by Jim Heskett
“Not now,” Kellen whispered to the voice, but it continued, taunting him, doubting him.
He opened his research document and copied the text, then opened a browser window and logged into his blog. He started a new post, then pasted the text inside it.
“Thirty seconds. Your eyes are going to burn. You will choke on the fumes.”
Kellen hit the publish button, waiting as the wheel spun on the cursor.
“Twenty seconds.”
The post appeared, ready to go out to hundreds of blog subscribers. Kellen clenched his teeth. He’d done it. He’d gotten his message out to the world, despite everything they’d done to shut down his access to the media. Maybe it would go viral, or maybe it would fizzle and die with the billions of other blog posts on the internet. Whatever happened, it was out of his hands now.
“Ten seconds.”
“Okay,” Kellen said. He stood with his hands above his head and walked out of the study room. “Don’t throw the tear gas. I’m giving myself up.”
He walked to the information desk as the man in the hat removed his gas mask. George Grant, LaVey’s advisor and Kellen’s companion on the campaign trail, the same one who’d tried to delay Kellen’s mission to find the flash drive by giving him busywork. George had grown his hair a little longer and dyed it black. That explained why Kellen hadn’t recognized him on the street.
“Hi, George.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“I thought you said you knew what I was here to do.”
George back-handed Kellen across the jaw. His lip re-split, and blood dribbled down his chin and onto the collar of his shirt. Tears welled in his eyes.
“You mean your little Soothsayer blog? Come on now, boy, like we can’t pull that off the internet? You would have saved us a little trouble by not publishing it, of course, but we can handle that.”
Kellen stood tall. He was ready. “I know everything.”
“I doubt it.”
“I know about that reporter Gavin Nguyen you had imprisoned in Alabama and how you squashed his story. I know that Alec Trenton, Mitchell Smith, and Dave Carter didn’t detonate those bombs at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It was you, and that bitch Beth, and Hector Castillo. I know exactly what you people did and who you are.”
George offered a few sarcastic hand claps. “Well, good for you. But you have no idea what we’re capable of. The world is about to get a sense of it, though. We’re going to change everything.”
“Just get it over with. If you’re going to shoot me, then do it.” Kellen couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. Seconds ticked by in some kind of surreal dream state. He felt air moving in and out of his lungs.
George laughed. “No no no, we aren’t going to kill you. We need you, and you’re going to come work for us.”
Kellen shook his head. He’d rather die. And if everything that he had uncovered turned out to be true, he would prefer that end.
“I’m afraid it’s not optional, son.”
George took out his gun. Kellen shut his eyes, then he felt a thunk against his temple. He grew woozy, fell to his knees. Then blackness.
The Spider Bite
(AFTER THE FALL)
Quentin blew into his hands to catch a couple seconds of warmth before the cold again seized them. He pulled the collar of his jacket closer and readjusted the shoulder strap on his rifle.
The wall had been quiet tonight. From his perch near the boundary of Millennium park, nothing but darkness came between the spotlight’s rounds. Every two minutes, the light came sweeping through. Then murkiness, quiet, peace, uneasiness.
The perch was an alcove nestled in the wall along Madison Street, the divider between South Chicago and North Chicago. Or old and new Chicago, depending on who told the story. Boss Chalmers didn’t have much need for a marketing department, but if she did, Quentin thought he could probably invent better branding than South and North.
Boots clinked along the steel grate behind him, but Quentin didn’t turn to look. Couldn’t be anyone but Wayne.
“Cold as balls tonight, doncha think?” Wayne said.
“Thought we were maybe getting some spring weather, but that was just a tease.”
“In like a lamb, that’s what my dad used to say.”
Quentin lowered his rifle and turned from his perch to smile at Wayne. He wore no rifle because he wasn’t a Percher. He was a Walker, tasked with patrolling the length of the wall’s top, mainly to make sure the Perchers weren’t sleeping on the job. If even a single Northie got over that wall, the consequences would spread to everyone on the shift.
“Like a what?” said Quentin.
“Doesn’t matter. Think we’d be fine if the wind would stop blowing.”
“Too true,” Quentin said.
“How’s the wife? Getting big as a house, I bet.”
Quentin smiled when Farrah’s face drifted into his thoughts. She’d be at home asleep now, nestled next to the space heater, baby in her belly trying to bust its way out. After that deceitful bastard Barry died in the manager’s office of the H-E-B and Quentin left Austin, he’d never thought he could trust anyone again. Then he met Farrah and forgot all about the cocaine in the file cabinet and stabbing his supposed friend in the back, for a while, at least.
Quentin worked the wall so he could pay for the generator to power the space heater. The space heater kept his wife and unborn child warm. The generator made him an indentured servant to Ms. Chalmers, and that’s why Quentin came up here, night after night, watching for Northies and shooting the ones who tried to climb.
At least, he was supposed to kill them. Usually, he aimed high and later claimed that the climbers jumped back down at the last second. His superiors weren’t happy with his poor aim, but they couldn’t complain about his record. In four months, not a single Northie had breached his area of the wall.
“She’s doing pretty well, considering,” Quentin said. “They got her on bed rest these last couple weeks, and she’s bored as hell.”
Wayne opened a flask and took a swig. “I’ll bet.”
Quentin pointed at the container. “Is that…?”
“A little something to warm my bones. You’re not going to say anything, are you?”
“No, dude, don’t worry about it.”
Wayne held out the flask, but Quentin shook his head. Without anything to mask his breath, they’d catch him at shift change, for sure. How Wayne was going to attempt to slip past them was his own business.
“I was thinking,” Wayne said as he unfolded a napkin full of peanuts and threw a couple in his mouth, “do you think they should go back to the five-day weeks, or is it better with these four tens?”
“Doesn’t matter to me, really. The three-day weekends are nice, but these long nights do take a toll. I’m always exhausted by the time I get home.”
“I wonder if they’re more or less likely to keep us on after shift change on the five-days,” Wayne said as he tossed a few more peanuts into his open mouth.
As Quentin took a breath to answer, Wayne’s eyes bulged and his hand rushed to his throat. He gasped, a desperate wheezing sound. Panic on his face.
Quentin grabbed his radio, finger above the button. “Are you choking? Should I call the sergeant?”
Wayne waved his hands, which Quentin took to mean as no. No to choking, or no to the sergeant?
Wayne fell to his knees. His face was starting to turn blue as his arms flailed through the frigid night air.
Quentin thumbed the call button on the radio, but it only crackled and went silent. Damn things never worked when you really needed them to.
He set aside his rifle and positioned himself behind Wayne, who was trying desperately to draw a breath, with no success. His chest hitched and hiccuped.
Quentin laced his fingers under Wayne’s ribcage and jerked in and up. Nothing happened, and Wayne was starting to squirm.
Quentin squeezed again. “Come on, da
mn it, Wayne. Get it out of there.”
Squeeze again. No movement. Wayne started convulsing.
A tinking sound came from over the wall. Quentin knew the sound well, he heard it several times per week. Climbers used ice picks, knives, sometimes even rusty garden hoe blades to scale the wall.
“Not now,” Quentin said as he squeezed again and again.
Wayne went limp in his arms as a head poked above the wall.
***
The head poking above the wall belonged to a woman with flowing red hair. She met Quentin’s eyes, then gasped at the dead body in his arms.
Quentin looked at his rifle. So did the woman.
He dropped Wayne and started for the rifle, but the woman held out her hands.
“Wait, wait,” she said in a timid, high-pitched voice. “Just let me explain.”
She was panting, shoulders and chest heaving.
Quentin froze in place, unsure what to do. Protocol said he was supposed to put a bullet in the woman and toss her body back over to the North side. He’d never seen a climber up close. Hadn’t seen the face of anyone from the North side in longer than he could remember.
“What happened to him?” she said.
Quentin looked at Wayne, who had died with his hands around his own throat. A pang of guilt ripped through Quentin, rumbling his stomach and sending a sour jolt of bile up into his throat.
He and Wayne had been friends, in the superficial way you could be friends with someone you worked with on the wall. Like with treasure hunter partner Barry, but without the lies. They chatted almost every night their shifts crossed. Wayne sometimes brought Quentin orange sodas he lifted from the stockpiles, and even though the cans were past the expiration date, an orange soda was an orange soda.
No one had ever trained him to do the Heimlich or anything like that. If only the damn radio had worked. Why hadn’t the radio worked?
“He choked on a peanut,” Quentin said, feeling how stupid the words sounded coming from his mouth.
He took a step closer to his rifle and the woman leaped back, looking back over the wall from where she came.
“You really don’t have to do this,” she said. “You can let me go. I’ll climb down the other side and no one will ever know. This guy isn’t going to say anything.”
Anger squeezed Quentin. “He was my friend, you heartless Northie. He was my friend and now he’s dead because the stupid radio doesn’t work.”
His hands gripped the shoulder strap of the rifle. The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a little knife, no longer than two inches. The blade gleamed in the moonlight.
“I’m just doing my job,” he said.
She glanced over each side of the wall, holding the knife out in front of her. Forty foot drop on either side. She might break an ankle, at best.
“Where’s your pick ax?” he said. “I heard it while you were climbing.”
“My pick broke near the top, so I dropped it. Dead weight. I worked my ass off the get up here, so please don’t make me jump over this wall.”
He lifted the rifle and pointed it at her. Laced his finger around the trigger, but something wouldn’t let him shoot. He was supposed to shoot.
“If you don’t have your pick ax, how were you going to climb down the other side?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. I was trying to deal with the more immediate problem of you shooting me first.”
“Tell you what,” Quentin said, his finger still frozen on the trigger. “I won’t shoot you, but I can’t let you cross. You can jump back down to the North side.”
She leaned over, frown on her face. “That’s insane. I’ll probably snap my neck.”
The spotlight came sweeping through. She ducked, but enough of the light caught her face that Quentin got a good look at her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Eighteen, tops. But she had beefy arms and a thick neck, which would explain how she was able to climb the wall so easily.
“Why are you trying to cross?”
When she looked up at him, she burst out in tears. “I’ve heard you have real doctors on the South side.”
“So?”
“I’m knocked up. I think there’s something wrong with the baby. Nobody back home can help me and I don’t know what else to do.”
She let a hand drift to her belly and smoothed out her shirt. Maybe there was a little bump hidden there, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Teenage girl, alone, pregnant, risking everything to climb the wall, knowing she would likely get shot or fall. Quentin felt a yawning in his chest and wetness appear at the corner of his eyes.
He slid the shoulder strap down so the nose of the rifle pointed at the steel grating.
The girl sighed a massive breath, shoulders rolling. She emitted a tiny laugh. “Holy God. Thank you so much. I really didn’t want to die up here tonight.”
“Do you have contacts on the South side? Have a doctor you know of?”
She shrugged. “I hadn’t figured that part out either.”
Quentin clenched his jaw. “You have no plan at all?”
She smiled, but the edges of her lips dragged down. She shook her head. “Will you help me?”
***
Boots clinked along the steel grate as they walked toward Millennium park. Between them and the boundary guard tower they’d pass two more Percher stations, both of which would be occupied. The guard tower was three stories of stairs, with manned stations on each floor. Plus, there was always the possibility of crossing a random Walker between the perches.
Had anyone found Wayne yet? Quentin had felt terrible leaving him behind, but there was nothing that could have been done for him, anyway. He probably wouldn’t even get a burial. Cremation, a spot on a shelf. No service to mourn the dead. Wayne often talked about his dad, but no mention of brothers or sisters or a wife and kids.
Quentin saw the indentation in the wall which meant they were approaching the first perch. He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Stop. You’re going to have to go over.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Over the wall. Hang from the South side, go hand over hand. There're no spotlights there. It’s safe.”
“I’m really tired right now. I’m not sure if I can hang on for too long.”
He slipped a hand into the cargo pocket of his pants and retrieved a pair of gloves with sticky palms. “This will help.”
She stood on top of the barrier and then turned to face him as she sat. She grunted as she let herself fall to a hang, and she became only a pair of gloves. She inched along, hand over hand, grunting each time.
“Quieter, please.”
She obliged, and in a few minutes they were at the perch.
A young man, not much older than the Northie, looked up at Quentin and tilted his head. “What are you doing?”
Quentin unclipped his radio. “It’s busted. Going to the tower to get it checked out.”
The Percher eyed Quentin, and Quentin’s hands began to shake.
The Percher unclipped his own radio. Instinct told Quentin to raise his rifle, but he reminded himself to stay calm and focused on taking even breaths.
“I’ll call ahead and tell them you’re coming. What’s wrong with it? Battery?”
“If I knew that, dude,” Quentin said, trying to smile, “I wouldn’t be going to the tower.”
The Percher clicked the button and mumbled some words into the radio. Quentin closed his eyes and breathed. He didn’t need a welcoming party at the tower.
The Percher put away his radio, still staring at Quentin. “You seen the Walker over here lately? Fat guy, can’t remember his name. He came by earlier, but he’s missed his last two scheduled times.”
He felt an urge to tell the ignorant Percher the man’s name had been Wayne and he’d died by choking on a stupid peanut. Instead, he shrugged. “I’ll keep an eye out for him. Probably snoozing at one of the mid-stations.”
“Yeah, probably. Have a
good one, now. Get to the tower and back to your post quick.”
Quentin nodded and pressed on. He wanted to check the barrier for the girl’s hands, but didn’t dare look that way.
When he was sufficiently past the last perch, he walked to the barrier. “Still there?”
“Yep,” she said, her voice strained.
He leaned over and grabbed her hand, then hoisted her above the barrier.
Her chest heaved, and she leaned over with her hands on her knees. “We have to do that again?” she said in between breaths.
“One more perch, and then the tower.”
She stood up and wiped some sweat off her forehead. “What do we do at the tower?”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
She laughed, but Quentin saw the worry on her face. What would he do at the tower? The outsides of it were slick and smooth steel, with no surfaces to cling from. The only choice was for her to go inside. The room would be well-lit, with at least one person on guard duty. Probably more. Now that the last Percher had radioed ahead, they knew to expect him.
Quentin felt the full brunt of the insanity of this undertaking. The thought struck him that he wasn’t just playing with his own life. He had a pregnant wife at home to think about.
Then he looked at the girl’s belly. He studied her face, forehead creased and lips pursed. So what if she was a Northie? Didn’t she deserve a chance to see a doctor like everyone else?
“Come on,” he said, readjusting the rifle’s shoulder strap. “We still have a ways to go.”
She sighed and followed him along the wall. He kept his rifle ready, looking out for Walkers. Would he shoot one if he had to? He hadn’t lived in Chicago for long, but these were still his own people. The idea of killing a Southie seemed so far from the realm of possibility that he couldn’t fathom it. But if they caught him harboring this girl, he might not have any other choice. He’d have to murder someone, then run for it, then get home to his wife. Whatever came next would be in the hands of fate.
When they saw the next perch, he waved the girl toward the wall.
She balked. “I don’t know. I’m so tired.”
