The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Tunnel’s completely flooded,” he said, standing back up and turning to Cora. “That damned worker lied!”

  He scanned around, his flashlight zipping over the tunnel ceiling from where they’d just come.

  “We’re past the perimeter now,” he said absently.

  “The work gang must’ve got in somehow,” said Cora.

  “Correct,” he said. “We must’ve walked straight past it…”

  He doubled back and kept searching, Cora by his side, her headlight now on, joining the search.

  “There it is!” she said, pointing upwards.

  11

  This gun is liberty; hold for certain that the day when you no more have it, you will be returned to slavery.

  Toussaint Louverture

  H e stood beneath the shaft in the tunnel ceiling, illuminating it with his flashlight beam. Cora stood beside him, unease on her upturned face. Every Citizen was told that outside the city walls was a killing zone.

  “It won’t be that bad,” he said, trying to reassure her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her expression now serious, valiant. “Besides, I’m done with these stinking sewers.”

  He leaned over and put his arm around her, kissing her cheek.

  “You did great back there,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a momentary grin.

  His attention returned to the old brick shaft extending about twenty-meters upwards. He explored it with his tactical light, catching sight of a cover of some kind at the top. Not a manhole cover but something flat, featureless. Simple rungs of steel tubing ran up the side of the shaft. He jogged back to the worksite where the slavemaster’s dead eyes stared back at him. Grabbing the lightweight ladder, he placed it below the shaft before climbing it, grasping the shaft’s lowest rung, then scaling the up the shaft itself. Cora followed closely, just below him. He placed his ear to the makeshift cover—a sheet of rusty steel. Footsteps on gravel nearby. Two people. One cleared his throat—deep voice, a man. Somewhere in the distance ran the faint electrical buzz of a surveillance drone. He peeked through the gap between warped steel sheet and the ground—dimly-lit, night-time somewhere beyond the perimeter. Then he caught a glimpse of boots and dark gray pants. Close, five meters at most. The guy clearing his throat seemed closer. Now was the time. He knocked on the sheet steel. Tap, tap, tap.

  He called out, trying as best he could to mimic the slavemaster’s voice.

  “Hey, can you get the cover? Got my hands full here!”

  “Can’t you get one of them slaves to do your fucking carrying? Sheesh, man!”

  He heard the throat-clearing guy get closer, then reach down, straining to pick up the cover. The moment it moved Rae pounced, powering upwards, knocking the security guard to the ground still holding the cover, his machine pistol slung but now under his back as he fell. Without pause, he kicked the fallen guy in the jaw at the same time locking the M4’s scope on the other guy, who raised his hands. Rae glanced down—the guy was out cold with the rusty metal square covering his torso. He maintained focus on the other guy, a short distance away.

  “Right tough guy, slowly unsling the weapon and throw it over to me. Then get on your knees.”

  A drone buzzed somewhere in the distance. Rae’s clenched his jaw.

  “Come on, faster!”

  He threw the machine pistol on the floor near Rae’s feet. It was a model he knew wouldn’t work without the registered user on the trigger. He picked it up and dropped it down the shaft, past the emerging Cora. She climbed out and took the unconscious guy’s gun. It too went down the shaft. Up ahead was near-darkness—the wasteland beyond the perimeter through which the empty Intercity highway ran. Just scrub, trees and bushes and the remnants of buildings. The leftovers of industrial life. The ruins of what looked like a warehouse loomed in the darkness. Only its lower, concrete wall stood intact, the metal sheeting above it mostly gone. The frame that had once held up the roof sat half-collapsed. Years of neglect, fighting and weather. Behind him—a kilometer or so away—was the perimeter and the glow of the city lights. An old, dark, passenger van sat between the conscious guard and the city perimeter. There was no way they would’ve used such a vehicle further out from the perimeter. Or maybe it said more about how little they valued its passengers.

  The smallish, Hispanic-looking, thirtysomething security guard wore a gray battledress uniform. Rae knew these guys were the auxiliaries that couldn’t make it into the real military. Wannabe soldiers, low on training and usually given the more basic tasks. Tasks like looking after a work gang.

  “Get over here and grab your buddy,” said Rae.

  The guy said nothing, just stood there.

  “You need me to come over there and give you some encouragement, little man?”

  Rae gritted his teeth and strode towards him. He watched the courage drain from the guy’s face as he neared. Rae was an imposing figure and moved with an ease of competence and, when needed, menace.

  The guy raised his hands.

  “Ok, ok, I’m coming!”

  He passed Rae, earning a gentle kick up the rear for dissension. Rae followed him, M4 trained as the guard threw off the sheet metal and strained to pick up his heavier buddy. Cora kept watch, her eyes darting around nervously as the drone buzzed somewhere in the distance, before turning back to the small guy hauling his buddy from the deck. Rae look to her and she seemed to read his mind.

  “I’ll go check the van for something to tie them up with.”

  He nodded and watched her turn and run the ten meters to the van, 9mm in her hand. The van door slid open, detecting her presence. Rae watched her stand back, covering the door with her gun.

  Well done, he thought as she took no chances, before disappearing inside the vehicle.

  The guard dragged his buddy to the van and Rae tied them both. He left Unconscious Guy on the floor between the back row of seats. Small Guy sat beside Rae at the front, feet tied, opposite the control panel. Rae took the 9mm from Cora and pointed it at the guy’s side. He didn’t need a gun to take down this shrimp but hoped it might dissuade rebellion.

  “Bring up the map on the display,” he said.

  The guy paused, so he dug the 9mm barrel hard into his side. The guy winced, crying out like a child.

  “Alright, alright, please stop!”

  “Should’ve knocked you out instead. Maybe your buddy back there’s more helpful. Remember this: we don’t need both of you.”

  He navigated the map to the location he was looking for and set it as the destination, then used the handgun butt to smash the van’s internal camera.

  “You’ll need to call it in. Tell them the work gang needs to move location. Alert them and you die. Use duress words and you die. Nice simple language, which should come naturally for a guy like you.”

  He didn’t know what duress words they’d arranged—or even if they had any—but he’d analyze every utterance for anomalies. Any warning and they’d have a military drone lighting up the van in under a minute.

  “Control this is Sierra-Delta-Two-One calling in a change of plan.”

  “Copy Sierra-Delta-Two-One. Please specify your change of plan.”

  Rae was sure Control wouldn’t have the Public Works job schedule but wondered if they’d clock the fact that the new worksite was so far from the perimeter. Small Guard gave the coordinates to Control via the display—some distance to the south where the main south road passed over an old canal.

  There came a pause.

  “O-k… Err, Sierra-Delta-Two-One, I see that’s an old sewer outlet by a bridge. It’s a long way from the city. Please confirm.”

  Shit.

  Rae whispered urgently, “Tell him it’s a disused terrorist rat-run and needs to be being blocked off by the work-gang.”

  He repeated the baloney to Control.

  “Sierra-Delta-Two-One… copy that. You may…”

  Another pause. A heavy drone buzzed near
by.

  “Control?”

  “Err, what’s the matter with your internal camera, Sierra-Delta-Two-One? I have no feed.”

  “Ah… I dunno... Guess it’s faulty or something. I’ll get it checked out with maintenance when I get back.”

  “You make sure you do that. Out.”

  Rae heard Cora let out a long breath.

  “Let’s go,” ordered Rae.

  The guard engaged auto-drive and the van negotiated the bumpy ground to the dark, deserted Intercity highway—no median, just a wide, unmarked road,

  “Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty back there,” he said to Cora.

  “He’s still out cold,” she said.

  The occasional thud of potholes punctuated the sound of the electric drive and dirt spraying up under the wheel arches. An uneasy silence pervaded the cabin. Rae didn’t want to talk to Cora with the guard listening in. The vehicle turned right onto the well-maintained Intercity highway—successor to the Interstate that it’d been for over a century before. They sped south for seventeen kilometers. Rae kept an eye on the outside but could see increasingly little as Chicago’s light grew weaker. He tapped the display behind the windshield and navigated to the Intercity Logistics System’s login page. The security guard watched silently.

  No camera detected – use alternate login method

  “Camera’s busted—press your thumb here,” Rae instructed, pointing at the fingerprint-recognition square on the display.

  The guard complied, giving Rae access to the schedule of road-trains. He filtered for departures after 2200h from Chicago on Monday, November 9, 2082:

  2205 SC Houston 52 Details

  2209 SC Seattle 35 Details

  2215 SC Boston 24 Details

  2220 FOB White Sands 88 Details

  2230 SC New York 45 Details

  2251 FOB White Sands 92 Details

  2315 FOB White Sands 84 Details

  …

  The first three were leaving at five, nine and fifteen minutes past ten and were bound for Sanctuary Cities. He tapped the Details link for the Houston-bound road-train. Fifty-two trailers comprising foodstuff, equipment for oil well drilling, empty natural gas vessels and consumer goods. He checked out the Houston road-train’s route and progress—it’d be passing them once they stopped up ahead. The Seattle and Boston road-trains were smaller and held nothing of interest. They would follow different routes out of the city—to the west and east, respectively. He went back to the list. FOB White Sands. That intrigued him. FOB as in Forward Operating Base. White Sands as in White Sands in what used to be the state of New Mexico.

  “Huh…” he muttered, thinking.

  New Forward Operating Base in the Border Zone. 88 trailers. Huge road-train. Then two more going there on the same day… And who knows how many before that?

  “What is it, Cal?” said Cora.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Tell you later.”

  “O-kay…” she said, eyeing Small Guard as he sneaked glances at what Rae was doing.

  “Avert your damn eyes!” she said, pointing the 9mm at Small Guard, his eyes shifting immediately to the window by his side.

  Rae tapped on the Details link. There was a pause, then a dialogue appeared. Details Classified. Same result for the other two White Sands convoys: Details Classified. After checking their own progress on the map, he switched it off and saw a pin-prick of white light on the road behind them. The Houston road-train, right on schedule. The quiet hum of their own road noise was broken by a moan from the tied-up guard in the back.

  “What the fuck happened?” he cried. “Ah my fucking head!”

  “Wash your mouth out,” said Cora. “Unless you want another kick in the jaw.”

  The guard groaned. Rae chuckled.

  “Where are we?” said the guard groggily.

  Rae sighed. “Darling, get something and stuff it in his mouth would ya?”

  “My pleasure.”

  She took off the guard’s boots and socks and stifled his protests, jamming a sock into his mouth.

  A few minutes later, the van headlights revealed the straight, vertical lines of something man-made on the road ahead. It grew into the superstructure of a rusting iron-girder bridge. Under it flowed the black water of a canal. Either side of the canal, the outlines of ruined factories and warehouses stood decaying and forlorn above immature trees and bush. A lost civilization, waiting to be reclaimed by nature. The van slowed, and its computer announced arrival at their destination. He used the manual controls to position the van where he needed it—out of sight from the road, beside the canal. With the headlights killed, the doors slid open and he untied the small guy’s legs.

  “Come on, you’ve got work to do,” said Rae. “Go grab your buddy back there and drag him outside.”

  A worried look etched itself on the small guard’s face.

  Rae sighed.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll live if you do what I say.”

  The guard nodded nervously and got to work dragging his protesting buddy into the darkness. Rae tied them both to a tree while Cora covered with the 9mm. He used the spare sock to stuff into Small Guard’s mouth, subjecting him to his buddy’s foot odor, before taking both their shoes and tossing them into the canal.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll find the van eventually.”

  And you guys too, once your mindchips get within range.

  Then they waited.

  Rae checked his watch.

  The headlights had grown large and dazzling against the backdrop of the perimeter, the rumbling of heavy vehicles rising from the distance.

  “The Houston road-train,” he said.

  He crouched beside Cora in the undergrowth, eyeing the onrushing convoy. At the front was the manned Army escort—four armored personnel carriers in precession, each with a turret complete with a heavy-caliber machine gun, missile launch tube and sonic pulse cannon. The sonic cannon could take down swathes of attackers—either fatally or not, depending on the power setting. Right behind the escort was the powerful tractor unit pulling the half-kilometer-long road-train convoy. Fifty-two coupled trailers followed—some of them cylindrical vessels, others boxy containers. Another tractor unit coupled onto the last trailer. Finally, four more Army APCs followed behind. Rae looked to the sky and counted three armed drones, evenly spaced, tracking the convoy from a hundred meters above. Three military drones armed to the teeth and nearly a hundred troops in eight APCs with reinforcements on call. No pushover, that was for sure. In twenty seconds, the fast-moving Houston-bound convoy was fading to the south, its destination still many hours away.

  After Rae and Cora got back in the van, he drove it manually to the other side of the bridge where the derelict factory stood, decaying and shrouded by re-growth.

  “Stay here,” he said. “Oh, and take a look for a tow rope. Nearly all vans like this have them.”

  He got out, probing deeper towards the collapsed building, searching for something they needed. The intermittent flash of light somewhere below the horizon, far to the south, heralded the distant sound of gunfire. A coyote called from somewhere closer. But there was no sign of humans this close to the city—a killing zone long-since subdued, long-since forgotten. Dead ground.

  “Found it!” called Cora from beside the back of the van, parked by the side of the road.

  “Great. Sit tight. Be back in a second…”

  He neared the edge of the rubble pile which had once formed part of the vast manufacturing plant. Glancing through the mess of steel and broken-up concrete debris, he found what he needed and ran back to the van. Once he’d re-positioned the van and tied the tow rope to the lump of concrete and rebar, he dragged it to the middle of the road. Two more lumps of old factory later and the makeshift barrier blocked the entire road.

  “Right, we’re done here,” he said to Cora.

  He checked his watch. Time was short.

  “Drive the van behind that rubble over there,” he said to Cora, pointing to
the wide pile of debris and ruins that had once been a working factory.

  She nodded, got in the van and he sat on the ground and took off his backpack as Cora drove the van to behind the rubble, out of sight. From the backpack he removed the med-kit, a lighter and a silver space blanket designed to help with hypothermia. Cora padded back and sat down beside him, a puzzled look on her face.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’ll see. Take off your leggings.”

  She laughed.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really,” he said, smiling, kicking off his boots and pushing down his combat pants.

  He took out the med-kit scissors and cut the silvery Mylar blanket, before thinking better of it.

  “Hey, you’re better at this than me,” he said, handing her the scissors and space blanket.

  He explained what they needed and why and Cora got to it, expertly cutting the space blanket, making a pair of leg tubes, each of which they fastened to their legs with medical tape. They carefully pulled on their pants.

  “Now for the masks,” she said.

  The silver mask, with slits for eyes and breathing holes, taped beneath her black watch cap, made her look like something from a horror movie. Only her familiar blue eyes detracted from the look of menace. He pulled up his hood and zipped his jacket up, before pulling on his gloves. Cora did the same. He donned the backpack and pocketed the lighter. Next, they both went over to the van, where he untied the tow rope, coiling it over his shoulder.

  “You might wanna stand back,” he said, igniting the lighter and setting fire to the inside of the van.

  Moments later the blaze was taking hold as they jogged from behind the collapsed factory and onto the highway and back towards the iron bridge. On reaching it, he and Cora looked up at the aging structure, then Rae checked his watch.

  “This is gonna be tough,” he said. “But just watch where I put my hands and feet and do the same.”

  She pocketed the 9mm and nodded.

  The silver-masked Rae leaned over and kissed the mouth-slit in her Mylar mask.

  “I know you don’t like heights, but you’re easily capable of this—just take it slowly, in little steps. We have time, no rush.”