by G. P. Ching
Only then am I able to appreciate the beauty around me. I’m riding on a carpet of pine needles, surrounded by deciduous forest in full summer splendor. Sunrise filters through the branches. The shades of green alone are breathtaking, from deep pine to the pale birch with its paper-white bark. “Thank you, Lord, for this. What a beautiful day you’ve given me.” My prayer is muffled within my helmet.
Flash! The blast of whitish-blue light blinds me and makes me jerk the handlebars. My vision recovers in time to brace myself for collision with a massive oak tree. Instead, the accident avoidance technology kicks in, and I veer around the trunk, wheels skidding in loose leaves and pine needles as the bike veers right then left to avoid tree after tree. I tap the brake until I regain control, then drive back to the source of the flash. Before I’ve even reached the mechanical spider, I fry the thing with a surge from my hand.
I stop the bike to make sure I haven’t started a fire in my overzealous destruction of the flasher. Tick-tick-tick. The sound of a beetle scampering across a wood floor brings my gaze up to the trees. Flashers. Everywhere. They creep up trunks and branches, climb from tree to tree with their spider legs, en masse. The swarm is close, too close. With a sharp turn, I retreat.
The mechanical sound of hundreds of flashers turning is louder than the Tomahawk. Flashes explode around me. Blinded and terrified, I lay my chest against the fuel cells and hang on for dear life. The bike takes over, ricocheting through the woods as its sensors work to avoid the trees. Instead of tapping the brakes, I crank the accelerator. My only hope is to go far and fast enough that the only thing the Greens see is a black blur.
“Please Lord, make me brave. Give me strength.” Tears flow over my cheeks. “I can’t do this without you.”
A massive figure darts in front of me, and I slam on the brakes to keep from colliding with it. My back tire skids through the pine needles. I am thrown from the bike, my back and head slapping a nearby tree. I crumple to the dirt. Only the backpack and helmet save me from being seriously injured. Even with the helmet, my head hurts from the impact, and a small crack appears in the corner of the visor. The bike halts perpendicular to the trail, its stabilizing technology righting itself.
The source of movement stares at me from between the trees. A wolf. At least I think it’s a wolf. The animal is unnaturally large, as big as a bear and silver-white with frosty blue eyes and tufted, attentive ears. I freeze. A wolf this size could tear through any one of my limbs without much trouble. The pack wouldn’t be far behind to finish the job. I brush the pistol in my backpack with the tips of my fingers and chide myself for even considering it. The animal is too beautiful. Too proud. It takes a step closer to me and I snap my hand out from the elbow, feeling the elastic tickle stretch from the back of my brain. I’ll protect myself if I have to, but I won’t kill it intentionally. A few thousand volts will knock it out.
But this is a dangerous plan. If there are more flashers in these woods, the last thing I want is for the Greens to have a picture of me using my power. I hold back, heart pounding, and swear to only act if the creature attacks.
The wolf sniffs the air, then lowers its head. I hold my breath, afraid even the rise and fall of my chest will cause the beast to attack. It stares at me in the oddest way, as if she can see inside my soul. She. I sense she’s a girl. A remarkable calm comes over me in the grip of her stare. For a moment, I take it all in, this wild animal accepting me while I accept her, without reservation. We are two creatures, surviving and curious.
Without warning or pageantry, the wolf attacks. I call out and cross my arms in front of my helmet, closing my eyes and expecting hundreds of pounds of wolf to barrel into me. But it never does. Well, not physically. A firm pressure passes through my skin and settles over my heart. I open my eyes and scan my surroundings, my breath heavy inside my helmet. The wolf is gone. Only, she’s not. I feel her… inside of me. Am I losing my mind?
On shaky legs, I stand and remove my helmet. I turn a circle, looking for the beast. I’m alone. My eyes linger on the carpet of pine needles. No footprints. I rub my throbbing temple. She wasn’t real. What does it mean? Did God answer my prayer with the vision of the wolf? Or was it simply a coincidence that I imagined her at the moment I opened myself to divine guidance. If there is meaning in the encounter, I can’t put words to it.
I return to the bike—trembling, overwhelmed. With one last look toward the forest, I don the helmet again, turn the accelerator, and continue down the path.
The forest opens up. I’m on the road that passes the Adamses’ residence and 54 Lakehurst Drive, the house where I found out I was a Spark. A Green Republic squad car is in the driveway, the government seal on the door. Just the sight of the emblem fills me with dread. David taught me what it represents: the laurel wreath is the symbol of Next Generation Ag and represents synthetically developed food; the lightning bolt, Nucore, naturally acquired energy; and the hammer, the Evergreen Party, military strength. It is a symbol of the three organizations who formed the Green Republic and now own the country.
Anxious to put miles between the emblem and me, I pump the accelerator. Not the smartest idea I’ve ever had. The rev of the engine draws the attention of the Green officer in the front seat. I check my speed and slow to the posted limit, seventy-five in Willow’s Province. I’m relieved when time and distance separate me from the symbol of the Green Republic.
Miles later, a beep on my dashboard lets me know I’m approaching the grid. The road ahead of me looks exactly the same as the road behind me. I have a fading memory of riding in the back of Officer Reynolds’s squad car my first day in the English world. Invisible or not, if I lock to the grid, the road will take me to my destination using its own energy. It will save fuel and get me where I’m going faster. Tentatively, I flip the glowing blue switch from manual to automatic on the dash.
Looking for network… Red letters flash in my peripheral vision. Enter coordinates or touch map to search. I tap the map of North America. It lights up, showing the entire empire of the Green Republic. Beyond is nothing but blue representing the ocean. I tap the northeast sector and it expands to take up the entire viewing area, then Crater City, and then the dark outskirts that I know as the deadzone. There’s an access point that will take me to the manor. The coordinates load.
Warning: Destination requires manual override. Fuel: 40%. Select LOCK to join grid.
I’m not sure how far I’ll have to drive off-grid. Is forty percent enough? Movement in my side mirror garners my attention. The Green Republic squad car creeps into view on the horizon. He’s followed me, although he is keeping his distance. “Forty percent will have to do,” I say to myself. I tap the LOCK button.
The motorcycle’s engine roars beneath me and I cling to the handlebars as it lurches forward. In my helmet, I watch my speed increase from seventy-five to one hundred, one fifty, two hundred. I can no longer make out individual trees. They’ve become a blur of color and light. By the time my speed reaches three hundred, my belly is flat against the fuel cells and I can hear my panting breaths behind my visor. The engine isn’t rumbling anymore. It’s as quiet as if I’m parked, but my speed is a steady three hundred miles per hour, powered by the road beneath me.
I squeak when my front wheel lifts from the ground and my body pitches sideways. Am I flying? No, a ramp, but I can’t make out the road I’m riding on any more than the cars that pass around me like shooting stars. I’ve heard the upper grid is nothing but a sheet of mesh wire, enough to hold up your vehicle if the power goes out but almost invisible from the ground. There’s no shoulder or guard rails. The empty air below me is both exhilarating and terrifying.
A familiar pang of guilt courses through me. Good Amish women do not ride motorcycles in stretchy black pants. They do not hurl through the sky as if they are challenging the angels themselves. Surely this is a sin, this feeling of being on top of the world, in control, strong, fast, and powerful. “Forgive me, Lord.”
The
image of the wolf appears to me, staring at me in my mind’s eye as if she is my own private message from the beyond. For a second time, I am overwhelmed with the sense the animal is a sign from God. Twice, the wolf has come to me when I’ve prayed. But what does she mean?
The motorcycle slows, jarring me from my reverie. My stomach drops as I descend and I sit up straighter. In my peripheral vision, the green numbers roll down from three hundred and level out at seventy-five. My dash blinks at me. Manual override engaging.
The engine purrs to life and the map on the dash indicates I should turn left at the bottom of the ramp. I stop at the intersection and signal. I’m definitely entering the deadzone. The buildings here are rundown, with boarded shut windows, broken glass, and hanging wires. After looking both ways, I squeeze the accelerator but pause when red lights flash in my mirror. The officer from Willow’s Province is behind me. He’s followed me.
“This is a routine inspection,” booms a robotic male voice from the vehicle. “Please remain in park with engine running.”
I curse under my breath. The recording is for me. There is no one else in the vicinity. What if the flashers transmitted my picture? Why else would he follow me this far? The rhythm of my heart kicks off a drum line in my chest. Boom, deboom-boom. The officer steps from the vehicle and approaches me. Should I stay or run? Boom-boom-boom. Too late, he’s by my side. Boom-boom. He has a tablet in his hands that he presses against the side of my dash.
“Candace Beckwith, thank you for stopping,” the officer says. “What were you doing in Willow’s Province and now in the deadzone?”
I swallow, my mouth so dry I can hardly speak. A half-truth comes to me and I say, “Out for a ride. I like to open this baby up every now and then. The freedom is exhilarating.”
The officer laughs. “You must be well off to afford a Tomahawk Infinity. Your dad work for the Republic?”
He’s staring at the device in his hand and it occurs to me that if he knows the owner of the bike is named Candace Beckwith then he probably has information about who her family is. David’s words echo through my head. Do not pull over. You have no identification.
“Something like that,” I say.
“Hmm.” Without taking his eyes off the screen, he takes a step back and lifts the device so that it’s blocking his face. I calm my breathing in an attempt to act natural. Maybe he’ll buy my story and let me go if I cooperate. “One more thing, Candace. Please remove your helmet.”
He’s taking your picture, I conclude, whether from intuition or David’s memories. I can’t remove my helmet.
I do nothing. I stare at the back of the officer’s device thinking, absurdly, that I’ve never had my picture taken and the only time I’ve ever appeared on film was for the Green Republic’s purposes. Korwin’s painting of me was the first time I saw an image of myself in a favorable light. I don’t know, maybe Bishop Yoder is right and it is vanity, but all at once it bothers me beyond the immediate threat to be photographed by the Greens.
“Ms. Beckwith? Your helmet.”
My eyes flick down to the scrambler on his belt. What’s wrong with me? I’m playing with fire. If I run, he’ll probably catch me. Who knows what technology he has to disable my vehicle at close range? If I remove my helmet, I’m done for. If I fry him, I send up a flag that Lydia Lane is in the deadzone. None of those options is acceptable. Fistfight the bastards then, I hear David say.
I place my hands on the sides of my helmet. “The clasp is stuck. Can you help me?”
The officer approaches, a look of annoyance on his face. As soon as he’s within striking distance, I jab his throat, leaving him gasping. I punch the device from his hand, sending it skidding across the pavement. He reaches for his scrambler, but he’s too slow. I elbow a tendon in his shoulder to debilitate his arm and head-butt him as hard as I can. It works. For a moment, he’s stunned. I’m off the bike in one lithe move. Thumb to wrist, I bend his arm into submission behind his back, spinning him to face away from me.
“Down on the ground!” I yell. I kick the back of his knees and he collapses.
“Consider the consequences, Candace,” the man shouts from his prone position, cheek pressed into the asphalt. My foot lands in the center of his back. His eyes flick to the squad car behind us and I follow his line of sight. How could I be so stupid? Of course there’s a camera in the vehicle recording all of this. It’s only a matter of time until more arrive.
Efficiently, I deliver a blow to the back of his head and render him unconscious. I’m back on the bike in a flash and accelerate into the deadzone. I can already hear sirens. Pouring on the speed, I drive deeper into the abandoned part of the city, cruising past the occasional man or woman curled up on the sidewalk. This is the deadzone, where defectors of Green Republic society come to escape. I’m not sure how they survive here without home, community, or farmland, and no power to live the modern way, and I don’t have time to think about it.
The sirens grow louder and I pull through a wide door into a space that used to be a garage for fixing vehicles. An automobile the color of a robin’s egg sits rusting in the darkness. I park behind it, in the pitch dark. It’s tempting to remove my helmet; the heat and humidity are suffocating.
Flashing red lights slink by the open door of the garage, sirens off, and I flatten myself against a section of wall. They’re close, too close. Fumbling behind me in the darkness, I feel for somewhere to hide. A car door slams on the street outside. They’re looking for me on foot. My fingers close around a knob—a door! I pivot and take a closer look, flipping my visor up and using my power to create a faint glow so I can see. I’m in luck. The lock has a keypad—not a Biolock but electronic. I place my fingers over the pad and the tickle moves down my arm to pulse the lock. It pops open at my prodding.
A teeth-clenching metal-on-metal clang gongs above my head when I open the door—two hubcaps on a chain, rigged to clash when the door is opened. Great. A figure appears in the entrance to the garage, the light breaking around the officer’s silhouette. I slip behind the door and close it noisily behind me, but I can’t relock it now that the wiring is fried.
I’m in an office. No way out. Footsteps approach outside the door. This is it. I’ll have to fight again. Another set of footsteps joins the first. Can I take on both of them?
“Identify yourself,” a man’s voice says.
I open my mouth to answer Candace Beckwith but pause when the officer grunts in pain. There’s a scuffle. The clang of metal on metal. The sizzle of a scrambler hitting flesh. The thud of a body against concrete. The doorknob turns. I flip my visor down and step into a fighting stance, ready to face off against the officer.
The door swings open. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll come with me.”
15
The man in front of me is vaguely familiar. I search my brain for where I’ve seen him before but come up empty. He looks to be in his thirties with cropped brown hair and a scruffy face. His tunic has been mended in multiple places—places consistent with stab wounds. There’s a strip of red cloth tied around his upper arm. This I recognize, and it makes me shuffle deeper into the room. He’s a Red Dog—one of the gang of deadzone miscreants that tried to rape me last year.
He pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Listen, girlie, I got no beef with you.” He points at his chest. “But this is Red Dog territory. Either you come with me to visit the alpha or I toss your ass out to the Greens.”
Red Dogs or Greens? I’ve survived the Red Dogs before. Definitely an easier opponent than the Greens, not to mention their headquarters is near my point of entry to Stuart Manor. I might get a free tour guide and protection all in one swoop. Unlike my first encounter with his kind, he doesn’t have a knife to my throat. I appreciate that.
I nod. “Okay.”
He pulls a red bandana from the pocket of his drawstring pants and approaches me cautiously before tying it around my upper arm. “I’ll need you to remove the helmet.”
I hesitate.
“Don’t worry about it. All the Red Dogs have familiar faces. You get me?” His voice is kind but demanding. Maybe I’m tired or scared but my intuition tells me to do what he says. I need his help, and I highly doubt he’s going to take me where I need to go with it on my head.
I reach up and pull the helmet off.
He winces like he smells something bad. “Maybe you’d better put it back on.” I don’t understand until he starts laughing.
“Are you suggesting I’m ugly?” I run a hand over my tightly braided hair.
He wipes his smile away with the back of his hand and stares at me through narrowed eyes. “I remember you,” he says. “You gave me water when I was living on the street.”
Recognition dawns. He wasn’t a Red Dog then. His hair was longer and he was thinner, almost skeletal. But the smile is the same. “I helped you then. Now, I need your help.”
He grunts. “Leave the helmet with the bike. Sometimes they can trace the technology to link one to the other.”
Since he’s standing between the Tomahawk and me, I hold out the helmet. He doesn’t take it. Instead, he wraps his hand around a rope dangling near the door hinge. He takes up the slack as he slowly opens the door. There is no gong of metal on metal. “The tension keeps the hubcaps apart.” He motions with his head for me to pass through the door. I do. He follows, closing the string within the door to keep it taut.
I place the helmet on the bike seat and balk at the body of the Green Officer near my feet. He’s bound but breathing. Carefully, my Red Dog guide steps over him. The officer groans and twitches.
“We’d better move,” he says, motioning for me to follow. “Be careful where you step.” He picks his way over a slew of strewn tools and parts to another door near the front of the garage. This one, he opens with a key, and we venture into a long corridor. He locks the door behind us.