by Ben Woollard
“You really think the Gov is capable of something like that? Of kidnapping their own citizens in order to fund a war?”
“I didn’t want to, and I still don’t. But I’ve had enough people tell me stories of Gov troops showing up and taking away their family members for me to doubt it. I know those people aren’t lying to me. Who would lie about something like that? As for what they’re doing with those people, I can’t say for sure, but it scares me, and I think you’re right that we should leave.” I looked out across the ruins of the outskirts back at the city, and I again remembered the image of the bird above it, its eyes red coals and talons poised above the streets, waiting to pick at those that walked beneath it.
“If that’s true, though, whatever’s happening here is gonna happen in the settlements, too,” I said.
“Yeah. I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Still, it’d be best to get out of Columbia as soon as possible.”
We found little over the course of wondering through those endless piles, but it was enough that our bags had some weight to them. We sat and watched the sunset glowing reds to blues over the streaked horizon, and when it was getting dark, headed back the way we’d came. We didn’t see any patrols when we got close to the buildings, and it was all too easy to dart back into the city unseen. We laughed about it as we walked back towards home, keeping to the side streets, as it was now getting past curfew, and patrols would be out looking for anyone not at home. A few times we had to duck to hide from some Gov troops pissing in one of the alleys, but otherwise we were clear.
When we rounded the corner on our home street we saw that a Gov patrol, two troops, were standing at the doorway of the apartment talking to Momma. We froze and ducked to hide behind a staircase, listening to what they said.
“What do you mean he’s not here? You mean he’s breaking curfew?”
“Please,” I heard Momma saying, “I don’t know where he is.”
“Be quiet! Your son has been committing treason against the UCG! We know he’s been avoiding the barricades, we have more than enough evidence to confirm it. Now tell me where he is!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. What’ll you do with him?”
“That’s none of your business! Now tell me!” the soldier yelled, grabbing Momma by her shirt and shaking her. She stayed silent and after a moment released her. “Alright, if that’s how you want this to go. I’m putting you both under arrest under the Administrative Durfew Declaration.” Me and Shiloh looked at each other with horror at these words, and we heard Momma begging to the troops. Peaking over the staircase I saw one of them hit her with his open hand.
The next moments are forever etched into me, and looking back they seem to stretch out so they seem as long as years. When I saw Momma slapped I lost it, and I sunk fully into the rage that flared inside me and charged out from where I hid, running full speed at the closest soldier and tackling him. I heard Shiloh sprint out after me, and looked over to see him wrestling with the soldier that had just hit Momma. I punched the man I’d tackled, who lay on the ground stunned, until blood was pouring from his nose and brow from where my fists cut him. I heard Momma screaming and felt her pulling me off the man, who was near unconscious. Shiloh had gotten the baton out of the other’s hand and hit him over the head with it so that he lay unmoving in the street, bleeding from his ears.
Just then we saw another Gov patrol round the corner a few blocks up. They shouted and began running in our direction. Momma went inside and came out holding my bag, Grandpa’s cane sticking out the top of it.
“Run!” she yelled at me. “Take Shiloh and go!”
“Come with us!” I said, but she shook her head. “We’ll never make it. Now go!” I stood for a moment, horrified at the idea of leaving her, but the Gov patrol was sprinting at us, and she wouldn’t budge. I could see Shiloh was crying, and we both hugged her as quick as we could, saying goodbyes that could never suffice in that moment.
“We’ll be back for you!” I yelled as we ran off, the Gov troops after us. We ran as fast as we could, weaving through the alleys and back roads, but try as we might the soldiers stayed right behind us. One of them had a gun and was firing off shots whenever we came into view. We reached the edges and ran as fast as we could out over the small divide and into the rubble. Just as we got there a shot rang out and I turned to see Shiloh fall behind me. I picked him up and dragged him on, his breath now heaving.
We stumbled through the darkness, having lost the troops in the chaos of the outskirts. Still we didn’t stop until Shiloh collapsed beside me. I could see lights on the other side of the hill we’d just come over, and I heard enough voices yelling to each other I thought there must be a search party out looking for us.
“Shiloh come on! We have to go! We have to go!” I said, but he didn’t move, just sat down in the dirt unable to continue. I looked him over and saw blood soaking his shirt in growing patches.
“Sam,” he said, his breath filled with the sound of fluid. “You have to leave me.”
“I can’t do that! Come one, let’s go!” I tried to lift him but he was dead weight, all the strength having drained from him. I saw blood running from his mouth. “No, no, no, no, no,” I muttered under my breath. “Shiloh! Come on man! Get up!” But his head lolled, and his breath was barely present, the sound of it filled now with frothing. I held his head and tried to force his eyes to open, but he was already losing consciousness, and as I kneeled there in the dark, the voices and the light of the approaching troops getting closer, I heard the last pained breath leave my brothers lungs. His whole body relaxed, and as the breath dissipated, the air around us seemed to grow lighter as if illuminated by some inner glow only present where we sat, covered in dirt and blood. Shiloh’s face seemed as if it were looking out at something for a moment, and his eyes, half open, looked at me bright and I thought I saw in them some kind of recognition, not of me, but of something else I couldn’t see. His body ceased its movements, and the light faded, leaving me alone inside the empty night. I collapsed, crying his name again and again.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This isn’t how this goes, this isn’t it.” I lay there broken until I heard the sounds of the search party coming over the hill towards us. It took everything I had to leave Shiloh’s body there, and as I ran I cursed myself through sobs, falling over many times, and looking back to see my brother’s body lying in the rubble. I ran delirious, no direction, not caring where I went, just running away from all the horror and the tragedy that was the city and my life.
Chapter 10
The Memoir of Franz Thompson
I don’t know exactly when the reality of my suspicions really began to prove themselves. It seemed to start when I began to understand that I was being kept in the dark deliberately. I had proved my loyalty to Shilk but it was becoming increasingly clear that he didn’t trust me. Something was going on inside the UCG, and I knew that the Red Caps were a part of it, and that I was playing some role in it myself.
While for the most part Shilk kept us around him as his personal guard, there was a group within the Sanglorians that he kept especially close. Remus was one of them, as well as one of the others that I had seen when I first went under The Device. It was only too often that I would report to Shilk to find him speaking to Remus or one of the other Sanglorians in hushed tones that stopped the moment they noticed me walking through the door. I felt that something bigger was being planned and that for some reason I wasn’t meant to be a part of it. The presence of The Device had placed within me was always there, always watching, and it seemed to be getting more paranoid all the time.
Then the day came when Lucie disappeared. We had plans to meet outside the barracks like we normally did, and when she didn’t show up I assumed she was just running a bit late. I waited for over an hour before I began to get worried, and decided I should go to her house to check and see if she was there. I had met her mother briefly a time or two before an
d didn’t think there would be much issue with my showing up unannounced. I walked to the small home, located on the corner of a midsized street, and knocked on the door. An older woman, Lucie’s mother, opened it.
“What do you want?” she asked me, and I was taken aback by the venom of her words.
“Afternoon, Ma’am. I’m wondering if Lucie is here, we had plans to meet earlier but she never showed up,” I said, doing my best to appear agreeable. The woman glared at me with radiating hatred.
“Get out of here! Scum! Fucking scum! All you Gov types!” she yelled at me, and slammed the door in my face. I stood there dumbly, not understanding what had just occurred. Again I knocked on the door, and I heard the woman’s voice from the other side. “Just leave us in peace!” she cried, and I could hear that her voice was choked by sobs. “You’ve already taken our daughter, please just leave us in peace!” Horror boiled up inside of me. I was made numb by the thought, and wandered away from the small home in a daze. I walked through the streets completely unaware of where I was going, my mind blank. As I walked I grew angrier and angrier. If Shilk had anything to do with this, if this is the Gov’s doing, I swore to myself, I don’t want anything to do with the Red Caps or the UCG ever again.
I stormed to see Shilk without bothering to contact him first, although I was sure he knew that I would be coming. Getting to the hallway in Central that led to his office I was stopped by the guards that stood on either side of the hall. I began to argue with them, but we were cut short by Shilk’s voice echoing down the walls from his office.
“Let him through, boys,” he said, and I pushed my way past them and approached the office, my steps reverberating through the empty space. When I came in Shilk was sitting at his desk alone. I was about to speak when he put his hand up to stop me. “No need to explain yourself, I know why you’re here.” Of course, I thought, and felt the presence in my head like a tongue feeling a wound inside the mouth.
“Is it true?” I asked him, the anger in me rising. No matter how detached The Device had made me, the anger I felt in that moment cascaded over everything inside of me, threatening to pour forth.
“It’s quite untrue, I assure you,” Shilk said. “Our mutual friend has explained to me the reason for your distress, and I can promise you that it’s quite unfounded. Please, sit down.” He gestured to the chair before his desk, but I said that I preferred to stay standing. “Suit yourself. Anyway let me explain: I’ve had the records checked, and your Lucie was not ‘stolen’ by UCG boogeymen, as public opinion seems to be so fond of speculating these days. On the contrary, she requested a transfer to northern management, appears she’d grown quite tired of the city.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Why would she leave like that? Without telling anyone? And her mother...”
“Her mother is merely upset to have her daughter move away so abruptly, as is quite understandable, as for the reasons of her leaving, I have the paperwork for a transfer request right here, you’re more than welcome to read it.” He handed me a tan folder filled with documents on Lucie’s employment at Central, from her first application all the way to the transfer request Shilk was referring to. I scanned over it, and saw that in the section asking Lucie why she had made the transfer request she had wrote, “to escape the oppressive nature of the city, the crowds, and the people who live within it”.
“But, it doesn’t make any sense,” I said, sitting down in the chair that Shilk had offered me.
“Yes, I’m afraid it seems quite a cold sentiment on her part, but these things happen. I understand your feelings completely,” Shilk said, and I, fool that I was, felt regret pouring over me. I was so desperate for any explanation, any kind of out that could be offered me, to make the world that I had been living in make sense again, that I was willing to jump into even the flimsiest of excuses as Shilk now handed me in that folder. The truth is that I had always cared more about the UCG than I had about the people in my life, Lucie included. Everything in me pushed me towards it: my upbringing, my experiences and decisions, The Device and everything that came as a result of it.
“I’m sorry for coming here sir, I shouldn’t have been suspicious of you. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Franz, anyone would’ve done the same in your circumstances.” We both stood up and he put his arm around my shoulder as he walked me to the door.
“Now, I want you to take tomorrow off. I’m sure this has all come as quite a shock to you, and I hate to see you so distraught and overworked.”
“Thank you, sir, but to be honest I think I’d better come in tomorrow; I’d rather not be alone with my thoughts at the moment.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel, then by all means. I’m merely glad we could clear up this little misunderstanding.”
“Me too, sir,” I said, and shook his hand.
Leaving Central I felt that the last place I wanted to go was back to my small and dingy barracks quarters, and so I continued to walk the streets. I walked with no intention or direction, just wandered the city. I wondered at Lucie. Why would she leave so suddenly? I thought. I wracked my mind trying to find signs within my memories that things might not have been going well, but nothing came up. At last, in despair, I gave up, and walked back to the barracks for a short and fitful sleep.
***
With Lucie gone, there was nothing to distract me from my position, and I threw myself into my work completely, taking as many extra assignments and hours as I could. I was given the job of loyalty training at The Academy, as well as running nighttime patrols. I was more adamant than ever about my commitment to the cause of the UCG and all of centralization.
Changes started to take place within the UCG at a rapid pace. Shilk had managed to restructure everything so that the members of his cabinet had next to no power, and all the decisions rested essentially in his hands. Of course there was outcry against this, especially from the more outspoken cabinetry, such as Shaun Davis. They did their best to protest, but it was understood implicitly by those who were losing power that any direct confrontation with Shilk would result only in a disappearance. Unlike myself or the majority of Columbia, those in the upper echelons of the UCG had no illusions about the nature of the state that Shilk was running. I would often speak to the students at The Academy, repeating all I had heard about how he was the only chance our civilization had of being lead out of the darkness that the collapse had thrown us into.
Yet despite how much I threw myself into the task of revering Shilk, and perpetuating his savior image, there still lingered in me the last remnants of the doubt that I had carried with me, and that had been engendered by the things that Lucie told me. Despite being so far gone, some part of me still held some suspicions against the UCG. Try as I might to suppress the feeling, part of me was never convinced that Lucie had requested her transfer, although I dared not speculate on the implications this would give rise to, and despite my wanting it to be true; no matter how much it may have hurt me for her to leave, it was nothing compared to the shattering of everything I had known if my fears about her disappearance turned out to be correct.
As winter fell upon Columbia, the snow coming to collect among the corners and the gutters of the streets, I began to see more and more behind the cloth that Shilk had pulled across my eyes. I was witness to arrest squads going through the city, and was even made to participate myself. I tried to believe in what I was doing, and for the most part I did. We were told the people we were arresting were criminals, and that they would be tried before any sentence was carried out. This was enough to justify the act of taking people from their homes at night. I’m ashamed to say that on more than one occasion I wretched people from their beds in order to escort them, shackled, through the frozen darkness of the nighttime city streets to the local jail, where I would leave them in horrid conditions of cold and near starvation.
It was on one such night, while me and Remus were walking patrol through the streets that, roundin
g a corner, we saw two Red Caps who had been knocked unconscious laying on the ground where their attackers still stood. We yelled at them and ran in their direction, our footsteps echoing throughout the empty nighttime streets. I saw the men hug a woman who stood there before they sprinted off. We followed them, careening around the corners and popping in and out of sight. Remus drew his pistol, shooting at them as they ran. They managed to get to the edge of the city, where Remus fired a shot that hit one the fleeing men, although it didn’t stop his running away. I was upset that Remus had fired at them, and as we organized a group of barricade guards to sweep the outskirts I told him that I thought so.
“You could have killed them!” I yelled.
“Good,” he said. “They might’ve killed those two back there for all we know!”
“That’s not how we should do things,” I said, shaking my head.
“Grow the fuck up!” Remus yelled at me, something bursting out of him that must have been there all along. “You know, of all of us you’ve got the weakest stomach and I’m tired of it! I never should have recommended you; you’re too weak.”
“Not wanting to shoot people in the back makes me weak?”
“Damn right it does,” he said without flinching. “You’ve got too many doubts, Franz, why do you think we had to get rid of your girlfriend?”
“What?” I asked, and felt the blood draining from my face.
“You heard me. I did it myself you know, went and arrested her at Shilk’s requ-” he cut off, gripping his head. “I know I shouldn’t but wh-” Remus said, speaking to himself. I had lost all sensibility, however, and grabbed him by the collar, shaking him.
