Flight of Shadows: A Novel

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  This knife, he vowed, would cut out both of her eyes. But not until the same knife had worked its way across her body and delivered the justified punishment for fooling him into a weakness that would never occur again.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Caitlyn climbed a short ladder that ended at a trapdoor, following two of the men with spears. A couple were below her, in case she tried to turn around.

  One of the men above her banged on the bottom of the trapdoor, a complicated code of raps and pauses. Seconds later, the door creaked open above her, and weak sunlight made it to Caitlyn’s eyes.

  The men above her climbed upward and into the room above. The men below her pushed her upward into the light.

  She had no idea, of course, where she was. The interior of the room above her gave no clues either. Tin-sheet walls, no windows, low, exposed roof made of the same stuff, where a hole had been cut to allow sunshine inside.

  Then she was blindfolded. She had to trust that if they were going to harm her, they would have done so by now.

  One of the men gently took her by the elbow. She heard the door open. The man led her outside, where the warmth of the sun hit her face.

  The man spun her several times clockwise, then several times counterclockwise.

  She began to count paces as they led her away. Began to smell the aroma of human waste and smoke.

  At the hundred twenty mark, the man stopped her and pulled off her blindfold.

  She was now out of the tunnels beneath the city, well beyond the city walls, in the center of a shantytown with no landmarks to guide her as to which one. Clouds had darkened the sky, spatters of rain finally coming down.

  Six men still surrounded her, making it clear she was under their guard. As prisoner. And as protectors.

  Walking went faster now that she could see.

  Five minutes later, they stopped at a shanty, indistinguishable from any others. One stepped over a small muddy stream to open the makeshift door and pointed. There was a table inside. A chair. And a basket with a loaf of bread and a big chunk of cheese. Jar of water beside.

  Despite the quickening of rain drops, the others remained in position outside.

  She understood clearly. The shanty was hers. And she wasn’t going to be allowed to leave.

  Razor was on a trolley with other Industrials, headed toward the address he’d secured earlier. Windows were open, despite the light rain. Windows were never closed in a trolly. Too much smell.

  The car wasn’t full yet, as it was making a pass from the inner city to the outer wall and was collecting more passengers at each stop.

  The street was essentially a canyon with high walls on each side—not as high as the city wall, nor patrolled by soldiers—and only the tracks for electric trains down the center. No sidewalks. Cameras with motion-detector software monitored the street. The software was set up to detect biped motion. The silent trains that whisked past every fifteen minutes did not trigger alarms. Only pedestrians came to the attention of Enforcers. Since it was impossible to scale the walls—strung with barbed wire and electrical zappers—anyone stupid enough to walk the streets was immediately put into custody.

  It was a good system for the Influentials, as the entrances through the walls to their neighborhood consisted of two types. The first was for Influentials. Large, clear acrylic bubbles extended from the wall out to their trolley stops. Inside those bubbles, they were protected. From weather. From any interaction with Industrials. Their trolleys were air-conditioned, seats with leather trim, smoked glass windows. No chance for an Industrial to enter these trolleys. Transportation for Influentials only stopped at the bubbles, and access to the bubbles from the neighborhood needed a password and retina scan.

  In contrast, the Industrials had to pass through a guarded checkpoint in and out of the neighborhood. Going in, they faced metal detectors and body-scanning devices. Suicidal as it was for an Industrial to attack an employer, the safeguard still existed. Going out, they faced the same scanners—this was protection against petty theft.

  Their trolley stops—for trains without air conditioning and without any seating—had no protection. When Industrials were finished with their jobs for the day, they would each pass through the wall, then wait in clusters for the trolley that would take them to the outer city wall, where they would walk to the shanties and soovie camps.

  Industrials around Razor ignored him. He was tattooed again. One of them.

  As the trolley whisked down the street, he saw the trees and rooftops of the houses behind the walls. Each house would have wonderfully tended gardens—attended to by Industrials happy for labor-intensive employment. Other Industrials cleaned and cooked. Some even provided tutoring for the children of Influentials. Households might have eight to twenty Industrials at work during the day. But at dusk, the neighborhoods emptied, and only Influentials remained in the houses.

  Razor became more alert as the trolley slowed for the stop he needed. Not to disembark, but to wait for new passengers.

  The trolley door slid open, and ten Industrials stepped aboard. They had passed through the checkpoint and were now bound for a checkpoint at the outer wall. There was the usual jostling for position. These ten were no different than the other assortments the trolley had been collecting. Some young, some old. Some with defeated posture. Others not so bowed. All with the spider-webbed tattooing across their faces.

  Razor didn’t hesitate and didn’t care who heard him ask.

  “Any of you bondaged to the Swain household?”

  Eyes swiveled his way. Then a woman—stout, old, hair bound beneath a handkerchief—quickly looked away.

  But nobody answered.

  Razor shrugged. Looked back out at the high, thick brick walls that passed in a blur. He swayed with the rhythm of the trolley. He waited until after the next stop, when another dozen Industrials boarded and pushed all the passengers in tighter.

  Razor shifted, and it didn’t take much for him to get near the old woman.

  When the trolley picked up speed and the murmuring of conversations began again, he leaned closer and spoke into her ear. He smelled bleach, knowing the scent came from her hands. She was a domestic cleaner then.

  “I know someone who wants to ask questions about the doctor,” Razor said in a low voice. “You will be well paid for your answers.”

  He knew he would learn a lot from how she responded. In households where Influentials treated Industrials with respect and decency, the ties became almost familial, with a shared loyalty. Influentials who abused their Industrials, however, were betrayed in as many unseen ways as possible.

  The old woman gave no reaction. Her silence could have been loyalty. Or fear. It confirmed for Razor, however, that he’d guessed correctly. She was bondaged to the Swain household. Otherwise she would have denied it immediately.

  The trolley windows were open, and air blew an assortment of passenger smells across Razor’s face. If it had been hotter, like the day before, the smells would have been worse. He was patient; there was no place to go anyway. He couldn’t exit at any of the stops. If he actually stepped off the trolley, he would have only two choices. Walk down the empty tracks and face immediate arrest. Or approach a gate, where the guards would likely deny him access, and possibly find out he was wanted by Enforcers.

  He had to ride to the end of the line, something he had expected.

  The old woman must have known it too.

  She remained silent and ignored him until that final stop, just short of the city’s outer wall.

  As the Industrials unpacked themselves from the trolley and began trudging to the outer gate, she discreetly tugged on Razor’s shirt.

  “What is it you want to know?” she asked in a voice much softer than her appearance. “And how much is it worth?”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Rain had quit, barely minutes after starting, and the shifting clouds left receding gray to be replaced by patches of white. Mason found a vantage point on a hill of disca
rded computer monitors. Billy and Theo might be somewhere in visual range, but he wasn’t worried that they might see him.

  Back in Appalachia, where hawks soared in clear blue skies, the predator birds would often screech from the air, knowing that the sound would startle small animals and send them scurrying. The hawks did this because when their prey flinched or started scurrying, the frightened movement gave away their hiding spots, and the hawks would swoop down and strike in savage satisfaction.

  With the oily smoke of burning plastic swirling around him here, Mason looked for the same advantage.

  If Billy or Theo recognized him from when he’d almost killed them in Appalachia, their reaction would set them apart in the pattern of activity among the dozens and dozens of scavengers searching among the acres and acres of debris—dismembered car engines long pulled from the corpses of soovies, rusted bicycle frames, video game consoles, and the hazardous electronic waste of the rich.

  This was the Meltdown, set farthest away from the city wall that encased the Influentials, a distance measured in miles, ensuring the acrid smoke never wafted into their manicured gardens.

  On his journey here, Mason had noted the progression, or rather regression, of status in loosely defined layers. Closest to the city walls, the Industrials and Illegals with the most status lived in sturdy shacks, with the least walking distance between them and the checkpoints at the city walls. Many of them had large dogs chained nearby for protection; the Influentials never allowed weapons more sophisticated than knives among any of them, so the dogs were essentially enough to keep a shanty safe if the owner could afford the resources it took to feed the animal.

  Each successive layer outward from the wall held populations that were poorer and had more distance to walk the dangerous and unpoliced trails from where they lived to reach inner-city, near-slavery employment among the Influentials. Nearly an hour by foot from the checkpoint at the city walls, the final outer layers consisted of the soovie parks, and beyond was the Meltdown, where Mason now stood. Here, the poorest and the most desperate spent all their daylight hours trying to glean copper, brass, and other metals for sale at stalls closer to the city wall.

  The noise was as horrendous as the smell of burning plastic, with relentless scavengers tearing apart computers and other electronics with hammers and pliers, many of their faces pitted with tiny scars from exploding glass.

  On his hillside of computer monitors, Mason enjoyed the sensation of being above it, surveying the scavengers from his precarious perch.

  He had his left hand in his pocket, fondling the fur of a freshly killed rat, when someone finally challenged him.

  Short of spotting Billy and Theo, he’d been hoping for this. It would have been simpler to walk up to a scavenger and start asking questions, but not near as enjoyable.

  The challenge came in the form of a rock that bounced off a computer monitor at Mason’s feet. He looked for the source and saw four of them, young men in grimy jeans, shirtless. They wore soot-stained kerchiefs across the bottom half of their faces. Not for disguise, but to filter out the noxious fumes.

  Three held rocks poised to throw. The fourth was gesturing for Mason to move down the pile of monitors toward them.

  Mason shrugged. It took him a few minutes to pick his way among the monitors.

  “We got rules here,” the one without a rock said. “Simple rules. You don’t work alone. Half of what you find goes to us.”

  “Screw your rules,” Mason said. Offering to pay them for information was undoubtedly a mistake. It would only mark him as prey to be robbed.

  The leader stepped forward, his face twisted with a threatening leer.

  Mason was expecting it and closed the distance instead of retreating. At the same time, he kicked upward and outward, striking the center of the man’s groin. As the man fell forward, Mason grabbed his hair, spun him around, and put him in a chokehold.

  That kept the rocks at bay.

  Then, with his other hand, Mason Tasered his victim in the back. Not at full stun. He didn’t want jellied meat. He wanted a man in agony.

  The leader shrieked and sagged to his knees.

  “Tell them to go away,” Mason said. “I want to talk.”

  “Get him!” the man shouted instead.

  The other three rushed Mason, who dropped his human shield and swung his Taser in an arc. Two fell instantly, still conscious but partially paralyzed. The third hesitated in disbelief, and Mason swiped him with the Taser too. Same result.

  He adjusted the weapon to a higher power, and just like stabbing them with an ice pick, punched each of the three in the throat with his Taser.

  None of them even managed a croak as each collapsed completely.

  Mason turned back to their leader.

  “Hope you’re ready to talk now,” Mason said. “I’m not bad with a knife either.”

  FORTY-SIX

  The old woman didn’t have to instruct Razor to walk with her through the main checkpoint at the outer wall. Both knew that if they stopped walking, it would draw the attention of Enforcers. The rules of departure were very simple—three lines of single-file pedestrians.

  Given that Industrials were already screened for theft at the secondary walls that surrounded each neighborhood, the departure checkpoint was not as carefully guarded as the entrance checkpoint the old woman would have used at the beginning of the day to get inside the city wall for a trolley to take her to the Swain neighborhood. Here the point was simply to get the Industrials out of the city as efficiently as possible. If they wanted to loiter and form groups beyond the city wall, that was not a concern for the Influentials. Because they were weaponless—death to any Industrial and the entire family if anything beyond a knife was found during a random raid—they were no threat with a guarded wall to scale to reach the inner core.

  Razor stayed in line, face straight ahead for the cameras, silent like everyone in front of and behind him. He passed through the checkpoint with no incident, nor did he expect any. His face was tattooed like all the rest.

  The checkpoint gate had a turnstile where the cameras scanned the bar code tattoos for each of the three lanes of pedestrians. Computers tallied the number of Industrials who had entered the city at the beginning of the day and compared it to the number who left. There was an allowable variance because, unofficially, some Industrials, especially the young and attractive, stayed behind at the whims, or abuses, of Influentials. But the comparison number—just like the difference between the in and out for each neighborhood—was still watched closely for any large difference that might indicate that Industrials were staying inside the city for a possible nighttime revolt.

  Finally past the outer wall—which was thirty feet tall and wide enough for the two-soldier patrol at the top—the old woman turned to Razor.

  “Food.” She nodded her head toward a street vendor, who had a cart with strips of fly-specked cooked chicken hanging from wires.

  Razor bought two pieces, using crumpled bills of small denominations. Only idiots allowed themselves to look wealthy outside the walls.

  He returned to her, keeping one of the pieces for himself. He ripped off a piece of chicken with his teeth and deliberately chewed with his mouth open, essentially mimicking the way she attacked her chicken. She said nothing until all of the greasy meat was gone.

  Then she spoke with weary hatred. “That man, the doctor, he keeps my daughter behind two or three nights a week. Who can stand against it?”

  Razor nodded. He understood with far more clarity than he would ever share with anyone. Images tumbled through his mind, the images of his nightmares, and he took a deep breath to clear his emotions.

  Because of those images, Razor understood hatred too. And how it could be used. This woman would not protect Swain. Chances were, no Industrial in the household would.

  “How long have you been in his service?” Razor asked.

  “Five weeks. Maybe six.”

  “He is a surgeon?”
>
  “Yes. But no one visits him for surgery. He doesn’t leave the house.”

  “Old? Young?” Razor wanted a picture of the man in his head.

  “Early fifties. Beyond that, I know nothing. No one in the household does.”

  “No one?” Razor said it with disbelief. In most households, Industrials were given no more attention than an appliance. Valued as little as any slave. As a consequence, most Influentials talked or acted around them like they didn’t exist.

  “We’re all new to the household. All of us joined when I did.”

  “Why were the previous household Industrials all dismissed before you got there?”

  “Maybe they knew too much. This man, none of us like him. We all fear him. He is abusive.” She spat on the ground.

  “Still, I can’t believe in six weeks you know nothing beyond his occupation.”

  “My daughter says he occasionally has a visitor. Late at night. A military man. And sometimes a woman, who comes there with the military man.”

  Razor nodded. The old woman didn’t need much encouragement.

  “My daughter is locked up when the woman comes and is not released until she goes. Like he doesn’t want her to know about my daughter.”

  Razor shrugged.

  “There’s nothing else I can tell you,” the old woman said. “Really.”

  “If I need to find you again?” Razor asked.

  “Do I look young enough to live near the city wall?”

  He knew what she was implying. Industrials with the most status lived close to the gate that let them into the city to work during the day. The walk was shorter. She was too old to have status.

  “How far do you walk?” he asked.

  “Almost to the soovie camps,” she said. “And soon I’ll have to move there.”

  Poverty slowly drove them outward, with the weakest and poorest at the fringes, to be preyed upon by the gangs that ruled the soovie camps.