Flowertown

by S. G. Redling

  “Go on, get outta here.” Ellie waved him down the corridor. “Go save your damsel.”

  “All right,” Bing shouted over his shoulder. “Have fun fornicating!”

  “I will!” Ellie waited until she heard his footsteps heading down the stairs. She pulled her phone from her pocket once more and read the message again. It wasn’t from Guy. It was from Med Services. Since quality of life treatment medications could not be taken in weekly doses, each blue tag patient was required to take their various pills at regular intervals throughout the day.

  “For her convenience” the pharmacist had explained that each blue tag patient was enrolled in an automated med-alert phone system that would text when a dosage was due. Ellie had already ignored the first alert, the one that had come in after Bing’s message had finally gotten through. Pulling two small red pills from her pocket, she wondered what would happen if what Bing suspected were true, if text messages around Flowertown could actually be blocked and filtered. Would they block the medical alerts for someone in need of medications? Was she already behind on her quality of life treatments? Figured. She swallowed both pills.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Well, that was a bad plan,” Ellie said to herself as she passed through security outside the records office. It had occurred to her that if Bing was headed to soothe the ailing Rachel, that meant her room would be too crowded by one. She knew Bing had absolutely no shot at winning her young roommate’s heart or favors, but she saw no need to dash his hopes. Rachel liked Bing’s flirting, and Bing didn’t seem to mind the constant, if friendly, rebuffs. Whatever it took to pass the time, she figured. But while another fruitless attempt was underway, Ellie would just be an interloper, so she had to find somewhere else to go. Plus, Bing and Rachel both figured she’d heard from Guy. Ellie had no intention of revealing the true texts she had received.

  She headed down Avenue Four. The heart of Flowertown had originally been mostly farmland, and as quarantine and treatment facilities had sprung up, the military had laid them out with military precision. Starting from the few blocks of already present structures, Flowertown had blossomed out in a near-perfect grid, the names of the streets showing the same imagination as their shape. North-south lines were avenues, east-west were streets, and everything was numbered.

  For the most part, there were no real sidewalks because there were very few cars to dodge. After the initial chaos of containment, all roadways were closed to everything except military and rescue vehicles. Personal vehicles within the spill zone were impounded along the barrier zone for disinfection, and as centrally located living quarters became permanent, few residents bothered to reclaim their vehicles. There was really no place to drive anyway.

  What made HF-16 so dangerous was what would have made it such an effective pesticide, had the testing been allowed to continue. Targeted for a specific strain of grain-eating beetle, the chemical was intended to not only eradicate a large segment of the parasite population, but to remain inert within those birds and bugs that ate the remaining survivors. It was hoped that those predators would then continue to excrete the pesticide, the chemical having attached itself to the animal’s cellular structure, and therefore ensure the eternal extinction of the grain-eating beetle.

  In a horrible sense, HF-16 worked. It did attach itself at a cellular level, and any organism that absorbed it did continue to secrete the chemical through any form of elimination, from bodily waste to fallen hair to saliva-soaked chewing gum. Unfortunately, it proved toxic to a large number of organisms, including people, farm animals, and most of the bird population. It also proved to be quite resistant to decontamination, which was why the water system of Flowertown had been completely contained. City and county water mains were diverted, sewage lines internalized. A ring three miles wide around Flowertown had been completely burned and sterilized with a combination of herbicides and decontaminants as well as high-frequency jamming waves, to prevent any wildlife from sneaking out with the dangerous chemical. Anything that made it to Flowertown had a very difficult time getting out.

  This included any type of pollution. Open burning within the confines of the spill zone was prohibited, and containment engineers had even tried to enforce a no-smoking ban for the first six months before they realized there were limits to human cooperation. Litter was strictly controlled, hundreds of people employed simply to pick up scraps of paper and wads of gum, lest they blow out of the containment field. Recycling was mandatory, and packaging on incoming supplies was legally required to be kept at an absolute minimum. The end result of all this containment and legislation was that Flowertown, the most contaminated place on earth, was also the most environmentally progressive. It was an irony that was only amusing for the first year or two.

  A tall, skinny kid with bad skin was scraping peeling paint off the yellow curb Ellie walked along. She wouldn’t have noticed him if he hadn’t stuck his arm out before her.

  “Hey, Ellie, right? You carrying?” She shook her head. He was looking to buy some pot and must have met her sometime she was with Bing. “I heard Bing’s got some good stuff right now. Tell him to call me, okay?”

  “Yeah, I will.” Ellie kept walking, not bothering to get the kid’s name, much less his number. Bing knew everyone in Flowertown, at least all the pot smokers, whose numbers had grown exponentially over the years. Boredom, anxiety, and the nausea-inducing maintenance medications made marijuana a household staple, and since none of it could leave the spill zone anyway, the law turned a blind eye to its commerce. As Bing had wisely crooned one night, “The opiate of the masses has finally become an actual opiate.” She patted her pocket, feeling the bag Bing had thrown at her earlier still tucked away there. It was strange, she thought as she pulled open the door to an unmarked bar, that Mr. Carpenter hadn’t insisted on patting her down.

  The noise within the bar blew her thoughts from her head. Some basketball game was on the big screen behind the bar, and whoever was playing mattered a great deal to the gang gathered before it. Ellie groaned, the sounds within the small room seeming louder than usual. She made her way to the far corner of the bar and waved to the bartender for a tall draft. The girl behind the bar nodded and held up an empty shot glass, silently asking Ellie if she also wanted her customary shot of bourbon. Ellie shook her head. She was getting a headache and could feel the two pills she had swallowed on an empty stomach turning into something bitter and foul. It looked like the quality of life meds, or QOL, as they were labeled, were going to be as hard to get used to as the maintenance meds, assuming she had long enough to worry about it. The bartender reached across the bar and traded Ellie the tall glass of beer for a debit card. She swiped the card and handed it back to Ellie, along with a bowl of saltines.

  Ellie took a bite of a cracker. “What, no American cheese slices to go on them?”

  The bartender shook her head in disgust. “Can’t get peanuts or even potato chips. Larry wanted me to start charging for the bowls so we wouldn’t go through them so fast. Can you imagine trying that in this monkey house?”

  “Why can’t you get peanuts?” The crowd watching the game had begun to chant, so Ellie had to shout to be heard.

  “That truck wreck.” The bartender was now at a full shout. “On the barrier. Won’t get anything until next week!” Someone must have made a basket because the bedlam at the other end of the bar got even louder. The bartender, knowing where her money came from, headed back into the fray as Ellie waved her off. First Bing’s soup, now the bar’s snacks. Word around the zone was that only one tractor-trailer rig had overturned on the secure highway through the barrier zone, but it seemed it had been carrying an awful lot of supplies.

  The beer bounced around in Ellie’s stomach, and she was grateful for the crackers. She rubbed her hands over her face, and it felt like her eyeballs were too big for their sockets. Was this how it would be, she wondered? Would she just begin to feel progressively worse every day, every minute? Her phone buzzed in her pocket and
she didn’t want to answer it. She hadn’t paid attention when the pharmacist had told her how often she would need to take her QOL meds. If this was another dosage reminder, she wanted to ignore it, but curiosity got the better of her. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. It was from Guy.

  “PS1 til 10. Alone.”

  Ellie tipped back the glass and drank the beer down in a few deep swallows. PS1 was power station one, less than six blocks from the bar. If memory served, it had a decent-sized living area for the guards and workers, including a shower that almost always worked, to say nothing of a decent-sized cot. She belched and grabbed a few saltines for the road. Meds aside, she still had some say over the quality of her life.

  Before she made it to the door, the crowd at the bar erupted again, this time in angry shouts and some creative obscenities. Ellie glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see some referee getting the business from fans, but instead the screen was full of a trailer for a new action film coming out. She had seen flashes of ads online, but this was the first actual trailer, and judging by the sea of middle fingers jabbed at the screen, her opinion of the film was the popular one. The movie was called Leak, and from what she could gather, it was about a band of terrorists who escaped Flowertown to infect Chicago or New York or some other place more important than Iowa for whatever reasons the jackasses in Hollywood thought people would buy. It was an outrageous concept and hugely insulting to all the people who had had their lives restricted for so many years through no fault of their own. Containment and contamination weren’t just buzzwords in Flowertown. Everyone had lost someone after the spill, and nobody endured the maintenance medications lightly. When Ellie thought of the implications of suggesting that anyone in Flowertown would willingly subject the rest of the country to what they had been put through—

  The crowd cheered again. The screen was black, as if bending to their collective will. People high-fived each other, glad to see the odious trailer gone, replaced by a black screen, then a blue screen, then a scroll of technical jargon before freezing on the network logo. Someone had cut the trailer short. In the middle of the college basketball playoffs. Ellie knew how much it cost to run a TV ad during the playoffs. That was a mighty expensive mistake on someone’s part. She turned and headed out of the bar, remembering the ass-chewing days of advertising. She didn’t think she’d want to trade places with whoever would be paying for that mistake. Then she stepped out onto the street and the smell of the rainwater decontaminants struck her. She’d trade places with that fuck-up in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat.

  On the walk to the power station, Ellie decided that even more than Guy’s body, what she really wanted was a shower. Her skin felt slick with oil and old fear, and she burped up traces of the vile medication. Nobody would ever call her a stickler for hygiene, but even Ellie had her limits. She pushed the buzzer and stuck her tongue out at the closed-circuit camera above the panel, and the latch on the chain-link gate opened.

  “There’s my girl.” Guy sat with his feet propped up on the front desk of the small station. “I see you got all dolled up for me.”

  “Don’t start. Are we alone?”

  “Just you, me, and cable TV.”

  “Good.” Ellie peeled her shirt off and stepped out of her jeans as she headed for the shower. “Tell me you have water.”

  “It’s the power station. Of course we have water. Is that the only reason you’re here?”

  “Not the only reason.” Ellie spoke loudly enough to be heard over the running water. “But if you could smell me, you’d know it’s for the best.” She pulled the flimsy plastic curtain across the small stall, but Guy pulled it back. Grinning, he sat back on the toilet, folded his hands behind his head, and watched her.

  “Consider it the cover charge.”

  Ellie smiled and turned her face up to the water. It stank of chlorine and was only barely tepid, but it washed the smell of anxiety off of her skin. She rolled the bar of hard government-issue soap between her hands until a pathetic lather formed, and she ran her hands over her body, not bothering to see if Guy was watching. She knew he was. She would love to luxuriate in the moment, or maybe invite Guy to join her, but they both knew that even water for military facilities could only hold out so long. A quick lather of medicated shampoo and Ellie felt clean once more, the smell of flowers overcome for the moment by the smell of chemicals.

  She turned off the water and leaned back naked against the cool tile. “Seems a shame to get back into those dirty clothes now that I’m all nice and clean.” Ellie expected Guy to join her in the stall, making one of his usual comments about getting dirty. Instead he tossed her a towel.

  “We’ve got to talk.”

  She stared at the scratchy white cloth. “This can’t be good.”

  “It’s not all bad.”

  “Okay.” She made no move to cover herself. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Get dried off. I’ll get you a drink.”

  She tipped her head back, the fluorescent light making her eyes hurt again. Guy stepped out into the office and she followed him, dripping water and leaving sopping prints behind her.

  “You want a beer?” He turned to her with an open bottle. “And do you think you could put something on?”

  Ellie took the bottle. “I never thought I’d hear those words out of your mouth. This day is just full of surprises.” She took a deep drink. “I don’t suppose you have any thing clean around here that I could borrow for a little while. I wasn’t kidding about not wanting to put on filthy clothes.”

  Guy poked around in a cupboard and pulled out an army-green T-shirt. “I don’t know whose it is, but it’s clean.” He tossed it to her and turned his back, leaning on his fists at the desk.

  “Wow, thanks for the privacy.” Ellie pulled the shirt over her head. “I’m decent now. I think it’s okay to look.” When he still didn’t look up, she took another drink from the bottle. “You know, Guy, this is still a drama-free zone, remember? I thought we were both cool with that. If you’re seeing somebody else and you don’t want to—”

  “I signed the papers.”

  “What?”

  He straightened up and turned to her, holding a thick sheaf of paper. “I signed them. Today. After I saw you.”

  Her mouth hung open, waiting to hear something that would make sense of what he was saying. “I thought you weren’t…you said you’d never…you love the army.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought about it.” Guy leaned against the back of the office chair, his feet crossed casually, but the fingers that gripped the pages were white. “I changed my mind.”

  “You changed your mind.”

  “Yeah, I changed my mind. You know, it’s a good offer. A really good offer.” Ellie stepped backward unsteadily, reaching behind her for the cot she knew was close. She sat down hard on the edge of it, not caring that she was naked beneath the shirt. Guy tapped the rolled-up papers against his palm. “I thought maybe you’d be, you know, happy about it.”

  “I’m just…shocked. You said you’d never sign those. You said those guys were toy soldiers. What did you call them? White-collar mercs?”

  “What, are you wearing a fucking wire or something?” Guy hurled the pages at her, his anger making his Boston accent thicker, and Ellie jumped at the sudden rage. “You recording every word I say? I don’t need a goddamn transcription of what I said before. I changed my mind. If you don’t like it, get the fuck out. Is that what you want? Huh?”

  He turned around and slammed his fists down on the desk, hanging his head and breathing deeply. At her feet the pages unfolded themselves and Ellie could make out the large type portions of the contract that Guy had signed. The easiest part to read was the red Feno Chemical letterhead. She didn’t need to read any more. She waited until Guy turned back to face her, leaning once more against the desk, composed. She chose her words carefully.

  “Can you tell me what made you change your mind?”

  He shrugged, looking down at
the ground. “It’s a good deal. I get my full army pension, full retirement benefits. It would take me another fifteen years of service to get that. There’s a signing bonus, and then, on top of that, I’ll be making a shitpot full of money. For doing the exact same thing I’m doing now.”

  “Only now you’ll be doing it for Feno, not the army.”

  “Same shit, different uniform, right?”

  Ellie nodded. He sighed and pushed off the desk, coming to sit next to her on the bed. He rested his elbows on his thighs and stared down at the floor. “It’s not just the money, you know? My nephew Tommy wants to go to Boston College, got a scholarship and everything, but it’s not enough. My sister can’t afford the rest, and this money will go a long way to helping him out. I don’t want him to have to do what I did—join the army to pay for school.” He laughed and shook his head. “Join the army and see the world.”

  Ellie leaned against him. “You saw Iowa.”

  “Yeah.” Guy leaned back into her. “Seven and a half miles of it.”

  They sat that way in silence for a long time, touching but apart in their thoughts. Ellie couldn’t understand what had prompted Guy to sign the contract with Feno. He had always been adamant in his disdain for the private security forces of the chemical company. He had called them amateurs and implied more than once that it was only the U.S. Army that was really protecting the residents of Flowertown, that nobody should expect the criminals to guard the prisons. He had called Feno’s enormous salary offerings proof that they had something to hide, and once, when they’d both been very drunk, he had said they were trying to buy a get-out-of-jail-free card, should criminal charges ever arise from the spill. And now, with less than two months left on his tour of duty, he had signed with Feno.

  Guy broke the silence, squeezing her thigh. “I guess you’re stuck with me. If you want me, that is.” Ellie still could not wrap her head around what she was hearing and said nothing. “Don’t worry. It’s still a drama-free zone. It’s not like I’m going to move in with you.”