by J B Cantwell
“You okay in here?”
It was Lydia.
I groaned from down on the floor, my arms wrapped around the dirty toilet bowl. I couldn’t make myself speak. She banged the stall door open and folded her arms across her chest.
“You fool,” she said, but she was smiling. “You of all people should know better.”
I frowned. Me of all people?
“I know about your mom,” she said, her smile faltering a bit. “My dad wasn’t far off, himself. That’s why Joe—”
She stopped talking, couldn’t bring herself to say any more.
“Have you found him yet?” I croaked. “Your brother?”
She shook her head.
“No. I still don’t know where—”
Her voice betrayed her again.
“So we’re not so different,” I said, spitting a mouthful of saliva into the bowl.
“I guess not,” she said.
We looked at each other, silent for a time.
“What did you do?” I finally asked. “To get in here? To become a Red?”
Whatever kindness was on her face dropped off. She was silent for several long moments.
“I killed someone,” she finally said.
I stared hard at her, but then I realized that I wasn’t surprised. And I only needed one choice to guess right.
“Your dad,” I said.
She stared ahead at the bathroom tile, blank.
“They don’t tell you how it’s going to feel,” she finally said. “To kill someone, I mean. Sometimes there’s hatred behind it. Sometimes it’s just a job you have to do. But every time … well … you know.”
And I did.
Chapter Twelve
After a while, Lydia helped me off the bathroom floor and deposited me back into my seat. Several had left the table to go back and clean themselves up. Only Hannah and a couple others I didn’t know remained. I felt much better, and the room had stopped spinning around me now that most of the alcohol was out of my system.
Hannah, though, was slurring.
“Ha!” she said. “You made it back, my little darling!” She patted me on the shoulder as I sat down. “I was starting to think that this one,” she pointed to Lydia, “was keeping you all to herself.”
“Shut up, Hannah,” Lydia said. “You’re drunk.”
“True,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t change anything. My being drunk doesn’t change who you are, what you did. Who I am, what I did.”
A tear touched the edge of one eye, and she wiped it away angrily.
Not for the first time, I wondered just what it had been that Hannah had done to land herself in the Service. Was it something as bad as Lydia? Even murder?
Hannah turned to me.
“You see, Lydia here, and me, we go way back. Don’t we?”
Lydia was silent, her fists clenched at her sides.
I picked up my fork and took a mouthful of the mash, now cold. My stomach revolted for a moment, but the more I ate the more it calmed.
“So, how do you know each other then?” I asked.
“We served on the same team, didn’t we?” She stared at Lydia, her body gently swaying.
Lydia was silent.
“And I was left for dead. She left me for dead.”
“There was nothing I could do,” Lydia said, her voice quiet. “You know that.”
“Sure,” Hannah said.
She lifted up one leg and let her boot land on the tabletop. Pulling up her fatigues I saw her calf for the first time. I hadn’t noticed it before, but she had a large, round scar beneath a fresh tattoo.
It was the rule, of course, that they had drilled into us from day one at boot camp. Don’t go back for survivors. If your unit members couldn’t make it back to base, they were to be left for dead. No exceptions.
“You know I was just following protocol,” Lydia said. “We would have both been sent to the Burn if I had helped you.”
Hannah considered this. She, herself, had done nothing but follow protocol since boot camp. I remembered, though, her being mad at me when I hadn’t run back for her in the footrace at the end of training. She must have known that we would both be reprimanded, even sent to the Burn, if I had helped her. But that fact hadn’t kept her from blaming me for her misstep.
Finally, she looked up at Lydia.
“You know that you should have helped me,” she said. “You know it.”
Lydia shrugged.
“Maybe.”
Lydia turned and walked away from the table. Hannah picked up a nutrition square and began nibbling on one corner.
“Hannah,” I said, “what did you do get in here? What law did you break?”
She looked down at her plate of mash, her meal barely touched, just like mine.
“Drugs,” she said. “Lots and lots of drugs.”
I sat back in my chair. It wasn’t too much of a surprise. Most drug users were ignored by the police back home. They had bigger and more dangerous things to worry about than a junkie on the street.
“Did you sell them or do them?” I asked.
“Bit of both,” she said, slurring.
“How did you get caught?”
She shrugged.
“How does anyone get caught?” she asked. “It was this stupid thing.” She tapped the left side of her head where her chip was inserted. “It told them what I was doing, where I was. I guess they got bored of policing the wall that day.”
I thought about my own efforts to hide my actions. I knew they could track our movements, but could they listen in on us as well? See what we could see?
My stomach dropped as I realized that all those notes to Lydia might have been read by the sergeant. But what had I said? What had Alex said? Chambers?
“I don’t know what they’re doing to us,” Alex had written. We have to find a way out.”
But we hadn’t found a way out. After that last note he had begun a much more intense round of phasing. Was that because of what he had said? After weeks and weeks of the phasing, he was barely recognizable, both physically and mentally. I wondered if those higher up the chain of command had brushed us off, knowing that Alex would soon lose his desire to do anything but help our military. And I would lose my desire to stop him.
My blood turned to ice as it pumped through my veins.
They might have seen it all. And yet they had decided to let me stay. Maybe there were other recruits, too, others like me who had voiced their desire to leave. There had to be, now that I thought about it. I remembered the sounds of quiet sobs I had heard that first night in the basement of the recruiting building. Others had regretted their decision to join the Service, too.
I wasn’t alone.
Chapter Thirteen
The morning came too soon, accompanied by a throbbing headache and an overall soreness I couldn’t attribute to anything in particular. Hannah was up, spritely, even.
“Wake up, Pink!” she said, snapping me with a towel from the shower. “He’ll be in here any minute to check on us.”
And he was. Before I was even able to put my socked feet onto the floor, Blackwell was there with his baton, banging it on every bed he passed. He reminded me of Holt back in boot camp.
I stood up as quickly as I could, and immediately the room spun around me.
“Take it easy there, Pink,” Hannah said. She righted me and stood me up straight just as the sergeant was rounding the corner.
“Today is the day!” he shouted. “Today we will begin building the pipeline that will bring this water back home to us, where it rightfully belongs.”
My eyes were focused on the floor.
No, it doesn’t. None of this is rightfully ours.
Blackwell stopped in front of me.
“What was that, soldier?” he asked.
Oh, my God. Did I say that out loud?
“I said that the water is rightfully ours, Sir,” I said, trying to look convincing. I swayed on the spot, just a little.
Blackwell smiled, then turned to address the rest of the soldiers.
“I see that some of you got your hands on some liquor last night,” he said. “Well, it was well deserved after the work some of you did, and the losses some of you took. But if you can’t hold your liquor, I recommend not doing so again.”
He turned back to face me.
“Yes, Sir!” I shouted. My own voice rang in my ears, too loud.
“Yes, Sir,” he repeated quietly, smiling again. “Everyone get cleaned up and ready to go. Chow will be quick this morning. I expect to see you all back in the cube, packs on, by 0700. Dismissed!”
As soon as his back was turned and he was on his way out the door, I sat back heavily onto the bed, head in my hands.
“Ugh,” I moaned, trying to steady my brain within my skull with my bare hands.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Hannah said.
At least I wasn’t nauseous anymore. I felt like I had the flu instead. I was shaky and every part of my skin prickled. I should have stayed in bed, but that would mean leaving this place and finishing out my tour at the Burn.
I got up and began to dress. I didn’t have time for a shower, but at least my second set of fatigues were clean.
“What should we bring?” I asked Hannah. “Everything?”
“I am,” she said. “Who knows if the Fighters, all of the Fighters, are really dead? Seems to me this mission is just as dangerous as battle.”
If it were to turn into a battle, that thought seemed unimportant to Blackwell. We were not offered weapons.
Forty minutes later we loaded up into armor-lined trucks and tanks and crashed our way through the forest, leaving a large swath of trees knocked to the ground behind us.
Hannah sat across from me, and Lydia two rows away. She was watching Hannah, scowling.
The only Prime in our vehicle was the driver.
Prime Andrew Price
Designation: Special Infantry
He was completely silent as he navigated the huge truck through the trees and into the valley of grass on the other side. The rest of us didn’t have much to say, either. I had stupidly left my body armor in my pack, and now I wished I had put it on under my fatigues. We would be open targets once we disembarked.
We drove through the grass. Only the windshield showed where we were going, but even through that bulletproof glass I could tell that the landscape was beautiful. The grass rolled in large hills, and off to one side was a quiet river that ran through to the lake. We might’ve drawn our water from the river instead, but when I saw the construction equipment, I realized why we couldn’t.
The pipeline tubes were huge, at least eight feet in diameter. I gulped as I thought about stealing so much water from our neighbors who had tried so hard to defend it.
And now I worried about sucking this lake dry like the Great Lakes had been. After generations of no rain in the center of the country, the pipes had brought water to the fields of wheat that made our nutrition squares. Now, with the combination of no rain and pilfering the water, the lakes were half the size they had once been.
The truck bounced along the uneven terrain until at last the lake was in view. I was dying to get out, to walk up to the shore and take it in. Its freshness, its sparkling beauty. Soon enough both of those things would be gone.
The large machines arrived, followed by enormous trucks stacked to the top with the tunnel tubes. Already, the diggers had created a large, long trench reaching onto the land from the lakebed.
We stepped down from the truck, and I found that the air wasn’t fresh like I had expected. Instead, the smell of diesel fuel spread out from the diggers, making my stomach turn again like the night before. I steeled myself to not vomit the meal I had forced down that morning.
They put us to work right away, smoothing out the areas where the diggers had already been. The bed of dirt needed to be as level as possible to keep the tubes from bursting under the pressure of their own weight.
The day wasn’t hot, but I was sweating. The shoveling was backbreaking work, even though most of it had been done by the diggers. I had left my pack up top, and my canteen of water within it. Hannah had hers slung around her back.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I have a swig of your water?”
She glared at me for a moment, realizing just how important her supply was, as her pack was up top as well. She handed out the canteen.
“You owe me,” she said.
“I’ll let you have most of mine once we get back up there,” I promised.
The water was lukewarm, but it soothed the dryness in my mouth and throat. I tried not to take too much, but stopping myself from drinking was hard.
“That’s enough, you pig,” she said, snatching back the canteen.
The day went on, and with few breaks for us to catch our breath. Keeping up with the diggers was difficult, and the speed of the pipe installation was too fast for us to take. No amount of yelling from Blackwell made us move faster. Most of us were still exhausted from the battle the day before.
As each piece of pipe was laid, it was covered up with huge mounds of earth. I supposed this was to prevent the Canadians from damaging it once it was operational. I wondered, though, how our leaders planned to keep the underwater pieces safe. The lake was deep, but that didn’t mean the pipes couldn’t be attacked from beneath the water.
Then, taking a break up top for lunch, I realized the plan. Two boats hovered around the area where the pipe was submerged. I expected the boats would be there, doing that job, for a very long time. I was glad not to be on one. The terror of battle was great, but the sickness of the motion in a boat long-term was worse.
As the sun started to set on the horizon, we were called up from the trench. All of us were covered with dirt, our faces barely recognizable. I couldn’t wait to get back to the base where I could drink freely and wash myself off.
This time, we walked back to base, and Blackwell directed four armed Primes to guard us, two in front, two in back. Alex was among them, and though I tried to get close to him up front, it was difficult to do so without bringing on unwanted attention. Like us, he was dirty, though I suspected the laboring had been much easier for him than us.
We entered the woods, taking the trail of destruction that the truck had made that morning.
I wanted to catch up to him, to maybe hold his hand. He remembered me now, but would he ever remember our friendship the way it had been? And would he ever forget the lies the government had stuffed into his brain?
As we walked, something on my right side caught my eye. A single white mattress left to rot beneath the trees. I gasped, then coughed, trying to hide my surprise.
“Can we stop?” I yelled out to Alex and another Prime I didn’t recognize.
“No stopping!” came the answer from the stranger.
My mind was racing.
“I need to pee,” I called back. “I haven’t gone all day. It’ll just take a minute.”
Both of them sighed, but they did not stop the group.
“Go ahead then,” Alex called back. “But you’ll have to catch up.”
I grimaced at his tone.
I broke apart from the group, not daring to make eye contact with Hannah or Lydia or anyone. I jogged toward the mattress and the clearing beyond.
Don’t look at it.
I squatted to pee, knowing that not doing so would cause trouble later. As I emptied my bladder, I kept my eyes up and looking in the trees. Anyone watching would think I was looking for Fighters, I was certain.
But my hands were quietly digging, fingers grasping blindly for the tool I knew I had buried there.
Then, there it was. Metal against my fingertips. I didn’t dare look down. Instead I stared ahead as I stood and pulled up my fatigues with one hand. With the other, I stuffed the tool deep into my pocket. No one would see, not unless I had been followed.
They had meant for me to have it, the Fighters. Maybe they knew that I would use it for
their cause, for their resistance against the States, their enemy.
Our enemy.
I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, whom I would give it to. But its weight pressed against my leg as I jogged back to the team.
I had something of real value now, something better than guns or protest. All I had to do was hide it.
I reached the team and fell back into line. I would keep my face straight, emotionless. I would keep the information from anyone who was directing me to serve them.
I would lie.
Episode 6
Chapter One
We were digging in. We were taking over. That was the idea. Step by step. Bit by bit.
We had infiltrated the city, but we hadn’t taken control yet. Our team of eight was hunkered down in a blown out building, waiting for a signal from the Primes to move forward, to set charges in buildings, to kill those who remained.
Edmonton. The place where all the oil pipelines met. The place where the flow had been shut off, interrupted by any means possible to stop the liquid gold from getting into the United States.
And water. A new pipeline had been connected to the northern half of the Great Lakes for the Canadians to pump water north. They didn’t really need it. They defended it, though. Who knew what would happen to their reserves in the future? What if the drought caught up with them, too? Their weather had gradually changed from bleak snow and ice into a perpetual spring, perfect for growing everything their country needed to survive.
They guarded their treasures.
We had nothing to trade. Our country was broke. And broken. Too much and too little water had plagued us for the past fifty years. The torrential rains would come at the worst time for planting, flooding the fields. The dry, hot air would come when the seedlings that survived needed water most. And the oceans had risen so far that all of our cities without protective walls were underwater.
The Canadians had no need of our grains. They could grow their own under the clear skies northwest of the Great Lakes. We no longer had anything to give in exchange. They were hiding in the buildings we passed now, defending their country and its resources.