by B. C. Tweedt
He leaned his torso forward and looked down the hall just in time to see Orion, Emory’s son, disappear behind a black steel door. The kid was infamous in the Crater – mostly for the creepy device on his neck, but also for his cruelty.
Beep! The drone barked at him and he jerked back.
“Gotcha. This way?” He pointed the way he’d come and backed away.
Emory’s son. A guarded door.
He’d have to investigate that later. Until then, he retraced his steps, discovered an alternate route, and found the door to the Crater.
He stopped to take a breath and swipe his bangs to the side. Luckily, when he entered, no one noticed. The Plurbs’ backs were to him, and they were angling to see someone on the ground level.
Cael tried to push his way through the crowd, but was repelled with threats and curses. Instead, he returned his own threats and searched for an alternate path. He soon found a wheeled generator with a spotlight rising from its center. A quick leap and grab brought him to the top of the generator. Over the heads of the men at the balcony, he could see below. Emory stood on a heli-pad with a phone to his ear.
Surrounding him were five giant television screens playing a news channel. Between the televisions were men holding posters with the word “Quiet” on it. After watching the news channel for a few moments, Cael caught on. Emory was being interviewed.
If he listened close enough, he could just make out what Emory was saying as he grew more and more passionate. “They have their candidate. Everything that follows is just a show. You’re pawns in a chess game – marionettes in a show that ends in tragedy. Your rulers, the beloved government you love and need, will punish anyone that does not play along, who does not play by their rules. You will see. We’ve seen what they’re capable of, nuking one of their own cities, using Pluribus as a scapegoat.”
Cael nodded, letting the hatred soak in through memories of the aftermath. He’d heard both sides of the story. Some claimed it was Pluribus, and they had plenty of evidence – as Plurbs had been at the Fair and other places around the country, kidnapping politicians’ families; but that was a far cry from nuking an entire city. To Cael, it made sense for the government to stage it all. The act had given the government more power than ever as citizens were willing to give up freedoms for government-promised security.
“They will do it again,” Emory continued. “Be ready. Watch for it. Are you listening? Because I’m giving you a headline.” He quieted to a whisper. “Mark my words. A year from now, every state that dares to vote for a freedom-loving candidate will be attacked – punished – by our government with a severity exceeding that of Des Moines’.”
The crowd stirred in anger as the anchor tried to stammer a response. “Are you saying…?”
“But this time you’ll know,” Emory continued. “When it happens, it will be time for you to decide who you follow – a United States that forces its members into compliance, or an American Republic of the Constitution that freely allows its member-states the choice to join in a blessed union, or to fend for themselves in independence. So again, be ready. And trust me. Though the ARC may not claim Pluribus as their own, we are ready to defend any who joins her.”
The men flipped the “Quiet” signs, and the crowd erupted to “Applause” commands. Emory held up his phone as if he were the victor in a boxing match, allowing the anchor to hear the men surrounding him. The anchor never stood a chance.
Cael smiled.
This was why he had joined Pluribus. Not for the training – not for the camaraderie – but for justice. It was time someone put the government and the lying media in their place and kept them there. If it took violence to do so, then so be it.
The anchor was still dumbfounded when Cael stuck both his fingers in his mouth and let out a celebratory whistle high and shrill.
-------------------------------
“You’re from Iowa?” a tired-eyed cleaning woman asked Greyson, trying to make small talk as she guided him toward his new dormitory room with Rachael in tow.
“Yeah,” he replied, adjusting his arm sling with his bandaged hand. His identification lanyard swung by his sling, telling the world his false name. Nolan Schroeder.
“There’s a bunch of you here.”
He didn’t respond. He was taking in each room as he passed by. Most were filled with the accessories and knickknacks customarily seen in childhood rooms. There weren’t suitcases splayed open on the smooth cement floors; there were framed pictures, potted plants, and laundry baskets, as if these were permanent homes. Yet, something about this place was not inviting.
Perhaps it was the dim fluorescent lights hidden behind panels or the dull, cream-colored walls; or perhaps it was the forever-nagging thought that this was not home.
“Can I ask?” the lady asked, gesturing at the sling on his arm.
Greyson looked past her, indifferent. “Got shot.”
The cleaning girl smirked, apparently thinking it was a joke, but Greyson’s expression gave her pause. Rachael’s look told her to drop it.
“So, this is your room,” the lady stuttered, pointing in the next room while giving him timid side-glances. “Some of the kids donated some things…when they heard you didn’t have any…”
As she trailed off, Greyson sighed deep and long, still staring into the room. The bed was made with precision, covered with Transformers sheets. The curtains were clean and pulled to the sides. A teddy bear rested against the pillow. There was even a beanbag chair in the corner with a pile of books stacked next to it.
“I’ll let you settle in,” she said, giving him the keys.
Before long, she had left him in the quiet with Rachael.
His tired eyes darted around the room, but his feet couldn’t penetrate the doorway. This wasn’t his room. Those weren’t his things. The only things he had were in his fanny pack. He didn’t have a room anymore, and he didn’t want one. Having a room meant he was supposed to stay.
A child’s laughter, catching his attention, bounced around the hall.
He took a timid step toward its source, listening.
“Nolan? You okay?” Rachael asked from behind.
But Greyson was listening to the child’s voice as an adult voice replied, muffled. Again the kid giggled. The happiness echoed in the hallway, nagging at him.
Greyson continued listening as he treaded back to the room and Rachael.
He didn’t belong here. This is where children lived. This is where happy children lived, who deserved clean rooms they could call their own. It was too good, too permanent. As soon as he healed, he was gone.
“I can’t live here,” he said, handing her the keys.
Rachael sighed, trying to hide her concern. “We need the Med Center rooms open.”
He was eyeing the mountains out the bedroom window. “I’ll find a place.”
Chapter 6
Jarryd rushed into Greyson’s dorm room. “Hey, stud muff…” He paused in the doorway, and Nick bumped into him from behind. The room was tidy, but the bed had been emptied of its sheets and pillow. “The stud muffin isn’t here.”
A few minutes later Jarryd knocked on Rachael’s office door in the Med Center. “Nurse chick! SmokeStack has something for Greyson, but we can’t find the dude. Where’s my bro?”
Nick rolled his eyes, adjusting his new black-rimmed glasses behind his twin brother. The last few months had sent a rift between them, not only in the way they thought of the Plurbs, but also in their looks. Jarryd had kept his long, moppy hair down to his ears and neck, but Nick had cut his short.
Growing impatient, Jarryd pushed Rachael’s door open but stopped just inside the doorway, causing Nick to bump into him again. The room was dark and Rachael was seated on the other side of Sydney, watching a TV screen. Jarryd could sense something was wrong. There was something about the females’ eyes that gave him a tingling sensation in the chunk of his brain that urged him to flee. He had
honed his talent over years spent with a female mother – the ability to read girls’ minds. He knew what they wanted, what they hated, and when they were to be treated as dangerous.
Tears were an early warning system.
“Sorry, got to go!” he blurted, trying to squirm around his brother to the hallway. “Abort. Abort!”
Nick had the same early warning system, but a more compassionate response. He pushed Jarryd inside. “What’s wrong?” he asked Sydney.
Jarryd slid to the side, hands twitching at his chest.
Sydney peered at them. “It’s the news. It just keeps getting worse.”
Nick found another chair and pulled it next to the girls’. Though Jarryd stayed at the perimeter, he could still see the screen where a camera was panning a chain-linked fence with barbed wire. Soldiers stood guard behind sandbags and machine gun nests. There were tan army trucks lumbering inside, shots of people pouring out of buses in handcuffs. An anchor called it a “FEMA holding facility”.
Dumbfounded, Jarryd took a step closer. “Female holding facility? Doesn’t sound so bad…”
Sydney scoffed. “FEMA. Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“Oh, well, what’s the emergency?”
“Haven’t you been watching the news?”
When Jarryd scrunched his nose, Sydney rolled her eyes. “It’s the Shepherd Act,” she said. “Homeland Security is arresting everyone.”
“Arresting the Plurbs, you mean. Nick’s friends?”
Nick shot him a dagger of a look. “Not just Plurbs, I’m sure. Anyone who gets in the way. This is a long-time coming. Our government has been preaching that every opinion and way of life is equal for some time now. So, when others claim their ideas are morally superior, the government sees them as dissidents. The feds only tolerate those who agree with them. They only tolerate themselves. Everyone else must comply. And tyranny is born.”
Jarryd rolled his eyes. “Blah-blah, big-words. Can someone interpret?”
Sydney huffed. “Well, it’s supposed to just be Plurbs they’re arresting, but there’s even like this ‘Hate List’ for bigots and everyone who says anything against the law or the government.”
“What happens to those on the list?”
Sydney shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out. The law’s like thousands of pages long.”
Nick was nodding furiously. “That’s Foster for you. They’ve basically already given him wartime powers, but we’re not at war. At least not yet.”
Jarryd scowled. “Don’t go there again. It’s not going to happen. Right, Syd?”
He didn’t get the response he was hoping for. Her gaze didn’t stray from the screen where talking heads were discussing the very same thing, and had been for weeks.
“I don’t know anymore,” she muttered, defeated. “It’s all happening so fast.”
Jarryd shrugged, shaking off the fear that had crept up his spine. “Nah. You guys just keep watching this channel, and that’s all they do is talk about that stuff. Think about it. Have the police, the army, or female management people ever been bad? They’re here to protect us. They’re arresting all the Plurbs like they should.”
Suddenly Rachael’s stoic voice interrupted, “Have you ever seen the video of that guy who killed a giant wolf spider with a broom?”
Sydney recoiled, disgusted by the thought. Nick leaned in and nodded ‘no’, eager to hear her explanation.
“He struck hard and fast,” Rachael whispered, “but it turned out more complicated than he thought.” She watched the images on the screen as if they explained everything. “Turned out the spider was carrying its newborn babies on its back – hundreds of them. Its babies burst away like a fountain in all directions, scattering, hiding, making the man’s house a much more dangerous place than it had been to start with.”
The pictures in Jarryd’s mind were disturbing, but so was the analogy. He knew what she meant. If the government crushed Pluribus, it could create an even more dangerous world with more terrorists. And it was already happening. The news channel played videos of SWAT teams busting down doors, protestors being surrounded by police drones, and military vehicles churning down streets.
“You asked why I’m crying?” Rachael asked, tears still pooling in her eyes. “I’ve seen evil before. I’ve traveled the world, seen people turn on each other – do horrible things to each other – all in the name of justice, tolerance, and peace.” Her eyes were wet but her lips quivered in anger. “I’ve lived in fear from governments, and they lived in fear of their own people. They were afraid of losing their power. The countries I worked in didn’t have much power, but still, no one wants to lose their power.” She turned to the window. “And no one has more power to lose than the United States.”
When she looked back to Jarryd, she shrugged. “I’m afraid for my country.”
Jarryd surrendered any argument he had made, trying to shut out the uncomfortable fear crawling on his skin.
Rachael swiveled to Sydney. “And I’m afraid for Sydney.”
Jarryd cocked his head. “Why?”
“She’s going into the thick of it.”
Chapter 7
Asher lost sight of the shape. He swiped at the branch obstructing his view and let the soft pine needles slip through his gloved fingers before releasing it behind him with a snap, dropping snow crystals to the ground. The shape was gone. It was fast. So was he, but his small feet couldn’t churn through the mountain’s snow as fast as he wanted.
He imagined himself so much faster, bounding up the mountainside like a mountain goat, his legs thick with muscle, his massive hands wielding a machete like the expert survivalists he read about in the one book he’d brought with him from his dad’s book store: A Trailblazer’s Guide to Survival.
That’s who I am. A trailblazer.
But he didn’t know which direction to blaze.
He stopped at a rocky outcrop that blocked his path, his quick breaths puffing from his mouth like smoke. He sniffed at his cold snot and looked to the left and right, examining the obstacle. The outcrop was chest high – with no handholds. He tried lifting his boot to the top, but after two failed attempts, he knew it was worthless. His legs were too short. Surrendering to his frustration, he backtracked and found a new path – and, by chance, the footprints.
Bolting ahead, he was a trailblazer once more, battling with branches, chugging through the shin-deep snow in a rocky hallway jagging its way through the middle of a pass near the peak. The tracks led right through its center, but the shape was nowhere to be seen.
Wind shushed him without ceasing, and he obeyed it, creeping through the pass. His hand found the red fanny pack Nick had given him, and his small fingers crawled their way to the Swiss army knife.
A wolf. He imagined it above him, its drool dripping down the crevice. It had him where it wanted him. Trapped on top of the peak.
Snow fell like drool above him. The rock walls crowded him in, narrow and jagged. But he was small enough to pass through without harm. Until he reached the end, where the shape was waiting for him. It growled, its wolf-like body erect.
But Asher was relieved to see him.
“Wait up, Kit.”
The German Shepherd gave a wag of his tail, but his nose jammed back into the snow. After a few sniffs, he was off again, barreling up another slope.
Asher took a deep breath and followed the dog’s path. His legs and throat burned, and it wasn’t long before he’d lost the dog’s shape again.
“Kit! Come on boy, what’s y’ah hu’wwy?” he asked with the speech impediment that had nagged him for years.
Asher fell to his hands on the steep slope and crawled up the last few steps to the slope’s end.
And then his lungs seized. The view was awes0me. An entire mountainous valley opened below him, the snow-capped Rockies on all sides. The camp was behind him, hidden beyond the pass he’d gone through, but this was a whole other world,
where the Rockies were on their own, separate from civilization, too wild and treacherous for human habitation.
But there was something below that didn’t fit.
Asher smiled and slid down the slope as if his butt were a sled. Grimacing through a few bumps, he then panicked. He was going too fast. His feet couldn’t stop him; his hands grasped at the loose snow as he barreled toward a wall.
Smack!
His boots hit the wall of sticks, shaking loose a small avalanche from the hut’s roof onto his body.
For a moment he sat, recovering from the panic and spitting at the snow.
He looked back at the trail his butt had created.
“Cool.”
Trailblazer.
He stood up, shook off the snow, and walked the stick hut’s perimeter, inspecting its design. There was nothing fancy about it, and there were even a few gaps in its roof, but the thick branches and needles provided good building material.
He came to the door, if one could call it that. It was a Transformers bed sheet hanging over an opening. Looking over his shoulder, Asher pulled up the sheet and peeked his head inside.
There was a comforter laid out in the corner with a small pillow at its head. A cup sat next to a pan that rested in the center of the room, filled with half-melted snow and lit from a hole in the ceiling. Grinning, Asher crawled inside and helped himself to some of the pan’s drinking water.
While drinking, his eyes landed on a small book sticking out from under the covers. He recognized the color, the size, and slid it out, confirming that it was indeed the little Bible that Greyson had showed him on the plane. Asher flipped open the cover, reading the ‘Payback List’ that Greyson had scrawled into the Table of Contents. There were a few new entries. Pillow. A sleeping bag. A sheet. A pan and a cup.
He turned back a page. Written on the bottom was ‘Days of Service - Sydney’ followed by tally marks. The same was done with ‘bedpan empties’.