by Hunt, James
***
The living room was clean, tidy, and simple. Even the way the furniture was placed in the room signified a natural balance. It was like the owner had placed each piece specifically in its area to ensure the house would not lean to one side or the other.
In the adjacent study, the same care and balance was erected in the form of bookshelves. The walls were lined with them from the floor to the ceiling. Hundreds of books, tens of thousands of pages, millions of words all neatly tucked away behind their covers.
Todd dipped his hands into the water bucket and splashed his face. The droplets of water collected in the thick bracken of his beard and through his slicked-back hair. He ran a comb through both his hair and beard, taming the knots and tangles formed from the previous seven days, which had been the last time he’d taken the time to wash himself. He scrubbed himself down as best he could then rinsed with the five gallons of water he had pumped from the community’s water pump. He snatched a towel and tried to catch as much of the water dripping onto the floor on his way to the bedroom as he could.
The bed was made, and on top of the comforter sat a pair of pants, a T-shirt, boxer briefs, and socks. The towel hit the floor, and he started to dress.
The town’s sirens wailed just as Todd pulled the laces tight on his left shoe. He abandoned the shoe’s partner and immediately went to his study. In the chair was a worn leather briefcase. He snatched the manila folder inside and rushed back to the bedroom. He pulled up a piece of the floorboard by the tips of his fingernails and stuffed the folder over a dust covered pistol inside. He made sure it was secure then grabbed his right shoe on the way out.
The farms surrounding the makeshift town were fairly spread out. Until the government created their “community,” the families and individuals in the area got along fine. To his left and right he could see his neighbors making the walk down. All of them kept their eyes on him.
Once Todd made it onto the main track, he could see the sentries, rifles in hand, herding everyone in line. Todd filed in, and one of the other community members caught his eye. He gave him a simple nod, and the man looked away.
A new inspector had arrived. He reminded Todd of the street thugs he used to see in California, complete with short hair, simple clothes, and an air of anger and entitlement; the kind of guy who’d knock you out because he was having a bad day. The man didn’t fit the mold for most of the inspectors he’d seen. Especially after seeing the gun holster on the inside of his black leather jacket.
There was another man standing behind the street thug. He looked like some lab rat Todd would have found during his teaching days. The rat held his case of syringes close to his chest, wide-eyed and visibly shaking.
The street thug said something to his pet rat, who then moved to the first person in line and began drawing a blood sample. Whoever the man in the black jacket was, he definitely wasn’t an inspector. While the ‘assistant’ made his way down the line, the street thug simply watched the rest of the community, giving everyone a good look up and down. When he made it to Todd, he stopped.
“What was your job?” Street Thug asked.
“Was?”
“Before the soil crisis.”
“Janitor.”
Street Thug took a step back, rubbing his chin. Then, as quick as a snake bite, he grabbed Todd’s wrist and examined his palm. Todd felt the man’s finger trace along the creases and grooves of his skin. Then, just as quickly as he’d grabbed Todd’s wrist, he tossed it away.
Street Thug shoved his own palm in front of Todd’s face. “You see this? This is the hand of a man who worked outside. Someone who gripped tools and machinery. You have the hands of a twelve-year-old girl. You weren’t a fucking janitor. So what do you do now, janitor?“
“Body depo,” Todd answered.
“Like that, do you? Copping a feel of the stiffs before they’re gone. I can’t imagine the play around here is any good, so you have to take it where you can get it.”
The thug puffed hot, stinking breath against Todd’s throat. Todd balled his fist so tight the bones in his hands popped.
“Aww, what’s the matter?” Street Thug asked. “Have a soft spot for the stiffs? Formed a connection with them, have you?”
The lab rat stood sheepishly behind the thug. “Um, sir?”
The thug took a step back and allowed the rat to collect his cheese. Todd stuck out his arm and felt the cool puncture of metal pierce his skin, followed by the slow drain of life from his vein. Once the syringe was full, the warm, tingling sensation in the crook of Todd’s elbow disappeared, and he covered it with the pressure from his opposite hand. He stood there, feeling the pulse from his heartbeat quicken.
Finally, the thug stepped away. Todd felt his heart rate slow. The beat in his chest and pulse in his arm declined in proportion to the distance between the two of them. Once all of the samples were collected, the lab rat disappeared inside the truck that he arrived in.
Todd closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, quietly. He let the cool rush of air blow past his lips and into the open space in front of him. He had to stay calm. He couldn’t panic. His eyes slowly moved to the sentries surrounding the group. He counted twelve. All armed with assault rifles, and secondary pistols at their waists. They had enough bullets to kill every member of the community twenty times over.
It would only be another few minutes before the lab rat finished the tests on his blood. And when the rat analyzed the calories along with the vitamin and mineral count that was flowing through his blood at this very moment, Todd would have to make a decision that carried repercussions that would extend far beyond his small community.
***
Sydney carefully placed each vial of blood into the cylinder holes of the machine. Once each vial was secure, he flicked on the machine, and it roared to life. The blood samples would be spun, dissected, isolated, and analyzed individually.
After the machine provided Sydney with the nutrition levels, he would then compare those results to each community member’s ration consumption that was kept on file in the Soil Coalition’s database.
That database contained files on every single citizen in the United States, including himself. It was one of the most secure servers in the country, with most of the files being classified beyond his clearance. It contained health records, eating habits, family medical history, known ailments and diseases, genetic stability. It had everything.
Sydney cross-referenced the results and found that most members of the community were over their limit, but within the percentage range of leeway given. But one member’s nutritional data was through the roof.
“That can’t be right,” Sydney said to himself, clicking on the file to examine the specifics. But the computer’s results were accurate. The man had no vitamin or mineral deficiency, and he had a healthy blood chemistry. Sydney was quite possibly looking at the healthiest man in the United States. This type of nutritional level was even beyond even his compensation, reserved for the highest officials in the government.
“The soil,” Sydney said, falling back into his chair. The soil that he analyzed earlier that was supposedly from Maine that was found in a field somewhere in this area.
Did these people find a solution? Have they been able to grow crops? Did they have a surplus of food?
Sydney jolted forward in his chair, immediately opening up the background files of the members of the community. He was looking for scientists, chemists, biologists, teachers, professors, any mind that could have had the potential to make such a discovery. Each name he came across had occupations such as mechanic, banker, programmer, janitor, pilot, writer, detective, but nothing close to the level of education needed to create such a miracle.
A violent pounding sounded on the door behind him. “Hey! What’s the holdup?” Jake asked.
“N-nothing. Just finishing up!”
Sydney went back to the file of the man with the immaculate nutrition levels. His background suggested nothing extrao
rdinary. According to the file, he was a high school dropout who couldn’t hold a job longer than a few months.
But still.
If Sydney were to turn this man over, he would waste away in a farm camp. However, the manipulation of blood sampling could land him in a farm camp for life. The scales tipped back and forth in his mind. On one end, his life. On the other, the life of a man he didn’t even know.
Another round of vicious knocks shook the door. “Let’s go!”
Gordon was right. Sydney couldn’t survive in the world the way it was now. He needed the protective shielding of his lab. But if he turned this man in, this… janitor, then he could be condemning one of the greatest minds of this century.
***
The rat had been in his cage long enough to process the results. Todd couldn’t figure out what was taking so long. Were they figuring out what to do with him? Did his nutrition levels warrant some executive call to officials on the other side of the country?
The door to the mobile lab opened, and the rat emerged. He handed the results to the street thug, who looked them over. Todd could feel a lump in his throat clog any path that would have allowed him to swallow.
After a few minutes of flipping through the pages, the thug slammed the clipboard back into the rat’s chest and stomped off.
“Inspection’s over!” Street Thug said.
Chapter 5
After three hours of being handcuffed to the chair in the darkness, Alex’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Not that there was anything to look at in the first place. When the door opened and the fluorescent lights flickered on, the skin crinkled around his eyes and forehead as he shut his eyelids to protect his pupils from the intrusive light.
“Alex Grives, so nice of you to come and see us this afternoon.”
Alex blinked furiously. Flashes of white continued to blind him every few milliseconds. He twisted in his chair a bit and winced from the pressure of the cuffs around his wrists.
“I hope you’ve been comfortable, Alex.”
“And when did you start caring about that, Gordon?”
When Gordon’s face finally came into view, he looked slightly thinner than the last time Alex had seen him, but other than that he still looked like the same bullshit-shoveling piece of scum.
“When they told me they had a hunter in custody with a bag of non-GMO seeds, I had a feeling it would be you, but never in my wildest fantasies did I think you’d ever have the balls to come and see me again.
How’s the shoulder?” Gordon asked.
“I want to make a trade.”
“Ha HA!” Gordon clapped his hands together and looked back at the sentries. “See? Balls. God, I miss dealing with men like that.” He leaned on the table, keeping his hands clasped together. “I already have what you wanted to trade, Alex. Sooo… what other business do I have with you?”
“You only have a portion of what I can trade.”
“Bullshit.”
“Are you willing to have me rot in a farm camp to find out?”
“How about I just beat it out of you.”
“We both know that isn’t going to work.”
Gordon laughed. “I guess you’re right about that.” He got up from his chair, and two muscle-necked sentries squeezed their frames through the door one at a time. “But it never hurts to try.”
Alex clenched his jaw. It was going to be a long afternoon.
***
Blood splattered across the one-way glass, and Gordon had to move to the side to make sure he could still see. It’d been a while since he’d seen a good fight, not that this was exactly pay-per-view, but at this point he’d take what he could get. The two sentries had pummeled Alex for the past twenty minutes. Gordon wasn’t even sure if the man was still conscious.
“He’s not talking,” Gordon said and turned to Dean, who was by his side. “Search the house. See if we can find it on our own. If not, then we’ll cut him the deal.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean replied.
A faint buzz sounded, and Gordon reached into his pocket. He frowned at the screen, then double-timed it to his office. Once inside, he locked the door and immediately dialed Jake.
“Nothing,” Jake said.
“You mean to tell me that there isn’t a single person there over the limit?”
“Not according to these results that lab tech you sent with me got.”
“And he showed you the results?”
“Yeah. I had him email them to you so you could see for yourself.”
Gordon tapped the spacebar on his computer, disrupting its slumber. His eyes scanned the document from left to right rapidly. He repeated the process twice before his elbows thumped on his desk, and he rubbed his eyes in disbelief.
“Then where the hell did the soil come from?” Gordon asked.
“I know the lab results say different, but I’ve got a profile on this guy here that doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?”
“This tall, smirky-looking fucker. According to his file, his name is Todd Penn. Before the famine, he was some nobody. A janitor that couldn’t stay in one place long enough to lay down any roots, but he stood out like a sore thumb when your tech was taking those blood samples.”
“You think he put the soil there?”
“I don’t know what it means, but I want to stay here until I figure it out.”
“Fine. But I need you back here soon. We’ve run into a situation with some non-registered seeds.”
“GMOs?”
“No. Organic. And the seeds are only half the problem.”
“I’ll call when I have an update.”
Gordon ended the call and tossed his phone onto the desk. All of it was piling up. The food camps, the debt to China, and the sanctions from Mexico and Canada along with the combination of no headway in sustainable food production after three years’ worth of efforts were beginning to sway the White House’s confidence in him. He needed leverage, and a solution to the soil crisis along with non-GMO seeds would be a good start.
Gordon had sullied his hands in the sewer of lobbying long enough to know when the tide was turning. However, he knew what would happen if Washington turned on him, and what was better, Washington knew it as well. They kept him fed and in a position of power, and he did his best to solve the mess they made while keeping his mouth shut about it. But it wouldn’t be long before he controlled who was in power and who wasn’t.
***
Sydney’s knee bounced nervously inside the mobile lab. The only light in the truck was the glow from the computer screen next to him. He swallowed hard. His throat felt dry. He reached for a bottle of water under the desk. The plastic bottle crinkled from the tremors in his hand. He took a sip then set the bottle down and wrapped his arms tight around the briefcase he carried with him, the case with the real lab results. If they were going to take him, it would happen soon. All that was left to do was wait.
The thought of wasting away in a farm camp for the rest of his life over the past few hours had dulled his senses to the point of apathy. The fear and apprehension that overwhelmed him during the forgery had run its course. But when Jake opened the door forcefully, a resurgence of angst gripped him.
“You’re heading back to Topeka,” Jake said then slammed the door shut before he had a chance to ask any questions.
Am I going back to be sent to a farm camp? Are they going to just kill me? Did Gordon want to speak with me personally before I was condemned? Did he want the pleasure of doing it himself?
The frigid, icy grip of panic took hold of the pit of his stomach and spread to his chest. The truck rumbled along the road, hitting potholes and divots along the way. Each jolt sent a shot of adrenaline through his body.
But the closer they drove to the airport, the less Sydney believed he’d been discovered. Gordon and the bloodhound he’d sent with him didn’t have the slightest inkling of the science behind what went into analyzing the results. All they cared about was t
he end product, and that’s what he gave them. He was worrying about nothing.
***
Sentries were stationed in every room in the house. Warren watched them set up the cameras in the kitchen, the living room, all of the bedrooms, and the garage, and he tried not to be obvious while watching them.
When they showed up, Warren thought they were there to collect him or search the house. Whatever Alex had gotten himself into was now affecting him. He shook his head and walked back into the living room, where one of the sentries leaned back in his chair.
“Hey, get off of that!” Warren yelled.