by Liz Grzyb
It would have been nice, but it suffered from bombous interruptus. But, by God, I had my story!
* * ** * ** * *
Happy Hunting Ground
Corey J. White
The sky is smeared with cloud and dotted with blackbirds unbothered by the drones that share their space. The hauler pushes past, quad rotors humming as it carries its load of groceries toward the murky air over Chicago.
“Don’t track it direct,” Creg says. “Works best if you plot a course so it comes to you, otherwise it might see what you’re up to.”
Ricky’s drone darts about, far more agile than it looks carrying the net launcher.
“And slow down; give it a chance to catch up.”
“You would make a terrible driving instructor,” Ricky says.
Creg pokes out his tongue, but Ricky’s eyes are hidden inside a drone-eye visor, the strap cutting into his huge afro. The outside of the visor is reflective enough that Creg can see himself crouching down in the tall, brown grass: stocky frame, smile stretching across his face.
Ricky is tall, muscular, with sharp cheekbones and a jaw that looks like it could kill a thousand men. But it’s not just his looks that Creg is drawn to—Ricky’s sense of humour is as dopey and droll as Creg’s, and he’s smart. Ricky spent so many years studying economics, Creg figures he could run the commune more efficiently than Sondra.
“How am I supposed to know where it’s going before it gets there?”
“You’ll get a feel for it. Most orders are going to Logan Square and Lincoln Park, and the mapping software always takes them the same way.”
From the clearing, the constant, undulating hiss of traffic on the I90 sounds like waves crashing on the beach, at least until a driver starts honking or a truck hits the compression brakes. Over that low hum of noise, Creg recognises the deeper thrum of the hauler’s engines cruising overhead, flying in the direction of Ricky’s drone.
“Why are we out here then? Shouldn’t we set up near those two ‘burbs?”
“We’re out here because the FoodCo distribution centre is just up the highway; here we can get the drones when they’re out in the open. No buildings, hardly any powerlines. Cops aren’t going to come out this far—not unless we do something dangerous like drop a hauler on the highway.” Creg’s hands itch to reach out and take the controller from Ricky. He doesn’t. “That’s not gonna be an intercept path.”
Ricky makes an irritated-sounding groan in the back of his throat.
“It’s all good,” Creg adds. “You’re just gonna have to get out ahead of it, then flank it.”
Ricky nods and his drone carries on, drifting away from the FoodCo hauler, losing speed so it’ll gain on him.
“Almost there, just a few more seconds.” Creg lifts his visor to his face and brings up Swifty’s menu while the background shows the drone’s camera feed. Creg starts the Hunter-Killer routine, but leaves Swifty on standby.
The hauler stops and hangs in the air a moment, then it swings hard to the right, canting forward as it tears away from Ricky’s drone at speed.
“It rumbled you,” Creg says. He puts Swifty in go-mode, and the drone zips up from its hiding spot in a graveyard for rusted shopping carts. Creg rests the controller in his lap, keeping one hand on it and using the other to hold the visor to his face, watching Swifty close fast on the heavy quadcopter.
“Think you can net it as it drops?”
“I can try,” Ricky says.
Creg keeps his finger hovering over the controller’s trigger from habit, though Swifty doesn’t need help to shoot. “Come on, Swifty,” Creg mutters to himself. The drone’s view shakes with recoil, and instantly the hauler drops from the sky, systems overloaded by Swifty’s hack-shot.
Creg lowers his visor and watches Ricky move his drone in with its net out, ready to catch the blockiest butterfly that ever flew. As the hauler hits the net, Ricky’s drone dips with the extra weight, but stays airborne.
“Aw yeah,” Creg says. “What a lay-up.”
Ricky takes the visor off and lets it hang, strap following the lines of his heavily-patched, beige overalls. “You sound like such a nerd when you try talking basketball,” he says, but he’s smiling.
“Hey, you’re the one dating this nerd.”
Ricky frowns and his face scrunches up, as if he’s struggling with what he can say to that.
Creg saves him the trouble. “Masks on; let’s reel this fish in.”
“Basketball first, now fishing? Man, you gotta stop mixing metaphors.”
Creg dons his knitted balaclava then rearranges it over his eyes, nose and mouth. Ricky pulls out a Bauta mask that one of the commune’s teens lent him. It’s a broad, masculine face, but where its mouth should be it juts out with two flat planes, like the cowcatcher on the front of a train. The teens all spray them matte black and call it ‘Post-Anonymous’, both because privacy is dead and because the Anonymous hacktivist group went out in a blaze of infighting years ago.
They walk toward the spot where Ricky’s drone landed, and Swifty flies down, meets them halfway, and starts trailing behind Creg.
“Why do we bother with the masks? If you stunned it, won’t the eyes be off?”
“Raleigh commune says some units are being released with an extra battery, specifically for counter-theft purposes. Stays off unless the main power dies, then it switches on and starts grabbing footage.”
“For real?”
Creg shrugs. “Who knows, but I’d rather sweat it out in a mask for a few minutes than give them this handsome face on a platter.”
Ricky smirks. They reach his drone and its quarry, lying on a section of flattened grass. It takes them a couple of minutes to get the hauler free of the net, then Ricky rolls up the netting and stashes it in his backpack. Creg takes the electrical tape from his pocket, cuts a few pieces off, then covers all the hauler’s cameras.
Leaning in close, Creg laughs as he pulls his balaclava off.
“What?” Ricky says.
Down on his haunches, Creg points out his sigil—a small REG inside a large C, painted in neon green. “I’ve nabbed this one before.”
“Catch and release,” Ricky says.
“See, it is like fishing.”
Ricky pushes his mask up so it sits on top of his hair, inches above his head. He cracks open the FoodCo crate with a multitool, and they split the groceries into two duffel bags. “I still think we should keep them, reprogram them to work for us. Or at least sabotage ’em.”
“Think of it like recycling,” Creg says, as he closes the crate and sits the drone back upright. “Ten minutes for the overcharged capacitors to discharge, then it’ll head home, with no idea about what happened to the goods it was carrying.”
“Wouldn’t the commune cope better if we kept the food instead of giving it away?”
“Cops can’t prove we stole anything if we don’t have the stolen goods. Besides, we grow plenty of food; people in the city need the FoodCo stuff more than we do.”
Ricky brushes some dirt off his drone, then puts it into his backpack. Creg leaves Swifty out to follow behind them as they walk out of the clearing, toward the jalopy parked nearby in the shade.
“When are you gonna show me how to do that?” Ricky asks, nodding toward Swifty, following behind like a loyal dog. “I’d love that whole faux-pet thing you’ve got going on.”
“I couldn’t recreate it if I tried. With all the different algorithms I’d downloaded, tweaked, and jammed together, it just happened.”
They load the duffel bags into the back of the truck, then Ricky drops his backpack in too. “Wanna kill this before we head back?” he asks, pulling a joint from his overalls pocket.
“Sure,” Creg says. He climbs into the tray and offers Ricky his hand. “We’ll sit up here; Sondra hates it if you return the jalopy stinking of weed.”
Ricky lets Creg pull him up into the tray and they sit on the edge. “As if you could smell anything over the grease fue
l,” Ricky says, then he lights the joint and takes a hit before passing it to Creg. “What you said before, about me dating your nerdy ass; is that what we’re doing? Dating?”
Creg tokes, and as he holds in the lungful of weed he remembers what Ricky is talking about. “Well, we spend half the week together,” he says, words accompanied by curling smoke. “We bang constantly, and I actually like you, so yeah. Do you not think we’re dating?”
Ricky smiles, leans forward and kisses Creg. “Just checking we were on the same page.” He pulls back, taking the joint with him.
“Actually, that’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” Creg hesitates for a moment; he swallows, feeling his Adam’s apple shift in his throat and his cheeks start to burn. “Maybe it’s time for you to move in.”
“With you?” Ricky offers Creg the joint, but he waves it away.
“I’ve gotta drive. You could get your own place in the commune, so we’re closer but not living in each other’s pockets. Or . . . ” Creg’s voice trails off. He isn’t even sure about the or.
“Like . . . full-time commune life?”
“It takes some getting used to, I admit, but it’s great. We’ve got hundreds of solar panels on the roof, we catch rainwater, grow our own food, barter for anything else we need. It’s a life without money or stress, as long as you’re happy to help out.”
“I know it’s great for you, but I came to Chicago looking for real work, real money.”
“You know how little of that there is these days.”
Ricky nods, then sighs. “Yeah.” He holds the joint pinched, half an inch from his pursed lips, and inhales until the cherry almost touches his fingers. He flicks the roach out of the truck and exhales. “You get so much out of it, working with the kids; I guess I’m worried I won’t enjoy it like you do.”
“There are lots of jobs at the commune though. Maybe your thing will be hunting, or you can be our Robin Hood distributing the stolen booty in town, or gardening, or plumbing, or electrical.”
“I just don’t get how you enjoy it so much. Kids are work, you know?”
Creg gets up from the edge of the tray, and rearranges the bags so they’re flush against the cab, wondering how much he should say. How much can he share without scaring Ricky off, sending this gorgeous guy running back to the south?
“My dad took off when I was eleven, about a year after Mom died. He left me with Grandma and never came back.” Creg’s eyes are down, so he forces himself to look up, though he still can’t quite meet Ricky’s gaze. “Half those kids are in the same boat, so if I can be there for them, maybe it’ll be a positive thing. Maybe they won’t feel like their whole life is fucked because of something their dads did.”
“You really think he fucked up your whole life? Still, after all these years?”
Creg stands, still avoiding eye contact. Creg knows he looks like he has it together, but his head is like a broken drone, veering hard into dark places no matter where he tries to steer it. Then there are all the mistakes he made as a teen, before he realised older men weren’t a healthy replacement for his missing father.
“Come on, let’s go,” Creg says. He climbs out of the tray and unlocks the doors. They both take a seat and Creg starts the engine. “We’ll head into town and see who’s hungry.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ricky says.
Out of the corner of his eye, Creg can see Ricky trying to read his expression. He puts his sunglasses on and Ricky turns to look out the windscreen. Creg feels Ricky’s hand on his thigh. He doesn’t remove it, but can’t bring himself to hold it either. They roll out from the shade of a huge old basswood, and into the afternoon sun.
As Creg pulls onto the service road, heading toward the nearest on-ramp, Swifty goes high into the sky, camera down, giving Creg a view of the highway on the dash-mounted screen. The road runs off into the distance, disappearing into a glimmering event horizon of grey pixels.
“Looks like smooth sailing,” he says.
Creg parks the jalopy outside the commune amongst the chained-up bicycles. He feels relaxed now, and squeezes Ricky’s leg just above the knee. Ricky’s whole body contorts for a split second as he tries to escape. Ricky squeals and hits Creg’s arm out of the way.
“I didn’t mean to tickle you.”
“Yeah, right. Maybe I’d believe you if you weren’t laughing,” Ricky says, but he’s smiling.
Creg looks Ricky in the eye. “Sorry. I know I get weird talking about family stuff.”
Ricky leans across the handbrake and kisses him. “It’s okay.”
They climb out of the truck. The commune is four apartment buildings arranged around a central courtyard. The blocks used to be depressing monoliths of rough, brown brick, but they mounted vertical gardens across the interior facades. The pots overflowing with green foliage and bursting with splashes of reds, oranges, and purples are enough to make the old projects look like home.
“That first night, how did you know?” Ricky asks.
“That you were gay?”
“I’m not, but how did you know I’d kiss you back?”
“I didn’t know,” Creg says, “but it seemed worth the risk.”
They walk through to the courtyard and the smell of the commune hits Creg in the face—the sweet fruit blossoms, the sharpness of fresh fertiliser, the soft scent of cooking rice. It’s almost enough to disguise the smell of the recycled grease the jalopy runs on, still clinging to him like bad cologne.
Creg spots Sondra talking to the gardeners and starts to walk over. They’re standing beside a pile of concrete rubble left over from when they tore up the courtyard to plant crops years ago. Now the soil is so rich it’s almost black, and above this layer the green of the plants and the brightly-coloured blossoms look unreal, hyperreal. Sondra sees Creg and Ricky approaching, puts her hand on Chen’s shoulder and leaves the gardeners to whatever work they’d just been discussing.
“How’d you both do today?” Sondra asks. She has trinkets hung all through her long, dark dreadlocks—buttons, coins, sea shells, even dice—which jangle as she walks.
“Classic prepper haul—canned food and bottled water; no shortage of takers.” Creg grins. “Oh, and here,” he pulls a box of chocolate-covered raisins from his pocket and sneaks it to Sondra like they’re conducting an illicit drug deal.
She smiles and shakes her head, and even that small movement is enough to send the trinkets in her hair clattering.
“How am I ever meant to give up refined sugars when you keep bringing me these?” she says.
“When you stop taking them, I’ll stop giving them to you.”
Sondra stashes them in a pocket and rests a hand on Creg’s shoulder. It’s something she does a lot—physical contact, but not as intimidating as a hug. “Thank you,” she says. “There’s nothing left in the jalopy?”
“No. Why?” Ricky asks.
“Joelle’s on the roof, watching the drone surveillance system; she says the cops are massing at the station.”
“It’s too soon for our annual raid,” Creg says.
“That’s what I was thinking. Could you go up to the roof and check it out, see if Joelle’s reading the signs right?”
“She probably is, but yeah, of course.”
“Just in case, I’m going to go open the doors for all the older people, so the police have no excuse to kick them in and give someone a heart attack.”
Sondra dashes off, and Creg grabs Ricky’s hand. “Let’s check it out.”
“Maybe we’ll get to stay up there and watch the sunset.”
“Sounds romantic,” Creg says, tugging gently on Ricky’s arm as he heads to the nearest stairwell.
“What’s the deal with you and Sondra?” Ricky asks as they start climbing.
“Huh?”
“You look at her like you’re in love, or like she’s your mother.”
Creg chuckles, but he knows it’s true. “She took me in when I was a kid. That’s her thing, collectin
g strays. I used to work at the FoodCo online dispatch warehouse. She’d drop in, semi-regular, try and convince them to give her the out-of-date food so she could distribute it to the homeless. Sometimes they agreed, but mostly they binned it and wrote it off for tax. One day she saw me and some other kids waiting outside for our shift to start and told us about the commune. I’ve been here ever since.”
Ricky files in behind Creg as some teens come running down the stairs. They’re jabbering excitedly and wearing their masks on the top of their heads, ready to be pulled down at a second’s notice to snatch their privacy back from the ever-present gaze of CCTV, webcams, and facial-recognition software.
They rush past, calling out variations on Creg’s name, and bumping the fist that he offers out to them.
With the shouts of the teenagers still echoing in the stairwell, Creg gives a wry smile. “They’re good kids, but I’m glad they spend most of their time in hormonal quarantine on the top floor. If this place gets more crowded we won’t be able to move around as the seasons dictate. The commune wouldn’t be the same if we couldn’t act like weird, indoor nomads.”
They get out onto the rooftop and the sun is hanging low in the sky, reflecting off the solar panels spotted all over the roof. Some of the panels are shaded by bedsheets drying in the breeze, the faded fabrics flicking like sails.
“That’s some view,” Ricky says looking out toward downtown Chicago. Half the buildings shimmer in gold, the other half are hidden in shadow. The sky over the city is a dirty bluish grey, like smoke from the end of a joint.
After a few moments, Creg pulls Ricky away, and leads him around the solar cells and washing lines, past the beehive. Getting from the stairwell to the far side is like navigating a maze, though one you can see over the top of.
Joelle is sitting at a bank of screens in the old aviary. The wire mesh and shelving has all been removed, but the scent of pigeon shit remains. Creg moves one of the sun-bleached chairs and sits down beside Joelle.