by Jim Heskett
There were no tunnel guards on this side, though. Curious. Even if they’d already shut down entry via this side, they should not have abandoned their posts so quickly.
And then, Valentine realized why she was alone. She saw the Colorado tunnel guards, out of the corner of her eye, hustling off in one direction. They had to be chasing after Yorick and his friends.
A sense of relief washed over her. Accidentally killing them inside the tunnel would have been a pyrrhic victory.
No. Take the chips, and then they would die. Any other order was unacceptable.
Valentine rushed in their direction. A hundred paces later, she caught up with the guards as they hustled toward the edge of a building. There were only two, and she put bullets in each of their backs, sending them to the ground. But, when she reached the building and peered around the edge, Yorick and his friends were nowhere to be found.
She screamed. Jaw tensed so tight, she thought she might crack a tooth.
They had evaded her once again.
An excerpt from “A brief history of the decline of the United States of America”
by James Eppstein, Ph.D.
A few years into the establishment of the feudal system, it appeared to be working as a self-propelling machine. Instead of one large, fallible government to topple, a decentralized approach kept the workings clean and effective. There didn’t seem to be a way anyone could corrupt it and bring it down.
But the machine needed fuel in the form of worker bees to keep it moving forward.
Local lords sent out search parties of private army and loyal contract mercenaries—mostly known as soldados—to scour the lands for children to force into slavery. Many of these children became serfs. A system of indentured servitude kept them obedient and with hope of either earning freedom, or hope of escaping someday.
Some serfs were allowed to buy their way out and even become landowners outside the plantacións. Most serfs, however, worked until they were no longer able, and then were put to death by the lords. Each plantación could make its own rules governing indentured servitude.
The plantación system worked to reinvigorate the commerce of agriculture, which had suffered greatly during the war. Scurvy had even made a resurgence, a problem not so rampant since the days of the great European sailing ships. But, with fresh fruit and vegetables flowing freely again, the country’s health—in general—improved in a manner of a few short years.
The plantacións and urban areas were mostly allowed to operate independently. The Mexican Transitional Authority came up with a brilliant move to ensure these autonomous fiefdoms felt like interconnected units, though. Each would specialize in something, such as the production of lumber or steel or water filtration or grains. And, the MTA would not let two similarly specialized plantacións or factories exist within a certain geological area. If you needed wheat, you had to trade your lumber at a reasonable price with the owner of the wheat plantación. The lords didn’t like each other, but they needed each other to thrive.
It all seemed to be working, and no one had the might to rise up above the system to break it. That is, until the second First City came along.
Previously, the MTA government had tried to establish a capital city in Kansas City, but it hadn’t worked. The idea of creating hundreds of equal and independent sections would distribute the balance of power as long as no one gained too much strength.
Then, King Nichol emerged into prominence. Meteoric would be one word to describe it. He was Lord of Denver, the largest community in the former state of Colorado. Initially an agrarian plantación, Denver grew at an astonishing rate, annexing and absorbing urban city-states nearby.
Locals attributed this success to several factors. First, Denver had suffered only a minor amount of damage in the war. At least, a relatively minor amount of damage. Most of the roads had been left intact, and EMPs used in the area had not permanently destroyed the city’s technology. This attracted people from all over the land to emigrate there. The promise of jobs and a stable economy brought in tens of thousands in a short number of years.
The second factor had to do with geography. The soil remained fertile, and with so much of the lands across the southern former United States scorched, the area became sought after for fruit and vegetable production. Also, the mountains provided a natural barrier against enemies to the west.
The third main factor was Nichol himself. Reports of him vary wildly… some claim him to be a handsome young man, benevolent and merciful, while other accounts described him as a crooked old man, as wicked as he is cruel. While the truth is likely somewhere in between—or maybe the truth is that Nichol has not always been one man—the end result is that he was effective. Ruthlessly so.
His slow annexation of nearby areas soon turned into a bloodbath. He consumed the entire state of Colorado in the span of five years. Then, his title changed from Lord to King, and no one could stop him. His territory spread further and further, eclipsed perhaps only by the legends surrounding him. Some said he had personally engineered the currency crisis. Some said he had single-handedly destroyed all the ports in all the seaside towns, keeping foreigners out of this fledgling country with no name.
No one is sure how this all happened under the watchful eye of the MTA. Many have speculated they were not as watchful as some historical accounts would have you believe. Or, perhaps there were other factors that have not been recorded.
Whatever the truth of history, the present became this: Denver became the First City, the capital of the kingdom, and Nichol’s army grew vast.
Seemingly every day, you would hear that King Nichol had quashed yet another Frenchie rebellion and had tarred and feathered entire villages of traitors. His armies would march into towns not strictly living within the feudal system, and if they would not pay tribute to the king, the overwhelming might of his army would wipe them out.
The city of Colorado Springs had been a longtime rival. While there are no official accounts, legend has it that Nichol razed the city in a single battle because the local lords refused to turn over the means of their wastewater recycling operation. If this is true, it means he massacred eighty thousand people in one day. However they died, Colorado Springs is now a town full of skeletons. Thousands of cars sit abandoned on the roads there.
His power seems to know no limits. And maybe that sort of pride will spell the beginning of a fall.
Chapter Thirty-Four
HARMONY
Rosia still had not caught her breath by the time they heard the two gunshots behind them. They were on a residential street, rows of identical houses spread out to the horizon. She and Yorick and Tenney stopped and turned to follow the noise. Tenney was still like a ghost. Poor Malina had died only five minutes ago.
They looked back toward the corner of the building where they had expected the two tunnel guards to come sprinting after them, but nothing happened.
"It's her," Yorick said. “Valentine, the woman from Rock Springs. She’s close by, and we need to move, now.”
They broke into a run, following Yorick's lead. He diverted in between two houses, hopping a fence and streaming across someone's backyard. This backyard had a giant hole in it, lined with concrete. The hole itself was filled in with water. It took Rosia a moment to recognize this strange creation as a swimming pool. She'd read about it in a book.
Rosia watched a woman eying them from behind a set of curtains. The woman was well-dressed, no gang tattoos or loco hairstyle. She had on a simple white and red sundress and her black hair in a ponytail atop her head. The shock on her face said this woman was not accustomed to gun battles and foot chases through the streets.
Harmony was as different from Rock Springs as Rock Springs had been from Pinedale. Pinedale had been a dusty collection of isolated buildings thrown together in one continuous patch of land. Rock Springs had looked like a once-thriving town that had been decimated in the war, never to return to its former glory.
But Harmony was a
different animal altogether. There were few battle scars here. In the collection of five or six large buildings that made up what was most likely the downtown area, only one appeared to have sustained damage. A large section of that particular stone and brick building had been patched with wood and corrugated metal, now rusted over. This town had not seen war in its recent memory.
And the neighborhoods could be described as idyllic. There were no propaganda posters plastered everywhere. Tall wooden posts with cables running between them stood at intervals along the streets. Rosia recognized these as telephone wires. The houses had white picket fences and trees planted and fresh coats of paint. Collectively, like nothing Rosia had ever seen before.
After everything she and the others had been through, she knew better than to trust the outward appearance. But, maybe this was what they had been looking for, after all? Maybe crossing that tunnel and escaping Wyoming was all the change they needed to find a better life.
Either way, none of that would matter unless they managed to avoid being shot by the psychotic woman chasing them.
They hopped the next fence and then turned again, almost doubling back. Yorick moved in a zig-zag pattern, shifting between neighborhood streets, crossing yards, hopping fences. No way could he know where he was going, but his battle training instinct had taken over. Rosia could see the focus on his eyes as he made moves he hoped their pursuer would not be able to predict.
They ran like this for five more minutes until they finally paused for air.
As soon as they stopped their forward motion, Tenney crashed down on his butt in the middle of the sidewalk. Tears flowed from his eyes like a water faucet. Yorick and Rosia sat on either side of him, wrapping their arms around the big guy. None of them spoke. There was nothing to say.
After thirty seconds of this, Rosia cleared her throat. "We should go. We’re exposed out here. It might not be just this woman looking for us. There were soldados in that tunnel, and we haven’t seen them on this side yet.”
Tenney ran a hand under his nose, wiping snot. He nodded. "Okay, I can do this." Grunting against his injury, he rose to his feet. He heaved deep breaths with a hand on his side. “I’m ready.”
Yorick helped him over to the next street, and they kept moving. They wandered like this for half an hour. Not as hurried now, and they took the time to study and catalog street signs and paths as they navigated.
Back at the plantación, before Malina had shot her, the scientist in the tunnels under the mansion had claimed Yorick's parents lived in a red house with blue shutters. Yorick whispered these words as a mantra, over and over as they searched.
“Red house with blue shutters. Red House with blue shutters. Red house with blue shutters.”
There were hundreds of houses. But as they searched and searched, Yorick repeated his mantra. Tenney and Rosia kept pace with him, letting Yorick lead the charge. He was like a robot, pushing, searching, repeating his mantra.
“Yorick,” Rosia said.
He ignored her, his head forward and eyes focused. Tenney plodded along, his face twisted in confusion and pain. He seemed dazed. In a way, so did Yorick.
And then, like a drop of rain from the sky, the red house with the blue shutters appeared. It was there, at the end of the street, the only red house on this block. Most of the others were muted colors of green and beige, boring two-story standard domiciles.
Yorick sucked in a breath as if he were drowning. "There it is. I don't believe it. That's it. That's the house."
The three of them approached the house, Rosia letting Yorick’s wide-eyes lead them. Yorick opened the knee-high gate on the little chain-link fence and continued up the pathway to the house. Rosia put a hand on Tenney's chest, keeping him back. The big guy nodded. He seemed to understand that Yorick should be allowed to go alone at first.
This was a potentially life-altering moment for her boyfriend. She could only imagine what was running through his head at the moment. His eyes were searching, he breathed rapidly through his mouth. His hair, wild and unkempt. Fists clenched at his side as he stepped up onto the porch.
Before he knocked, Yorick turned around and glanced at them both. Rosia marveled at the simultaneous relief and weariness on Yorick's face.
He knocked on the door. At first, nothing happened.
Rosia gripped Tenney’s hand as they waited. “I know you’re devastated.” This made Tenney whimper as tears flowed down his cheeks. Rosia had never seen the former farm serf act this way before, but she completely understood. She would be in the same state if something happened to Yorick.
“I’m devastated too,” she said. “If they’re home and we can go in, then all of this stops. We can slow down and process everything.”
Rosia suspected it wasn’t true, however. They had evaded this Valentine woman for the time being, but a person who had tracked them for hundreds of kilometers would not give up so easily. No way.
“Yeah,” Tenney said, his voice hesitant and frail. “I would like for the world to slow down. I want things to make sense again.”
Rosia didn’t add any more comment. She stood there, supporting Tenney, watching Yorick as he waited on the small porch in front of the house. Foot tapping on the concrete.
A few seconds later, the door opened. There stood a woman, and she was the spitting image of Yorick. Change the gender, add thirty years, and they were the same person. Unbelievable.
A moment later, a man came to stand behind her. He looked a little like Yorick, but not as much as Yorick looked like his mother. Something about this struck Rosia as so strange. The resemblance brought a familiarity, almost as if she had seen them before.
"Can I help you?" the woman said.
Yorick fell forward, into her arms.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Yorick’s mother, Olivia Ortega, stood in the corner of the kitchen. Yorick watched her as his father, Laertes Ortega, set the bowls of soup before them. Olivia had not stopped crying since they’d arrived. Tears of joy, he had to assume, mixed in with touches of sadness. It was as if she could see in his face the long and hard journey they’d taken to reach them.
His parents’ house reminded him a lot of the plantación, specifically, the domiciles in the apartment buildings of that quadrant. Those had been fake or else designed to be a facsimile of real apartments, set up to provide urban battle scenarios. There were no propaganda posters about Wybert in this house in Harmony, of course, but the types of furniture and electronic devices were similar. They had working appliances and clean countertops. A refrigerator hummed in the corner, and a digital clock on the wall blinked with each passing minute.
Yorick had a million questions, and he had no idea where to begin. For now, basking in the glow of his parents’ smiles was enough to fill him with peace.
As Laertes set the bowl of soup in front of Yorick, the older man dropped down to one knee. A wrinkled smile spread across his face as he placed a warm hand on Yorick’s back. “I didn’t think we’d ever see you again, son. Now, you’re here, in the flesh, and it’s so surreal, only the stars know how to understand it all. It’s like a dream.”
“How long have you been in Harmony?” Yorick asked.
Laertes tilted his head back and forth. “Ten years, I think. We traveled a lot before then. Of course, after you… after you were gone, a lot changed for us.”
“How did Wybert get me? How old was I?”
Olivia stepped forward. “Let’s save your questions for after you eat and have had a chance to bathe and rest. It’s been an overwhelming day for all of us.”
“Your mother is right,” Laertes said. “I’ll go help prepare the beds and draw a bath. You and your friends can eat your meal in peace. We have all the time in the world now, so we can slow down and take our time getting to know each other.”
Yorick nodded. He didn’t know what to say.
“You look exhausted,” Olivia said.
“Thank you,” Rosia said. “You’re too kind with your
hospitality.”
Laertes smiled at her, then he leaned in close to Yorick’s ear. “This one is a beauty,” the older man whispered to Yorick as his eyes darted to Rosia. “Good job, son.”
Yorick felt a blushing grin spread across his face.
Laertes patted him on the shoulder and then stood up. “You really hiked all the way from up near Jackson to here? That’s quite an amazing feat, for such a young group of people. You should all be quite proud of yourselves.”
Yorick nodded appreciatively, but he didn’t say anything. They hadn’t all made it, of course.
Then, Yorick’s parents collected their bags and took them out of the room. Yorick sighed as he listened to his parents lug them upstairs. A moment later, the sound of running bath water wafted into the kitchen.
He sipped his soup, and a feeling of utter peace washed over him. After a lifetime inside Wybert’s walls, then a short time fighting to get here, it was done. No more running. No more scrambling to find the next bit of hope to cling to. He had no idea what his life would look like from now on, but that didn’t matter. Now they had a vehicle to get answers. A way to find the future.
Yorick looked at Tenney, causing the smile to vanish from his face. The big man ate his meal in silence, his blank eyes staring into the hunks of meat and broth in his bowl. He was like a statue, his shoulders barely rising and falling with each breath.
“I’m sorry,” Yorick said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now.”
“The real reason was her,” Tenney said. “You asked before why we wanted to come with you. Malina talked me into it. She said if we could get to your parents, maybe there was hope she and I could find our own people, too. We could find answers about why this happened to us and then begin a new life, somewhere else.”
Rosia leaned across the table and put her hand on top of Tenney’s. “Whatever happens next, we’re all doing this together. That part hasn’t changed for the three of us.”