by D. J. Molles
Walter looked at him like it was the most obvious question in the world. “There were ram marks in the door and the scorch mark from a diversionary grenade in my living room. That don’t sound like a burglary to me.”
Merl only nodded to concur, his face newly troubled.
Walter told him how he’d fled the house. How he’d met up with Virgil. And then most of what had happened. He didn’t tell it all. He left out the unnecessary parts. He left out the parts where he watched a man’s hand separate from his body like an invisible knife had divided it. He left out the part where he’d kicked an innocent woman in her own house because he was afraid of what she was reaching for in a dresser drawer. He left out the part where he’d shot the man named Hank to keep him from running away. He left out the part where he watched Virgil execute him.
There were lots of parts that weren’t really worth talking about.
But the big points.
The big picture.
He relayed that.
“We crashed the car in the woods a mile from here to get away from a convoy of guntrucks that had turned around on us,” Walter said. “They had to’ve gotten our description”—from the family we home-invaded—“They were coming after us.”
Merl looked incredulous. “And you decided it would be a great fuckin’ idea to lead them here? Jesus H. Christ! Walter! My family is in here!” As he spoke, his own words riled him. He drew a fist back, clenched it hard, his lips tightening. “I should beat you out of my damn house.”
Walter just shook his head. “We lost them.”
“What about drones?”
“We scanned for them.”
“Shit.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“I know.” Walter took a swipe at his eyes, felt shame anew. Not for feeling it. But for showing it. “If I had anywhere else to go, I would have gone there, Merl. And if you need to kick us out after Getty’s leg is patched, I understand. But this isn’t just me. This isn’t just an us issue. They have the whole District on lockdown. They’re going to find us. And not just us. They’re going to find everyone. They’re going to exterminate every bit of resistance out of this place, and don’t think it’s gonna stop there.” Walter shook his head bitterly. “It won’t stop there. We can’t call out. We can’t message out. We can’t even take a video of what they do to us in here. We are completely at their mercy. And they have none. And they would’ve come for you and your family whether I’d come here tonight or not. Because we drive in the same tractor. Because they don’t need any more reason than that.”
Merl put his hands on his hips and looked at nothing in particular.
The wall.
The floor.
“We shoulda said ‘no’,” he mumbled, almost dreamily.
Walter almost laughed at him. Almost, but there wasn’t enough humor in it. “Yeah, well. We shoulda thought about that a long time ago. That ship has sailed. We can’t say ‘no’ anymore. We’re not citizens anymore. We’re subjects. And subjects can’t say ‘no.’ All subjects can say is ‘so the wind blows.’”
Abruptly, Walter felt like putting his fist through the wall, but he thought that he’d done Merl enough damage for one night, best not to damage his property as well. But he felt every year, he felt every injustice, he felt every goddamned single thing that they’d slowly, so slowly and sneakily, taken away from him, and not just him, but his family before him. How they’d taken it all away like a masterful magician, and no one had any idea where it all went.
All those years of thinking that he could get by.
All those years of thinking, “If I just play by the rules, they won’t bother me.”
So the wind blows.
And the seasons go.
And the seeds grow.
But they should have fought back.
He should have fought back.
He should have done it a long time ago and not waited until every possibility to defend himself was stripped away. His father should have fought back. His grandfather should have fought back, rather than just speaking out, because words are words and amount to nothing but their own physical weight.
They all should have fought back when they had the means to do so.
But it was too late now. They’d pissed that chance away on the hope and prayer that perhaps, maybe just maybe, unlike every other government in the history of governments, that theirs would be benevolent.
What a crock of shit.
And he understood. Walter understood in that one instant of fury, why it was that for all these years Virgil had looked down on him.
Walter had dug himself into a hole of complacency, and Virgil had watched him do it.
Virgil had known the truth long before Walter had wanted to admit it to himself. But Walter had been afraid of the truth. Afraid of what he’d lose. Afraid for the safety of his family.
But now his family was gone anyways.
Virgil had been right all along.
They should have fought back.
More of them.
Everyone.
Back in the days when they were still citizens.
Back in the days before they became subjects.
Walter shook his head, wordlessly, and felt every inch of him the fool that he knew he was.
And what now? To say “It’s too late anyhow,” and then raise up his hands in defeat?
No. Not now. Not after they’d taken everything. Now there was no reason not to fight. Now there was no reason not to die.
In his panic he had put his friend’s family in the line of fire. He’d been a coward.
You’ve been a coward all your life, he roared at himself inwardly.
For all the fist-fights and all the anger that made him feel like he was an animal not to be messed with, now he came to find out his true place in the order of things. Except that it did not sit well with him.
He’d grown mentally fat on the comfort of society.
But that did not define him.
He would define himself.
“Virgil!” he suddenly barked.
Merl jerked.
Walter moved around him. Out of the entryway and into the kitchen.
Virgil and Tria were looking at him. He realized that he’d shouted probably louder than he’d intended to. But one cannot simply swallow an explosion. Sometimes it needs out. Sometimes it simply has to release. Sometimes you can damage yourself trying to keep it in.
Tria was holding Getty’s right hand. Virgil was holding his left.
Ann was between them, putting staples into Getty’s red-stained, red-flushed leg.
Getty himself was sitting with locked jaw and bared teeth, watching it happen. There was a gray box strapped to his upper left arm, and a set of clear tubes ran down from it and into a catheter on the interior of his elbow. Probably the standard medley that the SoDro field medics pumped into every knocker who got a limb caught up in some machinery: pain meds, blood boosters, and stimulants.
Cluh-clip went the staple gun, violent in the silence.
Getty let out a strange noise, but didn’t take his eyes away from the process.
Finished with that staple, Ann looked over her shoulder at Walter.
“What?” Virgil said.
Walter cleared his throat to get the fire out of him. Composed himself marginally. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 19
Virgil met him and they sidestepped away from the group and into the living area. Walter had his eye on Getty, judging their progress, but then he looked up at Virgil, and Virgil was looking at him, not with the great contempt he had expected but with a stern sort of focus.
“What’s wrong?” Virgil asked.
“We can’t stay here,” Walter said. “We’re putting Merl’s family in danger.”
Virgil glanced around him. Then he nodded without speaking.
They were on a ticking clock. It was just a matter of time before the CoAx came for them here. Before they
started indiscriminately kicking in every door within a five mile radius of where they’d ditched the stolen truck.
“How close is Getty to being done?” Walter asked.
Virgil rolled his shoulders like he was working a kink out. “She needs to staple the back side. Finish his IV. Then he’ll be mostly okay. Still can’t move good, though.” He looked at Walter with genuine worry on his face. “How are we getting out of here? We gonna borrow their car?”
“Where are your guys? Your team? The snatchers?”
“Various places,” he said, enigmatically.
“They don’t have a rendezvous point or anything?”
Virgil’s tongue worked against his teeth, as though deciding what to say and what not to say.
“Christ, Virgil!” Walter flung his arms out, frustration spooling up. He kept his voice lowered, but it was all intense and grating. “This isn’t the time. You held back before because I wasn’t a part of this shit. But I’m a part of it now, okay? I’m in it. I’m with it. Stop holding back.”
It wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t conflict. Not like before. Not like it would have been only hours ago. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Perhaps a bit of both. But if Walter had said those exact words eight hours ago, Virgil would have stared down his nose and not said a goddamned thing.
Now, he stared at Walter for a long, undecipherable minute, and then nodded once.
“We have a safehouse in the Town Center,” he said. “They should’ve gone there when shit hit the fan, but it’s just a rally point. There’s no telling whether they’re still there or not.”
“Can they help us get out of the District?”
Virgil bobbled his head—yes and no. “That’s the purpose of the rally point. To meet up and find a way out. But I can’t promise you that they’ve found a way out. I can’t promise you that we’ll discover one at all.”
“Nobody can promise shit right now,” Walter said. “Are our chances better with them or without them? Loyalties and friendships aside. Answer that question.”
Virgil considered it, and to his credit, he did it earnestly. Then he nodded. “With them. We’ve got equipment to fight back. Even with the comms blackout, we can worm our way in to the network, figure out a weak point, try to exploit it. They’ll be working on that. If they haven’t already gone for it.”
“How long are they supposed to wait for you?” Walter asked. “They are supposed to wait for you, right?”
Virgil didn’t even glance at the clock. He already knew. “We’ve already passed that window. The noose closes fast. We know that. I instructed them to only wait four hours if things got hot.”
“They’re definitely hot.”
Tria appeared at their side. Her thin face was thinner. Like the hours had bled her. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“We’re going to try to get to Virgil’s team,” Walter said. “In the Town Center. You got any issues with that?”
He half expected her to argue just because she disliked Virgil. But she nodded shakily. “As long as they got a way out of this shit storm, I’m in.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Virgil said. “But the chances are better than by ourselves.”
“How are we getting there?” Walter threw the question out.
“Can’t walk,” Tria said. “Not with Getty’s leg like that.”
Walter agreed. “We’re at least five miles from the Town Center. It’d take us the rest of the night if we were carrying him along with us.”
“No, we need to get there sooner rather than later,” Virgil said. “Our only chance is to catch them before they find a weak point and exfil this place. Otherwise we’re back to square one.”
“How sure are you that they’re going to find this weak point?” Walter raised his eyebrows at Virgil.
Virgil sniffed. “They’re snatchers. It’s their job.”
“So…drive,” Tria said.
And then they were all silent.
Walter shook his head slowly. “I can’t take Merl’s car. On top of everything else.”
“Oh, you’re gonna take my damn car.”
Walter turned and looked behind him.
Merl was standing there, arms still crossed over his chest. In his rumpled shirt and boxers, he looked out of place in this gathering of sweaty, dirty, exhausted individuals with rifles and softarmor strapped to their bodies.
These unfortunate revolutionaries. Fugitives. Hunted animals.
“Merl…” Walter began, but didn’t finish. He didn’t finish because he wanted the car. He just didn’t want to accept it from Merl.
Merl shook his head, waved off any further words. “It’s not a charity act and I’monna kill you if you get that shit shot up, I swear to God. But you’re doin’ more harm than good sittin’ in my house. Not that I don’t love you like a brother, but you need to get the hell out of here, and soon. And if that means my car, then take it.”
“How you gonna get to work?”
“Work?” Merl scoffed. “I don’t think there’s gonna be work tomorrow. But if there’s fields to be planted tomorrow morning, I’ll report that my car got swiped by a band of idiot revolutionaries and have SoDro send the van around for me. I’ll be fine.” He smiled. Then stopped smiling. “But seriously, you guys should leave.”
***
“How you feelin’, Buddy?” Virgil was in the driver’s seat of Merl’s old pickup truck.
Getty was propped up in the back, just behind his friend. He looked clearer now, but still not well. Drawn. Expended. Like something disposable that had already been used up and left on the side of the road.
“I’m better,” Getty mumbled. “Pain meds and stims are fighting it out in my head right now. Okay if I smoke?”
Neither Virgil nor Tria cared.
Getty got a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He enjoyed a big draw and exhale, then looked across at Walter, who was in the back with him. He offered Walter the pack. Walter took one and Getty lit it for him.
The four of them drove along tensely, off of Pecan Avenue, which harbored only two other residences, and onto the main highway that would take them straight into the Town Center.
Although the Agrarian Districts were rural and relatively unpopulous, farming had become a twenty-four-hour business. Plantings didn’t stop. Pumping the chemicals along the hydroponics lines didn’t stop. Harvesting didn’t stop. What could be done in the day could largely be done at night. And so it never stopped, a ceaseless machine.
Even at this early, dark hour, there should have been other cars on the road. SoDro vans taking workers back to their residences at points across the District. Those that owned their own cars getting off of work, or racing to check into some odd-hour shift, or possibly to try and put in some overtime before their actual shift started.
But the roads were empty.
Merl’s words held a certain weight now in Walter’s mind: I don’t think there’s going to be work tomorrow.
Off to their left, he watched three gunships, far out over the dark countryside. They didn’t run with lights when they flew over the district, and their metal hides were black on the black sky, but each of the three was burning their spotlights. Searching for something.
Me? Us? Walter wondered. Or some other element of resistance that they’ve managed to rout out?
There had to be others. Others besides Virgil’s snatchers, and Tria’s crew, and Richard Honeycutt’s syndicate.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Chicom commandant had called these Districts “dens of rebellion.” Or had it been? Yes, it had been nearly a decade. My, how time flies. Walter wondered whether it was even the same commandant these days, or if he’d been replaced by another?
I wonder what my great, great grandfather would have said about that question? I wonder what ol’ Walter Baucom The Original would have thought about multiple generations of foreign military commandants being in charge of this so-called sacred dirt?
But a piece of dirt
is only so sacred as the blood that has pledged to defend it. Eventually rain and time washes out the blood that is already there, and if no one new steps up, then that dirt is just dirt once again.
Well, he would have ate his hat and fought back.
But then, in his great, great grandfather’s time, they’d had the means to fight back. That was before they’d been turned into subjects. That was back in the day when the word “Rights” wasn’t just some term ascribed to the things in life that made men comfortable, but rather the things in life that made men free.
What do you know about freedom?
And Walter had no answer. He’d lived his life here, in these Districts. And he’d thought that being left alone was all the freedom that he needed. But that wasn’t really freedom. That was just avoidance. And avoidance only took you so far.
“You see that shit?” Virgil called from up front.
Walter leaned forward, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “What?”
They were headed straight north up the highway. Still a few miles out from the Town Center, but it was dead ahead of them, over the woods and through the trees. Now the highway was dark and black and it stretched out with its two concurrent lines, into the darkness, where it seemed to disappear into a wall of trees.
But beyond that seeming-wall of trees, the night sky was not so dark. It glowed. It burned. The outlines of gunships in the sky flitted back and forth. Something like the tail of a comet jetted over them, and Walter knew it was fast-movers.
They watched and drove on.
“Flyovers,” Virgil said, very serious. “They’re engaged with someone over there.”
“You think that’s the Town Center?” Tria asked, worried.
Virgil glanced into the rearview mirror at Walter. “I can’t say. Walt?”
Walter was still transfixed by the sky. A stream of tracers, like little lightning bolts all in quivering disorderly line, burst from one of the shadowy gunships and arced towards the ground.
Walter felt his heart pound suddenly in his chest.
“Yes,” he said, quietly. “I think it is.”
“If they’re not dropping bombs yet, that means they’re in house-to-house,” Tria observed.