The Purge of District 89 (A Grower's War Book 1)

by D. J. Molles

  Virgil nodded.

  Tria let out a string of curses.

  Walter continued to stare.

  Getty laid back in his seat and smoked the last of his cigarette. When he didn’t have it in his mouth he regarded the shrinking stick’s red cherry with a certain romance, like the touch of a lover he knew he would never feel again. Then all at once, he drew out the last little bit of smoke from it and pitched it out the window and looked very serious, very focused, very clear.

  The clearest he’d been since getting that bullet in the leg.

  “If that’s the Town Center,” Tria noted. “It’s gonna be blockaded off.”

  Virgil just shook his head. “If it’s an actual firefight, they ain’t gonna have time for blockades.”

  “It’s gonna be a shit show.”

  “This whole night’s been a shit show. What else is new?”

  Tria leaned and looked into the back, first at Getty, and then at Walter. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Are you guys gonna do this?”

  Getty nodded. “Ayuh, I’m gonna do it,” he said, as though it were a silly question.

  Walter just stared back at her. But eventually he nodded as well.

  I’m in it. I can’t not be in it.

  I’m in it for me. I’m in it for everyone.

  For Carolyn. For Roy. Even for that drunk, Grandpa Clarence.

  I’m all in.

  And the truck drove on, as though it were not even in Virgil’s control. Like one of those amusement park rides that makes you feel like you have control, but you have none, you are always being inexorably drawn into the center of the action. You will experience everything that it has to give you, and there is nothing that you can do about it. You are strapped in. You can go nowhere.

  Your free will doesn’t mean shit.

  “You need to tell him,” Tria suddenly said into the introspective darkness of everyone’s looming mortality.

  Walter looked at her, confused, thinking, tell who what?

  He looked at Virgil.

  Virgil was eyes-forward, both hands on the steering wheel.

  “We might not make it out, Virgil,” she pressed.

  The man who’d been sheriff of Agrarian District 89 up until only hours ago growled breathily, but didn’t respond.

  “He has a right to know,” she said.

  Walter was frowning now.

  He realized that Getty was watching him in the stillness, calm as Getty was always seemingly calm, and that was when he realized that it was him they were talking about. It was the subject in which everyone stopped talking when he walked into the room. It was the thing that everyone else knew, but didn’t want him to know.

  “Know what?” Walter demanded, edging forward in his seat.

  Virgil stayed silent.

  Tria let out a disdainful huff of air through her nose. She turned away from Virgil. Faced the road. Adjusted her position in her seat. “The Eudys,” she said, flatly and suddenly, like she’d made a decision. “The Eudy Clan. You ever heard of them?”

  Walter looked at her, then at the windshield and he could see the ghost of Tria’s form reflected in the angled glass, but only her rifle, and her legs, and her hands on top of the rifle, and how they were squirming together, nervous.

  “No. Not before tonight. Why? Should I?”

  “They’re terrorists,” Virgil remarked bitterly.

  Tria snorted reproachfully again. “We’re all terrorists according to the CoAx. If you wanna be free you’re a goddamned terrorist, and that’s how it’s always been.”

  Walter had moved now so that he was almost hanging between the two front seats. He felt unwell. It came on him very suddenly. One moment he was just feeling his pulse skyrocketing, and now, all of the sudden, there was nausea that went with it. Was it the exhaustion? Was it his body rebelling against everything he’d put it through? He was no trained warfighter…

  “Okay,” he said, irritation coming through, the type of irritation that accompanies someone whose patience has depleted along with their feeling of well-being. “What does this have to do with me? Why do I care who the Eudys are?”

  Virgil drove.

  Tria watched him.

  Waited for him.

  So did Walter.

  Say something, goddammit!

  He cleared his throat.

  Walter was aware of the way he glanced over his shoulder, as though to measure how close Walter was, and the way that he then shifted, just slightly, just an inch or so away from him, as though he was preparing to fight Walter off.

  This is serious, isn’t it?

  Why don’t you just tell me—?

  “They’re Carolyn’s parents,” Virgil said.

  Chapter 20

  “No,” Walter said. His voice was calm. Matter-of-fact.

  His chest felt achey. His vision worn down to just what was in front of his face.

  “No, Carolyn’s last name was Hartsell,” Walter asserted.

  He wasn’t sure what was happening. Was this a misunderstanding? Were they operating on bad intel? What made them think this ludicrous thing?

  Walter knew his wife. They didn’t know her. Virgil did, kind of, but Tria didn’t. Getty didn’t. None of them knew her better than he did.

  He fully expected Virgil to look surprised and say, “Oh, all this time I thought she was a Eudy.”

  Virgil didn’t say that.

  Neither did Tria.

  They both exchanged a glance with each other, but didn’t look at Walter.

  “She was a Hartsell,” Walter repeated, a little more insistent. And with that insistence, a little more unsure. And with that unsurety, a little irritation, a little indignation, a little how dare they…

  “She was a Hartsell after the state took her,” Virgil said stiffly. “After they disappeared her parents. The Eudys.”

  Walter sat there, wordless.

  Perhaps his lack of words was perceived as an invitation for more explanation, but really, he didn’t want anything else. He wanted them to shut up. He kept thinking, they don’t know what they’re talking about, this is bullshit.

  But Virgil didn’t perceive that. Virgil perceived silence, and he forged ahead, relieved that Walter was taking it so well, when in fact Walter was simply frozen, his hands clenched together at his knees, and his brain was only half listening to what Virgil said, while the other half ran around in circles with its hair on fire, denying everything and trying to find a hole to hide in.

  The sanctum sanctorum had been violated.

  His memories had been deemed unreal.

  Everything he knew about the most important person in his life was suddenly stamped with a big, fat, red, FALSE, or at the very least, QUESTIONABLE.

  And Virgil was still talking.

  “The Eudys started their shit back in the day, back in the beginning. They were the motherfuckers that DTI was designed for. They were the original Domestic Terrorists.” He put heavy import into the words. “When they were caught, the state took Carolyn, gave her a new name, and shipped her to this District. Gag-ordered and all. The Eudys have been sitting in DTI for over a dozen years. Until recently, anyways.”

  Walter sat.

  That’s about it.

  There wasn’t much else to do.

  He could be angry. But that felt pointless. He could rage about it. He could deny it. But here he was, getting this entire pile of shit laid on him while he was hurtled into the storm.

  It all felt very pointless.

  He stared out the windshield at the distance, where the night was heating up into orange fire light, and dark shapes moved across the sky like wraiths and spit out tongues of fire that chewed through cement and life.

  There were people out there. People that those big bullets were obliterating. Someone, down there on the ground, dying right now, dying for something, some thing, and Walter was having trouble remembering what it was.

  He was about to be there. He was about to be there
in the middle of all that, and he couldn’t even remember why.

  She would have told me, he wanted to say.

  But really. Would she have?

  If they had taken her parents to DTI. If they had told her what would happen if she spoke about it. If they had told her how very easy it was for secrets to get out.

  Oh, Walter could almost see it happening. He pictured some Fed hovering over a little girl version of Carolyn, saying, “Don’t ever tell anyone what happened, because three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, and if we ever find out that you told anyone, and we will, you can bet your pretty pig-tails we will, then we’ll execute your parents on national television and we’ll throw a goddamned parade about it.”

  No. Carolyn would not have told him.

  In the front of the car, back into his hellish reality, them this doomed meteorite, planet-bound, unstoppable, they were going into that fray, like a gravity well that was sucking them in, and Virgil was driving them in, and from his seat of control he looked in the rearview mirror and he made eye contact with Walter, who was suddenly feeling a little woozy, and he said, “her name’s not Carolyn, either.”

  Walter looked back. Didn’t blink. His eyes got dry. Hazy. Everything turned to black and white. He still didn’t bother to blink.

  “Oh?” he said.

  “It’s Stephanie. Stephanie Eudy is her original name.”

  And that was strange. People’s names became somehow their embodiments. She didn’t look like a Stephanie to Walter any more than she looked like a Robert. She was Carolyn. Carolyn Hartsell. Carolyn Baucom, actually, and thank you very much.

  Whoever she was, she’d married him. She’d married him and she’d taken his name. Which meant that she was a Baucom. Walter knew that. And Virgil couldn’t take that away from him.

  But then there was something else.

  “You knew,” Walter said.

  Again, his voice was calm.

  He was calmer than ever right now, miraculously. He stared at Virgil, and then looked away, out the windshield at what was ahead of them. Along the edge of the visible horizon, there was a light that flashed white, and a rumble that they felt.

  Virgil looked away from the rearview mirror.

  He didn’t respond.

  “You knew,” Walter said again. “And you let me think that it was my fault.”

  Tria fidgeted in her seat.

  To Walter’s left, Getty was sitting, looking out the window as though none of this conversation pertained to him. And Walter supposed it didn’t. Getty was wiser than he appeared at first interaction.

  “Why did you keep this from me?” Walter asked, earnestly.

  Virgil’s jaw worked violently. “Because I didn’t want you running off.”

  “Running off?” Walter coughed out a laugh.

  “I didn’t want you getting it into your head that you were going to run off and ally yourself with Carolyn’s parents. They’re Not To Be Fucked With.” He looked at Walter and his expression was that of the person who believes they are finally pulling themselves up to the moral high ground. “I know you, Walt. I know you would have tried to find them.”

  Virgil started to say something else, but Walter cut him off, his brow knit together. “Wait. Wait. I don’t understand. Why did the CoAx come for Carolyn? Was she working with the resistance? Was she getting in touch with her parents or something?”

  Virgil shook his head slowly, unsurely. “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We don’t know. From everything we can see, I don’t even think that Carolyn knew the Eudys had been broken out. Why do you think the CoAx and the Fed kept the break-out such a secret? They didn’t want to fan the flames. They knew that the entire organization that had gone to weeds would start coalescing again if they found out the Eudys had broken out. Besides that fact, I don’t think the Fed wants to advertise that their DTI had a hole poked in it.”

  “She didn’t even know?” Walter leaned back in his seat. There was a weight on his chest. Somebody had put a cinderblock against his sternum. “She didn’t even know.”

  Virgil shook his head.

  “I don’t understand why they took her,” Walter said, listlessly.

  “I don’t either,” Virgil admitted. “But it has something to do with the Eudys. I guaran-fucking-tee you that.”

  They can’t do that, Walter thought, inanely. They can’t just take her because her parents got busted out of internment…

  And then

  Of course they can. They can do anything they fucking want.

  What are we?

  We’re just the people.

  We’re just the subjects.

  So the wind blows.

  But no more.

  You don’t have to go whichever way the wind blows.

  You can run against it, if you choose.

  But you have to choose.

  Walter stopped slouching back in his seat. He sat up fully. Gripped his rifle a little tighter.

  How strange. How very strange this all was.

  How was it that someone of his historically shitty temper could be so calm right now?

  “Tria, you got any more ammo in that bag of yours?” he said.

  Tria hesitated, then she dove into the satchel that was between her legs and she came out with extra magazines for their battlerifles. “Good idea,” she said. “Everyone top off. Keep your partial mag in your pocket. But this is all we got, okay? This is all we got.”

  We are going to die today.

  They are going to purge us.

  They are going to purge this whole District.

  Walter took his magazine from Tria’s small, pale hand. He swapped it out with the one that was already seated into his rifle. Then he took the half-emptied one and he found a pocket in his pants that it fit nicely into—the left, back pocket. Hopefully it would stay there.

  “How far are we right now?” Getty asked.

  “Not far,” Walter said, looking out his window. “Virgil, what’s your plan?”

  Virgil took a deep breath. “I’m going to drive as far as I can drive. And then we’re gonna bail. And we’re gonna fight our way in. And we’re gonna hope that my group is there. And we’re gonna hope that they have some resources to help us out, and maybe even a way to get out of the District. If not, then I suppose the plan is just to shoot to the last round. Save one for yourself.”

  “Better dead than DTI,” Getty intoned.

  “Fuck that,” Tria mumbled to herself. “I got a knife.”

  No one spoke for a full minute after that.

  Looking out of his own window, Walter broke the silence: “Virgil.”

  “What?”

  “If we get out of here alive?”

  “Ayuh?”

  “We’re gonna hafta talk.”

  By which he meant that he might have to throw a few blows.

  And though Virgil didn’t acknowledge this, Walter thought that he understood.

  Chapter 21

  Union Highway—the highway they were driving north on—was the main road that ran north-south. It meandered on in a relatively straight line for miles, sometimes with little offshoots that harbored a few old houses.

  In the approximate center of Agrarian District 89, Union Road intersected with Town Center Boulevard. These crossroads created four quadrants. If viewed from the air, the first three quadrants—northeast, southeast, and southwest—would show wide, flat, square patches of concrete that extended out from the crossroads.

  This was the industrial section. The area where all the hangars were located, all the parts were warehoused, all the machinery was kept and upgraded and recycled and repaired. A miserable-looking grid of metal buildings, usually done in tan, sometimes in gray.

  What was known officially as the “Town Center” was in the last quadrant. That one slice of the pie to the northwest of the crossroads. Here, there were no metal buildings and hangars and Quonset huts. Here it was thousands of
three-story brownstone buildings, 90-percent apartment buildings, 10-percent bars and stores and entertainment.

  The intersection of Union and Town Center was a natural high point in the land. There, sitting at the traffic light nearly every day of his adult life as he drove into work, Walter could see most of the Town Center. In the early mornings sometimes fog would shroud it in a sleepy sort of haze.

  Walter had seen the view many times.

  But he had never seen it like this.

  They were sitting at that same traffic light. And it had caught them now, just as it always caught Walter. And he was leaning forward to tell Virgil to run the light, there was no reason to stop for it now. But then he looked out from that intersection and he saw the Town Center and the words died in his mouth.

  But it was the scene.

  And it was probably the same reason why Virgil was just sitting there, idling at a red-light like a good citizen when he should have been trucking through it.

  To the northwest, the Town Center had been wrecked.

  Walter stared at all the building fronts that ran along Town Center Boulevard. It seemed like there was not a single glass window left intact. The sides of the buildings twinkled with smoldering firelight. Smoke had blackened some areas. Bullet holes of various sizes stitched random patterns across the walls.

  Cars stood in wreckage, in various positions, like corpses of men that have been shot and killed and fallen to the ground. One car was up on the curb. One was crashed into a telephone pole and was burning. A third was parked neatly on the side of the road, but it looked like a giant dog had chewed on it.

  There were bodies in the streets. Disguised amongst the rubble.

  “I can’t believe this,” Virgil whispered to himself, dumbfounded.

  This was where the fighting had been.

  But it was not here anymore.

  To the west, gunships circled over a different section of the Town Center, like flies buzzing around roadkill. Their spotlights would blink on in the darkness, searching for something, and then wink off again. And when it was off, tracers would lance out like gouts of fire from a dragon’s mouth and Walter knew that they were obliterating everything they touched.