Disorder

by Martha Adele

  Though she claims she knows, I don’t think she believes.

  Logan

  Bloot, being the least cared for state in Bestellen, has allowed the outside jungle to overflow into their walls. This is the part that we are venturing through.

  Usually, the inside of the wall is towns, buildings, and farms; but with this edge of Bloot, it is jungle. The top of the wall, where the guards usually walk, is overgrown with the top of the trees, which allow only a few Bestellen wall guards to walk through. Even though they have enough room to walk around, they can’t see much because of how thick the trees are.

  Our van pulls up to the point by the wall that the foliage is so thick you can’t see anything below from the guards’ position. We park about three hundred meters back from the wall and exit the van. Up the trees we go, one at a time.

  Eric heads up just before me. I follow him, and John follows me. We all make it up in less than a minute except for the man who stayed behind in the van.

  “Ready? Move out.” John leads us forward through the intertwining branches of the trees. We jump, swing, crawl, and lunge to new branches and to new trees. After getting close enough to the wall to see a few of the guards pacing on the top, we halt.

  Eric and John pull out small tranquilizer bullets that look like the medicine vials back in Bergland, only much smaller and filled with yellow liquid. They load the tranks into the guns and fire at the guards. The silent whistle of the tranks zooms through the air, and the tranks hit the guards in the spots where their armor is the weakest. Each guard that gets hit falls unconscious within seconds in whatever position they are in. A lot of the men stay standing, but there are a few that fall to the ground due to a lack of balance. None of them know what hit them.

  “Move!” John calls out.

  We head forward and get over the wall as quickly as we can into the trees on the other side. On the inside.

  We’re in Bloot.

  The trees in this section are just as thick and odd as the ones outside of the wall, but I immediately notice a change. The farther we go into Bloot, the smoother and more recognizable the trees are. They remind me more of the ones back home in Minje.

  We climb down just before we hit the edge of the woods and walk out. Everyone is wearing armor and has their pockets filled with everything they need for their specific assignment, but we wear ratty clothes over top to blend in. Bloot’s evening air is growing cold, and the cool breeze isn’t helping. The farther we get from the tree line, the more houses we see. The broken-down cabins are scattered, just like the people. Everyone here wears torn fabrics of some kind just to cover their skin, but there is no way that any of their clothes actually keeps them warm.

  The sound of a baby crying echoes from the cabin to my right. Its horrible screams shoot through the house’s broken windows and streams through the crowds. Eric and I seem to be the only people who have noticed. John and the others have already split off and gone to do their assignments, leaving the two of us to go do ours. None of the other Bloot citizens seem to care about the wailing child. They act as if it is nothing new. Barnes and I walk and watch as many rub their hands together to generate some sort of warmth while others beg on the corners of the small dirty streets and lie on the ground, awaiting their fate.

  I have only seen one official on the ground among the commoners. He sticks out like a sore thumb with his dark uniform and the luminescent orange lines down the sides of his arms, legs, and torso. His dark helmet with the black face mask makes him appear even more ominous than he already is.

  Eric and I walk through the scattered town and into the commons area. The first thing I see is a large tented area. Some sections of the wall have brick and stone supports, but there is more tent than stone. From what I can tell, this used to be an old building that got destroyed somehow. It appears to just be ruins with cloth on the broken bits so that they can use the area.

  Eric stiffly states, “This is the marketplace,” as we begin our walk over. The sun is setting right behind the officials’ headquarters for this sector, making the shaded marketplace even colder. Every Taai member was supplied with long-sleeved shirts and long pants to help cover the armor and weaponry. In order to remain undercover, the clothes we were given had to be ratty, just as everyone else’s. The thin layers give the chilly weather a slight advantage. Considering I’m cold and I have on armor and long clothing, I have to wonder how these people feel. I’m sure the officials’ clothes are thick enough to keep them warm, but all of these poor people have got to be uncomfortably cold.

  As we head to the marketplace, the gravel crunches underneath my feet. The whole commons area ground is covered in rocks, mud, and poop from livestock. Though the marketplace is the largest structure in the town, the other buildings are in much better condition. Not to my surprise, the officials’ quarters is the best-kept building I have seen so far.

  The floor of the marketplace is the same as outside, made up of gravel and poop. The large room has hundreds of tables and stands with people selling and buying goods. The air smells like old wood, dust, copper, and livestock; and the people smell just the same. Eric immediately splits from me and takes a right while I go left.

  The first table I stop at is covered with balls of yarn. Not nice and soft yarn, but hard and dirty strands of wool. I lean over the table and look around, trying to make sure that the man selling the yarn doesn’t become suspicious.

  I bump into the table and slip the radio bomb to the bottom of it. “Oof! Sorry, sir.”

  The man gives me a slight glare at first but quickly lightens back up and shoots me with a toothless smile. He picks up a few balls of his product and holds them out, mumbling something about buying them.

  I shake my head and return his smile. Though I repeatedly and kindly turn them down, he won’t stop talking. I have to turn my head away and continue the mission.

  The next few tables I do are easier. All I do is walk by, wait for the salesperson to get distracted, and stick the radio bomb to the bottom of their table. I have to make sure to stick it far enough under that it isn’t seen from the aisles or from behind the table.

  Just as I slip the bomb under my sixteenth table, someone grabs my wrist. Thinking that I have just been caught, I jerk my head back to look at the culprit, a little old lady. Her fluffy silver hair, adding at least four inches to her height, comes up to my chin. I look down to her to see a scowl.

  The woman’s bony fingers squeeze my wrist with one hand. Her eyes grow as she brings up her other hand to feel my arm. She gives my wrist a quick pat down and pulls up my sleeve slightly. She sees my hologram cuff.

  Before I can do or say anything, the woman gives me a huge wrinkly smile. I lower my arm as she lets go and looks around as if to check to make sure the coast is clear. The woman pulls back her thick wool scarf and pulls down her shirt collar to reveal the Diligent’s symbol tattooed on her collarbone. She excitedly points at it and looks to me as if she is pleading.

  I nod and bring my finger up to my lips and gesture for her not to say anything.

  The woman giddily covers herself back up and hops behind her table. The commotion in the room continues at the same pace, but it seems to get a little louder as the woman packs her things up. She slams down an old brown suitcase onto her table and throws in a bunch of her things, ranging from buttons to pieces of cloth.

  I turn to leave and move on to the next table when a lady knocks something off her desk. I pick up the gray stone to hand it back to the woman when I see a beautiful painting of a little river, maybe a creek, painted on one side of it. The bright blue babbling brook runs beside a thick meadow of grass. There isn’t much room for the rest of the picture on the stone, but what is on there is beautiful.

  “Here.” I hand the lady the stone, but she closes her briefcase without taking it.

  The woman walks out from behind her table and closes my fingers arou
nd the stone. Holding her hands around my fist, which encases the painting, she points to my chest and gives me a big and bright smile. She wants me to keep it.

  “Thank you,” I answer, knowing I have to get going. The woman nods, and I move on. I slide the stone into my pocket and head on to the other tables. Eric and I meet in the middle of the marketplace after we have arranged all of our given bombs.

  We look around to make sure there are no officials. “Ready?” Eric asks me.

  I nod, and he brings his cuff up to his mouth. “Marketplace is set.”

  We hold our cuffs to our ears, and the voice of one of our teammates comes out. “Speakers are a go. Commander?”

  John’s voice pops out after a moment of waiting. “Good to go.”

  Eric and I wait. We stand in the marketplace and look around to all of the people. There’s a kid walking around, trying to sell his scrawny goat. We watch his failed attempts and wait for the plan to commence.

  The speakers outside of the marketplace by the officials’ quarters squeal to life, grabbing everyone’s attention. Something too muffled to understand comes out at first but quickly turns into the same message. “Everyone head to the commons for inspection.” The voice of Johnson, one of our group members, echoes through the town over the speakers. “Repeat. Everyone head to the commons for inspection.”

  Everyone in the marketplace scrambles to get their things together. The boy with the goat pulls the animal out, followed by the old lady who gave me the stone. She prances out of the building with her suitcase swinging by her side, along with a goofy smile on her face.

  Eric and I follow the crowds as they all flood into the commons and line up for “inspection,” which is usually what the officials do when they suspect there to be drug or weaponry deals going down. This part of the plan is to evacuate every citizen from the officials by gathering them all together. And so far, it’s working.

  The officials come running out of every nook and cranny over to the hundreds of people who are lining up. They are running around, radioing to one another, trying to figure out who made the order for an inspection. As far as they know, there wasn’t an inspection scheduled.

  Eric and I, side by side, look to each other after all of the officials emerge from the crowd. They huddle together, trying to figure out what’s going on while the large crowd of people continue to line up into three rows. Without any official order, the officials follow the speaker’s instructions and begin searching everyone in the lines. Eric and I are toward the center of the line closest to the marketplace so we have a better view of the situation. We wait until the officials have all calmed down before proceeding with the next part of the plan.

  Eric nods to me once the officials are about twenty people away from us and pulls up his sleeve to get to his cuff. Within seconds, the marketplace is booming with Bergland’s anthem, which is the forbidden song throughout all of Bestellen.

  Men and women alike,

  We all joined the fight.

  We fought, we fought,

  Until we dropped,

  Men and women alike.

  Once the first words come out of the speakers, all officials flee from the crowd toward the marketplace. They all aim their guns into the building and go crouching in. The crowd murmurs as it backs away from the guards and the marketplace, but they are quickly silenced by four officials who stay behind to watch the crowd.

  The four officials swing up their weapons and hold the crowd at gunpoint but are paying too much attention to their fellow officials in the marketplace to actually be a threat.

  We follow the babbling brook,

  Look through every cranny and nook,

  And meet the others down the way

  To avoid the evil crook.

  I look around in the crowd to make sure all of the kids are in the back, farthest away from the marketplace. My focus falls on an old man who holds an old lady’s hand, the same old lady who gave me the painted stone. He looks down to the lady and gives her a sweet smile as he starts singing along to the song, slowly getting louder.

  No matter our race or state,

  We all want to stop the hate.

  We’ll fight, we’ll fight

  Every night

  Until we reach our fate.

  The officials standing in front of the crowd shout at him to shut up and stop singing, but he doesn’t. The old man gets louder quickly and projects the song but is shot in the head immediately. The blood splatter covers the woman beside him, along with a few others who stand near him. The old man’s death is followed by other citizens, scattered across the crowds, singing along. The officials shout out and flail their guns, trying to get them to stop; but soon, everyone joins in singing.

  The officials open fire on the crowd and are attacked by the masses. The people at the front of the crowd that live through the spray of gunfire kick, jump on, spit on, and tear apart the officials outside of the marketplace. Eric and I shout to everybody, telling them to get back as the song comes to a close.

  We follow the babbling brook,

  Look under every cranny and nook,

  And meet the others down the way

  To take back what he took.

  We manage to get everyone as far away from the marketplace as we can as the bombs in the marketplace go off. Stone flies everywhere, along with shrapnel from what was left inside of the ruins from today’s sales.

  Everyone yells something different as they run through the town, attacking any and every piece of property that belonged to an official. From vans to buildings. They destroy everything. Eric and I check all of the citizens’ bodies that we can to make sure anyone who isn’t dead is getting help. I check dozens of bodies and stop when I find the kind gray-haired old woman who gave me the rock. She lies dead next to the old man who was the first to be shot.

  As the rest of the citizens raid the officials’ headquarters, John radios in. “Meet in front of the officials’ quarters. I repeat, meet in front of the officials’ quarters.”

  Eric answers back, “Got it.”

  Eric and I meet back up with the other members of our group in front of the officials’ headquarters and get as many people out of the building and gathered around us as we can. John gets everyone’s attention by standing on one of the officials’ cars and using his cuff as a speaker.

  “Attention! Attention!” Very few people stop talking. John pulls out his pistol and shoots into the air three times, getting everyone’s attention and shutting them up. The gunfire echoes through the air and slowly fades as everyone shifts their focus onto John. “I am Commander Young of Bergland’s elite force. We don’t have any time for questions. Once we blow a hole in that wall, everyone needs to follow me. We will have vehicles waiting to take you guys out of here to safety.”

  The crowd cheers for John as he gets down from the car. He comes over to the rest of our Taai group and holds his hand to his earpiece. “Okay. Got it.” John lowers his hand and turns to us. “You guys stay back to make sure everyone gets out. I will lead them out and then meet you guys at the vehicle we came in.”

  “Yes, sir,” we all affirm.

  “The jet should be coming any second.” John turns around to the wall’s general direction. We can’t see it from where we stand due to all of the cabins, woods, and the fact that it’s two to three miles away.

  Everyone becomes silent as the deep sound of a roaring thunder comes barreling overhead. We look to the sky as a Bergland jet flies over top of us, and a large explosion shakes the ground, blowing a section of the wall to bits. All of the citizens remain quiet, in shock that this is actually happening.

  John turns to everyone and shouts into his cuff’s speaker, “Everyone! Follow me!”

  Like cattle, they all go storming after him. Weaving through the buildings and running through the woods, the citizens cheer for freedom as they e
scape this desolate land of oppression. The Taai, including myself, help go through the town and make sure everyone is out. When Johnson called for everyone to meet in the commons for inspection, everyone in the town obeyed. They must have been really frightened of what would have happened if they disobeyed.

  Bloot is overall a small state, but the sector my group is assigned is the smallest sector. Its population was a little over eight hundred people. Looking at the sea of dead citizens lying in the commons area, I know it’s at least two hundred people less.

  Once we finish checking the area, the rest of the guys and I head out toward the point of the explosion. After jogging about three miles, we make it to the giant section of land that is completely destroyed. All of the trees within a hundred-meter radius of the wall have been knocked over, and the wall itself is just crumbles of stone scattered around the woodland floor. We make it through and head back to our van, where John stands waiting for us. The sun has already set, and it is almost pitch-black within the woods other than the headlights from our vehicles.

  “About time,” John jeers. “I guess you guys were scanning the area pretty thoroughly, huh?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mavis

  Everyone has been assigned their new posts for tomorrow, which is causing all to be a bit more chatty than usual. It’s either that or the fact that it is the first night of us raging a full war on Bestellen.

  I lie on my bed, listening to the silence floating through the room. All of the other girls, including Mandy, are still in the showers, performing their nightly hygiene chores. I left the kitchen early today, which allowed me to get all of my rituals done before everyone else. It’s a rare occasion to have some peace and quiet like this in this room, usually because there are so many other people in here. I’ve noticed that this particular group of girls hasn’t become as close as many of the girls in the other rooms. There are some in here that hang out together, but not many.

  The two girls who are the closest in this room enter, interrupting my thoughts. One of the girls is muttering something that sounds like an equation to the other girl. Not a normal equation like I’ve seen with Janice, more like one that sounds like a different language.