Disorder

by Martha Adele

  DISORDER

  Part One

  Martha Adele

  Copyright © 2019 by Martha Adele.

  ISBN: Softcover 978-1-7960-1065-7

  eBook 978-1-7960-1064-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

  Rev. date: 02/25/2019

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Sam

  Chapter Two

  Sam

  Chapter Three

  Logan

  Chapter Four

  Mavis

  Chapter Five

  Logan

  Chapter Six

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Seven

  Logan

  Chapter Eight

  Sam

  Chapter Nine

  Mavis

  Chapter Ten

  Logan

  Sam

  Chapter Eleven

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mavis

  Logan

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mavis

  Logan

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mavis

  Logan

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sam

  Logan

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mavis

  Sam

  Chapter Nineteen

  Logan

  Mavis

  Chapter Twenty

  Logan

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Logan

  Sam

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sam

  Mavis

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Logan

  Mavis

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sam

  The forest floor streams through my fingers as I run my hands through the thick turf to find the ground. The pressure on my hip slowly becomes more obvious as my eyes flutter open and my surroundings come into focus. I find my face scrunching in response to the weeds around me tickling my nose and puffing out air to get the dirt and bugs away.

  I push myself to a sitting position, and what feels like sandbags in the back of my skull pull me down. Forcing myself to sit up is more difficult than I have ever recalled it being before. The shade provided by the towering trees surrounding me makes the cool weather cooler, causing it to feel as if it were later in the autumn season than it actually is. The patches of light breaking through the canopy of leaves above me causes there to be rays of sunshine streaming through the forest, illuminating the floating pollen.

  An odd tingling erupts in my feet as I rise from the ground. The feeling of hard marbles migrates from my toes up my body the longer I stand. When it reaches the back of my head, most everything gets knocked back to its normal sensation. What is left of the metaphorical sandbags slowly dissipates and trickles down my neck, rolls off my shoulders, and streams down my arms to my fingertips. I look down to my fingers and wiggle them around slowly, feeling the imaginary sand sift through my skin, and fall to the forest floor as the rest of my body slowly receives the message from my brain to start walking.

  I look down to my foot as I take my first step. The ground’s soft and spongy feel soothes my joints, all except one. The pain feels as if a knife is being slowly stuck into my hip and twisted the higher I lift my knee. With my groan being the only audible noise I can hear at the moment, I kick the palm-sized rock on the ground beside me as I realize that my hip was resting on it the whole time that I was unconscious.

  The hip pain lessens the longer I stand and the more I try to walk. The golden rays of the sun and pollen that surround me remind me of the rays that would shine into my house through our cinder block–sized windows. Even though Mom would spend all her days under the blazing sun, she always managed to point out how lucky our family was to have windows and how beautiful the sun could be. Mom would use that opportunity to teach me a corny lesson and tell me that the “light shines even brighter when it is surrounded by darkness.”

  All I can think about as I walk around is the last time I saw her and how that was the last time I would ever see her. I had been preparing to fight for my country since I was born, so when the day came, I would be prepared for the draft.

  On the ninth hour of the day that a citizen of Bestellen turns eighteen years of age, the pledge in question will be fully admitted into their selected career.

  The only reason that it was going to be the last time I ever got to see my mom is because when you are assigned to the Stellen military, it means that the day you turn eighteen, you would be drafted. Those who are drafted remain in the military as long as they are physically capable to fight. After a certain number of years in the military, those who are unable to successfully fight due to age or physical damage are assigned to be an official, a teacher, a trainer, or part of the wall’s security.

  I had always figured that after all of those years of brutal fighting, I would want to be part of the wall’s security. It seems like the easiest job. All they really do is walk the top of the large concrete wall that surrounds Bestellen and make sure no one is trying to get in. It seems easy because no one would ever try to get out of Bestellen. Why would anyone want to? We, as a country, are taken care of very well. And no one would try to get in because of how hard it would be. We have security guards, cameras, weapons, and so much more according to Chancellor Lance Meir II.

  Meir is our current ruler and is probably the best ruler anyone could ever ask for. Under his reign, Stellens have free health care, an amazing bartering system between states, and the best education system anyone could ask for. When we are born, babies get all of their shots and medication, along with a full checkup, and are assigned a future career. When the kids are assigned careers, they are educated for that career and that career only, which saves both time and resources.

  With Mom’s assigned career as a farmer, she got to stay in her home state, our home state. Though every state can have different careers for their citizens, Bouw is mainly an agricultural region. Its citizens are laughed at and called Koes, which translates to “cow.” Even though we are responsible for most of Bestellen’s wind power, our contribution to Stellen society is often overlooked due to the assumption that all we do is farm.

  The state of Verwend is mainly associated with weapons and the Stellen military. We call its citizens a Vend. Metropolis, Bestellen’s capital, lies inside of Verwend but is toward the outskirts of the province. Other than that, I still don’t understand why Verwend is Metropolis’s favorite state. There are rumors in Bouw that people in Verwend are spoiled by Metropolis. I have heard that every household has a show box and an air system that controls the temperature of their home. I
n Bouw, only the officials’ quarters have air systems, and we have one show box per precinct. In Rose, my precinct, we only ever use the boxes for news purposes. When those boxes came on and the officials gathered us in the squares, we knew something was wrong.

  Metropolis is where Meir and all of his government officials stay. They make all of the economic choices, all of the defense choices, and all of the laws for Bestellen. They also handle all of the scientific research for the medicines they provide in our health-care system and all of the future developments to come.

  The state of Hout is directly above Bouw and beside Meer on a map. Hout is mainly a large forest filled with a bunch of lumber mills, lumberjacks, and hunters. We call its citizens a Timmy. Metropolis favors them no more and no less than Bouw, I would say. I never hear anything interesting about them, so I would guess that they are like us, people who just do their jobs.

  The third-most-favored state of Bestellen is probably Meer. It is filled with a few large lakes that take up most of the area of the region, and its main career set and contribution to Bestellen is aquaculture and waterpower. Its citizens are nicknamed the Vis.

  Bloot is less than one-third the size of Meer and is mainly a textile district. From what I have heard, Bloot gets most of their resources from my state, and they have to work with that. We call Bloot citizens a Bloot. These guys are definitely the least favorite. Why else would they be so small?

  Minje is probably the second favorite. Though they have quite a few power plants to go along with their many wind fields, they are still associated with the mines over anything else. Minje citizens are called Merkers.

  Bouw has shops and some power plants, but most of our citizens end up working on the farms, which earns us our name. My dad was in the small percentage of people that weren’t chosen to work on a farm. He was a salesman in one of Bouw’s marketplaces for clothes, yarn, and other things he made from the sheep’s wool from one of the farms near our house. When Dad was a baby and the Raad (the counselor who assigns careers) told his parents he would be a spinner, they were happy he would get to live a new, different, and exciting life rather than the life of livestock and crops his family had become so well acquainted with.

  My mother told me she felt the same way about me being chosen to serve the nation. So when the Stellen officials came to pick me up, I figured that they would be taking me to my post or to a training center for further evaluation. As they knocked on my front door today, Mom and I were in midhug. We both knew that this moment was the last time that we would ever get to see each other. Mom pulled back from our hug with tears streaming down from her face, causing her crystal blue eyes to be even brighter than usual. Our eyes locked for a moment as three sharp knocks against our door pierced our ears.

  Mom wiped away her tears and smiled at me. “Ready, Samuel?” The whites of her eyes had settled into a light pink shade, which I rarely ever saw with her.

  I nodded to Mom and marched over to the front door. As my fingers met the door handle, the officials pounded on the outside of the door and shouted in a deep and authoritative voice that obviously scared Mom. “Open up!”

  Her shoulders jumped, and she put her hand over her chest as the man’s voice boomed through the house. I scurried over and opened the door before they had the chance to shout again. My eyes met their dark and reflective masks. My reflection bounced back to where I was staring at a slightly distorted version of myself. My dark and flat hair seemed longer than it normally was, and my nose seemed more birdlike than usual. Even though I was distracted by my obviously contorted features, I noticed two sets of bright blue eyes in the mask—one being mine and the other belonging to my mother in the background. The officials both parted and made a pathway for me out of the doorway. I turned back to Mom, who was holding her chest and smiling as she sniffled back tears.

  That moment was the second time I had ever seen her cry. The first had happened a few weeks before when the accident at the marketplace happened. Due to some sort of mistake made by one of the workers in the marketplace, there was an explosion at one of the stands, causing a domino effect and more explosions throughout the building. Some people made it out alive, but everyone near the first explosion was found dead on arrival, including my dad.

  Mom’s sad expression when the officials came to pick me up was not the same expression that she had when Dad died. This one was more of pride mixed with sorrow. The other tears were obviously of anger, sadness, and fear. All I wanted to do in both moments was run over to her and give her a hug.

  But the officials waiting by the door wouldn’t let me this time. One of their stern voices blurted out the command “Now” as the other grabbed my arm and started pulling. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t feel as if I could control my actions in that moment. It was like my brain stood still as my body shoved the officials off me, and I lunged for Mom. She backed away from my hug just as the men grabbed my arms and dragged my kicking and flailing body out of the house. The last look that my mother ever got to give me was one of pure horror, and I will never be able to change that.

  I remember watching my house become smaller the farther the officials pulled me away and seeing the deep shadow that was cast over everything when they threw me into their carrier van. I remember nothing else before I woke up on the ground in the jungle.

  As I slowly regain my sense of hearing, the sounds of what I can only assume are birds come into focus. Their light chirping noises bounce off the trees and meet my ears with their sweet song. I have never heard such chirping before, which leads to my first real question.

  Where am I?

  The cool breeze that is blowing through the hundreds of trees meets my face and chest as I walk through the woods, searching for answers. I notice as the breeze blows through my thin shirt that I am wearing the same clothes I was when I left with the officials.

  I weave through the trees, and my hand slides onto the bark. I realize that I have never before felt any tree or plant quite like it, nor have I ever heard of bark feeling choppy and jagged. All of the trees inside of the Bouw were smooth fruit-producing trees, none of which was rough to the touch.

  My heart, along with the rest of my body, jumps as a scream echoes through the woods. Without effort, my feet shoot off from their resting place and push me as far away from the screaming as I can go. The horrid and high-pitched sound is coming from what sounds like a mile away, but I don’t care.

  The longer I run, the thicker the foliage around me is getting. The leaves and branches slap me all over as I push through them.

  Thicker, thicker, thicker. Stop.

  The large and concrete barrier in front of me prevents me from going any farther.

  My thoughts sort through themselves and shout to me, The wall!

  My hands meet the vines and bushes that are growing up the wall as I raise my eyes upward to look for an official. The moment I look up, I realize that I am on the outside of Bestellen. The top of the wall is rounded outward toward my direction to prevent anyone from being able to see up at the security. The inside of the Stellen wall had always been perfectly vertical until the top section, which holds the security guards. Once their top strip, where the guards work, is reached, the wall bows outward, away from Bestellen.

  I shout to my full capacity toward the top of the wall, “Hey!” hoping for the Stellen Wall Security to hear me. “Hey! I’m down here!”

  No answer.

  A low growling from behind me causes my whole body to jolt and spin around. I shoot my eyes back to the woods to look for the source but see nothing except for the very plants that I had to push through to get to this point.

  “Hey!” I continue to scream. “I’m outside of the wall … Hey!”

  But there is no answer.

  My back is pressed against the concrete as the growling grows louder. I can feel whatever is about to end my life coming closer. Too many thoughts to
count are running through my head. Too many to sort through. Too many to think. Only one thought shouts out above all the others as the growling beast approaches: I am not going down without a fight.

  I launch myself off the wall and through the woods, trying to avoid the beast. The low-hanging branches coupled with the thickets and thorns are not my allies. I duck, weave, and climb over and through the obstacles until I am caught on a set of incredibly thick briars. They cling to my left arm as I turn back to the woods and look for the source of the growl.

  My eyes scan my surroundings and find a pair of lopsided yellow eyes looking in two different directions as the animal slowly comes into one of the golden rays of light. First, its head with black, orange, and white stripes and its teeth the size of my hand come into sight, followed by its matching large and catlike body with no tail. The beast creeps toward me as the reality begins to set in. The briars are to be my downfall.

  The beast inches its way toward me, growling its low growl as I notice the oddities of the catlike features. The animal’s ears look a lot like the ears of my neighbor’s cat, but it looks as if there was an extra small set attached to the top of the ear flaps. The odd-shaped ears lead me to notice how off the eyes of the animal were. One eye is focused on me while the other is a little farther down the animal’s face and is looking to my left. The teeth of the beast are much larger in proportion than those of my neighbor’s cat. They are about as long as the length from my shoulder to my elbow.

  All I can think about as the huge animal approaches me is What is wrong with this cat?

  I figure this thought will be my last, but no. The cat’s posture straightens up as its eyes jerk up and back to where the wall is. Bullets ring through the air, causing it to rain leaves as the cat runs back through the forest. I take off running in the opposite direction, ignoring the fact that I was trapped by briars, which tear half of my arm’s flesh to shreds. As I run, I look down to see the large cuts and gashes all over my arm, but I don’t care. The pain only motivates me to run faster.