Flowertown

by S. G. Redling

  Turning the corner onto Avenue Four, Ellie saw a line of army trucks in front of a storage facility, back flaps open, soldiers humping cartons from the building into their holds. Instinctively she searched the men for Guy, then wondered if he would still be reporting for duty. Would the explosions last night hold up his transfer to Feno? Would they change his mind about his decision, if such a change of heart were allowed? She hadn’t bothered to worry about his safety last night. Guy was the sort of man who always charged into the center of a fray and came swaggering out with just enough scars to look cool.

  Ellie stood in the middle of the street and lit a cigarette. The soldiers ignored her, if they saw her at all, and she wondered if any of the men she watched had learned, like Guy, they were infected. She wondered if any of them even suspected such a thing was possible. As her fingers once again found the tooth in her pocket, she tried to imagine the fury and the shock these men, these boys, would feel learning the sacred protection meds they so worshipped had forsaken them, razing their haven and bringing them down to the unclean level of the stained Flowertownians they so nobly protected.

  “Fuck.” Ellie pulled her finger from her pocket. She had squeezed the tooth so tightly a jagged corner had broken the skin on the pad of her thumb. Ignoring the long-neglected instinct of hygiene and sanitary concern, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked off the blood. At this point, infection from Rachel’s tooth was the least of her problems. She knew she should pitch it, but again, tossing away a piece of young Rachel’s body like trash disturbed her.

  For the first time in years, Ellie wanted to run. She couldn’t remember feeling so agitated and restless. Then she remembered this was the first morning she could recall she hadn’t smoked weed upon waking. It was a mistake she didn’t plan on making again, because awake and hyper at seven in the morning in Flowertown was an abysmal state to be in. The bar on Sixth and Eighth would be open; there were no blue laws around here. But even as she headed in that direction, she knew she wouldn’t drink. The more she woke up, the louder the sounds of the soldiers working around her, the danker the smell of the runoff channels, the clearer Ellie felt her mind becoming.

  She passed the soldiers on the corner, meeting each of their stares. They didn’t interrupt their work but followed her with their eyes. She made a wide berth of the trucks but stopped at the corner, watching. They were loading unmarked plastic tubs from the storage building into the trucks. At first Ellie couldn’t think what seemed so strange about the activity until she realized that, in all the time she had watched soldiers working around storage facilities, she had never seen tubs loaded out of buildings. She supposed they had to be moved out at some point, for distribution or trash removal or something, but this was the first time she had seen soldiers stacking tubs in trucks rather than tossing them out.

  She almost walked up and asked the nearest soldier what they were doing, but caught herself. This sober-in-the-morning thing was making her feel like she had in high school the first time she had snuck a bottle of wine. It was tampering with her decision-making ability. Nobody talked to the soldiers in Flowertown. And not just when they were on duty. There were unofficially segregated bars, diners, even picnic tables where the stained and the clean never met. Ellie supposed there were other pairings like her and Guy and nobody came right out and pronounced a division, but for the residents of Flowertown, the coppery smell of protection meds could not be separated from the drab green or bright red of security force uniforms. Those penny-scented greens and reds were the only ones allowed to own and carry guns, and for the hundreds of country people imprisoned within the zone, giving up their weapons had been a sore spot indeed.

  A soldier noticed how long Ellie had been standing and staring and headed her way. She held his stare, taking a deep drag off her cigarette as he approached. There was nothing illegal about standing on the corner, but it was obviously making the men uncomfortable. She waited until he was within five feet of her, his hand resting on his sidearm. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, she flicked her cigarette at his feet and laughed, turning her back on him. She could hear his breath and imagined the glances his fellow soldiers gave her. Just another nut job wandering the streets, they were probably saying. Or maybe not. Maybe those explosions last night had put their nerves on high alert. Ellie made a point of not turning to look back, knowing without a doubt she was being watched until she turned the corner on the next block.

  Dingle’s Market was open, of course. Annabeth Dingle never slept a night and so never bothered to close her little market. Ellie knew lots of people who claimed to have trouble sleeping since the spill, but she believed Annabeth when she said she never slept more than fifteen minutes at a time. Ellie had witnessed more than once Annabeth propped up on her padded stool in front of the curtain to the market’s office, her black and silver hair slipping like a visor over her eyes as her head nodded in quick rabbit dreams. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at the most, and Annabeth would raise her head refreshed and alert. Well into her seventies, Annabeth often said it was a cruel irony that now that she no longer needed sleep, she was stuck in Flowertown with nothing to do.

  Ellie wasn’t certain if she was catching Annabeth in one of her naps or if the old woman was reading the magazine folded in her lap. Either way, she kept her steps quiet, liking the feel of Dingle’s Market. Of all the markets in the zone, Dingle’s still felt like outside. The shelves held nothing the other markets didn’t carry, and today they were even barer than usual, but there was something about the way the shelves huddled together and the handwritten signs popped up like subtitles that maintained the illusion of a small-town market. She didn’t want anything, although she could feel her stomach growling, but ran her fingers along a row of cereal boxes, waiting to see if Annabeth would awaken.

  Ellie turned the corner, past a nearly empty display of oyster crackers, and continued her stroll down the canned food aisle. Great gaps in the selection made the wall of shelves look like a giant checkerboard, small piles of canned spinach and sauerkraut separated by open spaces that had once held more desirable vegetables. Demand for canned hominy had obviously tapered off long before the run on canned corn, despite the two-for-one special advertised on the sign. Ellie did grab two cans of chili with beans, knowing they wouldn’t last long. She didn’t know how Annabeth always managed to keep it in stock, but when it came to canned chili, Dingle’s was often the only game in town. Seeing even more gaps in the shelves before her, Ellie grabbed two more cans, tucking them up under her arm.

  She headed to the front of the store to grab a basket, deciding to try to find something that Rachel might be able to keep down later, when she heard voices coming from within the curtained office. Ellie peered around a pile of toilet paper value packs. It was early for anyone to be in Dingle’s, even with Annabeth’s famous round-the-clock service, and Ellie paused when she saw that the old woman still had not moved from her napping position. The voices were low, whispering, and Ellie could hear something being slid across the floor and the sound of cabinets being latched. It was probably just deliverymen bringing in some much-needed stock, she told herself. And it was probably just the novelty of sobriety that was making her stand perfectly still, eclipsed by the toilet paper, not daring to breathe. So much for weed making you paranoid, she thought.

  The voices quieted down and Ellie listened for the sound of the back door opening, but as she stared at the unmoving curtain, Annabeth raised her head, looking for all the world as if they had been in the middle of a conversation.

  “You’re up early, Ellie. Got the munchies?”

  Ellie dropped the cans into the plastic basket and headed toward the counter in the back. “Couldn’t sleep. You know how that is.” Whoever was in the back room had fallen silent. Annabeth took the basket from Ellie and began punching in numbers on the old-fashioned cash register.

  “Oh, I know all right. How’s Rachel doing? Did she get her pass yet?” A small metallic clink sounded behind th
e curtain, but the older woman made no sign of hearing it. Ellie tried not to stare at the curtain.

  “Not doing so well. Can’t keep anything down.”

  “Well now, why don’t you grab one of those boxes of oyster crackers and take them back to her? My treat.” Ellie turned and grabbed a box and, as she turned back, noticed the curtain flutter then fall still. Annabeth smiled and put the crackers in the bag. “Poor little thing can’t afford to lose any weight. She must want to get to that wedding awful bad.”

  “I think it’s as much Vegas as anything else.” Ellie handed her the debit card. “That and getting out of Flowertown.”

  Annabeth’s mouth twitched as she swiped the card, but it came up a smile when she looked up. “I can see why a girl would want that. Who wouldn’t?”

  Ellie took her card and her groceries and headed back out into the street. She kept reminding herself that she was not high. She was awake and clear minded so there was no doubt about what she knew she had seen. Behind Annabeth, under the curtain, peeking out near the doorframe, had been a box of bullets.

  Walking on autopilot, Ellie found herself at the records office before she had even decided where to go. The office didn’t open for another fifteen minutes, but there were a few early arrivals floating around and she could hear the distinctive ting-ting-ting of the overworked industrial coffee pot coming to life. She flipped her badge to the guard and headed in and almost didn’t stop when he called to her.

  “Are you talking to me?” Ellie turned to the guard who had shouted to her, wondering if everyone who didn’t get high had mornings this complicated. “What do you want?”

  “I need to see your badge.” The guard was big, and Ellie couldn’t tell if his army crew cut was blond or gray. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if he was new or the same guy she passed every day. She came back to his post and held up her badge.

  “Is there some kind of problem?”

  The soldier compared her face to her badge but didn’t look her in the eye. “You are to show proper identification upon entering all government buildings.”

  “Yeah, I did. Nobody ever looks.”

  Finally he met her gaze. “Well, we’re looking now.”

  “Oooh.” She snatched the badge back. “I bet you’ve been waiting all morning to use that line. Did you practice in the mirror while you shaved?” She spoke over her shoulder as she moved on. “You might try curling your lip a little bit and maybe reaching for your weapon. Or maybe throw in the word ‘punk’ once in a while.”

  She looked back when she reached the stairs and saw that he was still watching her, his face unmoving. This crap she did not need. She paused on the bottom step, knowing she was under surveillance, and turned back. As she cut down the cubicle aisle for Bing’s desk, she saw the guard perk up and head her way. Grinning, she waved her badge in the air, the bold red type visible from across the room, and mouthed the word “clearance.” Her clearance for the records office gave her clearance for the entire building, a little detail that occasionally irked Bing, who did not have the same badge. Why anyone in charge thought she was more responsible than Bing was a mystery to anyone who bothered to think of such things, but at the moment her presence irked the army guard enough. She took her time sauntering down the aisle, swinging her hair in her best impression of a pageant walk, and just before she sat down at Bing’s desk, blew the staring guard a kiss.

  She let out a breath as she disappeared from his sight. It had to be the explosions last night that were putting the soldiers on edge. Now more than ever this was no place to be without smoking a nice fatty, and Ellie knew Bing had to keep at least one emergency bag somewhere in his cubicle. She sat back in his seat, ignoring its trademark screech of protest, pulled up to his desk, and tried to think like her paranoid and complicated friend.

  Corporate cubicles were strange places, even within government quarantine chemical spill zones. Ellie remembered her days in the cubicles in Chicago and the pleasure she used to take in piecing together the secrets of her coworkers by the things they did and did not display in their little white work spaces. She had never sat in Bing’s chair before, had never been in this space without him, and if it hadn’t been for the personnel label on his inbox, she wouldn’t have been entirely sure this was his space at all. There were thick binders of government forms and protocols, requisition records, manuals, and other mind-numbing bureaucratic paperwork present on nearly every desk in the room. A computer sat sleeping in the corner; stapler, tape dispenser, sticky notes, cup of pens. A little yellow monster made of silicone crouched beside the mouse holding a sign that read “Bite me,” and on the installed bulletin board, amid the forms and phone lists, Ellie saw one photo of a grinning black Labrador wearing a bandanna.

  As far as Ellie knew, Bing did not now nor had he ever owned a dog. She was pretty sure he was allergic to most animals; she smiled at the picture. It was so like Bing to put up a fake picture of a pet. Even at work—hell, especially at work—she knew her friend’s paranoia never rested, and it was typical Bing style to try to mislead any snoopers to a false impression, even about something as unimportant as a pet dog. The squishy little stress ball monster too, she knew, was a misdirection. Bing was not one for stress balls or whimsical toys. To the un-Bing-trained eye, this was the desk of a happy, functioning employee, but Ellie had spent enough time with him to know better. He thought she never paid attention. She thought she never paid attention, but this morning Ellie found herself examining the desk like a puzzle to be solved.

  “I don’t want to know your secrets, Bing,” she whispered to herself. “I just want to find your weed.” If it were her work space, she would have intentionally hidden a baggie in the thick binder marked “Laws and Regulations” just to be contrary, but she knew Bing would think of the possibility that someone would at some point borrow that binder. No, his weed and whatever other little secrets he might be keeping were hidden someplace more clever, certainly not in a Tinkerbell lunch box in the file drawer.

  She pulled open the center drawer. She knew none of them would be locked. Bing thought locks were for amateurs and said they only raised suspicion. The center drawer held the usual office paraphernalia as well as some breath mints and a bottle of eye drops. Bing got the red-eye when he smoked too much. Ellie poked around a bit, knowing she wouldn’t find anything here, but she sort of enjoyed the scavenger hunt. She turned to the set of drawers on the left, and the chair let out a gruesome screech. Some bolt or spring complained at her motion and Ellie had to laugh. It was probably an intentional sabotage Bing had rigged in his seat so he would know if anyone were sneaking into his cubicle. Laughing at her own paranoia, she could imagine him sawing through an I-bolt in such a way that he was the only person in the office who could sit here silently.

  Nobody came at the sound of the chair screeching, and Ellie continued her search. She started with the large file drawer on the bottom. The front of the drawer was filled with the usual hanging files with the usual indecipherable labels used for government work. She flipped through the files, knowing nothing would be found in them. At the last file, she pushed the collection forward, opening a gap in the back of the drawer where a stack of books lay. Bing was a huge reader, she knew, and felt more than justified hiding in his cubicle reading on the government’s dime. She pulled out the first three books in the stack: The Illusion of Thought: How Stimulus Dictates Mass Action; Paranoia for the Aware; and When Bad Things Happen to Bad People—Great Retributions in History. Guess I’m not going to find a bodice-ripper in here, she thought. She had also still not found the weed.

  She put the books back and pulled open the shallow drawer above the file drawer. Rows of a variety of rubber and box stamps filled the space. There were date stamps, classified stamps, rejected and accepted stamps, even a notary public. Who knew? Bing, a notary public. Ellie scanned her fingers over the stamp handles and box tops, reading through their contents, and noticed there were two notary stamps. The one in th
e front was current; the one in the back of the drawer had expired two years earlier. Both stamps were large plastic box stamps, and both were still in their white boxes with the windows on top. Peeking around to be sure nobody was watching, Ellie pulled out the expired stamp and took it out of the box. The plastic lid, under which an imprint of the stamp had been set, had a tiny crack in the corner. Jackpot.

  She grabbed a staple remover and pried off the top of the stamp. The simple mechanism inside fell apart and she had to quickly grab it to keep the rubber stamp at the bottom from falling out. Other than the plastic and spring, the stamp was empty. She had been so certain he would have hidden some weed there. Before she put the plastic lid back on, she sniffed the little case and smiled. Oh yeah, she was right. There had definitely been pot in here, but where was it now? Maybe he had cleared it out after her little run-in with Feno’s Mr. Carpenter. She slipped the stamp back into its box and back into its slot in the drawer and was leaning in to continue her search when a hand grabbed her shoulder.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Ellie jumped. Bing’s face was red as he leaned into her face. She tucked her hands under her thighs innocently. “Nothing.” She laughed, knowing she was busted. “Rummaging through your desk.”

  “Why?”

  “Looking for your weed.”

  Bing snorted, his anger gone. “Good luck with that. You’ll never find it.”

  “Oh really?” Ellie leaned back in the chair. “You so sure about that?”

  “I am one hundred percent sure. Trust me. You’re out of your league.”

  Ellie swung her feet back and forth, making the chair squeak rhythmically. “Wanna bet?”

  Bing leaned against the cubicle wall and looked her up and down. “Okay. Let’s make it something worthwhile. Judging from your customary style of dress this morning—what is that on your shirt? Gravy?—let’s bet a load of laundry.”