Scarcity

by Robert Calbeck

  “I will not go back to turning tricks,” said Serenity.

  “I ain’t even gonna say what I used to do,” said DeShawn. Thaddeus punched him in the arm. “Fine, no secrets. I know. They’re the devil’s tool to separate us.”

  “It’s okay, you can tell us,” Michael said, “we’re sort of fugitives ourselves.”

  He lowered his head in shame. “I used to be a hit man. I killed people, sometimes in robberies, other times I just got a name or a picture, and I put a bullet in ‘em. You’re looking at one hell of a sinner.”

  “Why did you do it?” asked Michael.

  “I ain’t got the best of reasons, but times were tough and I needed to eat. They paid me in food. Each kill fed me for about ten days; two weeks if I really skimped.”

  “You killed for food?”

  “Shut up!” Luthor snapped. “Hunger can make you do some crazy things. Trust me.” Luthor’s eyes seemed to sink into his skull as he remembered some dark, unnamed memory. Something about Antarctica, he only got that look when he thought about that horrible place. Luthor recovered quickly however, and continued to defend the larger black man. “Besides, who are we to judge him? We’ve killed people in the last week.”

  DeShawn nodded. “Thank you, Luthor.”

  “For what?”

  “For not judging me. It was the darkest part of my life, I ain’t proud of it. It still haunts me.”

  DeShawn lifted up his baggy shirt and pulled out a very large hand gun that had been tucked into the back of his pants. Vika flinched visibly as she saw the weapon, but DeShawn held it open in the palm of his hand.

  “This used to be my life,” he said somberly. “I keep it around to remind me of who I don’t want to be no more.” He popped open the magazine with an experienced hand and showed them a distinct lack of bullets. “I always keep it empty to remind me of who I am now.”

  Roc patted him on the shoulder in a fatherly way. “I realize it may sound crazy to you, but this is how we stay alive. We work all day, worship together, and share food. We men run security, the women take garbage to the transfer stations in exchange for slices of bread.”

  “Every five kilos, or so, that we bring, they give us another slice.” Serenity said.

  “It helps supplement our diet here and keeps us relatively healthy,” Abigail added.

  Tanya found herself feeling very guilty for eating that slice of bread. The women had picked up garbage all day in order to earn it. “We make a great partnership and it keeps us alive.”

  “I have set up three other partnerships like this one,” Father Roc said, “I believe that DeShawn will be ready to start taking over the spiritual leadership of this co-op soon. When he is ready to assume full leadership, I will depart to plant another.”

  Not only is this co-op thriving, paying people all day with nothing other than garbage, but it is appealing enough that Roc is franchising?

  “But that is enough about us, it sounds like you all have quite the story as well,” Roc said.

  Awkward stares passed between the four of them. Tanya could tell they had no interest in telling their story. But Tanya felt compelled to share. Their new friends possessed a freedom, an openness with their lives and struggles that Tanya deeply desired. They lived on the bottom of society with nothing to lose, yet with a powerful faith so they could say anything. Perhaps if Tanya too told their story, then maybe she could move toward that freedom.

  “I can tell them,” she offered.

  “Go ahead,” Luthor said.

  Tanya felt herself switch into history mode and proceeded to recount their story. Beginning with Luthor’s ground-breaking invention and Eli’s murder, she described their frantic escape and the rooftop showdown that had forced them to the streets. It felt like telling a story that had already been written down in textbooks but one in which only she knew the details. She left nothing out.

  Their new friends listened intently. It didn’t seem to bother them at all when she spoke of death and murder. They leaned in eagerly when she described their dramatic escapes. She had never spoken before to such a fantastic audience. If only her students listened so actively; instead they played with their devices, finding every possible means to waste both electricity and her time. Her new friends had no phones, no technology, nor even the energy with which to use them. They could simply appreciate a story by a campfire, something modern generations had all but lost.

  “Thank you so much for sharing with us,” Roc said as she concluded. “Your honesty is both refreshing and appreciated.”

  “You believe us? I tell you we can control gravity and you just accept it?”

  “What reason do you have to lie?” asked Abigail. “Surely, even if you were lying you would not make up something so ridiculous as that. Reason then concludes that you must be telling the truth.”

  “Roc always tells us we are supposed to live by faith, not by sight,” DeShawn said, “so I don’t need to see anything to know you telling the truth.”

  “Well said brother. You are closer than you think to taking over for me.”

  “But I like having you around here. Maybe I need to have a relapse or something.”

  Roc laughed. “We both know that isn’t going to happen.”

  “Knock it off, D,” interrupted Thaddeus, “you ain't gonna relapse. Besides, our friends need help.” His eyes burned with more intensity than the trashcan fire.

  DeShawn nodded. “Yeah, anything you need. We got you.” Everyone else nodded in agreement. Their eyes burned with the same hope, that maybe 126 could change things. Free energy probably seemed like an oasis in the desert to them.

  “You would help us?” Tanya asked, feeling flattered.

  “Anything,” said Thaddeus. “If you can end hunger, I’d take a bullet for you.”

  “Same,” said DeShawn, “I seen too many dead kids wash up in these gutters for one lifetime. Just one thing though—I ain’t killing nobody. Never again.”

  Tanya nodded appreciatively at his conviction.

  Luthor scratched his graying stubble. “Right now we are trying to find a way to Chicago. Any way you could help us get on a train? My laptop was destroyed in the explosion. We need to retrieve our backup files from my friend back home.”

  “Tony’s is one of the most profitable restaurants in the area thanks to our services and the owner is generally glad to give us extra help when needed,” Roc said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know if they can help you with the train.”

  “Do you have anything to barter with?” Abigail asked.

  “We have a gun,” Vika said.

  “I don’t know if that’s enough,” Abigail said. “A gun might buy you tickets. But you’ll still have to deal with the Mark scanners.”

  “Seebee gloves shouldn’t be that hard to find,” suggested Michael.

  Abigail shook her head. “New York City has been upgrading its security lately. The mass transit stations have a new streamlined system to stop the use of gloves. Now that they all use overhead scanners concentrated around the ticket turnstiles, they’ve completely outlawed gloves.”

  “So a single carp could stop us in our tracks during the bottleneck,” said Luthor.

  Michael grinned, “you know the carps. They’re like rats—”

  “Where there’s one, there’s sure to be…” Thaddeus stopped himself, “a poop-ton more.” DeShawn patted him on the shoulder appreciatively. It was a common phrase, apart from the impromptu censorship, to refer to the patrolling habits of the carbon police.

  Tanya didn’t see any way around the problem. Last time they had needed to bypass security, they had used Vika’s expertise to counterfeit gloves. But if gloves were illegal then it would be impossible to do the same trick again. Not that she was particularly sad about not needing to kill anyone and cut them up.

  Luthor appeared to be thinking hard. “There must be an inherent flaw in the security if they have removed the individual scanning stations in favor of the overhead scanners. Wo
uld it be possible for a Markless to get on undetected if they had a ticket?”

  “That might work, but not for us,” Michael said. “There is no way for us to mask our damn CPI signals without cutting them out.”

  “I would severely caution against that,” Vika replied. “In the event that we do succeed, there will be no way to prove your innocence if you destroy your identification chip.”

  “I don’t want to cut on myself any more than the next guy. But I’ll smogging do it if I have to choose between that and Sabers killing my friends again,” said Michael.

  Luthor rubbed his temples in frustration and looked at Abigail. “I know we can’t fake them, but do you know if there is any technology that could mask an individual signal?”

  “I don’t know. Anything is possible, I suppose. I am just not that familiar with black market technology.”

  “Black market technology?”

  “Sure,” Abigail said. “There are a lot of really smart people who lost everything almost overnight with the new carbon regulations. And they’ve now had twenty years to experiment— that is, if they survived the Culling.”

  “Do you know anyone with access to that kind of technology?”

  Thaddeus frowned. “I… No, it’s a bad idea.”

  Roc whispered something to him.

  “If you know someone who can help us, please don’t hold back. I assure you we can take care of ourselves,” said Luthor.

  He looked troubled, but Roc nodded, encouraging him. “The guy’s name is Jose Ostafal, but I don’t trust that rat any farther than Serenity can throw DeShawn. He tried to recruit me to do the same thing D was doing.”

  “I’m glad you got out of that life before it was too late,” DeShawn said.

  “You’re the one that got me out! Introduced me to Roc. You saved my life man, I had nothing to do with it.” Thaddeus continued, “anyway, Jose never lost his mark, so he used his money to open up a small convenience store on the fringe between the suburbs and the city. But that is just a front. His store is actually an outlet for every illegal product you could dream of. And anything that he doesn’t have he can have custom made from his suppliers in the suburbs.”

  “If you see him, be careful. His wares do not come cheap, but he may be able to help you,” Roc said.

  “If the worst thing we have to worry about is not being able to afford his tech, then it seems like it’s worth a look.”

  Thaddeus shook his head violently. “It’s not. He’s with the Dog Pound.”

  “The Dog Pound?”

  “They’re the most powerful and ruthless bastards in the city,” DeShawn said. “They ain't people you want to mess with.”

  Luthor crossed his arms. “If it’s a chance to get home, we have to take it. How far is it?” “It’s about a two day walk from here,” Thaddeus said.

  “Then we leave tomorrow.”

  Chapter 17:

  Eleven Years ago: Titan Dome, Antarctica

  The men lay crouched on ice 4000 meters thick that stretched as far as anyone could see. Luthor re-attached his skis to his pack—he couldn’t exactly ask the Chinese to wait while he unstrapped from them. Luthor switched on his infrared and the omnipresent, obscuring whiteout became nothing more than an icy canvass for heat-emitting weapons. The Chinese defensive emplacements popped up as tiny orange dots in the distance. Everyone had turned off their heating packs again so they would not similarly grace the screens of the enemy’s infrared. With their pure white suits and freezing extremities, they were all but invisible.

  Garcia looked at his Battlepad, waiting for the signal from command to begin the attack. Hundreds of other COs spread around the periphery of Titan Dome also waited to send their men on a massive coordinated assault. “Damn it’s nice to have a few of those comm-sats back in orbit again. Let me tell you. Greedy-ass China shot down 75% of them before the first month of the war was over. Coordinating anything without them was a bitch.”

  The new allied satellites launched since the beginning of the war all had defensive countermeasures capable of shooting down earth-based missiles. Apparently, the cost to saturate their defenses was too high for the Chinese to bother trying any more. They were also outfitted with enough armor to withstand impacts of debris from the other destroyed satellites that still orbited the planet. Luthor was glad he hadn’t been in service long enough to have experienced the communications snafus that had plagued the allies in the beginning.

  “Protect Chaz until he lights up that dragon. So long as you don’t shoot, nobody’s going to see you.”

  “Jake not shooting could be a problem,” Chaz said.

  Garcia and Luthor laughed. It felt good to break the tension. Luthor didn’t want to think about being the initial assault of the largest, riskiest offensive of the war. The front line had a tendency to impersonate ground beef. It had been that way since the invention of the machine gun.

  Finally, after 90% of his body was completely numb the order came through to attack. Luthor vaguely heard a murmur from the Battlepad, “operation Zeus is a go.” It seemed a fitting codename for an offensive that would capture Titan Dome.

  “Remember men, don’t be a hero. Just do what needs to be done,” Garcia said. “Move out!”

  Luthor’s heart rate rose like a kinetic warhead. With chilled muscles he began a crouched run. The hulking form of Marri ran next to him, Claptrap still obediently strapped to his back between his skis. The white-on-white of the landscape was broken only by measured dragons and missile defense towers; it stretched on, limited only by the very curvature of the Earth. The nearest cluster of artillery lay 300 meters ahead. Several other groups of men joined them on the right, attacking the same position.

  Chaz knelt, rocket to shoulder, and fired. The explosive projectile ripped a hole through the metal carapace of the dragon; burning bodies were ejected from the wreckage like shrapnel. Luthor saw dozens other explosions down their line. It looked like their surprise attack was being executed flawlessly despite the deployment snafu.

  The remaining dragons woke up and sprayed returning fire. The sheer number of bullets those things could discharge was staggering. The rounds made a pulsating bar of white-hot flame, slicing anything in its path. His ears couldn’t distinguish the individual gun shots any more than he could hear the individual explosions inside the cylinders of a revving engine. The dragons were designed to be a versatile anti-armor, anti-air, anti-everything weapon, their massive bullets were impervious to stealth and countermeasures that could fool missiles. It turned out that infantry didn’t like them either.

  The laser beam of lead swept back across the line, rending men in half with its fury. Luthor ran flat out. The sooner he got to the nearest gun, the sooner he would be inside that arc. China hadn’t expected the Coalition to be able to penetrate this deeply with mere paratroopers and so had relatively light defenses against infantry. Fox-holes and machine-gun emplacements were scarce. They had the advantage.

  Jake and Garcia crouched next to the ladder to the cab of the dragon, keeping the meager Chinese defense at bay with their MX-5s. Acting on instinct, Luthor made the best of their covering fire and jumped up the ladder. He pointed his rifle in the cab and pulled the trigger. His rounds went wide as a foot kicked the gun from his hand and sent it flying to the ground.

  One of the Chinese gunners appeared over the side aiming a pistol at Luthor’s face. He grabbed the man’s forearm and pulled it down against the ladder, and pinned it in place with his belt knife. Blood spurted up into Luthor’s face as arteries severed, and the man cried out in Mandarin. Luthor jerked it free and vaulted the remaining rungs into the cockpit. He kicked out the bleeding man and leaped on the remaining gunner, who still vainly tried to shoot the infantry on the other side. He sank the knife deep into the gunner’s chest.

  “Die, you son of a bitch!” Luthor cried, unexpected fury rising within him. He twisted the knife cruelly. Horror and pain froze on the man’s face as immutably as the Antarctic landscape.
It took only a few uninterrupted beats of his heart before his eyes glassed over, the light winking out of them.

  “Greedy Chinese bastards. You made me do this!” Luthor wrenched the knife free and kicked his next victim out the other side.

  Luthor climbed out, not wanting to spend another second in the belly of another dragon, he had enough of that for one lifetime. He grabbed the MX-5. In minutes, Martinez had successfully demolished the radar-clad missile defense platform adjacent to it with lethal quantities of C-4. The other dragons on the line also stood silent, either destroyed or captured. Smoke rose all along the defensive line. The attack had been executed flawlessly.

  Garcia walked up, Battlepad in hand. “Helluva job, men. Everyone’s reported in. Phase one complete, minimal casualties. Flanking divisions are engaging enemy air support, our armor column is rolling full steam ahead.”

  “Now we just have to stay alive,” Martinez said frowning.

  “You aren’t dead yet!” Garcia shouted.

  “Alive and kickin!” Jake said patting his shouldered rifle, “we just shat on their guns and wiped their asses with C-4 and RPGs. We have the advantage. Besides if they want this gringo dead, it’s going to take an army.”

  “I’ve heard the Chinese have one of those,” said Chaz

  Marri looked up from reloading Claptrap, “how long until the armor arrives?”

  “7th Tunneling Division is supposed to reach us at the same time 3rd armor engages the Shackleton side,” Garcia said.

  “When is that Sarge?” asked Chaz.

  “About thirty minutes. We have to hold this position till those Moles get here.”

  The wind paused for a moment. It might have been peaceful if not for the crackling of the smoldering weapons that sliced the silence. Luthor stared at the corpses of the dragons and freezing bodies of the Chinese soldiers. How the hell did I get here again? he thought. Stuck in the basement of the world, freezing my ass off, fighting for oil scraps. Meanwhile, everyone I have ever known starves back in the States.

  Luthor stopped reading reports from home after he’d read that his mother had died of the plague and everyone he’d ever met was on the brink of starvation. All he knew now were the dystopian rumors floating around. They were calling it the Culling. Everyone not strong enough to survive was dying. Supposedly, the military had rationed the already scarce food and medicine and had commandeered nearly all of the oil. If reports could be trusted, far more civilians had died from starvation and sickness worldwide than soldiers had in the war. WWIII was proving to be every bit the bitch that Einstein had predicted. He had said, “I don’t know what weapons would be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” The irony was that he thought it would come out of a nuclear apocalypse born of superpower stupidity, not an energy death born of scarcity.