When he moves away, she raises her hand up, and then I’m gone.
— XIX —
KELLY HAD WARM, brown sugar hair, and the smile of a young woman who always looked for the cuddly part on a cougar. She wasn’t quite new-world-order crazy—a starving citizen who would eat anything they could get their hands on. She was more like a raw root grinder with a touch of black market meat every once in a while. She had no idea what she was in for with me.
I knew the appeal, it had worked in the past. The trouble with living every day of your life with an even keel is, when the inevitable rough seas in life hit, you need someone like Lieutenant Dan “You call this a fucking storm?” to pilot the ship through the shit.
Okay, maybe I did mess up the reference—it was a contraband copy of the damn old cinewave, anyway—but I like colorful cussing. Life is messy—people cuss. Get over it. Probably why they invented profanity in the first place.
Anyway, that’s the universe—yin and yang, and good and … not so good, all locked in a never-ending struggle to maintain balance, I guess. That’s what Kelly used to say. Too bad for her, because my “angel of nice” got me—angry, conspiracy-ranting “asshole,” I’ve heard said to describe me before. Could be true, people don’t like hearing what you really think.
Whoa… Way too much philosophy before breakfast, but that’s what is in my head. Sounds too preachy, even for me. I shrug it off and concentrate on seeing Kelly, because I know it’s her. But everything is surreal, like just before the sun breaks through the fog.
Surreal? I got words in my head that don’t feel natural to me. Death… Whatever I thought I knew about—hell, looks like I don’t know shit about it. I doubt anyone does until it’s their turn. It’s not what I thought it would be, I’ll tell you that. More of the same kinda shit, though—trials and judgments that are out of my control. SSDD—same shit … not much different when you’re dead.
He’s here, or somewhere, rooting around in my head. Her too, for that matter, because I’m not making this shit happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining—any chance to see Kelly again, I’m all in. I don’t feel scared or mad or any of the other poisonous emotions I carried around with the pointlessness of rocks in a backpack for most of my life. I feel sort of … relaxed, actually.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling and I wonder where it’s coming from. Doesn’t take long to figure it out, that’s how I always felt around Kelly. She had this way of disarming people, even the worst ones.
Don’t know why I am talking about her in the past tense. That was then and this is now. Only now is then, because I’m back to the first night we had sex.
Hey, I’m a man—some stories are true—we don’t go long without thinking about it. I don’t even think death is powerful enough to change that.
Anyway, my dorm habitat is dark. Despite how beautiful she was, Kelly was totally self-conscious about being seen naked, even when she wanted to be. It took a long time before we could do it with the lights on. As soon as it was over, she would bundle up in pajamas, complete with socks to go to sleep.
It sucked, because I’m more of an “in the raw” man. No sense in having to pull off a bunch of annoying clothing when your dick wakes you back up in the middle of the night. Anyway, my blood runs hot, hotter at night.
I can feel my own disapproval now, so you don’t even have to start. But what good is a hot woman if you can’t look at—
I stop and realize that it sounds pretty sexist. I never worried about that sort of thing before, but God being a woman? Maybe now’s the time to start.
I’m excited—not hard to tell that—but a little nervous, too. We never got caught on campus, but if we had… The feeling with Kelly is wonderful and I only think about it ending once. But before I can bask in the afterglow… “Afterglow?” That thought is definitely not mine and now I’m wondering just what the point is. That’s her, I’m sure of it—euphoria and tenderness. Maybe she’s trying to pull me to the light, just like Kelly used to do … does.
The whole thing is confusing, but before I have a chance to enjoy the … “end,” I’m snapped away and I jolt straight up in my bed—ripped out of one of the craziest dreams I’ve ever had.
I jerk my head around. I’m in…? It is our habitat, our room … after academy. And … and the whole thing is just a dream. What the fuck?
I turn to Kelly’s side of the bed and there she is.
She sits up, rubs her eyes, and then looks at me. “Wha—what’s wrong?” she asks.
Is this the dream or the other thing? Did I jump? Or maybe they are still bouncing me back and forth, deciding. Whatever it is, it feels real enough.
I look around the room and then I feel down under the covers with my foot. If there is one detail they might have missed, it would be the socks on Kelly’s feet. And there they are—scratchy, wool and warm. Honestly, I don’t know how she can sleep in those itchy things.
So, that’s Kelly, now where…? When is this? “Nasty…” I mutter.
“Nasty what?” Kelly asks.
“Dream,” I tell her. I’m still trying to shake off all the emotions swirling in my mind. I did jump off that building. And I feel for the holes in my shoulder and ass—nothing. “I jumped off a building, and … and I was falling, and the—” I’m still a little afraid to say his name. He silently warned me about that. “God was a woman.”
“What?” Kelly says. “Don’t even tell me you had some sex dream about God.”
“No-no,” I say. “That’s just—I have a line.”
She groans and rolls over. “Not hardly,” she says. Then she giggles. “Razor thin, maybe.”
“That’s … messed up,” I say. I feel a little better. Maybe it was a bad dream. Yeah, could be … super-bad dream. Might as well have some fun. “I wonder what that would be like?”
I get the reaction I’m after, and Kelly rolls back and love punches me in the shoulder. “You are so bad,” she says.
“Who?” I say. I’m still a little shaken up, though, so I reach over and check for pajamas, just to make sure. Pajamas—check. What the hell is going…?
When Kelly feels my hand, she looks at the clock on her nightstand. Then she rolls back and looks at me.
I can’t see her, but I swear I can feel the playful look of fake disgust on her face.
“Seriously?” she’s not really asking, she knows by now. “Again?” She chuckles a little. “Nasty devil is what you are. I should make you go back to sleep and finish your little God dream.” Then she reaches down and starts pulling down her pajamas, mumbling, “Three in the morning, waking me up.”
My eyes get wide. The light from the streetlamp out our window seems brighter than it should be. Kelly’s eyes glint a dark, shiny color and she blinks. Her eyelids close slower than they should and when she opens them—
The bedroom door flies open in a loud crash, and I hear the boots as they thunder into the room. The light is blinding and then there are three more lights strobing in our faces, blasting us both in the eyes, and I squint.
“Jacob Oliver Blake,” one of them shouts. It’s louder than he has to, but he’s all pumped up on adrenaline and judgment, “and Flora Kellina Blake, you are hereby remanded to Protection!”
Oh, shit! I think. Not because we are about to be black-bagged and tortured—no one is allowed to call Kelly that.
It’s a short thought, though. “State your compliance!” that first one says.
There’s two more in the room, I know that. And I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the glare of a flashlight, see if I can find all three of them. Get to your gun!
“Put your hands down!” number two shouts. “State your compliance!”
But before I can lower my hand—Scrape!
Suppressors have an unmistakable sound—not silent, but not loud enough to do damage to your ears indoors.
And my shoulder catches fire and I slam back into the headboard. And everything is hot. Feels like my chest got a hot po
ker shoved through it. I’ve seen what that feels like. Then Kelly screams and the world turns to molasses.
Molasses? But that’s the word in my head. In fact, I can smell it—molasses and vanilla, mixed with burning cordite, and the smell of smoke from the gunshot. And … bad cologne? And I know what this is. “Stop…” I try to say, but it comes out slow and muffled. It hardly matters, they aren’t stopping shit. I know that, too. This is it.
I instinctively roll toward my nightstand. It seems to take forever, but that’s where I keep the pistol, and this is what it’s for. I know it’s too late—Scrape! And hot lead pierces into my butt cheek and I yell, “Goddammit!”
Now my ears are ringing a little—a suppressor isn’t silent, that’s a myth—but I can still hear Kelly scream, “Jake!” Sounds like an echo, far away.
I feel her roll toward me and her hand touches my back briefly, before it’s ripped away and she screams again. “No-no-no!”
And then they shove a bag over her head and drag her out of the room. I can hear her muffled crying, as number two drags her down the hall, her legs kicking the walls as they go. And a second later, I hear him shout at her, “State your compliance!” But Kelly doesn’t answer, and then … she’s gone.
Boots shuffle and clomp on the hardwood floor in our bedroom. Then I hear number three repeat the command, “State your compliance!”
And I know what’s coming if I don’t. “I submit to judgment!” I scream it, yelling helps with the pain. But I’m just buying time. Gotta get to my gun!
And number one says, “Clear!” I think I see his hand move to his shoulder. They haven’t fully deployed the speech recognition. Only a few of the prototypes out. I tested one—some good tech—keep both hands on your weapon. Best time to attack him, I think.
“Secure the weapon,” a voice squawks back from the mini-wave on his helmet.
Number one then three, I run through the order in my head. Don’t let them get it. And I’m almost to it and—
My nightstand gets kicked away from my hand and things speed up, and one of them grabs my gun and then some metallic scraping and then the sound of the bullet that used to be in the chamber of my Kimber .45… My last hope of redemption rolls across the floor.
It was a delusion—they’re pros—there never was any hope. I know, I helped train them. My pistol was just a little boy’s security blanket against a pack of big, black-clad bullies.
So why have it? Made me feel better, I guess, I know what it meant not to. Regardless, who the fuck is Protection to tell me I can’t have it? Only reason they ever wanted to take them in the first place was so they could do shit like this … and no citizen could say or do a thing about it.
It’s hard to work up an anti-authority rant with a bullet in your ass. That’s me, angry to the end.
“Weapon secured,” number one says. I assume he touches his comm button again, because me and number three already know he has my pistol. And me? I’m not going anywhere.
“Secure protectant to transport,” the voice squawks back.
And there it is—I’m going to a “fifty.”
The wave-code for a crazy person is a “5150—Delusional-defiant.” That’s the technical term we use in training. And the butchering, interrogation hellholes they’re surely taking me to are all called “Fifties.” Old granite and iron-built sanatoriums where they used to keep the insane.
But no matter what level of offense you commit now—resisting authority is all the same to them—you’re headed to a fifty, their sick little name for the ratholes where they rape and torture everyone. And that’s that, you’re done—no coming out of a fifty. Anyone who defies authority has to be insane, right? And if you aren’t living in your own private hell in your head when you go in, you will be soon enough.
Which one am I going to? The one. Shit!
I clutch at my ass and I can feel the hot blood oozing onto our sheets. I barely have time to roll. I make it to my side and I see the black legs rush at me. I hear the whack and then a blinding spike of intense pain and bright light, and I think I see flames right before everything gets fuzzy.
The last thing I hear is, “Protectant secured.” Then I go black—nothingness.
— XX —
I WAKE UP staring at a blurry window, rain trickling down the outside of it. I zone out through the glass for a second, and then snap out of it and start cataloguing, White walls, linoleum floor, lots of bright fluorescent lighting. I run my fingers through my hair—no lump.
A woman goes by with a flowered shirt on and baggy turquoise pants. Scrubs? I think. She’s a nurse. I should know, Kelly and I talked to plenty of them while Amy was in the… I’m in a med-mart standby room, waiting for … Amy?
Another bad dream? It feels as real as the others, but for all I know I’m still falling from the roof … or splattered on the street … or bent over a table in an interrogation cell, facing my judgment.
Did those black-boots hit me that hard? I feel the back of my head again—no pain either. After the smack from that little billy club, I should have a lump the size of a grapefruit.
“What’s wrong?” Kelly’s voice asks me.
For a second, I think that it must be those two, still fucking with me. But when I look next to me, there she is, tears in her eyes and wearing her gray Stanford sweatshirt. She wore her lucky sweatshirt while we waited for Amy to get out of State surgery.
And I know what day it is. We’re in the surgery standby room. This is a bad day.
The headaches wouldn’t go away, so they finally decided to cut into my little Amy’s skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. It was risky business—State healthcare adjuster kept saying that—and we had to fight like hell to get him to authorize it. Never would have happened if I wasn’t who I was. But when it was over…
Amy never left this med-mart. It was a bad call—my call. I fucked it up. I should’ve known better. Not even Kelly’s sweatshirt could overcome the State citizen care system. They had to lower the standards to replace all the doctors that quit the business. If you cut open a goat in Africa, you qualified. Hell, I knew more about internal anatomy than them from hunting. They were twice the butchers, though.
Those two are fucking with me—making me watch this. It’s probably him. Only a sick bastard would make me go through this again.
I look up at the ceiling. For some reason I figure they must be above me. Anyway, looking down to talk to them doesn’t feel natural. And if I end up having to look down to talk to my new puppeteer, I don’t think that will be … pleasant. “Do we have to do this?” I ask.
“What are you looking at?” Kelly turns and asks me. “Do what?” She looks up to see what I’m looking at. It’s probably just ceiling to her. Doesn’t matter, she’s not real. “Who are you talking to?”
I ignore her. “You’re just gonna fuck with me?” I say at the ceiling. “What’s the point?”
“No one is doing anything to you,” Kelly says. “It’s not always about you. Jesus, this is about Amy. Come on, you need to hold it together. That little angel’s coming out of there, and she needs you to be strong. I need you to be strong, so stop mumbling and start praying.”
Praying… Kelly tried and tried to get that to stick. Never did. “Mumbo-jumbo,” I would tell her, “cult bullshit.” Now I feel kinda … stupid at the thought. Problem was, doing it over and over again with no results seemed naive to me.
“Is this the lesson?” I ask into the air. “You never know what you got ’til you’re dead?”
“Jake,” Kelly says. The tone is unmistakable. “Don’t you say that again.”
It catches me off guard. It’s been a while since I took an ass-chewing from her, and I look at her with a blank face. She has no clue, but I question if now is real or not. To tell you the … all these jumps … I have no idea where they are headed. The sights, smells and sounds, though… I look at Kelly and say, “She’s not coming out of there.” I regret the words as soon as they come out.
Kelly slaps me across the face and starts crying. “Shut your mouth,” her lips quiver around the words. “She’s coming out. My baby’s coming out.”
Crying… I hate the crying. No amount of it changes shit, and I know better. Dream or not, Amy is already dead.
Two hours later, the surgeon comes out with a citizen grief counselor … and our little angel is gone. Feels as real as when I listened to the bastard butchers explain it the first time, and I wonder…
I wonder what the consequences would be if I choked one of them out in a dream? And Kelly’s sobbing on my shoulder and the whole thing is a big case of bad déjà vu. I gotta get out of… I look up again. “I know it’s my fault,” I shout. “You think I don’t know that?”
Reliving it, I notice that Kelly doesn’t stop me when I say that. Did she blame me? How could she not?
Things were never the same after that. We trudged along, pretending to be alive—numb existence. No citizen can afford therapy and my Protection allotment ran out pretty quick. Liquor didn’t help, either. You can’t pour enough in that hole to fill it.
Kelly never said that she blamed me for pushing for the surgery. She didn’t have to. I punished myself every day.
I don’t know how people can have another kid after something like that. Neither of us had the stomach for it. And with the world melting apart at the seams, and the State and Protection squeezing the people harder and harder… Humanity’s train wreck seemed too close to make another baby grow up and ride it off the rails without us.
Anyway, Kelly wouldn’t have been able to handle a third loss. We never talked about it, but I knew she regretted the first one even more after Amy was—I could feel it all over her. That one? We never called it a he or she—easier to pretend it never existed. It would be thirty by now.
“Enough already,” I say. The whole thing is making me wanna vomit. I close my eyes and mutter, “I’ve had enough.”
Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Page 7
