by H. A. Swain
I nod.
She takes another bottle from the shelf, twists off the cap, and watches me guzzle that one, too. I catch my breath and say, “Thank you.”
“How long’s it been?” she asks while snapping on sterile gloves.
“Don’t know,” I mumble.
“That’s a long time then,” she says. “I think the painkillers made you groggy. Let’s have a look at that leg.”
Slowly, the past few hours come back to me. Betta decided the safest place for us would be a medical clinic far from the Inner Loop, so she drove us another hour west to the settlement where Basil grew up, and she dropped us here. They whisked Basil away to clean his wound and graft Just-Like-Skin onto his arm while a doctor gave me pain medication then set to work on my ankle, after assuring us all medical treatment was confidential. At some point, I passed out from hunger, pain, and exhaustion.
“Where’s Ba … um, my friend?” I ask. “With the hurt arm?”
“He was asking about you, too,” she says. “You can find each other in the waiting area as soon as I’m done.” She lifts my leg. The silver legging flaps where they’ve split it at the seam to make room for an inflatable brace that compresses and releases rhythmically against my ankle. “Any pain?”
I shake my head.
“Good,” she says. “It’s just a sprain. We injected the muscle fibers with corticosteroids, which should alleviate the swelling and begin rebuilding the tissue pretty quick.” She stands back and cocks her head. “Now, you want to tell me what really happened to you two? Because you and your friend don’t look like people who got into a car wreck. In fact, he looks like he’s been shot.”
“Those damn geophags got guns now?” the man beside me asks.
“What’s a geophag?” I ask, imagining some horrible mutant creature roaming this desolate place so far from the Inner Loop.
“Dirt eaters,” the man snarls. “Don’t know why they had to come out here. We got to run them off.”
The nurse sighs. “Garvy, you don’t know it was them that beat you.”
“Who else?” he huffs.
“Who you owe money to?” she asks, which shuts Garvy up. She looks at me and rolls her eyes a bit. “Anyway, those poor folks are too crazed with hunger to do much damage.”
“They’re hungry?” I ask, my eyes wide.
She shakes her head sadly. “They keep coming in here, bellies full of weird things. Dirt’s the least of it. I don’t know what to do other than give them some Synthamil and send them on their way.” She sighs and looks at me. “You going to tell me what happened then?” I keep my mouth shut. “Fine,” she says. “You’ll need to come back tomorrow.…”
“But, I don’t have any money,” I blurt out, and for the first time in my life, I feel the shame of being at the mercy of someone else’s generosity. For a quick second, I think about turning on my Gizmo to access my insurance info, but the price of being located is too high.
“No need,” the nurse says with a smile. “It’s a free and confidential clinic.”
“How can it be free?” I ask, skeptical.
“We have a benefactor.” She pulls off the sterile gloves and begins whistling a familiar tune.
Don’t worry about a thing. ’Cause every little thing’s gonna be alright. “‘Three Little Birds!’” I say.
She stops whistling and smiles. “That’s right.” She points to a sign above the door. Three chubby little bluebirds sing in a branch, the words EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT written in cursive below them.
“Papa Peter?” I start to say, but then I catch myself and stop.
“Who?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I shrink back, but certain I know who’s behind this place. “Never mind,” I say quietly, full of homesickness. “I’m not thinking clearly yet.”
“The medicine will wear off soon,” she assures me. “I’ll bring you some painkillers for when it does.”
As she walks away, a woman from across the row removes an oxygen mask from her face and calls, “Hey, Garvy, you see that newsfeed?” She points at a screen taking up the far wall. The sound is too low for us to hear, but I see the repeat of my parents in front of our house and I cringe.
Garvy nods. “Been all over the screens today. Some privy girl got snatched up by corporate resisters. Her mommy and daddy are offering ten grand for her,” he says with a snort.
I can’t believe Basil was right. They’ve offered a bounty for me.
The woman pulls the mask away from her face again and laughs. “You’d think she’d be worth more. You see who her parents are?”
“I’d take their money,” Garvy says. “They offering extra if you nab the guy who took her?”
“Another ten thou, but they say he’s dangerous,” the woman says and I nearly protest.
“You got to bring him in alive?” Garvy asks.
My stomach drops.
“I doubt it,” says the woman. “Why would they care as long as they get their little privy back.”
I groan again. Garvy squints at me from his good eye. “You hurting, honey?” He reaches out to pat my arm and I flinch. “The nurse will be back with your meds in just a sec.” Then he leans in close. “But if that’s not enough I got a line on some good stuff. Take you right to the moon, baby.”
“No thanks,” I mumble and scoot to the end of the exam table then try to slip my foot into Yaz’s shoe, but it won’t fit.
“Hey now!” the nurse comes back and hurries toward me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I have to go,” I tell her.
“Not without this, you don’t.” She holds up a patch. “This will release pain meds steadily for the next forty-eight hours.” She starts to pull down the sleeve of my sweater.
I wriggle away. “Is there a location device in it?”
“No,” she says, tugging at my sleeve again. “Why would there be?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, positive. It’s not connected to anything.” She looks at me squarely. “This clinic is private, free, and confidential. Do you understand?”
I glance at the bluebirds on the branch again. “Okay,” I tell her and lower my sleeve so she can affix the patch to my shoulder.
“You have to stay off your leg for a few days to give it time to heal.” She grabs a pair of crutches leaning against the wall behind me. “And we should see you again tomorrow for another injection, okay?”
“I understand,” I say, but I have no intention of returning. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
“You’re welcome,” she says with a kind smile.
* * *
I manage to loosen Yaz’s shoe enough to fit my swollen foot inside it then go find Basil in the lobby among more despairing people slumped in chairs, waiting for their chance to see the harried doctors and nurses. He looks even paler than I remember. “You okay?” I ask.
“No bullet in there. Didn’t hit the bone. I’ll be fine.” He lifts his expertly wrapped arm.
“We should go.” I hobble past on my crutches.
“I told you they’d offer a bounty.” He nods toward the giant wall screen where my parents are looping through again.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I say, then I immediately regret it when we push through the double doors and walk outside into thick, acrid smog that smacks me in the face like a dirty wet sock. My eyes sting, my throat burns. I start to wheeze and cough. “Good god, what happened?” I wave my hand in front of my face, but the heavy orange air doesn’t budge.
“The wind changed directions.” Basil pulls a blue handkerchief from his pocket and rips it in two with his teeth. He hands me half, and I tie it around my face like he does. “Won’t help much,” he says through the cloth, “but it’s better than nothing.”
All around us the world seems in shambles. Along the street, entire fronts of buildings have collapsed into heaps of rubble, leaving the interiors exposed like giant dollhouses. Some resourceful folks hav
e covered over the gaping holes with fading black plastic tarps, rust-speckled strips of corrugated metal, and half-rotted blankets flapping faintly in the breeze.
“What’s that noise?” I ask about the grind of some machine that sounds as if it’s on its last leg.
“Generators,” says Basil. “One World Renewable Energy Labs hasn’t made it out here quite yet, or ever, so we burn what we can salvage to power the place.” He points at the wires crisscrossing overhead like tangles of hair. “When something nasty gets in the incinerator and the wind turns, it gets ugly.”
People shamble past us, eyes down as they choke through the smog. A group of kids cough and chase one another over and under a huge curl of sun-bleached red metal lying on its side in the dirt. Between two half-collapsed buildings, a group of men and women pass around kudzars and bottles filled with liquid that’s too clear to be Synthamil. They stare at us as we walk by. They’re a scary-looking bunch with face tattoos and angry eyes.
“I take it strangers don’t often come to town.”
“Not a lot of tourism here,” Basil mutters, while keeping an eye on the crowd watching us.
“Who are they?”
“Mercenaries,” he says. The word sends a shiver down my spine.
We turn a corner onto a dirt road that runs alongside a trickle of muddy water carving its way around big mounds of dirt and trash and what looks to be an old bridge buckled with rot. On the opposite bank, a giant skeletal arm with gnarled fingers reaches for the sky.
“Oh my god.” I stop and point. “Is that a … tree?”
“What’s left of it,” Basil says. “When I was really little and the river ran, it got leaves sometimes. But now the only time there’s water is during a storm and then watch out, this trickle becomes a torrent. I’ve seen it carry away houses then dry up again within hours.”
The wind shifts, taking the most caustic air with it and revealing, beyond the tree, a squalid huddle of makeshift houses taking up most of an open field. The shanties, which are cobbled together from odds and ends, reach all the way back to an enormous set of stairlike bleachers.
“What’s that?” I ask.
Basil stares. “Huh?” he says as if confused. “Used to be a football field at an old school. We played there all the time when we were growing up.”
“Looks like people moved in.”
“But there’s no electricity. And probably no running water.” He turns away with a shrug.
After hobbling along on my crutches for another ten minutes, we come to a collection of houses along a curvy street that parallels the dried-up riverbed. Most of these places are in better shape than what we saw in town with all four walls intact, but Basil heads for the strangest home on the block. The roof has slumped in on one side of the top floor, and most of the windows are broken or boarded over. All sorts of discarded objects that have been fused into bizarre statues fill the apron of dirt surrounding the front. A stack of old screens, 2-D TVs, and computer monitors form a stairway going nowhere. The slight breeze makes brightly colored circular saws and disembodied fan blades attached to metal poles whirl as old eating utensils—forks, knives, spoons, and cups—dance and chime from the brittle branches of another dead tree. Everywhere I look, I see human faces and animals staring back at me through flashlight eyes and smiling with wire lips. The saddest thing is that most of these creations are falling apart, littering the ground with objects from the past that I can’t name. The only thing that looks like it might work is a tall windmill attached to a pipe sticking out of the ground.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Windmill pump,” Basil tells me. “You like it?”
“How does it get the water out of the air?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s not a Whisson Windmill, it’s a pump. See the pipe goes down to the water table underground and pulls the water up. Then I ran a line from that into a holding tank in the house.”
“Wait,” I say. “Did you build it?”
He nods.
“Did you build all of this stuff?” I point to the weird sculptures.
“No,” he tells me, seeming a bit embarrassed. “That’s my dad’s handiwork.”
“Oh,” I say. “What about that?” I point to a rusted-out blue car with mismatched wheels sitting near the front door of the house.
“That would be my mother’s car,” Basil says, even more embarrassed now.
“So, this is where you grew up?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says. “Pretty gruesome, huh?”
“Oh Basil,” I say, feeling slightly sick. “I’ve always known my family is privileged because of the work my parents do, but I had no idea people live like this. I thought the differences were in what kinds of Smaurtos we all drove and what percentage of our houses were voice command, but this…” I can’t finish my sentence because I’m about to cry.
“Now you see why Ana is so important to people like me?”
In that very moment, I am smacked with a realization as horrifying as the thick orange air that hit me a half hour ago. This whole thing isn’t about me proving Ahimsa and my mother wrong. And it isn’t about One World allowing people like Ana to talk about food. There is something deeply troubling going on in the world, and for the first time, I feel genuinely scared. More scared than when we were being shot at or fleeing from Pico and Iris, because the reality in the Outer Loop is not temporary. Nobody here can just run away. And the people who are flooding the Inner Loop to protest Ana’s arrest want more than her release. They want their lives.
I feel like a small-minded idiot for not understanding this before. I feel like a privy. And even that is troubling, because for the first time, I get what justice for the people out here might mean for people like my family. “Basil, I…” I start to say, but I can’t finish. How can I tell him I’m worried about my family now that they’ve put a price on his head?
“Listen.” He squeezes my shoulder. “This is all overwhelming, I know. And we’re both exhausted. We need to rest and give ourselves a few days to get better.”
“Here?” I ask, looking around at the rubble and ruin. Then I backpedal, trying to sound less appalled than I am. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Nope.” He pulls open the front door with his good arm. “It’s worse.”
* * *
“Mom,” calls Basil as we enter. “Mom, it’s Eli.” We walk slowly through the dark and cluttered rooms toward the sound of a personal transformation story coming from a screen in the back of the house. The air inside hangs heavy with stale kudzar smoke, making me want to flee outside for a breath of marginally fresher air.
“She won’t recognize you,” I whisper to Basil.
“Not sure she would recognize me even if I didn’t look like this,” he tells me.
“She can’t be that bad.”
“Want to bet?”
When we find his mother, she’s sprawled across a dingy orange sofa, one arm slumped to the floor among empty Synthamil bottles. Ashy skin pulls tight across her sunken cheeks. Dark hair, threaded with gray, spills across her eyes. The screen blares and flashes, but his mother doesn’t stir.
“Is she…?” I hold my breath.
“Alive?” Basil asks, matter of factly. He finds a remote device and manually mutes the sound of the screen. “Don’t know until you check.” He picks his way through the detritus then crouches down beside her, staring at her as if he’s come across something only vaguely familiar. “Mom.” He pokes her bony shoulder. “Mom, wake up.” He pokes her harder. “Hey Mom. Hey Alice!” he says and shakes her.
“What the hell!” she spews as she jerks awake, arms and legs flailing. “Who are you? What do you want?” She reaches under a cushion, searching frantically for something.
“It’s Eli,” Basil shouts as he skitters backward. “It’s your son.”
“You don’t look like Eli.” The woman squints, uncertain, and slowly withdraws a gleaming knife from under the cushi
on. I stagger backward, not breathing.
“Well,” he says, arms up. “It’s me.”
She furrows her brow. “Who’s that then?” She motions to me with the point of the knife.
“A friend,” he tells her. “We need a place to stay for a couple of nights.”
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” she asks him.
He sighs, as if he’s been through this many times before. “Elijah Robb Mintner. Born March twenty-ninth. Age seventeen. Son of Alice Jane McHill and Robert ‘Buddy’ Mintner. Younger brother of Arol James Mintner born July third, died twelve years ago on September eighteenth. I have a birthmark on my butt the shape of a sock and a scar on my shin from where I fell when I was six years old.”
Without warning, the woman bursts into tears. She sobs as if she’s just lost everything. Basil looks over his shoulder at me, rolls his eyes, and mouths, “Sorry.” I’m too stunned to speak.
“You need a smoke, Ma? Want a kudzar?” He searches for a pack on the cluttered table beside the couch.
“Yeah,” she says through her crying jag. “Give me a ciggie, honey. It’ll calm my nerves.” She holds out a shaking hand. Basil unearths a crumpled pack, removes a kudzar, lights it, and takes a long drag before he hands it to her. She sucks hard, pulling it down to mostly ash, then exhales loudly. As if he knows the drill, he lights another one. “How about you put the knife away?” he asks, then hands her the second kudzar as she smashes the butt of the first underfoot on the rug.
“You don’t know what it’s like out here,” she says, her voice still quivering. “I have to protect myself. Especially now that all those blasted geophags are living in the football field.”
Basil frowns at her. “Who are they?”
“Who knows!” She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes and sits up a little straighter. “Why are you here?” she asks him, sniffling. “And what are you doing with this girl? Doesn’t look like she’s from around here.”
“Just passing through. Wanted to check on you.”
She smirks as if she doesn’t believe him. “Well,” she says, sucking on the kudzar like it’s a lifeline. She shoves the knife back under the couch cushion. “Ribald’s not going to like it.”
