FSF, August 2008

by Spilogale, Inc

  The pitch of conversation rose around them, a dozen variations of the same stories being told, repeated, and invented. Their small group sat quietly for a second.

  Max coughed. “Did you ever hear the one that goes, how can you tell when a rumor about Drozhin is true?"

  Major Georgiev stared at Max, his face carefully blank. The two kids waited for the answer. Finally, Vasily said, “How?"

  Max aimed his finger like a gun at the other man's head. “'What did you just say?’”

  Georgiev smirked and the kids chuckled nervously. Max leaned back, closed his eyes, ignored the press of bodies. His day had started as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contact in Intelligence. His day ended as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contacts in Intelligence. Nothing had changed. But then he thought about the distance from the Adarean baptism at the execution that morning to the brutal murder of the Adareans in the park, and it felt as if everything had changed.

  As he listened to the sound of the wheels, all he could think of was the roar of the mower bladers as the tractor rolled toward the Adareans trapped in the pit.

  * * * *

  "Wake up, Nikomedes.” A hand shook him.

  Before he was completely awake, Max deflected the hand and turned the wrist. He snapped alert quick enough to stop before he broke it. Major Georgiev bent over him. “What?"

  "We're passing through the outskirts of Lost Angeles—it's night, the city's big enough to hide most of us."

  "What's the plan? There are bars welded on the windows, and the doors are locked.” He'd watched younger men waste themselves for hours trying to find a way out, everything from tearing through the panels to breaking windows. One of them had been cut badly on broken glass. Wind whistled through the broken windows; combined with the night temperatures, it would have chilled the ride to the point of hypothermia if not for the warmth of the bodies jammed together.

  "We're going to rock the bus, tip it over,” Georgiev said. “I could use your help organizing these kids."

  Max straightened in his seat. “Tipping the bus—that will get us out how?"

  "They'll have to empty the bus then. We'll overpower them, make a break for it."

  "You're on your own.” He leaned back again.

  "To think that I was ever inspired by you,” Georgiev sneered. “You're a coward."

  And you're a fool, Max wanted to respond. He had nothing against escape, but suicide? “Don't play into their hands."

  "This morning,” Georgiev said, looking around, “we were all part of an organization, each of us knowing our role and function. Tonight we are starving, thirsty outcasts, deprived of basic necessities. But we're still men, we have to do something."

  There were murmurs of “amen” and “witness” from the men around them.

  "Don't you think Intelligence's purpose is to reduce and dispirit us?” Max asked.

  "Yes, but—"

  "So what do you think they'll do to anyone who goes against their intentions early on?” Max asked. “What would your response be? To anyone who tries to lead?"

  Georgiev said nothing.

  "You would destroy the ring leaders as an example,” Max said, answering his own question. “And first you would create a situation where you expect people to step up, just so you can make examples of them. It's what I would do."

  "I'm not you,” Georgiev said. “And I believe this is all a mistake. Those are our fellow soldiers out there, our brothers and cousins. If we force them to pay attention to us, they'll listen. And if they don't, we'll overwhelm them."

  Murmurs of “yeah” and “they have to listen."

  "You've been hit in the face and burned and you still say that?” Max said, leaning back in his seat. “We save ourselves. No purge lasts forever."

  "You're pathetic,” Georgiev said and turned away.

  Vasily, hand at the invisible cross at his throat, stared at Max, shook his head, and followed Georgiev.

  Georgiev had no trouble organizing the men: he was the senior officer on board and soldiers were trained to love a hierarchy, taught to do something instead of nothing. After explaining his plan to tip the bus, he said, “All right, on the count of three, we all throw ourselves to starboard. Is that clear? One! Two!"

  "Wait, wait, wait,” cried one voice, and then others said, “Stop,” and Georgiev yelled, “Wait, stop!"

  The compartment was dark, but lights outside rolled front to back, front to back, illuminating puzzled faces. Finally, someone said, “Which side's starboard?"

  Max smirked. Most of the men had only served groundside.

  Georgiev rattled the locked door. “The doors are port, the other side is starboard. We want to tip over to starboard, so we can climb out the doors on top."

  Murmurs of “got it” and “all right” were followed by Georgiev resuming the count. Max braced his feet on the floor and grabbed hold of the bench.

  On three the mob of men surged toward the starboard side. The bus rocked—about as much as it did when it hit a bad pothole.

  "That was pretty effective,” Max said, but Georgiev was shouting out encouragement and instructions: “All right, that was a good first try. Let's all squeeze over to port, to the door side, and do it again."

  Men crushed Max against the side. He smelled urine mixed in with all the other locker-room odors.

  "Three!"

  This time the men yelled as they surged to the other side.

  This time there was a noticeable rock.

  "Good work, men,” Georgiev shouted. “Now we're going to rock it back and forth. As soon as we hit port side, the door side over here"—he leaned over and banged the door—"I want you all to run back to starboard, over here. Got it?"

  Mumbles of “got it” and “yes, sir."

  "What? I can't hear you!"

  "YES, SIR!"

  On three, they all shouted and threw themselves at the port side. Max brought up his arm to cover his head. This time the bus rocked again, though no more than it would be by the wind coming off the escarpment this time of year.

  "Starboard!” Georgiev ordered, and with a roar, they immediately threw themselves at the other side. Several men tumbled to the floor in the dark, but despite the blindness and swearing, the rock on the other side was bigger.

  Georgiev got them cheering and clapping for themselves, then set up a rhythm, charging one side then the other. As Max persisted in staying in his seat, knees and elbows hit him with every rush, even though he pulled his legs up on the seat. He deflected some blows, braced and took the others.

  "Come on,” Vasily shouted, all excited.

  Pounding from the compartment behind them led to a shouted exchange of plans. On the first combined rush, the two compartments ran toward different sides, canceling each other's efforts. One of the young men leaned up against the back wall and yelled, “Starboard, you morons, starboard!"

  "Hurry,” Georgiev shouted. “We're almost through Lost Angeles!"

  Renewed effort in both cars quickly led to rocking until the bus tipped up, wheels off the ground. As it swerved suddenly on the road, bouncing down again, the men fell silent, all but two or three forgetting to finish the charge back to the other side.

  "That's it, we can do it!” Georgiev shouted. “Come on, get up, let's start over!"

  The men were so absorbed in rocking the bus that only Max noticed it slowing or saw the headlights of the dustskimmers outside. The bus braked to a stop as a row of floodlights cut through the barred windows, freezing the unshaven, sunken-eyed faces of Max's fellow prisoners in a harsh light.

  Guards ran over, the locks clattered to the pavement, and the door flew open. “Congratulations, that's an impressive effort, good work, men,” the guard said. “Who's the senior officer here?"

  Georgiev squinted as he squeezed forward through the men. “Major Benjamin Georgiev, enlisted regular service in six-four. What we'd like—"

  The guard shot him, discharging enough bolt to knock down two men beside him
and pimple the hairs on Max's arms a couple seat rows back. One of the kids shouted, tried to rush the guard, but the blue crackle from the gun just missed his head as the men near him dragged him to the floor.

  Angry shouts from the second compartment were silenced by the sound of broken windows and a barrage of fire.

  "Do we have another senior officer in here?” the guard asked. Vasily and a couple others looked toward Max, but he shook his head.

  "Do we have someone else in charge?” the guard asked. When no one spoke, he said, “Good, because I'm a big believer in individual responsibility, and if anything else happens, I will hold each and every one of you individually responsible. Do I make myself clear?"

  He grabbed Georgiev by the back of his shirt and dragged his body, face first, down the steps and outside. Other guards, nervous, guns up, shut and locked the doors again.

  Vasily slumped down in the seat beside Max, his face a pale mask of disbelief and despair.

  "Don't worry,” Max said. “Georgiev is probably just faking it."

  The bus started rolling again, this time the skimmers flanking it in clear view. The city shrank behind them, and in moments, dust and grit came through the window, getting in Max's eyes and under his tongue. Elsewhere in the darkened bus, someone coughed. A couple others whispered that they should have prepared weapons from the broken glass and jumped the guard. Retrospect always gave you a better plan.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw one of the kids stand up toward the side of the bus and unzip his pants to relieve himself.

  "You might want to save that for drinking later,” Max shouted. Some of the men around them laughed; some didn't.

  "I got nothing to save it in,” the kid shouted back, which was true. “You want to come over, use it like a drinking fountain?"

  Max smiled, and his lips cracked. “Nah, don't think I want to touch that handle."

  Beside him, Vasily rubbed his throat. “I would do anything right now for a bathroom,” he whispered. “Hell, I'd personally murder Mallove for something to eat or some water to drink."

  Max's own throat was parched and his stomach had been growling for hours. With a glance around, he unrolled the stolen fruitein bar from the waist of his pants. He tried to tear it open with his hands, couldn't, ripped it open with his teeth. After breaking the bar in half, he said, “Sh,” and pressed half into Vasily's palm.

  "What? What's—"

  "Sh!” Then softly, Max added, “Eat it slow."

  He saw the blue shadow of Vasily's hand shove the whole thing into his mouth. He tried to chew it slowly, but swallowed before Max ate his first small piece.

  "Is there more?” Vasily whispered.

  "No, that's all."

  Later, while Max finished the last piece of the bar, Vasily asked, “Why did you share it?"

  "Because where we're going, I'll need friends more than I need food right now. Can we look out for each other?"

  "Yeah, of course,” Vasily whispered. “Whatever you need, whatever I can do, I'm the man."

  Max nodded, as if a contract had been signed, and Vasily dipped his head in return. Such a slight gesture in the dark. Vasily's stomach rumbled and he crossed his hands over it. As the bus rolled on through the dark, Max searched his lap for crumbs, licking them off his finger, one by one. Wind coursed over the flatlands and through the broken windows, carrying a hint of salt and moisture.

  All that was missing was the smell of compost and blood to complete the reclamation camp stink. As a political officer, he'd visited them more than once.

  Men around him shifted, tried to sleep, but Max stared straight ahead into the rushing night.

  * * * *

  Sunrise, harsh and unrelenting, cast brightness on their squalor even through the unbroken, tinted windows. The bus smelled of urine, shit, and sweat. Get used to it, Max told himself. His back ached and his legs were stiff from too many hours in the unyielding seat. In one corner, someone sobbed.

  "That's Machete Ridge,” Max said, pointing to a sharp line on the horizon. Vasily leaned across Max to look. “Do you see that bump, up there beside the road?” Max asked.

  "That's the reclamation camp,” Vasily said.

  "That's Faraway Farms. It used to be a reclamation camp.” Twenty years ago, Faraway Farms was the end of the line. Now it was just one more extension settlement on the coast, a few thousand people occupying rows of low brown buildings built around a series of narrow field-ponds.

  "Maybe we'll stop here,” Vasily suggested.

  "Be wary of hope,” Max warned quietly. “It'd be too hard to guard everyone here. Too many other people, too much access to boats and skimmers."

  Still, an hour later, when the bus pulled over to the fresh water cisterns outside of Faraway, even Max had to fight against hope.

  When he saw the guards hooking up a fire hose, he gave up hope and clawed his way over the benches to reach one of the open windows first. For a few blissful seconds, Max's face was drenched as he opened his throat to gulp down the blast of water. Then he was fighting the weight of men on his back, crushing him for a drink. He was saved when the hose moved along to another window and the mass of bodies tumbled over the seatbacks after it. Everyone got at least a trickle of water, all except for two men too sick, or weak, to move, who lay moaning at the front end of the car. Max thought they were the ones caught by the shot that killed Georgiev. Men stretched their arms through the bars, begging for more, as the guards moved to the next car.

  Max returned to his bench—he thought of it as his bench now, every man had marked out his two square feet of bus—and grunted as he sat. His whole body ached, needing exercise, a chance to stretch. Normally, he'd walk, if only to pace the aisle of the bus, but the aisle was filled too. A few men had stretched across the bench backs, feet on one seat, hands on another, to do pushups, and others did chin-ups on the hanging straps. Max would do that soon, if he had to, to keep his strength. Of course, that was a hard choice too: spend his energy, not knowing when he'd eat or drink next, or save it in reserve.

  Vasily plopped down, hair plastered to his head. He was scraping drops of water off his face, pushing them into his mouth. “I wouldn't treat animals this way,” he told Max.

  "That's rather the point,” Max said, imitating him, feeling the scratch of his unshaven skin under the droplets.

  "Your face is cut up pretty bad."

  "Is it?” He tasted the sharpness of blood on his fingertips, saw the bright red. “Must have been some glass shards in the window, got blown out by the blast of water."

  "When will we stop?"

  "We've been on the road maybe twelve, fourteen hours. I forget where all the camps are now, but we're not even halfway there."

  "Oh, Jesus,” Vasily said.

  In the old days, during the schism, the men sent off to the reclamation camps for their religious beliefs—or disbeliefs—would pray to God. Max prayed to Drozhin. During the purge, Intelligence would be desperate for information. Obermeyer would check the dropboxes, realize Max was out there, and start looking for him. Survive long enough to give them time to find him: that was Max's sole faith.

  "I can't believe they're sending me to the reclamation camps,” Vasily said. “I didn't do anything to deserve being treated like a murderer or a rapist."

  "So don't let them turn you into one,” Max said. “Besides, the worst crime is still having the wrong beliefs."

  "But I did everything I was supposed to do, I enlisted in the government after my mandatory service, I—"

  "Get over it. Keep your head low, do what you need to do to survive."

  "Do what I have to do to survive,” Vasily said, letting out a deep breath. He seemed like a decent guy, Max thought, not used to thinking, but thinking hard now. “Why did we have a revolution?” he asked. “I thought it was supposed to put a stop to this."

  Max remembered those days. The church schismed, and different groups insisted that they had the only true beliefs. With life depending
on limited resources, each side wanted everything for the true believers. Even after the terraforming increased their yields, the two sides had been willing to kill each other to prove who had the direct word from God. “The revolution bought us twenty years."

  "What?"

  "It's been twenty years since we had this kind of purge,” Max said. Sure, there were individual murders here and there, usually arranged to look like accidents or poor health. But that was politics as usual anywhere. “We bought twenty years of peace where we hadn't had it more than three years in a row for two generations. You grew up in peace, didn't you?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "The revolution bought you that. So it was worth it. And if this purge buys us another twenty years, maybe it'll be worth it too."

  Vasily shook his head. “I don't know if I can think that way. I don't know if I can ever think that way."

  "Maybe you won't have to,” Max said, but doubtfully.

  The bus continued all day, stopping only to relieve the drivers and escorts. Sometime that night, while they shivered to keep warm, one of the sick men died. The man next to him must've noticed he was cold, called his name, saying, “Pete, Piotr, aw, man, Pete, wake up, man, aw, I can't believe this, aw, Pete, aw, man."

  The body had a noticeable reek, even above the stench of piss and shit and sweat that permeated the bus. By the time the sun came up again, all the men were collapsed in a mixture of exhaustion and depression. There were no more pushups or chin-ups. The wind blew sand in through the broken windows, turning everyone a dusty brown. Max had grit in his eyes, his hair, in every wrinkle in his clothes and body.

  With the hot sun baking down through the windows as they drove north toward the equator, Max leaned against the wall, listless, conserving his energy. An impromptu morgue was formed under the seats at the front of the bus, the corpse shrouded with what was left of his clothes, pulled up to cover his face. The next row back remained empty, even though there weren't enough places to sit.

  Max was light-headed, weak from lack of food and lack of water. They'd gone so far. But then the reclamation camps had to be isolated. Only after the new one was turned into a settlement, like Faraway, would they fill in the space between with cistern stations and rest spots.