The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  I paused before typing the message, wondering how best to code the warning so as not to tip off the intel interceptors.

  Do a Mr. Johnson on the Maisy of your new hobby.

  The Johnsons were our neighbors, and Maisy had been their gentle dog. Back before I left home to join ASTA, Maisy died, and Mr. Johnson buried her in their garden. I hoped Robin would understand that I meant he should bury the evidence of his hacking. I didn’t sign the message. He’d know it was from me.

  I hit send on the text, then stamped on the phone with my boot, crushing it into small pieces. Flushing the bits down the toilet reminded me irresistibly of the time I’d done the same to Quinn’s phone. No, I would not think about him, would not remember the teasing glint which lit his eyes, his warm, firm lips, his I love you’s. He was better off without me, safer and less conflicted. I believed that. I hoped there would be a time in the future when we could reconnect. Right now, it was simply too dangerous.

  Pulling up my mask, I set off through the drizzling rain for the homeless shelter, but I hadn’t gotten five blocks before I was stopped by a passing police patrol.

  “You okay, kid?” one of the officers asked, lowering his window just enough to check me out.

  “I’m fine.”

  I kept walking, eyes on the ground, heart hammering. I lifted the hand closest to them up to my backpack straps, so that the tattoo would be clearly visible. My hood was down so my new hair was on show. Don’t panic, you look nothing like yourself, I told myself silently, nothing.

  “Where are you headed?” The cop car crawled along beside me.

  “Tallulah’s.”

  “Okay, then. Tell her Jim said hi.” I nodded, and the car peeled off down the road.

  By the time I got to the Inner City Teen Shelter, it was late afternoon and still raining. Sodden, cold, hungry and a single kind comment away from breaking down and bawling like a little kid, I pressed the buzzer. The woman who opened the door was enormous — tall, big-boned and weighty, with the kind of maternal bosom that would have been good for crying on, but I settled for the usual elbow-bump greeting.

  She gave me a careful once-over and then said, “You’re looking for a place to stay?”

  “Yes, please. If I may. I can pay.”

  “A homeless teenager with good manners and money. That’s a first.”

  Damn, I needed to disguise more than just my appearance if I wasn’t to give myself away.

  “Well, come on in, child. You’ll catch your death standing outside in the rain like that.”

  Thirty minutes later I was installed in my room, my tummy full, my clothes unpacked, and my rifle wrapped in a dark sweater and hidden behind the narrow wooden closet. The room was tiny and basic, but the bed looked clean, and my spirits lifted as I sank into a full, hot bath in one of the shared bathrooms.

  Tallulah hadn’t questioned the name I’d entered in the register book — Kerry Robins, the first name I’d been able to come up with — but she had asked, in a brusque though kind tone, “You running away from something, child, or someone?”

  I’d shrugged and fiddled with my earring. “Isn’t everyone here?”

  “I guess we are at that,” she said, and asked nothing further.

  Over the next few days, I learned there were about thirty kids staying at Tallulah’s, all between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. Some had casual jobs — sorting trash at the recycling center, or working cleaning shifts at the nearby Purification Center Disposal Unit where infected corpses and biohazard material were incinerated — but most hung out all day at the shelter. Tallulah had taken the trouble to set up some skills training modules, so the kids could, if they wanted, learn how to cook or bake, or sign up for computer-based training in programming and systems design.

  From what I could see, though, the favorite activity of most of those living here was putting on a pair of virtual reality goggles, sitting at one of the computers in the common room, and playing The Game. A good quarter of them liked to play as snipers. Even now, ASTA would be collecting data on these players, assessing skill levels, selecting potential future cadets. It turned my stomach. I hadn’t played The Game for months now, and I never intended to again. I wanted nothing more to do with it or its devious makers.

  Every day, I tried to put thoughts of Quinn out of my mind. Every night I allowed them to flood back in once I was in bed and could cry in peace, with one hand on my earring and my face mashed into the pillow. Where was he now? Was he missing me at all? Was Connor filling his mind with lies about me, was Evyan closing in for the kill? There was a hollow in the middle of me, an emptiness which was full of the absence of him. My arms felt cold and bare without his embrace, my face muscles stiff without the smiles he drew from me, and my ears were constantly pricked for the lilt of his voice or the deep rumble of his laugh.

  It helped a little — a very little — to keep busy. Today, like every morning, I’d walked straight past the common room, ignoring the harsh sounds of The Game’s explosions, shouted commands and ringing shots, and the excited yells of the players, and walked straight on into the kitchen.

  And here I am, making bread. Although I’m not very good at it, I am determined. Besides, it’s soothing to plunge my hands into the warm, elastic mass of dough, pushing in with my dove hand and pulling back with my yin-yang one, kneading the dough into a satiny-smooth ball.

  Tallulah moves her massive frame over to my side of the work bench and pinches out the length of dough containing the hair.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Should I toss this batch, too?” I must cost her a small fortune in wasted ingredients.

  “What the eye don’t see, the stomach don’t grieve over,” she says, examining the root end of the hair for a brief moment before flinging it into the trash can and giving me a conspirator’s smile.

  I smile back. I’m glad to be here, under her wing. I don’t feel safe, precisely. I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again. But I feel welcome, and that’s a refreshing change.

  Chapter 47

  Hawke and dove

  “Jared,” Tallulah says loudly to the kid peeling carrots at the kitchen workbench, “that’s more’n enough, boy. Stop peeling and start chopping. Nice and small, mind, like I taught you. Sweet Lord, but it’s hot in here!” She opens the back door a few inches, and a breath of cold air drifts in, along with the stench of rotting trash from the alley. “I know I shouldn’t leave the door open because of rats, but my brain is overheating.”

  “If there are rats in the alley, you should report them. They’ll send out a team to destroy them. They have specialist teams for that, you know,” I say glumly, dividing my big ball of dough into roll-sized portions.

  “Honey, if I’ve reported the vermin once, I’ve done it a dozen times. And they’ve never sent a soul to get the rats. No ‘specialist teams’ come to this part of the city.”

  Quinn once told me that the government chooses the areas it sends assistance to — making concerted efforts to keep infected rats out of middle-class suburbia, because that’s where their voting base lives, while allowing rats — fevered and otherwise — to thrive in areas where the poor, and illegal immigrants and other undesirables live. He called it a form of social engineering. Looks like he was right about that, too.

  I set the flattened balls of dough on a baking tray above the massive stove for their second rising.

  “Oh no, oh no, this is breaking my heart.” Tallulah waves one of her big hands at the T.V. balanced precariously on top of the refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen. It’s playing one of the dramatic soapies to which she is addicted. The lead actress has just died a tragically beautiful and completely unrealistic death from rat fever, reducing Tallulah to tears of deeply satisfied misery.

  “There now.” She sniffs and wipes her eyes with a dishcloth. “But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Now at least Rock will be free to love Storm.”

  Over the rolling titles, three sharp pips sound out, and then the
Southern Sector Government logo appears, followed by the face of President Hawke. He still has that thick, wavy brown hair and square face, but for some reason he no longer strikes me as a huggable teddy bear of a man. Maybe because I came as close as chaos to being forced to kill him, he now seems like just another person to me — an ordinary politician, probably not to be trusted with anyone’s wallet or vote.

  Mom never liked him. I wonder what she and Robin are doing right now.

  Wait, Hawke is saying something about an assassination attempt. Was it the rebels? I snag the remote to turn up the volume.

  “But I am pleased to say that rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Hawke grins widely, showing teeth so white they almost have a blue tinge.

  “Smarmy son of a bitch,” says Tallulah, who has also stopped to watch the Prez.

  “The attempt was foiled, and we have arrested several dissidents whom we will be questioning to ascertain information which will help us in the apprehension of even more terrorists.”

  Several dissidents? Who? Was Quinn captured? I know what that “questioning” entails, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Well, perhaps just on Roberta Roth. But maybe the story isn’t true, maybe it’s just more propaganda. Surely Zonia wouldn’t have attempted the assassination without a trained sniper or even a rifle? Unless they reverted to the original bombing plan.

  But Quinn is safe. I ran away so that he would be, so he damn well has to be.

  “Remember, if you see something, say something!”

  I expect to hear the familiar jingle which ends all government PSAs, but instead a serious female voice announces, “These are the faces of the Southern Sector’s most dangerous dissidents and terrorists, all of whom are wanted in connection with serious crimes.”

  A succession of photographs flashes slowly on the screen. Men and women, old and young, some of them standing behind electronically numbered boards, as if for mug shots.

  “Under no circumstances should you try to apprehend one of these dangerous offenders,” warns the voice. “You should immediately report any sighting to the authorities using the number displayed at the bottom of your screen.”

  And then I am looking at my own face displayed on the screen. It’s the photo from my ASTA ID, when my hair was long and blond with cobalt-blue streaks, and my face looked young and eager. It feels like my image is up there for minutes, hours, as I stand rigidly still, trying to keep my face expressionless while my heart races inside my chest, like a fugitive desperate to escape a prison cell. Will Jared or Tallulah recognize me? Not possible — I look nothing like myself. Nothing.

  Another face flashes, then another, and I can breathe again.

  “You okay there, Kerry?” Tallulah says, giving me a cagey glance. “You look like you just seen a ghost.”

  “Yeah, no, I’m fine. I … I think I just have low blood sugar.”

  Is it my imagination, or is she studying me too carefully?

  She hands me a fresh-baked cinnamon cookie. “Then eat something. You’re already thin enough to be blown over by a breeze.”

  The last of the onscreen faces is replaced by the See-Say logo, but before the jingle can play, Tallulah snatches the remote out of my hands and kills the power.

  “I can’t stand that man Hawke and his messages,” she says, slamming a cleaver clean through the backbone of a raw chicken spread out on the chopping board in front of her.

  “You do?”

  “He’s a slime-ball.” She brings the cleaver down hard, jointing off legs and thighs and breasts. “It amazes me that people don’t see it. Most of the kids here seem to think he’s the best thing since flavor-change gum. Hey, Jared?” She elbows him, and he lifts up an earphone to hear her better. “What do you think about President Hawke?”

  “Hawke? He’s cool. I’d vote for him — like, if I could vote. And if you’d ever let me stop with the vegetables.”

  Tallulah rolls her eyes at me in a see-what-I-mean expression and tosses the bones and scraps of chicken into an enormous stockpot bubbling away on the stovetop. There’ll be old-fashioned chicken soup with fresh-baked rolls for lunch — if, by some miracle, my bread turns out edible.

  “It’s funny. I really used to like him, but I don’t think I feel the same about him anymore.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Don’t know,” I say, shrugging.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Kerry —” Tallulah begins.

  “I smell cinnamon.” Carlos, the youngest kid in the Center, strolls into the kitchen.

  He’s a roly-poly pudding of a boy with huge, soulful brown eyes, which he turns on Tallulah’ now. As always, she melts under the power of those puppy eyes.

  “Give me a love, first,” she insists, folding him into her ample softness.

  The kid endures the embrace stoically, keeping his eyes on the prize — the tray of cinnamon cookies cooling on a rack in the breeze beside the back door.

  “There, now. Go help yourself to a cookie. No more than two, you hear?”

  Carlos nods solemnly and closes in on the cookies. Behind her back, he sneaks one under his mask and pops it whole into his mouth. He slides two cookies into each of his pants pockets before grabbing the permitted two. I grin. Eyes of a choirboy, soul of a conman.

  Then Carlos chokes, coughs, backs up several paces, and screams.

  The back door of the kitchen, already ajar, now swings open wide, and the four of us stare in horror at what stumbles into the kitchen, bleeding, snarling, growling.

  It’s an M&M.

  Chapter 48

  Lost and found

  I yank Carlos back by the collar and push him behind me. Tallulah grabs Jared by an arm and yanks him off the stool.

  “What the —” His eyes bulge when he takes in the scene.

  The M&M is an emaciated old man, with balding gray hair and a single tooth which he bares when he growls at me. He’s wearing the tattered remains of a pair of gray suit pants, stained with dark patches. The skin of his chest is stretched tight over the sharp arches of his ribs and cratered with clusters of oozing, putrefying sores. He smells of decay and death.

  “Get out of here!” I yell at Jared, Carlos and Tallulah, snatching up a broom to hold the M&M at bay.

  The man pulls his cracked lips over his bloody gums and growls a rasping, “Yake-yake-yake-yake.” Is he trying to laugh?

  He seizes the head of the broom. I think he means to yank it out of my grasp, but instead he rubs the rough bristles against his chest, shredding the thin skin, drawing blood.

  “Don’t!” I say, even though I know it’s futile.

  “Sweet Jesus have mercy!” Tallulah whispers behind me, then she hustles Jared and Carlos out into the hallway, and the door bangs shut behind her.

  “Yake!” the old man says. His eyes are on me, and I swear that in their crazed, bloody depths, I see a pleading desperation. “I-yake.”

  “You ache,” I say, as comprehension dawns. “I’m sorry.”

  He begins scratching with the bristles again, grunting. I relinquish the broom and slip out into the hallway, locking the door behind me. Banging and growling noises come from the kitchen. In the hallway, Tallulah and the boys stare at me, white-faced.

  “Jared, take Carlos to the common room and stay there. Lock the door and don’t come out until we say it’s safe. Do nothing else, call no one.” I cannot have a response unit swarming all over this place, wanting to interview us, checking up on my identity. “I’ll take care of it, okay? Tallulah, you stay here and make sure the M&M doesn’t get through that door, and that none of the kids comes near.”

  She nods, watches me run for the stairs.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “To do what?” she asks.

  “To take care of the situation,” I call back, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

  In my room on the second floor, I retrieve my rifle from behind the closet, check it’s loaded, screw on the suppressor
and remove the safety catch.

  Back downstairs, Tallulah’s eyes widen when she sees what I’m holding.

  “What in the hell? You brought a long-ass gun into my place?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  I unlock the kitchen door, crack it open an inch and peer inside. The old man’s back is to me — his spine a tight knobbled line of vertebrae beneath his disintegrating skin — and he is banging his head against the wall. Why do they always do that? It brings back a rush of bad memories — of other M&Ms, of sniping “targets”, of Nicky. Of my father.

  “Close this door and lock it again as soon as I’m through. And don’t open it until I give the all-clear. No matter what you hear, understand me?” I order Tallulah.

  “Wait —” she begins, but I’m through the door and inside the kitchen before she can protest and after a moment, I hear the door close and the lock click behind me.

  I lift the rifle into position and aim it at the back of the man’s head. For once, I won’t have to look into my victim’s eyes as I pull the trigger. A detached part of me observes the stock against my cheek, my eye lining up the sights, my finger already easing back on the cool crescent of the trigger. For the first time, I am about to shoot another human being, an innocently dangerous old man, without there being any doubts in my mind. I know what I’m doing; I know it’s the right thing to do. I’m clear on that. And I can find no guilt or shame or hesitancy inside myself. My hands are steady, my breathing slow and relaxed.

  Should I be concerned about the ease with which I am about to kill this man?

  I fire.

  The man collapses, hitting the ground with a wet, mushy thud.

  “Kerry?” Tallulah calls from the other side of the door.

  “I’m fine. Stay where you are.”

  I lay the rifle on the workbench, step over to the kitchen sink to grab a pair of thick rubber gloves, and slide my hands into them. I grab the poor old man by the wrists and drag him out the back door and several hundred yards down the alley, laying him down behind a dumpster overflowing with garbage. He cannot be found near the shelter. Nothing must connect the rifle slug in his head to the sixteen-year-old girl now residing at Tallulah’s.