New World Order

by S. M. McEachern

  “You hear it too?” Hayley asked.

  I nodded. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the second time today we’ve heard it.”

  “Maybe we’re getting close to the city,” Eli said. “Ryder has quite a setup for recycling plastic.”

  That perked me up. Was I close to Jack? I turned around to look at Eli. “How much farther, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We haven’t come to the old city yet.”

  “The old city?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” Eli said.

  I noticed sweat rolling down Jin-Sook’s face. She looked to be in a lot of pain. I stood and stretched my stiff joints. “I need to move. Mind if I ride for a while, Jin?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”

  Before I left the back of the wagon, I dug into my backpack, took a painkiller out of my first aid kit, and gave it to Jin as we switched places. We fell a little behind, but Eli stayed back with us to keep a lookout for cats. We caught up to the wagon, and Jin-Sook hopped in the back. I pulled my bike alongside Hayley.

  “You doing okay?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, I know I lost my cool. Rub it in, Sunshine.”

  I blew out a sigh. Did she ever switch off the tough-girl act? “I didn’t mean anything by it, Hayley. I would’ve been terrified by that cat too.”

  “It’s just—” She stopped and closed her mouth tight for a moment. “I sent my men away. It was stupid of me.”

  It took me a second, but then the implication of what she’d said dawned on me. She had sent three of her soldiers to escort Wilcox back to the Dome, keeping only Zach and Jonas with her. Zach was unconscious, and Jonas had deserted her, leaving her alone to rely on a group of urchins and heathens when faced with death.

  “Hopefully you know that you can trust us now,” I said.

  Her expression was contrite. “At least until we get home, right? Then we’re back on opposite sides of the fight.”

  It wasn’t unexpected that war was on her mind. Ever since Reyes’ confession, I had been worried about the same thing. But it was surprising that she was bringing it up to me. At first I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t agree with violence as the way to resolve our issues, but I understood why the Pit would choose that route.

  “Are you blaming the Pit for the fighting?” I asked.

  She turned a sharp look on me, but within a few seconds her features relaxed. “I don’t know anymore. Alex, Jack, and I have been friends since we were kids. I knew something was—” She stopped talking and shook her head. “But Alex?”

  My eyes shifted between looking at Hayley and navigating the path in front of me. “You know something, don’t you?”

  She heaved a sigh. “Just rumors. And I never act on rumors.”

  I didn’t push her for more information. The thread of trust that was growing between us was too weak to support rumors. Better to deal in truths.

  We drove in silence for a while, and I allowed myself the indulgence of appreciating my surroundings. The trees were a little different from the ones I was used to seeing in the mountains, and their branches were thick with buds. There seemed to be more birds flitting through them and more animal burrows by their roots too.

  Then we rounded a bend, and the sight that greeted us was so startling that I almost fell off my bike.

  “What the—” Hayley breathed. At least she could form words. My mouth was too busy hanging open.

  “There it is,” Eli said. He smiled broadly at our expressions. “The old city.”

  It stretched as far as the eye could see. Tall, crumbling spires rising out of the forest like monolithic giants, their iron skeletons broken and rusted to a bloody brown. I had never seen anything like it. The old city Jack and I had explored seemed like nothing more than a village compared to the sprawling expanse of this kingdom. How many people must have lived there? Millions? More? Stark against the intense blue of the sky, the disintegrating spires were an ominous headstone for a civilization that had once ruled the earth.

  The bears continued to amble on, unimpressed by the view, and Hayley and I grabbed the reins to stop them. It woke Reyes and Summer, and they got to their feet.

  “Holy crap,” Reyes said as he took in the sight.

  “Is that the old city you were talking about?” Summer asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Eli said.

  “What was it called?” I asked. “Back before the War?”

  “I don’t know,” Eli said. “All I know is that today it’s Ryder’s territory. Anybody caught looting there is as good as dead, so we’re going to avoid it. Our destination is about fifty miles west of it.”

  Zach’s groans distracted us. It had been almost forty-eight hours since he’d been shot, and we were all getting a little worried that he wasn’t going to wake up.

  “Let’s take a break, and I’ll tend to Zach,” I said. It wasn’t that long ago that I had been shot, so the memory of how awful I’d felt was still pretty fresh.

  We led the bears down to the river to drink and rest. I gave Zach two painkillers, and he downed them with a full water flask and begged for more, but I made him wait until what he had in his stomach settled. Hayley looked after Jin-Sook, checking her stitches and giving her new bandaging. Summer volunteered to look after the bears. Eli, Jin, and Reyes waded into the river, and Reyes got his first fishing lesson.

  A scream jolted us, and we all reached for our weapons. I expected to see another tiger, but it was Summer throwing the plastic container of bear meat on the ground with disgusted horror.

  “What is that?” she cried, pointing at the meat spilling out.

  Hayley and I both hopped down from the wagon at the same time. Half of a hand—a human hand—was lying on the ground.

  “Oh my God,” Hayley said.

  “How did we not know what we were feeding the bears?” I asked, and then covered my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Ew, ew, ew, ew!” Summer chanted as she ran into the cold river to wash her hands.

  Reyes waded out of the river and kicked dirt over the flesh. “That’s sick.”

  Eli clucked as if we were all nuts.

  Looking at Eli, Hayley pointed to the human flesh. “You think that’s okay?”

  Eli shrugged. “Recruits die, and recruiters don’t let anything go to waste. Bears have to eat, and hunting and fishing for their dinner takes time.” He pulled up the net and took a couple of fish from it to throw to the bears. The fish flopped on the ground before the bears snapped them up. “If you’re going to throw the meat away, have you given any thought to what you’re going to feed them?”

  “Yeah,” Hayley said. “Fish.”

  “We’re going around the old city, so we leave the river from here,” Eli said.

  “And you said Ryder’s city is fifty miles west?” I asked. He nodded. “If we feed them well now, they should make that distance.”

  “What’s the plan from here?” Reyes asked.

  “We’re in recruiter territory, so it’s time to be recruiters,” Eli said.

  Summer glanced at the clothes I had swiped off the recruiters and shivered in revulsion. “I get to be a prisoner, remember?”

  “I’ll be a recruiter,” Reyes said, picking up a tunic and a pair of pants. He put them on over his suit.

  “They’re a little small,” Hayley said with a barely concealed laugh.

  The pants rode up at least five inches above his ankles, and the sleeves were not only too short but also stretched tight across his biceps. He struck a pose and modeled the ill-fitting, filthy clothes. A giggle sprang to my lips, and for one fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of the boy who’d once stolen my heart.

  “I can pull it off,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. You look ridiculous. Plus your exoskeleton is showing.”

  “Not to mention the sunglasses,” Hayley said. “Are you people going to be able to take them o
ff without going blind or whatever happens to you?”

  Reyes crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her. “You people?”

  Hayley had the decency to blush. “I meant, you know, the sun hurts your eyes and, well, I don’t think anyone else will be wearing sunglasses in Ryder’s city. It’ll be hard for you to blend in wearing them.”

  Reyes’ mouth hardened into a tight line. “Being raised underground in a coalmine wasn’t a choice.”

  I raised a hand to stop his next words, knowing exactly where the conversation would lead. “Although I take exception to the way she said it, she has a point. We’ll make it there by morning, and I’m not going to wait around until night when I can take these glasses off to go find the men.”

  “Give me those disgusting clothes,” Hayley said. “I’ll be a recruiter.” She took an outfit off the rails and pulled a tunic on over her own clothes, gagging at the smell. “So the plan is to blend in with the comings and goings of the community, right? Or is there security to get through?”

  Eli and Jin waded out of the river, their net half full of fish. Jin threw a couple more to the bears on the way by.

  “There’s usually a few guards patrolling the edge of the city,” Eli said. He flicked his head toward the wagon. “From a distance, we won’t look out of place.”

  “And if we do look out of place?” I asked.

  Hayley held up her rifle. “Then we start shooting.”

  A nervous excitement ran through me. This could be it, the end of the mission. By this time tomorrow, Jack might actually be standing next to me. I cast a glance toward my belly and thought, Almost, little guy. Daddy’s almost with us again.

  Eli and Jin tucked into the fish, eating them raw, as they had the day before. The rest of us mixed up some packaged mush.

  “So what can we expect between here and the city?” Summer asked Eli.

  Eli shrugged. “More of the same, I suppose. We need to be on the lookout for cats and Ryder’s men. There are dog packs that live in the old city, but they usually don’t venture too far from it. Oh, and we need to find a trail and stick to it. The area was heavily populated before the War, and there are hundreds of holes left behind from old houses. Experienced recruiters know their way through, so we’ll find the most worn trail.”

  “Got it,” I said. The sun was low, and it was our turn to guide the cart while the others got some rest.

  “Are we ready then?” Hayley asked, climbing into the back of the cart.

  Reyes climbed onto her vacated bike. “Let’s ride.”

  We had barely left the foothills when we stumbled across a tiger standing guard over his kill. We could tell by the bike and the shredded uniform it was Jonas.

  Why had he come this far? Why had he even chosen to leave the safety of our group? It was senseless.

  Hayley alighted from the cart clutching her rifle, her jaw clenched and eyes shiny with tears. She shot the tiger three times and was ready to go for a fourth when I yelled at her to stop. The tiger was down, a bleeding hole between his eyes, and she was wasting bullets.

  Even though I was sure the animal was dead, Reyes and I approached it with caution. Another growl, not too far away, startled all of us. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the tiger’s hindquarters were gouged and bleeding and surmised that he must have been the victor over what was probably a fight for Jonas. I didn’t even want to imagine the terror Jonas must have felt.

  “Poor guy. He must have been running scared,” I whispered to Reyes.

  Hayley came up behind us, dropped to her knees, cut off Jonas’s name badge, and took his watch. Then she checked his pockets and took the personal items she found there. “For his family,” she said in a shaky voice.

  His rifle was on the ground a few feet away, and she snatched it up and threw it in the back of the cart.

  Reyes picked up his bike. “Can we fit this back there?” he asked.

  “I’ll ride,” Hayley said.

  No one argued with her. She was obviously too upset to rest.

  We got the bears moving again and had barely vacated the area when two tigers sprang from the brush and began to fight over what was left of Jonas.

  ***

  At some point you’d think I would have become accustomed to the constant huffing and grunting of the bears. And I hated to be annoyed with them because they really were gentle, docile giants who were working very hard for us. But now that we were in the thick of Ryder’s territory, I wanted to slip through the forest as silently as the People could. I didn’t want to attract attention, but if I did, then I wanted to hear it coming. Eli said recruiters usually stopped for the night because, unlike us, they couldn’t see very well in the dark. With night stalkers like tigers and dogs, not to mention the remains of old building foundations they could fall into, they were safer in a group by a fire with guards keeping a lookout.

  Summer, Reyes, and I rode beside the wagon as it ambled along the trail. None of us talked, not even in hushed whispers. It was a moonless night, perfect for us but not great for Hayley. We didn’t want her to turn on the bike’s headlight, so she was forced to stop driving and get in the back of the cart. It was a tight fit, but we managed to get the extra bike in the back too. There was some discussion of leaving it behind, but I did the math. Five bikes and ten people if we found Jack, Naoki, and Talon. Although we had come up with a plan to get into the city, we still hadn’t talked about getting out. The bikes would make for a quick getaway.

  As Eli had suggested, we steered clear of the old city. That made me happy. Even from this distance, the decaying skyscrapers that towered over the forest were just as eerie at night as they had been against the stark blue sky. It felt like the eyes of millions of ghosts were watching our every move, ready to wipe out what was left of humanity and finish the job they’d started three hundred years before. I knew it was nonsense. There was no such thing as ghosts. Yet I was relieved when we finally passed the city and put some miles between us.

  The sky was just beginning to lighten when we saw the end of the forest. We grabbed the ropes and brought the cart to a stop. Hayley jolted awake, reaching for her rifle. I put my fingers to my lips.

  I shook Eli awake. “I think we’re here.”

  He sat up, suddenly alert, and exited the wagon. We all crept to the forest edge.

  The sight that greeted me wasn’t at all what I’d expected. A tall wooden fence, about twelve feet high, ran the equivalent of two of our city blocks. About a mile of open terrain stretched from us to the fence, without so much as a single plant, tree, or patch of moss growing on it. Once we left the forest, we would be out in the open with nowhere to hide.

  “You didn’t say anything about a fence,” I said to Eli.

  “There wasn’t one the last time I was here.”

  “How long ago was that?” Hayley asked.

  “Fifteen years.”

  “There,” Reyes said.

  My eyes followed in the direction he pointed, and I saw a figure move along the top of the fence. “How many? Just the one?”

  “Another one at the other end,” Hayley said.

  “This isn’t what we expected,” I said. I’d imagined dwellings, roads, and some kind of plastic industry, with a stream of people coming and going that we could just blend in with and enter the city undetected.

  Hayley’s lips tightened into a straight line. “Okay. So we have to breach a perimeter. We need a concrete plan.”

  “We have a concrete plan,” Eli said. “That wagon should still get us in.”

  “It just got a lot riskier though,” I said. “Maybe Reyes, Summer, and I should go in on our own. If they start shooting arrows, our suits will protect us.”

  “Wearing your sunglasses?” Eli asked and shook his head. “They’re not going to open the gate for you.”

  “I was thinking about it last night,” I said. “If Ryder really is taken in by technology, getting in is going to be easy. Getting out, especially if they catch on to us,
is going to be a lot harder.”

  “We’re taking our weapons,” Hayley said firmly.

  “I’m not giving up mine,” Reyes agreed.

  “If they see your weapons on the way in, tell them they’re part of the treasure you found,” Eli said. “They won’t suspect they actually work.”

  “What about finding Jack, Naoki, and Talon?” I asked. “Do they keep the recruits locked up or in a specific area?” Eli’s eyes shifted away from mine, like he was avoiding me. I got a real bad feeling. “What are you not telling us?”

  He briefly looked at his feet. “When I was there, they had a detention area for recruits who resisted joining.”

  Hayley took a step closer to Eli. “Look, you need to tell us everything you know before we walk in there. I’m not going in blind.”

  “I can tell you what I remember,” Eli said. He pointed to a stone chimney that rose above the fence. “That’s the plastic factory, and I recall the detention area wasn’t far from it. The market, where they take recruits to be appraised, is in the center by Ryder’s house. I’m not sure what’s at the other end. I only made it to the market, spent a night in detention, and then got carted off to a plasticmine.”

  “So if they don’t shoot us on sight,” Hayley said, “we can expect to pass through some kind of security before we’re given permission to enter. We better make sure they see the bait on the way there.”

  “You mean the bikes?” I asked.

  “Bikes, weapons, whatever gets their greedy little hands rubbing together. The more tempted they are, the more likely we’ll gain entry.”

  “Or be shot and our treasure stolen,” Reyes said. “Maybe Sunny’s right—the three of us should go in wearing our suits.”

  She leveled a stern look at him. “I didn’t come all this way to stay behind, and I’m already wearing the get-up.” She ran a hand down the filthy animal-skin outfit.

  The sun was almost up, and wisps of smoke began to curl out of the compound. I assumed people were waking, stoking fires, and starting their day. Was Jack waking too?