Feed (19 page)

Ramone turned back to the pond. The cattle had disappeared, and the sun was now entirely over the mountaintops. “They never are, are they?” He threw a flat rock he’d been toying with into the water and watched the ripples expand.

“I guess not.” She kicked a half buried stone with the toe of her boot. “Are you?” she asked, squinting up at him.

“Am I what?”

“Running off.”

He laughed mirthlessly and rubbed the palms of his hands across his pants awkwardly. “No. There’s nowhere to run, Beth. You know that. I’m as safe here as anywhere.”

“That’s not very safe. The Enforcer,
and
Gale, claim someone’s coming here.”

“Gale?”

“You know him as Ghosteye.”

Ramone nodded. “My guardian angel, yes.”

She laughed. It sounded bitter. “From what I’ve heard, he hasn’t done a very good job of protecting you.”

Ramone shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

“Do you believe them—that someone’s coming here?”

“Does it matter what I think?”

She bent down to pick up the rock she’d dislodged with her boot. “I figure you have a working knowledge of who we’re dealing with here.”

“I’m afraid my knowledge is flawed. Otherwise I would have seen the Enforcer coming. I didn’t.”

“That’s Gale’s fault. He told me. He’s the one who alerted the Enforcer.”

Ramone felt his expression darken before he caught himself. Bethany tossed the rock into the pond, watching the splash with a look of satisfaction. “Why?”

“Why what? Why’d he tell them? I don’t know. Gale used to be part of the machinery. He believed what he was doing was art, like painting or writing a play. I tried to convince him otherwise, but you can see how well that worked. The only thing that changed him, according to Gale, was you.”

Ramone looked away, feeling the weight of that responsibility settling on his shoulders. It was there a second and he let it go, and with it, the desire to call them fools—Marci, Blythe, and now this Ghosteye. What would he do? Fight them forever? The battle wasn’t with them, but the Organization.

“So what do you think?”

He looked a question at her.

“About them coming here,” she answered.

“They came for me. They’ll come for you. And I’ve led them to you. I’m sorry.” He shrugged helplessly.

“I knew it would happen someday. Will you fight with us?”

He laughed. “With what? My bare hands?”

“Those cattle over there, that were here when you came out of the trees. Who do you think they belong to?”

He glanced across the pond, searching for the cattle, but all he could see was the trampled weeds and clumped mud where their hooves had been. “A rancher somewhere. Are they yours?”

She nodded. “Cattle’s not all we have.”

“Ah,” he said, rubbing his hands together and then folding his arms. “Then, yes, I suppose I will.”

“Good. We’ll need you. And the girls, do you think they’ll fight too?”

“Blythe will. I’m not sure about Marci.”

“I bet I can convince her.”

“She’s not exactly a pacifist.”

“Then it should be easy. Let’s go back to camp. I can sketch out our plan.”

*****

Back in camp, someone pulled Beth aside and she excused herself. Ramone strolled, lost in thought, to the campfire he’d already become familiar with—a few of the camp tenants were tending it and cooking breakfast already—and sat down.

“Hungry?” One of them asked, a tall broad-shouldered fellow in bare feet. His dreadlocks were long and pulled up into a ponytail, he had some kind of tribal tattoo on his face, and a nose piercing. Ramone nodded. They scooped some eggs onto a pie-tin and handed it to Ramone, along with a plastic fork. “Don’t throw the tin and the fork away. We use them again.”

“Don’t worry, it’s washed,” another said when he saw the look on Ramone’s face. This one’s hair was short, just barely beginning to form into dreadlocks, and his fingers were full of silver rings. He smiled at Ramone, revealing straight, unnaturally white teeth—a recent convert, Ramone thought. Maybe he’d been going through appearance upgrades before joining the camp. 

“Of course. Thanks,” Ramone said and began eating. The eggs tasted like they’d been laid by the golden hen from the fairy tales. Ramone didn’t remember eating anything quite so magnificent. “These are amazing,” he said.

“Free range. We keep our own hens,” the one with the tribal tattoo answered. “Also, you’re probably hungry.”

“So you’re him, eh?” The one with rings asked.

“Him, who?” Ramone responded, pausing between mouthfuls.

“The father of the feeds.”

Ramone swallowed then laughed. “I don’t know why you people call me that. I didn’t create the feeds. I’m a nanoengineer. I created the cameras. They were an optic camera, designed to replace irises in people with nerve-damaged eyes.” He put the pie-tin down as he explained it, shutting his own eyes in exasperation. “I didn’t even think of the surveillance application. I should have, yes, but I didn’t. Someone else pushed them in that direction. I’m not wholly responsible for the feeds. I’m not the one robbing the world of privacy. I’m sorry.”

“Whoa, it’s ok, man. Breathe, man,” the one with the tribal tattoo said. “I believe you.”

“Good. Even if you didn’t, it’s the truth.” Ramone opened his eyes, looking at the eggs, suddenly not hungry.

“Beth started calling you that, and we all just kind of followed her lead,” the one with be-ringed fingers said.

“Without doing your own research?” Ramone asked.

They both nodded, looking sheepish.

Ramone sighed and stood, intending to go back to the tent for Marci and Blythe. He never thought he’d desire their company over that of others, at least not the company of Marci. “Thanks for the eggs.”

He left the campfire, crossing the gravel and weeds, heading for the big tent where he’d beat up the Enforcer. Elliot. It disgusted him to use a name to refer to that monster.

“Ramone?” an unfamiliar voice said.

He looked to his left. A man on crutches approached him. Pale-faced, short hair sticking up like it hadn’t been washed in a few days, tall and thin. He didn’t belong in the camp, that much was clear.

“Yes?” Ramone answered, readying to run before he realized he didn’t need to.

“I can’t believe you made it, really, but I’m so glad. That day when I shut the feed down, I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”

Realization dawned on Ramone. “Ghosteye.”

The tall thin man nodded and hobbled closer. “I bet you’re a mixed bag about me. Am I your friend or your enemy? Well, I’ve been both, but right now, I’m on your side. Can we go somewhere and talk? I have some things I need to tell you.”

“What happened to you?” Ramone asked, feeling skeptical about the man, even though he was aware the Editor had somehow helped them.

“I ran into an Enforcer of my own. And, well, she was ruthless,” he said, with a smirk. “As you can see.”

Ramone took in the foot, and the bandaged fingers. “You got off easy,” he answered.

Ghosteye laughed, a bursting, awkward laugh with a smile that cracked his face open. “That I did, that I did.” As quick as the laugh came the sobering look after. “I’m very sorry for what Elliot did to you. I blame myself for that.” Ghosteye hobbled closer and, balancing one crutch beneath his arm, extended a hand. “Please accept my apology.”

Ramone studied the hand before taking it. He gave Ghosteye one nod. “Come with me,” he said, and led the tall man slowly back to the tent Ramone had shared with Marci and Blythe.

*****

Blythe groaned and rolled to her back. Her hip and knee felt like they’d been crushed by a semi-truck where they’d dug into the cot. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought that vixen Bethany had intentionally given them the most uncomfortable sleeping arrangements she could dig up. The army surplus blanket was warm enough, if scratchy as steel wool, but the pillow was as flat as a pancake.

She sat up and rubbed her face. The inside of the large tent glowed diffusely with the daylight from outside, but it was still shadowy enough that Marci was just a dark lump in the cot next to her. Ramone’s cot, on Blythe’s other side, was empty.
Hmph.
Their first night together and nothing. He hadn’t even reached out to steal a touch of any sort. She’d had trouble falling asleep, herself, thinking of him next to her, so close. She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but it had been well beyond an hour before she’d gotten her heart to stop racing and her thoughts to stop running wild. When was the last time she’d felt the thrill of a man’s proximity in the night?
Too long
, she thought with a sigh.

“Marci, hey, wake up,” Blythe said, nudging Marci. The girl grunted and snorted.

“What?” she groaned.

“It’s morning.”

“So?”

“We have things to do. Get up.”

“This is the first decent sleep I’ve gotten in days. What time is it?” Blythe could barely understand her—it sounded like she had cotton in her mouth. “I need another hour, at least,” Marci complained and rolled over, as much as she could on the tiny cot, and went back to sleep. 

Blythe slipped her feet into the boots at the side of her own cot and laced them up. She stood, shouldered her bag, and went around the boxes separating their sleeping area from the rest of tent, heading for the entrance flap. From her bag she pulled out a small mirror and tried to smooth her hair down. Yes, she did look like death reanimated, she realized dismally. On top of it all, her clothes were wrinkled and frumpy. And on top of that, those clothes came from that dive in the middle of nowhere U.S.A. and were inherently ugly. Hiking boots, gray canvas pants, and a pink T-shirt announcing that she was a Sagittarius. It was either that or one of those shirts with a pack of wolves howling at the moon. Blythe had picked the lesser of two evils.

She stepped out into the cool autumnal morning and glanced around the busy camp, wondering where she could get a cup of coffee. Overhead, birds chirped in the almost warm sunshine, fluttering from naked branch to branch. She rubbed her arms and shivered just as she noticed Ramone approaching, accompanied by a lanky man hobbling along on crutches. The stranger’s face was narrow, with a thin nose and mouth, and straight hair sticking up in haphazard angles. He wore a black long-sleeved t-shirt, tan cargo pants, and black skateboard shoes. He was handsome in a thin, sallow way, like the goths she used to see hanging around the record store before music stores vanished. Anyway, he wasn’t her type.

Ramone, on the other hand. He hadn’t been her type either. Random things were as possible as the predictable, she supposed, and well, this morning, he looked like the million dollar man—that glamorous vestige from her childhood that she’d worked into the stories she concocted with her dolls. Ramone strode purposefully, lacking the awkward, nerdy air he normally carried with him. Blythe swore, every day she knew him, it was like he shed another layer of indecision and glowed with a shiny new coat of lacquer, like an antique being restored.

“Blythe, of course, hello,” the man on crutches said. Blythe immediately recognized his voice. There was that slight northwestern accent, but for the life of her, Blythe hadn’t expected him to be so effusive. Well, he’d only said one thing to her so far. But she’d imagined him a bit shyer. Here he leaned forward on his crutches, proffering his hand. She took it, feeling his long, cool fingers reach beyond her wrist his hands were so large.

“Ghosteye,” she said, nodding. “What happened to you?” She looked him up and down, taking in the bandaged fingers and a slight purpling under his left eye.

He blushed and shrugged. “Ahem, well, as I told Ramone here, I ran into an Enforcer of my own. She was a bit more, well, let’s just say, brutish than the one you’ve been dealing with. She lacked that artistic touch. Preferred grand sweeping gestures.”

“That’s disgusting,” Blythe said, crinkling her nose. “A woman did this? I’m so sorry.”

“Let’s go inside,” Ramone said, taking a step forward, meeting Blythe’s gaze as he did.

“Marci’s still sleeping,” she said. “Besides, I really need a cup of coffee. That cot was unforgiving.”

“We’ll go in. You join us in a moment,” Ramone said. “Pressing matters.”

“Fine,” Blythe said, nodding, glancing between Ramone and Ghosteye before leaving. She went in search of a campfire with a brew going or a mess tent that looked busy. She knew of at least one public tent, so she went there first.

There was something discomfiting about the way Ghosteye recognized her. She should be used to that, especially since the feeds had been going for years now, but she wasn’t. And even though she’d spoken to him on the phone several times, it was still a strange feeling to meet someone who behaved like they knew you, though you knew next to nothing about them. She shook her head, unable to accept this as the status quo. Something needed to change.

She found the tent where they’d gotten dinner the night before. There were people milling about, smoking, drinking coffee from ceramic mugs and aluminum thermoses, laughing and talking. There was a noticeable excitement in the air that hadn’t been there the previous night. Word must have gotten around about an Enforcer being held prisoner in the camp. She went inside and found a clean mug in a stack at one end of a plastic card-table. There was a short line at the coffee dispenser, so she waited, overhearing a conversation between two dreadlocked girls in line before her.