After the Red Rain

by Lyga, Barry

  “There are still people—”

  “I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about the world. The earth. Things are bad.”

  “They used to be worse,” she countered. “It’s actually better since the Red Rain. There aren’t as many people, so there’s more room. More food. I read somewhere that it used to be so crowded that you couldn’t even go outside without getting crushed or having someone try to steal from you.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone knows.”

  “It used to be like that, true. Before the Red Rain. There were so many people on the planet that they had to cover the entire planet in buildings.”

  Deedra frowned. The entire planet was covered in buildings. That was just the way it was. There were once a hundred billion people living on earth, and the world was barely able to sustain that many. After the Red Rain, the population was cut in half, and there was more room. So much room that some days—like today—you could walk the street without being jostled or molested by a hundred other people along the way. On days when the Magistrate called for Territory-wide searches of apartments, though, the Territory overflowed with citizens camped out on sidewalks and streets, waiting for the DeeCees to finish conducting their investigations.

  “Well,” she said diplomatically, “it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Things are the way they are. The Magistrate runs the Territory, Jaron and the Bang Boys do whatever they want.…” She realized she’d clenched her fists in anger; her palms hurt and her fingers had gone numb. “And that’s why we have to go away.” It had been a pleasant distraction, talking to Rose, but it didn’t change the concrete facts of her situation. She would run. She would forever surrender her rations.

  “I’ll end up scavenging all the time,” she said. “It probably won’t be so bad, I guess. Maybe it’ll be better than the junk the government gives us.” Even as she said it, the pasty aftertaste of the fruit disc seemed to linger overlong in her mouth.

  “Once upon a time,” Rose said slowly, “that’s how it was. People didn’t eat… this.” He gestured to the fruit disc in her hand. “Genetically modified synthetics grown in a lab.”

  “What do you expect us to eat? Where else are we supposed to get food?”

  “From the ground.”

  Deedra laughed. “You want us to eat concrete and pavement? Or that little bit of dirt?”

  “That’s not what…” He sighed. “Once, you didn’t have to filter the water to drink it. People decided where they wanted to live and what they wanted to eat. And when.”

  “When was that?”

  “Before the Red Rain. A long, long time ago.”

  Despite herself, she chuckled. “That’s totally not true, Rose. It’s always been like this, except for when it was worse. There’s no point in fighting it.”

  “We’re here,” Rose said.

  She gazed past him. Yes, they’d arrived. Lissa was nowhere in sight. Was she inside already?

  If so, that was too bad. Because Deedra was not going in there.

  “We have to go,” she told Rose, backing away from the building. “I’m going. I’m leaving the Territory. I’ve decided. Are you coming with me?” Please say yes. Please, please, please. I can do this alone if I have to, but I don’t want to.

  Rose said nothing. He was staring up, not moving, a slip of green against the grayed white and beige backdrop of the Territory’s buildings. The sun struggled through the clouds, and bands of dust-filled light strobed around him.

  “Rose. Come on. Let’s go.”

  He pointed above them. What seemed like an entire fleet of drones soared over L-Twelve. Deedra barely had time to take in their presence when they all screamed through their speakers with one voice:

  “Lockdown!”

  CHAPTER 23

  Lockdown!” the programmed voice commanded again, also blaring from speakers mounted high on poles along the street. The sound was so huge and thick that it pressed against Deedra and nearly knocked her over. She stumbled against Rose, who steadied her.

  “Lockdown!” it blared again. “This is a lockdown!”

  Lockdowns happened all the time, especially more and more lately, as war with Dalcord seemed inevitable. There were lockdowns when a group of scavengers from another Territory dared to cross the border. When a lunatic with a homemade bomb threatened to blow up the factory. When a derecho blasted through the Territory, or when the rain was too toxic to risk going out into it.

  “This is a Territory-wide lockdown! All citizens remain in place until released by the Department of Citizen Services or representatives of the Office of the Magistrate!”

  A Territory-wide lockdown was the most serious of all. Maybe the Dalcord people had finally gone over the line, as everyone in Ludo feared they would. Or maybe it was just the weather. At least once a month, everything shut down because of drastic weather or dangerous air quality.

  “Get inside!” a voice shouted above the alert. “Now!”

  It was Dr. Dimbali, standing in the door of L-Twelve, waving people in as they rushed past the scanner without pausing. He looked up to the sky, then back to the crowd gathered outside, hustling them inside.

  “We have to go inside,” Rose said. “It’s safer there.”

  “No way. Not a chance.”

  “Deedra, don’t be ridiculous. We have to get inside.”

  “But Jaron—”

  “It’ll be fine,” he promised, and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her toward the factory.

  Deedra wanted them anywhere but inside L-Twelve. Trapped in there for who knew how long, they’d be penned in with Jaron and the Bang Boys. Her stomach tightened as they got closer, and, without even trying, she began dragging her feet on the ground, resisting. Rose was right: Whatever was happening, they needed shelter and L-Twelve was the closest, but she still couldn’t bring herself to go inside.

  Ultimately, she had no choice. Between Rose’s pulling and a press of bodies, she was unwillingly thrust through the door, tripping past Dr. Dimbali, who waited until everyone was inside before going in himself. He slammed the door shut and locked it.

  “This is bad,” she muttered to Rose. “This is not good at all.” They were locked down with Jaron, with the man who had proved he would beat Rose with pipes, would chase him down in the streets. She wanted to shrink into invisibility, crushing herself down to vanish between the bodies around her.

  Dr. Dimbali cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Everyone please remain calm!” The buzz and burble of frightened voices did not abate. He shouted some more, but the overlapping echoes of frightened voices in the relatively confined space overwhelmed him.

  As Deedra watched, he strode over to Lio and grabbed his pipe. Then he slammed it against the floor twice, three times: Clong! Clong! Clong!

  Now everyone paid attention. Breathing heavily from his exertions, Dr. Dimbali called out, “Please remain calm! We are well fortified here! Stay calm!”

  Deedra wasn’t sure of that. A lockdown was different from the shelter-in-place order that day by the river.

  “Are you all right?” Rose asked.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said with a confidence she did not entirely feel. “This happens sometimes. We just have to sit tight for a while. They’ll update us. If it’s weather, we’re stuck here until the weather’s over. If it’s something else…” She drifted off. Was she trying to calm him or herself? If Dalcord had attacked, they could be stuck there for days.

  Or they might not get out alive.

  Or Jaron might…

  She clutched her pendant, twice as glad that she had it back. One day of reaching for its ghost was more than enough. She raced it back and forth along its chain and stared up at Jaron’s office.

  As the alarms tapered off, L-Twelve grew quiet and still. Tension hung in the air like tattered cloth. Everyone was listening for whatever would happen next.

  Nonchalantly, Deedra sidled into place at her favo
rite workstation and focused her attention on Jaron’s office: He wasn’t in it.

  Relief flooded her. Jaron wasn’t here. Good. And maybe that meant the lockdown was a drill. If Jaron had known about it in advance, he might have stayed home, rather than be stuck all day at the factory. Jaron’s air scrubbers had to be top-notch; he would be much more comfortable at home than at L-Twelve.

  She murmured, “Jaron’s not here,” to Rose, then sought out Lissa in the crowd, finally spotting her in the back of the building, pressed into a corner. They signaled to each other that they were each all right. Lissa shrugged as if to say, Sorry I’m all the way back here.

  Rose nudged Deedra and pointed out Kent Massgrove, who was glaring in their direction. “I think we should get out of his line of sight.”

  She agreed. The Bang Boys would be distracted by the lockdown for a little while, but then who knew if they would take advantage of it to mete out what they perceived as justice for the previous day’s humiliation. Without Jaron, it could go either way.

  Taking Rose’s hand, she dragged him back toward the relief room, where people took their ten-minute break each shift. Together, they huddled in a corner.

  “Look, there’s something I need you to have,” Rose told her, speaking very quietly, making certain no one else could hear.

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story,” he told her. He reached under his coat and—after glancing around to make certain no one was watching—pulled out a flat, somewhat thick rectangle. He handed it to her, sure to keep it between them so that no one else could see it. “I want you to know everything I know, Deedra. I want you to learn what I’ve learned.”

  The object felt old and fragile but still substantial. It had the surface area of a tab but was much thicker and heavier.

  “It opens,” he said, and she realized it did. It was somehow hinged on one edge, then open on the other three. She peeled back the stiff outer covering to discover words: This Side of Paradise. Reflexively, she tapped the words, but nothing happened.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Rose said, chuckling kindly. “It’s not electronic. It’s a book.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Keep it hidden.”

  “Why? Is it illegal?”

  “I don’t think so. But it’s different. I don’t want someone to take it from you.”

  “Would that be bad?”

  “Well, it’s for you. Not for someone else.”

  A book. She’d heard of books, of course—the wikinets were full of them, diatribes about politics and the war and DNA recombination and the Red Rain. This didn’t look anything like a book, but she took Rose’s word for it.

  The lockdown siren blasted again. She winced into its intensity.

  “The Territory-wide lockdown is over,” said a different voice. She recognized this one as the voice of L-Twelve’s systems. “Lockdown is now isolated to this building. Please turn your attention to the nearest screen.”

  “Something’s happening here,” she told him. “Probably a bomb threat. That happens sometimes.”

  Out on the factory floor there was a large screen mounted up near the catwalk, for instruction and directions. The relief room had a smaller one, and they turned to it as it flickered on.

  Deedra was shocked to see Max Ludo’s face appear. It was cracked and offset from the broken display, but it couldn’t have been anyone but Max. Father and son shared the same gray eyes and the same cruel twist of a mouth. Max was Jaron in fast-forward, with the dew of success and power clinging to every wrinkle and the hollows of his cheeks.

  “I am speaking to you personally,” the Magistrate said, his measured voice rebounding and echoing from the display and the speakers on the factory floor, “because of a great personal tragedy.…” He paused and growled at someone off-camera. “No. Not like this. Go to hell.”

  He leaned forward, his lips trembling and his eyes flaring with rage. When he spoke this time, his voice was laden with grief and injustice. “Listen to me, you little puke-ants, you ungrateful dung-dwellers. One of you murdered Jaron. We believe it’s someone in this building. Troops will interrogate everyone within, and believe me, whoever is responsible will be found.” Max ground his teeth together with an animal ferocity. “If I have to haul each and every one of you into SecFac and cut your fingers off one at a time, I will! I will!” He was ranting now, pounding a fist on the desk before him. “My advisers tell me I should offer you little rat-chasers a reward for information about the killer. A reward!” His voice—usually deep and commanding—pitched high and quivering with uncontrollable rage. “I’ll give you a reward! If you didn’t kill him, you get to live another day! And if you killed him, I will personally rip your heart out and shove it right! Up! Your! Ass! Your family will eat cement for a month!” Spittle flew from his lips and spattered on the camera as he ranted.

  “Show them!” he bellowed. “Put the picture up! Show these animals what one of them did to my boy!”

  Heaving his breath, he waited a moment, then screamed to someone off-camera, “Don’t give me that crap! Put it up! Now!”

  The screen shifted to a static image. A bed. A body lay on it. Deedra recognized Jaron immediately. He was naked from the waist up, and she couldn’t not recognize that tattoo—the starburst. Until she saw the picture, she hadn’t believed he was actually dead. Even Max Ludo’s outburst hadn’t convinced her. But the picture left no doubt. What would be the point of faking this?

  Jaron’s body was twisted out of proportion, limbs turned in ways limbs had never been designed to turn. He looked squeezed, as though a giant had picked him up in its massive hand and crushed him to death as he struggled.

  Lacerations raced up and down his flesh, strips of skin hanging, a map of blood chiseled into him. Somehow, the worst part was that Jaron’s eyes (well, the one eye visible in the picture at least) were still open, staring emptily.

  It was bloody. It was terrible. Yes. But her tormentor was dead. She felt guilt and relief at the same time.

  Next to her, Rose drew in a startled breath, and his grip tightened.

  And she really looked at the image. Looked beyond the body, which had so commanded her attention.

  Something green and sinuous and studded with wicked projections lay entwined around Jaron’s lower leg, as though it had slipped down. In the upper left corner of the image, another, similar length of something lurked there.

  Something? Who was she kidding? It wasn’t something.

  It was a tendril.

  The feed cut away to a black screen with the logo of the DCS and the words:

  YOUR ASSISTANCE IS MANDATORY.

  THANK YOU.

  “Put that away,” Rose murmured. The book. He was talking about the book. She slipped it under her poncho, into her waistband, not even feeling it go. Her muscles had gone slack, her fingers numb. “No one can change what’s in there,” he whispered. “It’s permanent. It’s not like online, where people just say whatever they want and it gets all mashed up. This is the truth. This is real history.”

  What was he talking about? Who cared about his stupid book right now? Jaron was dead, and it was obvious who had killed him. “I can’t believe you did it,” Deedra said, her voice pitched low. “You killed him!” The idea thrilled and terrified her. Jaron’s death was a gift and a horror at the same time.

  “I didn’t.”

  She didn’t believe him. It was almost impossible that he hadn’t. He had the pendant. Where else would it have come from, if not from Jaron?

  Oh, God, she thought. And she remembered what he’d said to her the other night.

  Have you killed?

  Many, many times.

  And then he’d talked about bacteria and insects, but when she’d asked if he’d killed a person, he hadn’t said no, she realized.

  I don’t make that distinction, he’d said.

  “Did. You. Do. It?” she asked. Along her leg and side, the places where he’d cut
her the night before itched and throbbed. Moments earlier she hadn’t felt them at all. Now it was as though the rest of her body had gone numb and she could feel only those cuts.

  “I swear, no.”

  “You saw the picture. Those tendril things looked like, like… like you. He was cut. That’s like—”

  Voice urgent and huskier than normal, Rose grabbed her by the shoulders and locked eyes with her. “I swear, I didn’t do it. I could have, but I didn’t. I don’t want to hurt people, Deedra. I want to learn about them. Learn from them. And maybe fix things for them, if I can.”

  “You can’t fix the world. I told you—it’s always been this way.” She shook him off. “And stop trying to change the subject!”

  She glanced over to the others in the relief room. No one had taken notice of them yet, but that wouldn’t last. She imagined the misery headed toward them right at that moment. It would take hours to interrogate everyone, and in that time, no one could so much as open a—

  The door opened. Two beetle-helmeted DeeCees stood there. It was Deedra’s dream come to life, and she realized she was crushing Rose’s hand. His expression remained blank, impassive.

  “You.” One of the DeeCees pointed to Rose. “With us.”

  Rose gently extricated his hand from Deedra’s. “Don’t worry,” he told her, and she suppressed a horrified burst of laughter. Don’t worry. He was telling her not to worry? He was being hauled off by the DeeCees! She should be telling—

  He disappeared out the door, flanked by the DeeCees.

  But there were two more standing there, as if one of the L-Twelve machines mass-produced them and conveyored them in.

  “You.”

  The DeeCee was pointing at Deedra.

  “With us.”

  CHAPTER 24

  They took her to a small office off the catwalk, not to Pride Execution Camp No. 12. But they both had sidearms at their hips and rifles slung over their shoulders, and she would be just as dead no matter the location. It had taken half a dozen bullets to shock her from dream to waking; how many would it take to shuffle her off from life to death? On the way, her body had begun tingling all over, that strange pins-and-needles sensation she sometimes got when a limb fell asleep, but this time it was over every inch of her. Her ears filled with static, and her vision flashed orange, pixelated.