by Aral Bereux
‘There’s a Sector pass waiting for you at gate twelve. I have a contact there that’ll see you through the checkpoint.’
‘Caden left thinking his comms reached the safe house. I owe this camp.’
She stopped her bike; the crowds were too thick in rush hour, hurrying along to the lunchtime announcements on the city boards posted by the Militia Senate. She dismounted her bike and started pushing it on foot between the people, cursing at the ones who refused to give her enough room to move, shouldering them away until they did.
‘Vengeance, honor, or schoolgirls crush?’
Julianna wheeled the heavy bike onto a footpath away from the crowd’s squeeze.
‘Are you for freaking real? Is this what it’s about? Caden Madison is not my type.’
‘You stand at his portrait every time you check in.’
‘I’m trying to fix something I screwed up,’ she said.
‘Wonder how he’ll react,’ Isis said. ‘Taris probably killed her by now, if in fact, that was your mother you saw and not a shape-shifter. An act of revenge upon yourself perhaps, or maybe she’s Militia.’
‘You have no right!’ she said, her voice yelled inside her helmet.
‘I have every damn right. I know things you can’t even comprehend. Don’t you dare tell me I. Have. No—’
‘You know what, not talking anymore.’ She bit her wobbling lip. ‘You’re an asshole.’
Julianna raised her visor and ripped out the earpiece. She smacked it hard against the pendant until she could hear the squeal and Isis cursing again, this time clearly.
She checked over her shoulder at the CCTV moving in her direction. She just smiled for it and proudly displayed the one-finger salute, but the smile disappeared as a hover drone flew sharply around the corner. It bounced in position above the crowds, its black disk spinning and its laser pointed in her direction. The crowds hurried along, each person with a guilty conscience about something.
She lowered her head, and walked her bike. Surely, they know drones can’t read minds; they aren’t watchers, just their product. Her brow furrowed and she concentrated on emptying her mind.
The blue Triumph pulled alongside her, his sunglasses perched high on his head. ‘You know that just-in-case moment?’ he said.
She straddled hers again and turned the key, nodding to the hover drone moving again. ‘This is that moment, right?’
The hover followed them from a distance, pointing its laser in their direction.
‘I think I’ll see you to the open roads. Why’d you go and do that for?’
‘I was doing it to Isis.’
‘And everyone else watching, dumbass.’ He rode off, slowly weaving between the thinning crowds without apology.
She followed, sensing the hover creeping up like a sparrow tempting food near a person’s foot. It wasn’t sure; the blinking eye gave its final warning as she turned to see it.
I’m watching you.
‘Well, I’m watching you back, asshole,’ she muttered, and put a hand to her aching shoulder, from the laser attack the day before. She wondered if her new best friend could help with his healing hands.
His cool glance made her reconsider. His glasses were perched firmly in his thick hair, and his eyes had lost their green flecks for a shadowy appearance. Sensing something or sensing me? Julianna rode behind, in case it was.
His bike glinted in the sunlight. The magnificence of its well-designed edges allowed for the wind to run over its body…it did remind her of the Militia, the modifications he’d made were striking. Too striking. Her blood chilled – they weren’t modifications at all. Could she be sure? Would Isis send her into the den of a Militia agent? Unless he didn’t know...
He glanced in her direction; his eyes were green again, soft and apologetic.
She rode up to his side and they moved two-deep across the road. The crowds weakened into lines, mostly on the footpaths again, and the hover abandoned them. He raised his wrist to answer her question. The mark was there, most definitely there, just as it had been on Hensley on the safe house rooftop. Triangle, circle, star. She was messing with the big guns of the New World Order. He was Militia bike patrol.
So that explains the bike.
He nodded again, back in her mind.
Rebellion now, comrade.
The Sector Seven checkpoint was in the distance. The green signs pointing in its direction, with the regulation warnings in white blurring as they passed.
The Triumph slowed behind a truck under routine inspection; searched systemically with dogs, drones, and men before admitted through the boom gates. She sat behind them, perched on her bike, waiting. The pass from the safe house was good for Sector Seven. She hoped the normal bike routine of flicking the visor to show her eyes would appease the sentry on duty. She hid the pendant and waited, praying to a God who never answered that the pendant still worked, and that the drones were complacent.
He pulled his bike into the checkpoint and the sentries greeted him with the same paranoia they reserved for everyone. Her usual crew wasn’t on shift; Taris had changed the posting again.
He held his papers for them to see and lifted his sunglasses casually to the top of his head. It dawned on her the bike wasn’t just Militia issued; it was the one from the night before. Her eyes widened. She closed the space between them and waited with her papers ready in her hand. Their wheels bumped and the sentry guard shot her a glance.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
Julianna reversed her bike and lifted her visor. She twitched the papers against her leg, tapping madly away, and all three sentries and her escort watched her in their annoyance. She smiled weakly and stopped with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders.
Don’t be so nervous.
She met his eyes. Trying.
A nod from the sentry and gesture from his hand to move forward released the blue Triumph. It was her turn. As he parked his bike on the other side of the wire perimeter, she moved between the guards’ dubious expressions. He lowered his glasses and tucked his papers inside his jacket. The stranger rolled a cigarette casually between his fingers, licking the paper once, ignoring her interrogation.
The sentries stole her attention; two circled her bike and scanned for contraband. The third silently extended an open palm for her papers. Julianna handed them over, a small, black folder folding them inside. The senior sentry snatched them, glancing back and forth between the image in the book and the eyes under her raised visor.
‘Helmet,’ he demanded.
She removed it slowly, hoping the pendant would stay in place with her stretch. It did; she sat with the helmet resting under her arm as he continued to leer over her. The black hair was throwing them off. Her photo had blonde and the drones had red.
‘Good to go,’ he said, and returned the papers with a smile and a wink. His face softened to just another person doing his job. ‘Why you would is beyond me. Dangerous place, S-Seven. Don’t forget curfew at seventeen hundred, miss.’
Julianna fastened her helmet under her chin. ‘My regards to the Militia...you guys run a tight ship.’
Two hovers hung in stasis on each side of the posting and tuned into her voice. She drew a sharp breath and her escort’s attention moved from the cigarette pushed into his pocket to the drones’ solid focus. The drones followed, turning in their place to follow with their eyes as she revved her bike and joined him on the other side. They rolled along the abandoned streets side by side again, listening to the gates closing behind them, aware of the narrowly avoided conflict. No one else followed so close to curfew.
‘I hate this place,’ he muttered. ‘Purgatory for the living dead.’
Julianna glanced at the wide streets lined with built-up rubbish in gutters, and overgrown nature strips resembling jungles of knotted scrub and weed. The homeless crept into their view, comfortable enough with the new arrivals to return to squatting beside makeshift shelters.
A stray cat darted across their path to chase the
wind’s toys and to hunt for nature’s scraps. At least the world here was suited to someone, she noted; the cat looked healthy.
‘It used to be nice until the Militia did this,’ she said.
He shot her a glance from beneath his glasses and all she could see was her reflection.
‘You miss the part where I grew up here?’ She leveled with him. ‘When you read me, huh? Not interesting enough for you?’
The eyes from the makeshift huts along the road followed them; her voice piqued their interests, but she refused to look, riding past him instead, to be alone along the third-world street.
You should look, maybe Dad’s here looking for you. She raised her eyes at the command of her own inner voice. Maybe not.
The memory of him smiled down, handing her a pink bouncy ball, speaking quietly, gently instructing her to play in the backyard. Mommy and Daddy need to discuss something, grown-up talk. Not for the little one’s ears. Like all good children, she went into the backyard where the beautiful roses grew, cupping the large yellow one in her small hands, that sprouted from the ugly pot by the door.
She wasn’t alone in the yard. Someone watched from a distance, someone perched on the outdoor table with blonde hair, but she could never see his face.
The Triumph caught up. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ he said apologetically.
‘Yeah, you did.’ The helmet muffled her words, but she knew he heard her, with his senses more attuned than most. His intrusion was strong.
He sped past, swinging his bike into her path at a sudden halt and forcing her to brake. Julianna’s back wheel reared. They sat in the neglected road with the homeless as their audience.
‘You wanna head down there for a look?’
He was referring to the home she had spent her first early years in, before things turned to shit. The answer was no. She took her helmet off. There weren’t any hovers around this area – no need for them. They were alone but for the bums and rats.
‘Last chance to see your childhood memories in the flesh.’
‘Last chance?’ she said. The wind went through her and she shivered. A storm was threatening from the east, quickly moving in their direction and kidnapping what was left of the warmth.
‘You know, get some closure. Shelve some ghosts.’ He lowered his glasses again. ‘Or not. Come on, race you.’ He revved his bike and circled her twice. Time was wasting, but he shot off anyway, leaving her behind.
The roads pointing to the northwest were wide. He was already a few houses down, weaving playfully along the stretch of road when he summoned her mind to follow. She didn’t refuse his call, but she kept her distance. The houses on each side stood tall, most being period houses from the nineteen hundreds, and standing two levels high in their weatherboards. The once-wealthy street now beaten to complete ruin; derelict to time, but for the few who chose to remain as its residents.
A man in crumbled pajamas checked for mail. A matter of habit or insanity, she wasn’t sure; the snail mail had stopped years ago but for the couriers in the middle Sectors. No one would deliver a parcel out here. The sentry would never allow it. He glanced at her passing bike, closed the letter box and wandered back to his door, nodding to her as he went. She returned the gesture; a watcher still in these parts. Her heart rose to her throat.
What was that? Did we just connect? Did I—?
Her bike careened across the road, narrowly missing a mound of rubbish as she struggled to keep its balance.
He stood in his doorway watching her when she glanced back.
I’m barely a half-caste.
Are you? The old man smiled.
The mystery of her parents returned. The watcher was superior in thought and ability, the walker in strength, and half-castes rarely got a twinkle of either. Yet they lived by the same rules: strict values, strict beliefs, the role of a woman. Christianity was punishable by lashings, and marriages arranged. These were all her certainties, the things that had made her run. Half-castes diluted in bloodlines; granted the luxury of ignorance and mortality. She belonged to the latter group. The old man’s grin burned inside her mind.
‘I think,’ she said quietly.
The memory faded for the two-story house peeling its white paint, looming in front of her. Weeds over-ran the driveway and the yard was knee high in grass, but a single large rose teetered about in the light breeze above the back gates. She parked her bike, all the while watching the yellow blossom dance. The yellow petals had survived against the odds of the forsaken NWO, and she longed to smell its fragrance again.
He folded his glasses over the V-neck of his T-shirt and stood before the front door hanging loosely from its hinges. The slide of it against the wood decking was loud, and he propped it on the outside wall beside him.
Eighteen years of neglect and she was no exception. Julianna stepped cautiously onto the rotting deck, and surveyed the insides of the house from the doorway.
The window shutters on the second level flapped in the wind, threatening to fall on top of them. The white paint curled on the banister lining the rotting deck, exposing the grey timber beneath. She ran her hand along the black graffiti sprayed across the entrance wall, as she stepped into the empty house.
Julianna slipped her knife into her palm as she moved beside the staircase, one slow step after the other, flicking it open and holding it low, waiting for an attack from vagrants. But no one came. The house was inhabitable, even for the poor. He protested, raising his Militia-issued Sig hanging in his grip, to challenge her choice of weapon.
Oh, for crying out loud, really? She wondered. A pissing contest about weapons…how long’s it been since he was Militia?
She wondered how much she could trust him.
His bottom lip pushed out. The sulk of a watcher shone through, as Caden had done when she’d turned down his camping request. Taris did the same during an argument – until he tired of her, then he’d raise his fist instead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and returned her sights to the house inside, empty and ruined.
His foot pushed through the first stair without effort. ‘Better keep to the lower level.’
He peered into the hallway with his gun held high, and she followed closely into the open kitchen area. The smell of mold overwhelmed their need to breathe, and they raced through the hole in the wall where the glass doors used to stand. The yellow rose outside bowed for her to tip its petals.
Christ, if she could see her father one more time.
She vomited.
He touched her arm, standing behind with angled eyes, sympathetic. The sick feeling lingered before his touch took it away. He nodded to the overgrown yard where a swing, rusted by time, sat near an overturned bike.
The grass was long and damp underfoot where the swing rested. She outstretched her fingers to trace the stick figures her mother had painted on the steel frame. It was still there – two big stick figures with a smaller one between them. Her family – what was left of it. The only recorded picture. She traced her fingers again, stifling the cry that tried to escape.
He put his gun under his jacket when she lowered her head to her hands. She was in shock; gutted and winded by the memories she was unable to accept.
She rocked on her haunches on the low, tiny swing, holding her head tightly to muffle the cries she wanted to scream. Her mind searched for the one elusive answer that Douglas Cathan held and would never give, taunting and mocking her, and keeping her in her place until she would lash out again, like a wild animal. She longed to dance in bare feet on the grass on a cool spring day – how she longed to be free. How she longed for the fucking truth about her family.
Fuck’s sake, get a hold, J Rae!
‘Life sucks, huh. Didn’t know my family much either.’ He shuffled over cautiously. The frame held his weight precariously as he leaned over her small body. She wiped furiously at the stray tears running down her cheeks and his smile helped a little.
‘Old Hal back at the tavern was my
caregiver, the silly old...’ He crouched down beside her. ‘One thing I learnt from it all is you can make a family with anyone if you let yourself get close enough. It’ll be easier when it gets tough. You know what I’m saying?’
She nodded, taking a deep breath. Her hands wrung each other and she nodded again, eager for more words so she didn’t need to speak.
‘The brothers are good leaders. Maybe you should get out of dodge until things settle. Stay at the camp. You’d be safe with them.’
‘Did Isis say something to you?’
He lowered his head. ‘No moving you to the side, just trying to keep a valued Rebel safe,’ he said.
She straightened, her ankles biting as she did; the swing held her bum between the chains for a moment before letting her escape.
‘I don’t need anyone looking out for me. Last time it happened, I ended up engaged to an asshole and in a world of pain.’ She brushed past him. It was time to deal with Sector Eight sentries, and she hoped to God the man on gate twelve was a good man who remembered Isis.
‘It’s getting late; you coming or going?’
‘Right behind you,’ he muttered, and followed her out.
Chapter 10
1340 HOURS.
WEST CAMP, 45 MILES WEST OF CAMP 2.2.1.
The unseasonably warm breeze swayed the netting Caden unfastened. It hung around the tent canopy, trapping the bugs outside. Once convinced he was safe from their sting, he returned to his coffee waiting on the sprawled-out map.
He relaxed into the chair behind the table and glanced at the map again. Red pins marked the enemy camps; the scattering of them surrounding the blue pins was becoming a concern. It wouldn’t be long before they were pushed farther east, or back into the Sectors. East was not an option, west was impossible with Taris setting camps across the border – he knew it was a design specifically aimed at himself. Taris was setting a web, and it was strong. Caden was starting to worry.
He leaned back, resting a hand to support his head while he daydreamed. The other hand balanced his first fresh coffee in a month. The run into the city was worth the trip. The haircut had been a treat and he felt the cleanest he had in months. Clean and guilty, he thought. Not that his camp begrudged his indulgence for one moment.
