Broken Worlds Super Boxset (83 page)

The rows of naked workers all had the same look on their faces: defeat. And the sentries holding guns and whips in their hands all had the same look on their own faces: hate. That’s what people had become reduced to. That’s what Todd had been reduced to.

Todd shuffled forward, carrying a basketful of strawberries down the line of hydroponic tanks to the storage bins where all the food he and the rest of his slave laborers picked would be packaged and sent to whatever was still left under the Coalition’s control, which Todd hoped wasn’t very much.

Unlike his coworkers, however, Todd’s ankles were shackled together, which severely limited his speed and ability to make it to the bins in the same amount of time as his nonrestricted brethren. The shackles were an excuse for the sentries to whip him, and the trickle of blood from the strips of opened flesh on his back left a trail of crimson on the floor of the farm camp.

The only events that played through his mind were those of the community in Wyoming. He kept looking back for anything he’d missed when he was talking to Alex. But in the end, he knew exactly what had happened. He let the urgency of the situation and the belief that everyone wanted to take down the Coalition as much as he did blind his decision making until it was too late. He was so focused on the end result that he was willing to sacrifice the integrity of the elements involved to get there. Which was exactly what the Soil Coalition did in the very farm camps where Todd was stationed.

Todd examined the sullen faces around him. The hollow cheeks, the pencil-thin arms and legs, the pronounced ribs ready to penetrate the very skin holding them in place. He wondered how long these people had been here. How long would he survive in here? There was no doubt that Gordon wanted him dead, but for whatever reason, he didn’t have the firing squad take him down after he was captured. Did Gordon want him to suffer more? Is that why he had been put in this place? Perhaps. Or maybe Gordon was waiting to see if the scientists were able to recreate his solution without him. Then, once it was confirmed they had what they needed, Todd would receive a bullet to the back of his head while on his way to drop off a carton full of berries.

There would be no ceremony for him after it was done. No burial. He would be scooped up, tossed into a pile of other worthless bones, and set ablaze. He wouldn’t get to see his wife again. He wouldn’t get to talk to his daughter anymore. The bastards wouldn’t even give him the opportunity to be buried next to her.

Todd suddenly became brutally aware of the circumstances of her death. He was transported back to the day she passed. She was so sick, her body ravaged by the effects of GMO-24, just like it had destroyed so many other children and elderly too weak to handle the strains of genetic mutations. Her intestinal decomposition had accelerated past the organ’s ability to process any type of food or nutrients. It didn’t matter what they fed her, her body just couldn’t handle it.

Todd had never spent so many hours in the lab leading up to that point. The moment he found out what was happening, he and Emma started working on a cure. But they just didn’t have enough time. And so Todd was faced with a choice. Let his daughter suffer through the slow, agonizing effects of starvation and dehydration, or relieve her of that burden.

The crate full of berries in Todd’s hands began to tremble as the strength in his arms gave out. She wasn’t much bigger than the box he was carrying now when it happened. She was so small. So weak and in so much pain. He just didn’t have enough time. He cursed the relentless hand of time that waited for no man or excuse. It just kept ticking forward, bringing with it the inevitable fate that befalls everyone. No parent should have to bury their child, and no parent should ever have the disgusting task of ending their child’s pain themselves.

He and Emma buried her the same day. The sentries weren’t as strict back then, and they were allowed a brief time of bereavement. Todd didn’t sleep for three days after he put his daughter in the ground. He didn’t eat. He simply watched the world around him continue in its decay. Just like his little girl, the world experienced a slow death. Brought to slaughter by some faceless enemy whose only goal was darkness.

But somewhere within those three days of sleepless misery, the faceless assailant began to take form. Todd could see the features pronounced more clearly the longer he was awake. Every second his mind and body grew weary was another stroke of the brush on the canvas, painting the masterpiece of death. The grim reaper himself was taking shape, and Todd reached out his hand to uncloak the beast underneath.

When Todd finally pulled back the hood, Gordon Reath’s face showed itself. He was the poster child for what happened. He was the face of the Coalition that had forced him to bury his own daughter. And in that moment, all the pain and apathy and fear and loss replaced itself with the honed, razor edge of purpose. One he hadn’t quit sharpening since that very day.

But now, all the tools he had used to wield the one weapon that could bring down the violent facades around him were gone. He no longer had a lab to mass produce his cure to the virus that now plagued the world. All he could do was watch as the virus harnessed the power of Todd’s cure to continue its conquest and stranglehold on everything he held dear.

Todd emptied the cart of strawberries into the bin and then returned to the hydroponic tanks to strip the plants bare of their yield. A man, probably no older than Todd, carried a bag of the nutrients used to keep the water in the tanks at a suitable level for growth. Todd watched the man’s knees buckle and bend, his frail body straining under the weight of the bag, until he stumbled and fell to the floor, spilling the opened sack onto the ground.

Terror struck the man’s face, realizing the calamity of what he’d just done and the repercussions that would accompany it. The sentries were already converging on him as the mindless zombies surrounding him stepped around the spilt nutrients as the man desperately tried to scrape them off the ground and return them to the bag.

The whip at the sentry’s side extended to the ground and dragged slightly behind him until he and his two crusaders of pain towered over the man.

“Please,” the man said, clasping his hands together, begging for any type of leniency that was pointless to ask for. “I can pick all of it up. I can fix this. Please.” The voice was panicked and filled with a desperate tone that accompanied inmates on death row, pleading their innocence to the stone-faced executioner who sharpened his axe.

The first lashing sliced the man’s shoulder, triggering a pool of red crimson to contrast over the pale-gray flesh. The man howled and crumpled to the ground, curling up into a ball, holding his thin arm up and exposing his palm to the sentries, repeating the words “stop” and “please” interchangeably and repeatedly. But the next quick crack of the whip that opened a gash on the man’s leg was the only answer he would receive from the brutes in front of him.

Todd rushed forward in awkward, restricted jolts, as the chains around his ankles only allowed him to travel so far before the metal cut into his skin, causing him to stumble. He managed to get his hands around the neck of the first sentry but was quickly placed on his back by another sentry and was administered the same whipping as the man he tried to save.

Lying there on the ground, feeling the harsh burn and sting of consequences rushing over him, Todd could see the confusion and pain spread across the man’s face. He couldn’t understand why Todd had risked his own well-being for the fruitless endeavor of trying to help him. But Todd didn’t do it for the man, he did it for himself. He needed to prove that no matter what the conditions, or how painful the consequences, he would continue the fight to show those around him that they are in control of their fate. They have the ability to stand up for what they believe in and challenge the harsh realities of the world around them. Even after everything that happened, Todd was still trying to show the people who were enslaved that they had a choice.  

***

With Nelson pinpointing the location of both Todd and Emma in separate farm camps, Luis begrudgingly accepted the fact that he couldn’t be in two places at once, and despite the gunshot he had received, he wasn’t going to forgo the opportunity to retrieve his sister, no matter what.

Alex admired the man. Luis was someone who valued family, brotherhood, and loyalty. He was the silent guardian in the background, only coming into action when called upon by those who needed him most.

Most of Luis’s men, along with the units they met up with the closer they moved to Topeka, had accepted Alex, and his previous acts of valor seemed to have forgiven him the debt of his betrayal. But there was still one who wouldn’t take his eyes off him.

“You’re one smug prick, you know that?” Ray asked. “You think you have everyone fooled with the hero act. But I know who you are. I know what you do.”

“I’m just trying to fix what I already broke.”

“I won’t let you get away with this.” Ray edged closer to Alex within the confines of the tank, and Alex kept a watchful eye on the pistol attached to Ray’s waist. “Did you tell Luis what happened to his sister when you came into town? I bet he’d be interested to know how you got her whipped. I bet he’d like to know that it was you who put her on that post.”

“Gordon had a gun to every member of my community. It wasn’t just your friends who were caught in the line of fire, Ray. It was mine too.”

The accusations and guilt were becoming too much. Alex knew what he’d done. He’d lived through it. The knife of betrayal was a blade he’d stuck in his own gut for a very long time, ripping apart his insides, feeling the taste of disgust fill his mouth.

“And who the fuck are you to make those types of decisions? You came into our community and played god! You chose your own people over mine!” Ray said.

There wasn’t a pair of eyes that weren’t looking at the two of them. Alex could feel the rage welling up inside. It was the same rage that was there the night he came back from Wyoming. It fueled him into a stratosphere he could never reach without it, and he was dancing dangerously close to the tipping point again.

“Enough!” Luis said, his words ending any potential for escalation between the two of them. “You want to help, Ray? Then focus on getting Todd and Emma back.”

Ray cast his eyes down, and Alex moved to the other side of the tank. The cramped space wasn’t doing anyone any good. “Where are we now?” Alex asked.

“Just entered Kansas,” Luis answered.

“I need some air,” Alex said and exited through the porthole at the top of the tank and sat outside. The tank was cruising along at forty miles an hour, and the wind whipped his face as he glanced at the familiar terrain of his state.

Then, in the distance, Alex saw it. It was the lone tree he’d come across so many times on his hunts. The barren branches twisted into the air, and the black trunk and bark contrasted against the blue sky. The tree had been dead for some time, but still it remained, waiting for the time when its roots finally released their grip on the earth beneath and collapsed to the ground.

With everything that happened, Alex wasn’t sure how much longer his own roots would be keeping him alive. The past weeks had only accelerated the decay spreading inside him for the past three years. It wouldn’t be long before his own roots unearthed themselves and were exposed to the light above.

The tree out there was alone. Still defying the odds of life by standing strong in a world where it was surrounded by nothing but death. Alex couldn’t help but feel the same way. The only difference between him and the tree was the fact that he was still more alive than dead. At least for now.

***

The map spread across the desk of Gordon’s conference room seemed to be shrinking. The cluster of dots that had once stretched from Mississippi to Wyoming had relocated to surround the city of Topeka, Kansas. Everything Gordon had left to his name was stationed just outside the city, surrounding him in a ring of guns, men, and artillery.

Dean had lost all sense of composure and had devolved back into whatever gorilla ancestry his family came from, beating his chest, grunting, howling that they were all going to die. Every other top-level sentry was in the same boat. Trying to figure out the best way to save themselves without having Gordon finding out and putting a bullet in their heads.

All of their voices and all of their shouts and screams and fears were nothing more than just white noise. It was a slow and steady constant in the background of Gordon’s mind, almost Zen-like, allowing him to concentrate on just how many lives he was willing to sacrifice to ensure his own safety.

Any Class 3s who still remained were stationed in the building with Gordon at all times. It was part of their agreement that wherever Gordon went they would as well, and receive whatever amnesty from whatever country decided to take him in.

Gordon’s eyes flickered over to his laptop on his desk. He wondered how many countries were now scrambling for offers. How many would be willing to risk the lives of their own military personnel to ensure that their country receives the biggest scientific breakthrough in over a century?

He’d sold it as best he could, telling the marvels of the product in the persuasive tone that only a former lobbyist could. It was odd for him, being back in that role, but he was amazed at how easy it was for him to slide back in. Even after three years, he was able to put it back on like an old coat. The collar may have been slightly frayed and the cuffs a little looser than he remembered, but it still fit. It seemed no matter how hard he tried to bury who he was, it always returned to the surface.

“Gordon!”

It was Jake who broke through the white noise. Gordon became aware of the entire room looking at him, all of them hunched over and eagerly awaiting what he thought of their plan—their desperate, plan.

“Did you hear them? The city is being surrounded. We need an exit strategy,” Jake said.

So this is what all the squabbling was for.
They all wanted out, to make sure their own skins would remain on their bones.

“There is no exit strategy. We fight, or we die. There is no other choice for us,” Gordon said.

Gordon could already see the tide shifting toward betrayal and cowardice. They wanted to run, and since Gordon hadn’t built his empire on a foundation of loyalty and trust, he reverted to what had always worked for him in the first place: fear.

“And if any of you or any of the men under your command think surrendering or running is a viable option, you tell them this: they have been a part of this Coalition since the beginning. If we lose, they will not be pardoned. They will be put to trial and convicted of treason, crimes against humanity, and whatever other bullshit the court system will throw at them. And once they are convicted, which they will be, they’ll be sentenced to rot in a jail cell instead of the box in the ground where they’ll end up if they try and run.”

The white noise stopped. With Gordon’s message clear, the rest of the room emptied, and when the door closed, there was only Gordon and Jake, alone.

“You have something, right?” Jake asked. “You know that no matter how bad you think you’ve scared them, it won’t be enough for them to stay when the bullets start flying.”

Gordon rose from his seat at the conference room table and walked out the door. Jake rushed after him, scrambling down the hallway, leaning into his ear and whispering so anyone they passed couldn’t hear him.

“You don’t actually think you can win this, do you?” Jake asked. “Christ, Gordon, the sentries won’t be able to handle the amount of firepower coming their way. Not even the Class 3s.”

It was like an incessant bug, buzzing around Gordon’s ear, and no matter what, he just couldn’t swat it away. He entered his office and opened the laptop on his desk. Jake continued his circling, asking Gordon what he was doing, if he was crazy, if he understood that he would die if something wasn’t done.

“Enough!” Gordon snapped.

The buzzing ceased, and Gordon powered on the laptop, praying he would have any type of notification from the countries he petitioned. Russia, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Greece, India, all with handsome offers of money and amnesty in their country in return for the soil data. But all of them were overlooked and ignored once Gordon saw the one name that surpassed the rest: China.

Sheng had finally opted to throw his hat in the ring, and while his offer was less substantial than some of the others, Gordon knew Sheng would actually be able to deliver.

“You still have those Class 3s on standby?” Gordon asked.

“Yeah, they’re over in the hangar, just like you asked,” Jake answered.

“And Sydney is still working on the soil data?”

“Yeah, but he’s still not done.”

“Tell the sentries I want to be ready to take off within the hour, and make sure Sydney has whatever he needs to finish his work packed in the same amount of time.”