Never Too Far (13 page)

“Fasten these to your wrists,” the old guard said. “They’re temporary until you get to processing and get your permanent tags.” 

Joe took the temp-tags and put one on his wrist and the other on Mary’s. He was so relieved that they’d made it through and so eager to get going that he didn’t say “Thank you” to the old guard as they pulled away.

They were finally going into the city.

Chapter 23

Inside the gate, the wagon plunged into a dirt street crammed with ragged-clothed people and mule-drawn wagons and carts pulled by stooped men or children. To Joe, it felt as if they had been dropped into a pit of insects crawling and bumbling in every direction. Only they weren’t insects, they were human beings. Barefoot children in rags and sacks scurried in between the congested traffic. Other children stared blankly into space. Scraggly women shouted and squatted and shuffled around. These people were all dregs.

A woman with the front of her dress torn open screamed at a group of men who were laughing at her. A legless man on a wooden cart propelled himself on his knuckles while children ran out and rapped him on his head with sticks. The man didn’t even seem to notice. Then a girl in a frayed dress dashed in front of the horses. She raced along the side of the wagon next to Joe, followed by a scrum of shouting boys. Despite her grubby appearance, the girl’s face beamed with joy. Her blonde hair fluttered behind her. Her skinny legs kicked up the hem of her dress. Above her head, she held a long squirming snake, as if taunting the boys with it, daring them to catch her and take it away.

For a moment, Joe couldn’t get the sight of the blonde girl out of his head. The sheer delight on her face was startling in contrast to everything else. It made him wonder if Mary had ever been that way. She must’ve been at one time. She must’ve run like that blonde girl when she was a little kid. He imagined he was chasing Mary along the path that spilled out of the woods back home and led to the farm. He could hear her laughing ahead of him as he whooped and hollered, close on her heels. The scene was so vivid that he thought maybe it had really happened. Of course that was impossible. He’d never seen Mary until a few months ago. But there she was in what seemed like a memory. He couldn’t get over how much she was laughing. When he was about to grab her and tumble into the dusty grass, he heard something crack. It puzzled him for a moment before he realized it was the crack of a horsewhip.

They passed a squeaky cart driven by a man with a shaggy mustache over his mouth. He snapped his whip as if he expected action, but dragging the cart was a single mule that plodded along slowly with its head down. Beneath the
mule’s thick collar was a circle of raw flesh. Joe’s vision of Mary was long gone now.

Besides the swarm of filthy
dregs, there was a wretched smell Joe couldn’t get out of his nose—a smell of rottenness and feces and urine. It made his nose wrinkle. The stench came from ditches along the roadside full of mucky brown water strewn with trash and gunk. At one point there was a pump trying to force the muck somewhere else, but there was too much of it. Packed alongside the ditches, one right after the other, were small hovels made of scrap wood, plastic, and rusty metal. The only difference between them was the color of the wood or plastic and whether or not a tattered sheet hung in the doorway.

Joe couldn’t help but think that this grim existence awaited his family if he couldn’t get money for the diesel. Even though Frank had described the slums many times, the reality never truly sank in until now, until he actually saw it with his own eyes. He
’d never doubted Frank’s word. It was just hard to imagine such squalor without seeing it. Although he knew their life on the farm was difficult, it was still nothing like this. But without the money from the diesel, they wouldn’t be able to survive on their dying land, and the only option left would be the slums. It was better than starving. At least that’s what Frank would say.

The wagon continued to totter and weave along the crowded dirt road. A train heaped with coal emerged out of the ground and slowly chugged above the mess of jagged roofs. Joe wasn’t used to so much noise. Every sound seemed to ring right in his ears. They rode by a brick building that had a sign across it that read “Health & Rations.”
Dregs were pouring into the building with empty buckets and then pouring back out with buckets filled with sloshing water and what looked like some kind of root vegetable. Another building said “Day Labor Permits.”

In the distance, beyond the chaotic slum, he saw black buildings and smokestacks cut against the sky like burnt tree trunks. Joe suddenly realized he could see the sky again. He hadn’t really noticed before because his senses were too busy trying to filter through the barrage of new sights and sounds and smells.

After a while, they approached another brick wall that stretched in both directions. This wall, however, was much shorter than the one surrounding the entire city, and on top of it was a barbwire fence. They passed through another gate where they were quickly scanned, verified, and let through. In this new area, solar fields in shallow concrete basins ran along both sides of the road. Shiny square panels reflected the sun. On the other side were actual dirt streets with modest shacks and a single power line strung along poles. It was clearly a step up from being a dreg, even though there were still plenty of decrepit people around.

Eventually they reached two steel-girder bridges that crossed over a river. One bridge was for the train and the other was for the mass of people going back and forth from the city. Joe and Mary had to wait in line behind other wagons and carts
that were being cleared through the checkpoint ahead. Going in the other direction, out of the city, were wagons full of dirty men, women, and even children. The whites of their eyes shined against their darkened faces. Most of them never looked up. Instead, their heads drooped and bobbed with the rhythm of the wagons. That could be him, Joe thought.

Chapter 24

At the checkpoint, a guard strode up to the window and said something odd to Joe. He said, “Visor down.” Joe didn’t understand. He was about to say “What?” when a pair of red-tinted goggles dropped over the guard’s eyes from somewhere inside his helmet. Then dials encircling the red lenses spun around, back and forth, in quick jerks as if trying to focus. After the guard said, “Cleared,” and the visor shot back inside his helmet, Joe reckoned it was some kind of scanning device.

Moments later, they were diverted into a fenced area where a bunch of wagons with horses, mules, and even a bisox were parked. More guards with dogs were roaming around and randomly checking wagons, so Joe parked as far away from them as possible in the hope that they wouldn’t get to them. Even with the safe passage through the gate, Joe felt as if they had an aura of suspicion around them, as if the authorities could tell they were up to no good. He guessed as long as they had the diesel he was going to feel that way. He just had to accept it.

The parking lot was next to a huge building with thick pillars in front. It was the “Immunization and Verification Processing Center.” Another guard steered them up the steps and into a large atrium with a vaulted ceiling. Painted on the wall directly in front of them was a gigantic Guardian symbol. Apparently they didn’t want you to forget who ran things around there. They also didn’t want you to forget that armed security was everywhere, and you needed to stay in your place. Below the symbol to the left was the word “men” in black lettering, and to the right was the word “women” in orange lettering. Thick black and orange arrows pointed
down to a row of doors where people entered.

“Through those doors for sanitation and immunization,” a guard said.

Joe turned to Mary. “You have to go over there. It’s just a shower and delousing. That’s what Frank said. And you know he doesn’t lie. He said it was nothing to worry about.”

She didn’t budge.

“I have to go over here,” he said.

When he moved away, she latched onto his sleeve.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

He led her over to a door beneath an orange arrow and pushed it open.

“Go in.”

She hesitated. “You promise
?” she asked.

“I promise. You’ll be fine, and I’ll be on the other side waiting for you.”

After she finally went through the door, Joe hustled to the men’s door. He wanted to get done as quickly as possible so he’d be waiting for Mary just like he promised. He stripped off his clothes and laid them on a conveyor belt that whisked them away. Then he went through a steamed-over glass door into a large shower room where he was sprayed with some kind of chemical. He wasn’t expecting that, and he hoped it didn’t alarm Mary when she got sprayed.

He hurried to a shower pod that immediately doused him with water before some brushes shot out of the wall and scrubbed him as the floor turned in a slow circle. When it was done, he raced through a heat blower that dried him and then
he walked out the door. He quickly put on his clothes, which for some reason had a faint rotten egg smell to them. Finally, he burst into a dingy aqua-blue room. He hoped he had finished before Mary and she wasn’t someplace else scared and confused. He waited anxiously for a few minutes until at last she appeared. He was happy, and a bit surprised, to see she’d made it through the process unscathed.

“See,” he said
, “what did I tell you?”

Yet another guard shuffled them into a long bright hall. Joe was stunned by the whiteness of everything—the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the chairs, the tables, the beds
. Even the people working there were clad in white. The doctors wore long white coats and round mirrors on their foreheads. The nurses wore white dresses or pants and white hats with bright red crosses on them. All the whiteness stood out against the dingy groups of people being treated. On both sides of the hall were inoculation and examination stations. Some of them had white curtains drawn around them, while other stations were open for anyone to see.

What startled Joe was that some people were completely naked. An old woman with saggy flesh stood as a doctor looked at her backside. Joe realized that they were probably going to do the same to Mary, especially since she was pregnant. He didn’t want her to suffer that kind of indignity, so he told himself he had to make sure the curtain was closed. If
he had to he’d make a big ruckus and hopefully they’d be taken to an isolated place. If that meant a punishment for him, then so be it. It was the least he could do for her. Only then did he think about the possibility that the examination could reveal that Mary wasn’t breech. But before he could dwell on it much, they were led away into an exam station where the nurse promptly closed the privacy curtain. That was easy.

The nurse turned out to be a very chipper and bubbly person.

“How are you two doing?” the nurse asked. She smiled and Joe noticed how white and straight her teeth were; they didn’t look real. “Congrats on the baby. First time in the big city, huh?” She removed a scanner from her pocket. “Says here your baby is breech. That’s an easy fix. We could probably do it here, but it’s so darn busy we can only do things that can’t wait. Like emergencies, you know? We’ll get you set up with one of the public wards, probably number 3. There will be a wait, but there are some good people there.”

The whole time she talked, she prepped everything for the immunization.

“Alright then, just a few pokes, a blood draw, and DNA for your veritags.”

She was about to start with Mary when Joe stopped her and said that he would go first.

“What a gentleman,” the nurse said.

He wanted Mary to see him go through it before her so she wouldn’t be as scared. As it turned out, she was just fine. He, on the other hand, was the problem.

The nurse picked up the syringe, flicked it with her finger, and then positioned it so the needle was pointed at his shoulder. Joe watched it all, but at the very last second, as the needle drove toward his arm, he turned his head away and closed his eyes. The sting of the needle wasn’t as bad as the burning sensation when she injected the vaccines. He looked at Mary to show her everything would be fine. Then the nurse pricked his finger, and it was even more painful than the shot. As much as he tried to hide that fact, his lip curled. It didn’t help that Mary giggled, which he didn’t think was very nice, especially since he went first for her sake.

He didn’t hold it against her. When it was her turn, he told her not to worry and it would all be over soon.

The nurse helped too. She said, “Aren’t you a pretty girl? You have such a glow, and I can see that pretty blonde hair hanging down from underneath your hat.”     

Joe expected Mary to flinch or cringe or make a sound like he had. He knew it had to hurt because it hurt him, but if it did, she didn’t show the slightest sign. Likewise, she made no reaction when the nurse pricked her middle finger and drew a bubble of blood into a vial. Joe was amazed at how calmly she took the pain.

After the nurse finished, another guard led them into a crowded hall where people were lined up in front of six desks. On the wall behind them was the phrase “Security is Sacrifice” above yet another huge Guardian Party symbol. A row of guards stood below it. Many more roamed between the lines of people and directed them where to go. Some guards wore the visors with the red lenses. One guard, who didn’t have a visor, poked Joe with the muzzle of his rifle and pointed to the far line. He grabbed Mary’s bony hand and pulled her along. Ahead of them near the row of desks, Joe heard an occasional yelp and squeal. As they got closer, he saw people being injected with verification tags, a process that evidently caused some pain.