Broken Worlds Super Boxset (55 page)

***

The sun was just breaking on the easterly horizon and casting a pale yellow across Alex’s face. The big orange ball pushed its way upward and was a welcome sight. Dawn was always his favorite part of the morning, even before the famine broke out.

The early-morning glow cast the rolling hills around him in a blanket of gold. For a moment he could see the dead earth around him be replaced by the fields of wheat and grass that used to grow there. The morning made the earth around him still feel youthful. But the feeling would only last for another few minutes. Then the sun would grow bolder, revealing the premature aged spots that now dotted the land around him. In another hour, he would be surrounded once again by death.

Alex rubbed his eyes. The morning sun also brought along with it the tiredness of his body. His legs and arms felt heavy, and the squinting against the sun’s rays only increased the desire to close his eyes. He reached around to his pack and pulled out a small plastic bag. White pills lined the clear bag, and he popped one in his mouth. He washed it down with a swig from his water bottle and splashed a little bit of water on his face.

It’d take a minute for the caffeine pill to take effect, but once it started working its magic, Alex would feel like he could walk all the way to the East Coast. He’d bought the pills right before news of the soil crisis. He bought it in bulk, and he still had half the container full back home. With coffee now considered a luxury item, his body was thankful for the purchase of the pills to help ease the addiction from the daily five cups of coffee he used to choke down.

Once the sun morphed from its infant morning orange to an adolescent white, Alex could see the shambled outline of Junction City in the distance. From there, he could find something to take him the rest of the way to Topeka.

Junction City had become a bit of a wheel hub for the rest of the state. The town was small enough for easy government control when the soil crisis started to gain momentum, but large enough to act as a refueling station for transportation vehicles heading out into the less populated areas of the state.

The soil crisis had brought an unintentional boom to the area, which now drew a large economic presence from the government because of their stake in the Soil Coalition. It also provided another service for anyone interested in dealing with the black market. There were certain government officials who didn’t shy away from gestures of bribes to peddle something, or someone, under the radar.

The smog from the traffic pollution grew thick as Alex made his way onto Highway 18, which held a deadheading straight into the city. He was stopped by a few sentries at the city’s entrance, but a flash of his hunting registration, along with a few ration cards attached, slid under their palms didn’t lead to any questions or further pat-downs.

Junction City may have been larger and slightly more chaotic than Alex’s community, but the look of the population was eerily similar. The thin frames had slightly more meat on them, but that same look of dazed hunger filled their eyes.

Of all the things that Alex had noticed since the soil crisis started, people’s eyes were the detail he fixated on the most. There was a journey, along with a tipping point, for someone starving to death, and you could always see where a person was by the state of their eyes.

In the beginning there was the panic, fear, frustration, and agitation that accompanied the desire to eat but not having the ability to find food. However, the will to survive was still clearly visible, along with the strength to obtain it, usually by force.

Once the hunger continued its vindictive pursuit in your consciousness, it would begin to cloud the mind. It was like a slow fog you could see coming, but no matter what you did, you couldn’t stop walking toward it. The misty, low-lying clouds covered you in a blanket of confusion. You wandered aimlessly through it, unable to make out any clear objects, and grasping violently at anything you could draw close.

The fog would thicken until the fear and apprehension of not being able to recognize anything gave way to numbness. The hunger would remain, but the desire to conquer it would be replaced by apathy. Apathy about continuing forward, apathy toward the people around you, apathy for the situation you found yourself in.

Finally, the struggle to continue the mindless wandering would end. The eyes would close, ending their torturous journey, and never open again.

Walking through Junction City, Alex saw more of the same. There wasn’t a single person alive in this country that wasn’t in one of the stages he’d categorized. Most of the people here still held onto their frustration and anger. Alex understood that anger. It kept you alive.

***

Sydney started feeling anxious the moment Gordon told him that he was going out into the field. At first he thought it was some sick joke, a continuation of the torture of being sent to the farm camp. But the moment he received the plane ticket, he knew it wasn’t some sort of psychological warfare. It was real. His leg bounced as uncontrollably as his ability to stop himself from hyperventilating. One of the pilots was making his way from the cockpit to the bathroom in the back, and Sydney flagged him down.

“Captain, can you tell me how long the flight is?”

“Shouldn’t be more than forty minutes. We’ll be taking off as soon as the other passenger arrives.”

Sydney wasn’t a field agent. That wasn’t his area of expertise. He belonged in the lab, analyzing the samples sent to him by more-qualified individuals. The field had too much uncertainty. Too many variables that he couldn’t control. And when there were too many uncertainties or too many variables, the higher the probability of chaos. Chaos was dangerous.

Sydney closed the small covering over the window and leaned his head back onto the headrest. He buckled his seatbelt and tightened the strap as hard as it would go around his waist. All he wanted to do was go there, take whatever notes he could, then get back to his lab. His safe, controlled, clean lab. The sooner all of this was over, the sooner he could get back to his bubble.

The airplane’s door was still open, and Sydney could hear the whine of the plane’s engine outside. The sunlight that flooded the cabin slowly became blocked by an encroaching shadow. With each step up the plane’s ladder, the figure’s shadow grew.

Sydney slid down in his seat, trying to hide from whatever was coming. Gordon had mentioned that someone would be coming with him. He figured it was another scientist, but it wouldn’t make sense to send two lab techs into the field.

The cabin was completely dark now as a man carrying no luggage stepped onto the plane. The only things he had were the clothes on his back. A pair of jeans and a black leather jacket.

Alex stepped out of the truck rig and tossed up three MRE packages to the driver. The trucker nodded, and the rig jolted forward as the trucker shifted gears. A cloud of black smoke flew up into the air and disappeared down the road.

Topeka was just ahead of him, and surrounding the edges of the city were the steel death traps of farm camps. The sentries in charge of running them worked the people inside eighteen hours a day, and sometimes they went days without offering the workers food or water. The only amenity of civilization they offered was a latrine used by the workers for their unfortunate bodily functions.

Meeko was in one of those boxes, slowly wasting away, being whipped if he was working too slowly. The farm camps were full of kids like him. Orphans with no parents. They were easy pickings, and when they dropped dead from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration, they were easily disposed of.

Alex followed the road until it ran right past the city hall where the Soil Coalition headquarters resided. Alex remembered first hearing about the Coalition almost a year ago. It had an allure and a name the citizens of the country could rally behind. It was the perfect propaganda to give the government enough time to organize the remainder of their resources and recruit what bright minds and strong muscles remained of everyone else.

The Soil Coalition emitted a false sense of hope, one that people still clung to till this day. The early messages of returning to prosperity and bringing peace and rest to a torn country were words everyone wanted to hear. But as Alex looked at the sentries with assault rifles lining the steps of their headquarters, peace seemed to be the lowest objective on their totem pole.

Unlike the corrupt sentries at Junction City, the sentries that Alex would be searched by here shared the same mechanical efficiency of the sentries in his own community. Once his pack was handed over to them, he braced himself for when they found the seeds. The sentry who pulled them out flipped them over in his hand a few times.

“What are these?” the sentry asked.

The sentry had a wide face, almost as if someone pushed the front and back of his skull together, and that turned his head into more of an oval.

“Seeds,” Alex answered.

“What?”

“They’re seeds, dumbass.”

Alex wasn’t sure if it was his salty language or the fact that he was in possession of unregistered seeds that caused the bum rush of sentries slamming his face onto the hard city hall tile, but regardless of the reason it still hurt.

The bash to the side of his face didn’t help the still-present head pain from last night. He could feel the side of his face swelling, and the addition of his wrists being handcuffed only furthered his discomfort.

Once Gordon heard that someone had seeds and discovered exactly who it was, Alex knew he’d get the audience he desired. He just hoped his bargaining chips were worth the freedom of two farm workers.

***

Jake watched Sydney peel his fingers off the armrests after they landed. He’d thought the brainiac would go into shock and die before they even took off. Jake stepped out and took in the open land that stretched for miles. It was a far cry from the skyline of Philadelphia. He hadn’t seen a major city for almost nine months, but he didn’t miss it.

When everything first went to shit, the cities took the brunt of the blow. The supplies of food trucks shrank every day. First the daily deliveries stopped, then the trucks only showed up once a week, then every other week, and it wasn’t long after that the trucks were hijacked before they even made it into the city, and then the food trucks of relief supplies were replaced by men with guns.

Screams and gunshots seemed to be the only sounds the city offered after that. He remembered walking to a friend’s house three months after the first failed harvest when he heard a gunshot the next street over.

Once Jake made it to the connecting street, he saw a group of people crouched over something on the asphalt. They yanked and pulled at the object, taking greedy bloody handfuls of whatever they surrounded. A few of them turned to look at him when he passed by, but he kept his eyes forward. In his peripheral vision, he could see the limp hand of the person who had been shot.

When Jake showed up at his friend’s house, no one answered. He walked around back and let himself in. The power had been out for almost a week, so the heat blast that greeted him upon entering wasn’t surprising, but the smell of rotten meat that stung his nostrils was.

The living room wall was decorated with his friend’s brain matter. Flies swarmed around the bullet hole in his head. The used pistol rested in his lap. Jake didn’t even bother burying him. He grabbed the pistol, the holster he knew was kept in the closet, ammo, whatever food and water was left in the house, and then sprinted out of the city that festered with death.

The tech that Jake had flown with finally stepped out of the cabin, leaning to one side with his luggage weighing him down. Sydney waved his hand sheepishly.

“Um, Jake? Right?” Sydney asked.

“You plan on staying here?” Jake asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“The bags, Einstein. Why’d you bring so much baggage?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure how long we’d be staying.”

“Not long.”

“Oh, well, I was hoping you could help me with some of my equipment?”

Sydney gestured behind him to the other cases of luggage heaped in a pile by the plane’s belly. Jake turned his back to him and pinched his index and thumb together in his mouth and belted out a loud, sharp whistle. Two sentries immediately started their way.

“They’ll grab your shit. You really need all of that?” Jake asked.

“Well, to test any other soil samples we may find or specimens found, I want to make sure we have the necessary equi—”

Jake waved his hand, stopping Sydney from continuing. “Yeah, all that science shit. Right.”

If Sydney needed all of that equipment for just testing samples, then Jake couldn’t imagine the amount of equipment needed to turn the dead earth underneath the sole of his boots to a fertile substance. Whoever did it would need a large lab, one that couldn’t be mobile, so he made the assumption that whoever put that dirt on the ground in the middle of nowhere was still here. Now, all Jake had to do was find the prick.

***

The living room was clean, tidy, and simple. Even the way the furniture was placed in the room signified a natural balance. It was like the owner had placed each piece specifically in its area to ensure the house would not lean to one side or the other.

In the adjacent study, the same care and balance was erected in the form of bookshelves. The walls were lined with them from the floor to the ceiling. Hundreds of books, tens of thousands of pages, millions of words all neatly tucked away behind their covers.

Todd dipped his hands into the water bucket and splashed his face. The droplets of water collected in the thick bracken of his beard and through his slicked-back hair. He ran a comb through both his hair and beard, taming the knots and tangles formed from the previous seven days, which had been the last time he’d taken the time to wash himself. He scrubbed himself down as best he could then rinsed with the five gallons of water he had pumped from the community’s water pump. He snatched a towel and tried to catch as much of the water dripping onto the floor on his way to the bedroom as he could.

The bed was made, and on top of the comforter sat a pair of pants, a T-shirt, boxer briefs, and socks. The towel hit the floor, and he started to dress.

The town’s sirens wailed just as Todd pulled the laces tight on his left shoe. He abandoned the shoe’s partner and immediately went to his study. In the chair was a worn leather briefcase. He snatched the manila folder inside and rushed back to the bedroom. He pulled up a piece of the floorboard by the tips of his fingernails and stuffed the folder over a dust covered pistol inside. He made sure it was secure then grabbed his right shoe on the way out.

The farms surrounding the makeshift town were fairly spread out. Until the government created their “community,” the families and individuals in the area got along fine. To his left and right he could see his neighbors making the walk down. All of them kept their eyes on him. 

Once Todd made it onto the main track, he could see the sentries, rifles in hand, herding everyone in line. Todd filed in, and one of the other community members caught his eye. He gave him a simple nod, and the man looked away.

A new inspector had arrived. He reminded Todd of the street thugs he used to see in California, complete with short hair, simple clothes, and an air of anger and entitlement; the kind of guy who’d knock you out because he was having a bad day. The man didn’t fit the mold for most of the inspectors he’d seen. Especially after seeing the gun holster on the inside of his black leather jacket.

There was another man standing behind the street thug. He looked like some lab rat Todd would have found during his teaching days. The rat held his case of syringes close to his chest, wide-eyed and visibly shaking.

The street thug said something to his pet rat, who then moved to the first person in line and began drawing a blood sample. Whoever the man in the black jacket was, he definitely wasn’t an inspector. While the ‘assistant’ made his way down the line, the street thug simply watched the rest of the community, giving everyone a good look up and down. When he made it to Todd, he stopped.

“What was your job?” Street Thug asked.

“Was?”

“Before the soil crisis.”

“Janitor.”

Street Thug took a step back, rubbing his chin. Then, as quick as a snake bite, he grabbed Todd’s wrist and examined his palm. Todd felt the man’s finger trace along the creases and grooves of his skin. Then, just as quickly as he’d grabbed Todd’s wrist, he tossed it away.

Street Thug shoved his own palm in front of Todd’s face. “You see this? This is the hand of a man who worked outside. Someone who gripped tools and machinery. You have the hands of a twelve-year-old girl. You weren’t a fucking janitor. So what do you do now, janitor?“

“Body depo,” Todd answered.

“Like that, do you? Copping a feel of the stiffs before they’re gone. I can’t imagine the play around here is any good, so you have to take it where you can get it.”

The thug puffed hot, stinking breath against Todd’s throat. Todd balled his fist so tight the bones in his hands popped.

“Aww, what’s the matter?” Street Thug asked. “Have a soft spot for the stiffs? Formed a connection with them, have you?”

The lab rat stood sheepishly behind the thug. “Um, sir?”

The thug took a step back and allowed the rat to collect his cheese. Todd stuck out his arm and felt the cool puncture of metal pierce his skin, followed by the slow drain of life from his vein. Once the syringe was full, the warm, tingling sensation in the crook of Todd’s elbow disappeared, and he covered it with the pressure from his opposite hand. He stood there, feeling the pulse from his heartbeat quicken.

Finally, the thug stepped away. Todd felt his heart rate slow. The beat in his chest and pulse in his arm declined in proportion to the distance between the two of them. Once all of the samples were collected, the lab rat disappeared inside the truck that he arrived in.

Todd closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, quietly. He let the cool rush of air blow past his lips and into the open space in front of him. He had to stay calm. He couldn’t panic. His eyes slowly moved to the sentries surrounding the group. He counted twelve. All armed with assault rifles, and secondary pistols at their waists. They had enough bullets to kill every member of the community twenty times over.

It would only be another few minutes before the lab rat finished the tests on his blood. And when the rat analyzed the calories along with the vitamin and mineral count that was flowing through his blood at this very moment, Todd would have to make a decision that carried repercussions that would extend far beyond his small community.