by J B Cantwell
And Blake, himself, had clued me in.
On the floor, he had said.
Suddenly, terrified as I was, I couldn’t wait to get started.
Chapter Two
But it wasn’t as I had thought.
“Soldier Riley Taylor?” a voice called out in the mess hall.
The man was young, maybe only a couple years older than me. But despite his age, he was tall and broad, with dark brown hair cropped short.
I nodded.
Soldier Trey Jones
Designation: Red
“Alright,” he said as he approached my table. I had been eating alone, the place just starting to buzz as the last group was starting to come off their shifts.
18:30, read the big digital clock over the mess hall door. I still had the taste of lightly frosted nutrition square in my mouth, gritting against my teeth.
“I hope you’re fed up and ready to go. Though, you might’ve wanted to not eat quite so much before your first shift.” He eyeballed my plate. “The smell, you know …”
I knew the smell he was talking about. I had worked on the trawler on my way to our first battle assignment. I remembered the slimy texture of the fish they tried to mix into our mash on those nights when we were able to catch something that seemed clean. Undistorted. Unspoiled.
I stood up from the table and picked up my tray.
“Yeah, nobody said anything about that. And I was hungry.”
“Well, here’s hoping you make it through, eh?” He smiled, but not a friendly sort of smile. “And hey, if you don’t, you can always just puke on the belt. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
He turned without a word, and I followed him out, placing my tray on a shelf with a bunch of others. Before I knew it, he was through the door. He didn’t hold it for me.
I trotted behind him to catch up, and by the time he had reached the barracks, I had fallen into step behind him. He strode into the room and made his way down the line of bunks, now full of people, all of them with bitter looks on their faces.
Red cheeks, sweltering. Huge boots, stinking. Coughing, nearly all.
I was a new one among them. Another worker. Another victim.
Pity. Irritation. Exhaustion. Their eyes stared.
I put my head down and scurried after Jones, who was now at my bunk, opening up my cupboard of shelves. He pulled out my suit and held it up to me.
“Looks like a good fit. Though the color is all wrong for you.”
He winked, tossing me the hanger.
“Put it on.”
I glanced around and saw that those still peeling off their suits had regular clothes underneath. I stripped off my canvas shirt that covered my white t-shirt and kicked off my boots. Then I unzipped the suit and pulled it on. I had been right; the inside was itchy, but not as hot as I had feared. At least, not yet. The sweaty faces of my new comrades told me that it wouldn’t be long before I was beet red, too.
From the bottom of the cabinet, he picked up a large pair of boots with thick, tire-like treads on the bottoms. He placed them in front of me, and after I’d zipped up my suit, I stepped into them one at a time.
They were big. Too big.
“These are huge,” I said, trying not to complain. “Do you have any smaller sizes?”
“Sorry, hon. They were the last guy’s.”
I looked up at him, and in his eyes I saw a steely sort of resolve, like maybe he was a good man underneath who couldn’t stand the fact that one of his soldiers had died under his watch. But he was good at holding it back, at looking tough.
I tried to look tough, too. Because what else could I do? Cry? That day would come, I felt sure.
But not today.
I pulled on my thick rubber gloves, then picked up my respirator mask. When I went to put it over my face, he took my arm.
“Wait,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Wait until the very last moment.”
And there it was.
Sadness.
I stared at him and nodded gravely. Then I looked down at my uniform, checking myself over.
“Well, I guess I’m ready,” I said, my feet sliding around inside my boots.
“Yup.”
He turned and made his way back down the line while I grabbed my goggles and followed after him. Out in the hallway, he stopped, waiting. I noticed he had his own respirator now, must have picked it up in the barracks, and he pulled it down over his face. Then, goggles.
“These are the most important parts, the headgear. You’ve seen the kids in there, with their eyes and their sores, yeah?”
“Yes, I saw.”
“Don’t let that be you. You’ll get out of here someday if you can just stand the feeling of being covered up. It’s no picnic. But do you see red in my eyes?”
I looked at him carefully through his goggles.
I shook my head.
“No,” he said. “I’ve been here for five years, and I’ve never had a day without my fancy face mask. You do the same, and you’ll get out of here just fine.”
“Five years?” I asked, distracted. “Why?”
He smirked, but then his face fell.
“I have quite a debt to repay. Let’s just leave it at that.”
I wondered what kind of debt he might have to repay to land him at the Burn for five years. More. He was still a Red after all.
He turned and grabbed for the door handle. I put the mask and goggles over my face, resigning myself to keep them on, no matter what.
But then, why should I? They wouldn’t let me out of here. Maybe not ever. Why prolong a life like this?
Because I don’t want to die this way, like the guy whose boots I’m standing in.
No, I didn’t.
I took a last, deep breath of purified air and tried not to panic.
We walked along the metal bridge, out away from the barracks area and back alongside the burning towers. High up above, I saw people with shovels, and they saw me, too, though they didn’t dare stop their work. Instead, they just nodded and kept digging into the muck on the conveyor belt, tossing it into the furnace. Fuel for the masses.
Down below was where the sorting happened. Here, the people also had shovels to dump waste onto the belts headed up to the towers. But there were others, too, farther along down the line, who simply stood and sorted the material. Plastics went in one direction, paper in another, organic waste down the center, along with anything else unrecognizable.
Gradually, the belts snaked their way back and forth along their journey to the top. I stopped, staring in awe at the place. The towers were five stories high, and between them, bright sunlight poured through all the way down onto the floor.
There was no ceiling. The impression of being inside was false. I wondered what it was like in here when it rained. Maybe, with the toxins of the atmosphere washing down to the floor, we could breathe freely for a little while.
“I was going to let you sort today, but I’ve got orders to have you shoveling down below.”
Big surprise.
“That’s okay,” I said, my voice barely audible between the muffled sound that came from the mask and the noise of the factory all around us. “I can do it,” I tried a little louder.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get strong fast here. It may have been a little while since boot camp, but just think of it like doing all those push ups. It won’t be long.”
He walked farther down the bridge and took a set of stairs that led down to the floor. I followed after him, careful to hold tight to the railing from so high up. The boots were no help with balance, either, and I felt like I was constantly in danger of tripping.
Just two stories down and we were there. The place was even more bustling from down here than it had seemed. The sounds of motors and clouds of venting gas filled my ears. I felt small.
Jones made his way through the place quietly. There were no jovial high fives or even simple acknowledgements. I stared around, intimidated by the tough looking workers
who flanked me on all sides.
But they weren’t all that tough. Those without their face gear looked gaunt and sick. And those with it, like they were holding their breath, waiting for the next chance they would have to get some clean air.
My eyes fell back onto those without protection. How long had they been here? How long until their eyelids had started to sag? How long before …
But there was no use in obsessing over any of it. I knew what I needed to do to stay safe. Though I knew, whichever path I chose, either sickness or claustrophobia, I would lose.
I took a long, deep breath through the respirator.
This wasn’t so bad. I could do it. For a while, I could handle anything.
Right?
I thought of Blake’s face, his oozing sores.
We walked and walked, by the conveyors, by all those workers, until in the distance I smelled it.
The sea.
The stinking sea, full to the brim with the garbage of generations, with chemicals and animal life that had wasted away until they’d evolved into freakish specimens. Eyes in the wrong places. Slimy scales. Decaying flesh.
It was far from the dreams of old, where people would actually travel to the sea to take vacations. As we approached one of the trawler boats, it was clear that those sort of fancies wouldn’t be happening again anytime soon. Or maybe ever.
Jones picked up a shovel from a long wall where several of them hung neatly on their hooks. I stopped, staring at the tools of the trade, all organized so tidily.
He shrugged. “I guess it’s the one thing we can actually keep clean around here. You know?”
I accepted the shovel and looked to my left. A crew of young men and women were already at the trawler gate watching the hold of the boat, waiting for it to unload its cargo onto the warehouse floor.
“Don’t bother trying to make friends,” he warned. “It’s pointless, isn’t it?”
As he stepped away from me, I couldn’t help but feel sad for him, even more than for myself. He had lost all hope, despite his attempt to remain healthy, to remain covered.
I followed closely behind as he walked up to the group of people.
“This here is Taylor!” he shouted over the noise. “She’ll be with you guys today. Show her the ropes, eh?”
A couple people glanced up, and someone’s voice even whistled from the back of the crowd, a sound that brought laughter from a few of them. My new comrades. I smiled behind my mask.
I must have looked especially fine in my clean, white suit.
I took the whistle as a good sign, and I stood up on my toes and tried to figure out who it had been to make the sound. But everybody’s attention shifted back to the trawler as the lift gate eased away from the entrance, leaving nothing but an enormous, stinking mass at our feet.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings, but a moment later, I wished I hadn’t.
There, off to the right of the shovel wall, was a boy. He sat on the floor in a dark cell overlooking the floor.
A prison cell.
He wore no protection, and though I couldn’t see too closely from where I stood, I felt sure his skin must be on fire from exposure.
“Better get moving,” someone said. I turned around and found a boy about my height standing behind me.
Jeffrey Adams
Designation: Green
“Better if you leave him alone.”
“The boy’s right,” Jones said. “Don’t go mixing yourself up in things that aren’t any of your concern.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Taylor.” Then, he turned and walked away.
I looked after him as he left, shoulders just slightly hunched.
“I’m Jeff,” the boy said, bringing my attention back around. He held out his hand, but it took me a moment to tear my eyes away from the boy in the cell.
What was he doing there?
I didn’t even have time to be nervous about shoveling slop next to a bunch of strangers, nervous about living the rest of my days here in this stinking plant. Already I was rattled to my core.
Finally, I looked up into Jeff’s face.
“Riley,” I said, shaking his gloved hand. It didn’t make me feel much better, but I noted that his eyes were clear beneath his goggles.
“First day?” he asked, his voice sounding muffled through his respirator.
“Yeah.”
“Well, welcome to the floor.” He gestured to the back of the trawler as the door slowly began to lower, already spilling its contents onto the warehouse floor.
“Why is that boy in there?” I asked before he had a chance to walk away.
He shrugged, then picked up his shovel and walked over to stand next to the others. They were all waiting for the door to open, for their shifts to start. When I didn’t join him, he looked back.
“Come on,” he said, raising his voice over the din. “It won’t be so bad. It’s just gross.”
Gross wasn’t what I was worried about. My stomach had hardened into a cold knot of tension.
They lock people up here.
Jeff beckoned to me, and I took a few tentative steps in his direction, tapping my shovel across the concrete.
Nobody paid me any attention now that their work was dumped out before them. Almost in unison, twenty shovels dove into the muck, tossing the contents onto the nearest belt.
Plastic. Metal. Decomposing paper boxes. And, occasionally, fish. Stinking, rotting fish.
The garbage of centuries.
I turned away, realizing that no, the respirator did not block out the smell, just as Jones had said. I wrinkled my nose.
“You’ll get used to it in a day or two,” Jeff said, walking by me with a full shovel. “In the meantime, you’d better get to it.” He nodded in the direction behind me, and I turned to find a very angry looking man watching us from up on a platform encased in glass.
My stomach dropped.
Sergeant Bennett Wilson
Designation: Silver
He held a long stick in one hand, a baton like the one I’d seen back in Detroit, and he smacked it against his other hand as he looked down at me. He nodded, but not in an encouraging sort of way. He didn’t need to be encouraging. All he needed to do was scare us all into working. As I turned away, I caught the glint of a firearm in a holster on his belt.
His weapons were encouragement enough.
I figured out the truth, then, before I had even loaded my first shovelful. I had been used. Used, and then tossed away like the garbage the plant was burning right now. Maybe nobody upstairs cared anymore at all, and with that thought came an odd sort of relief. Maybe I wouldn’t be watched so closely now. Maybe I had simply been sent here to die.
I didn’t even have to die, though. Not really. Because I had figured out what this place actually, already, was.
Hell.
Chapter Three
But there were whispers.
Jeff kept his eyes on his work, clearly encouraging me to do the same. But I could see them, even though I couldn’t hear them. Two men working side by side, too closely for it to be for comfort or camaraderie.
I changed my position, walking around to the other side of the mess and shoveling next to the two men with the sergeant in my view. Wilson’s back was turned, and quick as a flash, a message was exchanged between them.
I couldn’t hear it. But I saw it. And that was all I needed.
But there were no whispers meant for my ears. Not yet.
My back was already aching, and I was only an hour in. I wondered when I would get used to the labor. Jones had said in no time at all. Just like boot camp.
I looked across the pile at Jeff, who seemed not to care that I had abandoned his side to shovel across the way from him. He was all business. Fill shovel. Empty shovel.
“Hey,” a booming voice came from behind me, along with a hard slap on the shoulder that spun me around. “I’m Julia.”
I turned to find a positively plump girl standing before me,
and, something so rare among the other workers, a big smile plastered on her face, just visible beneath her mask. “You’re Taylor, right? Did I hear him right?”
“Riley Taylor,” I said, nodding.
“I saw you back in the bunk room.”
“Oh, yeah,” I feigned. This whole day had been a whirlwind, and all I remembered about the bunk room was that it had been filled with miserable faces. Faces I didn’t want to remember, with their saggy eyes and seeping skin. I wondered if I would even recognize Jones when I saw him next, or if he’d be pushed out of my mind as well.
But that was ridiculous. Of course I would. The memory of nearly every soldier I had met over the past two years was burned into my brain. Forgetting wasn’t an option.
And here she was, this new girl. I couldn’t see the smile on her mouth, but I could see it around her eyes.
She dug her shovel into the muck.
Julia Parker
Designation: Red
Red?
“So, what did you do?” she asked, enthusiastically tossing a shovelful onto the belt.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not quite sure of her meaning.
“You’re Black,” she shouted over the din, through the mask that muffled her words. “And you’re here. Why?”
I thought about it for a moment. Maybe I shouldn’t say a word.
“Um … Enemy of the State?”
She laughed so loud I could hear it above the noise.
I smiled despite myself.
“What about you?”
“Murder.” She said it casually as she dug into the pile again.
I stopped what I was doing and stared.
“You’d better get to work. Wilson’s watching.” She nodded toward the viewing pedestal where Wilson was keeping court.
I glanced up at him, and for a moment he began to reach for something in his belt.
My mind went berserk. There could be anything in there. A gun. A whistle. A taser.
I looked down and didn’t stop my work again.
“Who did you murder?”
She paused, even under the watchful gaze of Wilson.
