Recombination

by Brendan Butts

  "Jesus. I thought this stuff was supposed to be to die for?"

  It was an old joke and I offered the typical response.

  "More like you'd rather be dead than drink it."

  He offered the can to me but I shook my head.

  "I'm trying to go to sleep, remember?"

  "Hah, yeah, you're right." He took another sip from the can.

  "You don't mind, do you?"

  "Nah, get your sleep on. We'll be hitting New York soon, that's when we start making all the stops. I'll wake you up if we got any trouble."

  I leaned back in the seat and didn't bother stifling a yawn as I let sleep wash over me.

  Chapter 20

  I expected a restless sleep. So I must have needed it more than I thought because when Zenigra finally woke me up, we were already in Massachusetts about two hours out from Boston. The bus was still rumbling down Interstate 95, but from the shift in faces around me, it seemed obvious that we had stopped to take on and unload passengers while I slept.

  I watched through the window as the urban sprawl of Massachusetts became more apparent with each passing moment. It started like the outline of windswept footsteps in dry sand and slowly gained definition as we drew closer to the heart of the state.

  It wasn't long before the sheer enormity of the cityscape started to become overwhelming. It was one thing to see movies that took place in mega-sprawls like Massachusetts from your comparatively small and close-knit domed city, another thing entirely to witness the sight first hand.

  My heart was fluttering in my chest.

  Jesus Christ, get a grip. Had I really spent so much time walking the highways with nothing but Switchgrass for scenery that the sight of such a massive amount of civilization was something to feel anxious about?

  The Massachusetts sprawl covered almost the entire state with one large cityscape. There had been no overarching architectural plan to this sprawl. Unlike megacities like Withmore that had been fully planned out before the first brick had been laid, the Massachusetts sprawl was a grown thing. The roots of which could be found in the numerous cities that had been around since before the Revolutionary War. Its buildings, most at least twenty or thirty floors tall, littered the landscape like the upturned branches of a massive tree.

  With advances in medicine and cloning, there had been a boom in population growth as the old stopped dying and the young continued to have kids. With the population growth had come a need for more housing, and more jobs. The retirement age had been pushed back from 65 to something in the '90s. It all depended on where you worked.

  These days you could retire at 90 and still have a good thirty to forty years to look forward to. More, if you could afford a clone.

  With more housing, there had come more industry. With more industry, there were more jobs. With more jobs, there was less reason to leave the state.

  The Massachusetts sprawl was not, by any means, the only urban sprawl of its kind within the borders of the United States. Though it was the largest and thought by many, to have been the first.

  It had started when separate cities, struggling under the weight of their own populations, had formed alliances with neighboring cities. The alliances had led to the consolidation of government. The consolidation of the government had led to the blurring of the lines between one city and another.

  Over time, new, larger cities had formed. Those cities had formed alliances with their neighbors and so on and so forth. Now there was only something like four cities left in the entire state. Boston was the largest, but just barely, from what I remembered.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a state that was for all intents and purposes, one giant never-ending city. After the year I had spent on the road, avoiding most of the population centers as I jumped from plantation to plantation, I couldn't seem to fathom it. There had even been talk, preliminary at best, of some kind of impending superstate, as the borders of the New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts sprawls drew ever closer.

  Where Miami had grown vertically after the Dome had been put up, the Massachusetts sprawl seemed to have done the opposite. The horizontal growth seemed to have eaten up every available piece of land. As I gazed out the window, I failed to see any green blots on the landscape that passed. I assumed there must be parks of some sort, somewhere. Kids had to have places to play, families spots to picnic, but I was sure that these places were all privately owned and charged a fee, or perhaps required membership for entrance. That's how it had been in Miami since the dome went up.

  Sure, there had been a few public parks the local communities had helped to preserve in the beginning. That hadn't lasted long as increasing demands on space drove the price for undeveloped real estate dome high. The community action groups protested as the politicians gave in to what could only be described as garbage bags full of money.

  Even my elementary school’s own run-down five hundred square foot playground had had the same amount of security you might expect a pricey gated community to garner.

  I shouldn't let this place get under my skin. It's just a big city. The same rules apply. If anything, the Massachusetts sprawl should feel like home. It had plenty in common with Miami: limited space, a high population, and an even higher crime rate. I wondered where the Snakes fit into the criminal food chain.

  I felt a nudge against my shoulder, pulled my gaze away from the window and turned to see Zenigra holding out an unopened plastic water bottle.

  I took it, smiled in thanks, and killed the bottle in one go.

  "When we get to the bus station," Zenigra was saying, "we need to keep a low profile."

  I laughed. Zenigra keeping a low profile? That was something I just had to see.

  Zenigra seemed to understand my laughter and even joined in for a moment. Then his face turned serious and he continued.

  "It ain't a long shot to think Lucas will have some chummers at the station checking new arrivals. If them bakas catch up with us before we meet up with the Snakes, it's gonna be a problem."

  "What about the cops? Would they really risk starting a problem in a busy bus terminal?"

  "Maybe not. But that's not to say they won't follow us into an alley or something."

  "How far is it from the bus terminal to Snake turf?" I asked.

  Zenigra shrugged his massive shoulders and as he did, I caught a glimpse of the baseball bat's metal frame still tucked snugly into the innards of his duster. It was comforting, in a way.

  "We're coming in at New South Station, it's about five or six miles ‘til we're near Snake turf. At least where the turf was last time I was here."

  "How long has it been?"

  "Turf changes hands pretty quick, weeks are like years to gangers."

  "We're going on foot?"

  He nodded again, "Gotta. We burned the last of our money on the new threads."

  Damn. I really liked the new clothes Zenigra had bought me, but not enough to die for. I couldn't think of anything to say so I let the conversation lapse into silence.

  I found myself hoping that the bacteria I'd been carrying around since I was little was still active in my system. It sounded like I would be relying on it a lot in the next few hours.

  An hour went by in silence. I thought about challenging Zenigra to a game of Memory to pass the time, but one look at him told me that he wouldn't be interested in playing right now. His face was set, ebony lines of concentration and concern that only seemed to grow the closer we got to our destination.

  About thirty minutes out, he began running through all the items he had on his person, doing an inventory. I followed suit.

  Two packs of gum, three bottles of water, six soy bars, and two ketchup packets I had stuffed in my pocket absently from take-out we'd gotten before getting on the bus.

  Not exactly the type of gear I was happy to be carrying into a potential war zone. Zenigra's personal inventory consisted of pretty much the same. At least he had a bat.

  The muscles in my han
ds were itching for a weapon. More accurately, they were itching for some kind of farming tool I could use as a weapon. A shovel or pickaxe would have been perfect. I felt confident I could end someone’s life with a metal rake. It would just take a while.

  I decided we had entered Boston proper when the bus pulled off at an exit. It was about this time that all the lines on Zenigra's battle-scarred and hardened face went slack. All the tension left his posture and he looked relaxed. I watched it happen and almost nudged him to make sure he was okay, but I stopped when he fixed me with a crooked smile. I gave him a look that said: What gives?

  "Course is set now, Sev. Stressing ain't gonna do nothing but take your attention away from where it belongs."

  I nodded and tried to take his words to heart, tried to relax. This was probably easy for him. He'd been in plenty of fights, died plenty of times. I was just a kid along for the ride. No way to turn off my goddamn anxiety.

  Still, I did my best to make it look like I had relaxed a bit, but I was pretty sure that Zenigra knew I was just putting on a show.

  It looked like he was going to try his pep talk again but he never had the chance. The light dimmed as the bus dipped below street level and jerked to a halt in front of an underground terminal.

  "Keep it low an’ follow me," Zenigra said as he stood up. Stood up wasn't really the best way to describe it. He had gotten to his feet, but he was so tall that he was almost bent double to keep his head from banging against the roof of the bus.

  I stood there, impatiently waiting for the other passengers to gather up their belongings. Couldn't these bakas have started getting their belongings together before we pulled up?

  It occurred to me that we probably should have taken seats at the center of the bus, so as to get off in the midst of the largest possible crowd. As it was now, we would be exiting the bus dead last.

  Zenigra seemed to have had the same idea because he began shouldering his massive bulk down the aisle.

  "S'cuse me, sorry, make a hole," he muttered as he progressed.

  I moved up behind him quickly so that the rather large hole his bulk had opened in the other passengers didn't close up behind him, leaving me stuck. I heard a few people offer muffled complaints as we passed, though they seemed to be directed more at my back than at Zenigra’s. I couldn't blame them.

  By the time we reached the exit, I estimated about a third of the passengers had already gotten off the bus. Now was as good a time as any to try and blend in. Zenigra stepped off the bus but didn't straighten. He kept his head low, body bent, trying to match the height of the other passengers. I jumped down behind him and started scanning the terminal.

  If this was New South Station, Old South Station must have been built in the eighteen hundreds. This place was a dump. The grimy concrete I landed on was pitted with massive potholes that looked like they could have swallowed one of our bus’ massive tires. The curb I stepped up on moments later was almost nonexistent, the chipped edges so worn they seemed more like a handicap ramp than anything else.

  Above us, the ceiling was a mess of low hanging girders and track lighting that looked like it would have been more at home on a construction site than a major center of travel.

  Looking over my shoulder, I could see the top of the bus barely cleared the ceiling, with a foot to spare. Well worn metal benches lined the sidewalk for pedestrians and families to sit on while waiting for buses to depart or arrive. Maybe this terminal was under construction or something. That seemed to be the only likely explanation for the disarray.

  The air smelled strongly of ethicol exhaust in a way that reminded me of Miami. Ethicol fumes permeate every part of the city I had grown up in. Even with blocks of building-sized intake and outtake fans running twenty-four hours a day and a public transportation system that was nearly unrivaled in all the known world, bakas still had to drive their eth guzzling luxury cars wherever they went.

  When Withmore City had been re-designed a few decades back, the engineers had taken great pride in the fact that their air circulation system was so ace, half the city could own cars and you'd never know it. Withmore was much larger than Miami though, so I guessed it must have been easier for them.

  As the crowd in front of us drifted apart, I could see we were on the back most of three bus lanes. The sidewalk we stood on merely an island in a sea of idling buses and taxis.

  We kept with the crowds as much as possible as we crossed the remaining two lanes and their myriad islands of concrete, making our way to a glass-fronted entrance that led into the heart of the station.

  When we passed through the glass doors, Zenigra straightened up. Apparently, he thought he was drawing too much attention walking around like a hunchback. I saw him cast his eyes around the terminal and then start off in the direction of a set of escalators.

  The crowds were still thick and I only got fleeting glimpses of the station as we passed through it. The glances I did manage all gave me the same impression I had first received upon exiting the bus. This place was a dump. The exposed ceilings which I had assumed meant that the particular terminal we had exited from was under construction were an ever-present sight throughout this part of the station. The same burning bright track lighting threatened to blind me every time I looked up.

  We rode the escalator up and as we did, I turned to glance behind us at the throng of people entering through the glass doors. I strained my eyes, trying to bring the individual people into sharper focus and was mildly surprised when my vision sharpened and I was able to pick out faces in the crowd. A quirked eyebrow here, a dirty look there.

  Just as quickly, the sharpness receded. It was like switching from a high-def netcast to a fuzzy digital television signal.

  My elation at seemingly still having at least one of my abilities was drowned beneath a tidal wave of fear as I realized one of the faces I had been looking at before I'd lost the high def signal had been looking back at me.

  It hadn't been a face I recognized, and it really could have just been a coincidence or my overly taxed imagination, but something drove me to take a step forward and nudge Zenigra in the arm.

  He didn't respond, just kept looking forward. I nudged him again, assuming he hadn't felt it. Maybe the muscle grafts had dulled his sense of touch or something.

  Again, he offered no visible response.

  Before I could nudge him again, he was stepping off the escalator and on the move again. His pace wasn't hurried, but he was tall and that meant each stride propelled him much further than mine. The benefits of being a giant, I guess. I struggled to keep up with him, wondering if I should call out to let him know that I thought we had been spotted.

  I saw him cut his gaze sideways to make sure I was still with him. I hurried up beside him, almost running now.

  "Try notta let them know we know," he muttered through gritted teeth.

  I got it. That was why he hadn't been responding. He had spotted our tail long before I had and simply not acknowledged it so that they wouldn't know we were on to them.

  We were walking through the center of a marble lobby now. The escalator at least a hundred feet behind us. I glanced down at the floor, taken in by how out of place such a grandiose display of taste seemed when you took the building around it into account. If you had just been looking at the floor you might think you were in the entrance lobby of the New Light Media corporate offices.

  We stepped onto and over a piece of marble that read:

  New South Station

  Built 2028-2029

  And then we were out the door. Sunlight began beating down on me so hard that I began to sweat almost before we were out the door. It wasn't hot, not even warm, but the sun was strong in the sky. It was about mid-day, judging from its position.

  If we had been on a plantation we would have been taking our lunch break right around now. My muscles twitched, yearning for manual labor they had never really experienced.

  I forced myself not to look back over my shoulder as I fo
llowed Zenigra out across the pavement. We found ourselves in a large courtyard scattered with foot traffic. The crowd was thinning. It was going to be hard for Zenigra to keep us in the midst of a group without blindly following them in whatever direction they happened to be going.

  We stuck with a group of suits for about ten more steps and then Zenigra broke away from them. They seemed to be heading for a twenty foot stone statue of some war hero holding an assault rifle. The statue stood in the middle of the courtyard and the stone ledge surrounding it seemed to double as benches. Numerous people were sitting on all sides of it, eating and chatting on grid phones.

  All around us, buildings towered, the tips of some eclipsed by low hanging clouds. A light breeze billowed my duster out behind me as we moved.

  Zenigra took us around the statue and I assumed he was trying to block us from view of anyone exiting the building after us. If we really did have a tail, it would only work if they were keeping off us a fair bit. Even then, they would probably guess our tactic and follow anyway.

  When we were out of sight of the door, Zenigra grabbed my arm and started to move faster.

  "No way to know if they got eyes on us out here, wouldn't even have noticed the guy in the terminal if he hadn't have looked so pleased when he caught sight of you. Lucas must have given the mercs a picture of you."

  "How would he have gotten a picture of me and what makes you think it's mercs that are after us?"

  "Plantation has cameras. Easy to get a pic of them I bet."

  We were nearing the edge of the courtyard. The courtyard melted into a sidewalk and then we were crossing a street. The cars had no trouble seeing Zenigra coming, but that didn't stop them honking at having to slow down. Ten steps for Zenigra, probably twenty-five for me, and we were on the other side of the street.

  The buildings of Boston proper rose up around us. Skyscrapers that literally seemed to be tickling the underbelly of the sky above us. We passed down main streets, side streets, and several alleys without spotting anyone following us. I spotted a few police drones, no more than small floating orbs equipped with anti-gravity belts and high-res cameras, floating through the streets.