Survival (4 page)

Fausto grinned, the expression devilish
in the orange light. It completely changed his features, that grin. “Now we
run, boys. We run for our salvation. This’ll keep them busy for a spell.”

He turned and trotted into the
darkness. Norton, Boyce and Blaylock, each of them now smiling as well,
regarded each other confidently and gave chase.

Though they heard gunfire in the
woods, it seemed far behind them. Its repetitive din was now just another facet
of the landscape, like the rumble of traffic on the interstate. It was a shock,
then, when Chancellor Carson’s voice boomed through the woods. It emanated from
the trees, surrounding the men.

“Congratulations on successfully
navigating your first eight hours of Labor! In sixteen hours, you will be
reunited with your family. As many mothers can attest, the deepest hours of the
night are often the most uncomfortable. In an effort to ensure a measure of
equality, the Authority has taken steps to make your evening in the Labor field
difficult.”

A bank of lights suddenly slapped
on, bathing the woods in a wash of bright yellow light, the men shielding their
faces from the intensity of the glow.

In that moment, a platoon of
bulls dressed in brown and black camouflage and night-vision goggles rappelled
from the towering trees around the quartet. Norton was the first to register
their descent.

“Bulls!” he shouted, just as the
soldiers opened fire. Fausto tugged him to the ground by his collar, folding
him into a roll in the same efficient motion. Norton watched Eric Blaylock’s
head explode in a film of blood and gore.

Fausto shoved him behind the base
of a huge spruce tree and then both men were scrambling into a hunched run,
zigging and zagging through as bullets chased them into the woods like
shrieking hornets.

An anguished cry echoed through
the woods—Bill Boyce. “My leg! Oh god, my leg!”

Ruiz and Norton hurtled a fallen
oak, their backs to the skirmish. It didn’t seem that the bulls had given
chase. Fausto shook his head, distraught, as Boyce’s cries escalated. The big
man loosed a string of angry insults that terminated abruptly with a single
pistol report.

“Shit,” Norton whispered, his
fear an aching, exposed nerve. Death was close, fifty meters away, and likely
once again on the march.

“You hit?” Fausto asked.

Bryan didn’t know—hadn’t thought
to look. “I don’t think so.”

“Forward then.”

They stood and, despite the
exposure of the lights (Bryan could now see their stanchions hovering high
above the Labor field), they tried to disappear into the woods.

“Murderers!” The bull’s call was
amplified by a megaphone. “You are both murderers! Ruiz and Norton—we’re coming
for you!”

“Fuck,” Ruiz muttered. He grabbed
Norton’s sleeve and they began to sprint blindly through the woods, blackberry
brambles whipping at their faces as they hopped trees and ferns, barreling
toward a future as uncertain as a world with twenty billion souls clinging
desperately to its scarred surface.

They ran, hammer flushed down,
for almost thirty minutes before Norton couldn’t push it any further. “Got
to...stop,” he panted, strings of saliva trailing from his chin.

“I know,” Ruiz agreed. “It
doesn’t matter anyway. There’s just too…too many of them.”

Norton looked up, shoulder still
heaving, and felt his heart grow cold. The man with the mousy eyes was losing
faith. It scared him more than Boyce’s shouts or the look of resignation in
Derek Gorman’s vacant eyes. “We can’t...we can’t just quit, Fausto.”

Bullets cut the air above their
heads, tearing into the trunks of hardwoods and pines, blowing splinters into
the air like confetti. Branches fell as the gunfire burned a swath through the
forest. Fausto raised his hands and slowly turned to face the forest. Norton
followed suit.

The lights above them went black
and the world was a void—a dense nothing marked only by the bobbing line of red
censors affixed to the bulls’ night goggles.

“Not bad, you two,” one of the
bulls called. Norton thought it was the same voice that had echoed through the
megaphone. “But it ain’t enough, son. You killed good men tonight, you fucking
abortions
.”

The venom in the bull’s words was
palpable. Norton closed his eyes, an image of Maggie the last thing he
registered before the world dissolved into chaos and destruction.

He waited for the bullets to rip
him apart—bullets that never came—and then the world went utterly silent. When
he opened his eyes, Fausto remained at his side. The lights suddenly blinked
back on and there were three men behind them, weapons pointed at the ground.
Behind them, there was an opening in the dirt with a set of descending stairs.

“This way! Move your asses!” the
closest man said. His enormous grey beard had been tied back with rubber bands;
the two sections hung from his chin like stalactites. He had wild eyes, thick
arms and broad shoulders.

The others disappeared into the
earth and Norton peered back into the woods. The bulls lay still in a lake of
blood, picked to bits by the gunfire of their rescuers. Fausto clutched his
shoulder and then they were on the steps, descending into the earth.

The man with the beard lingered,
scanning the forest for witnesses. Satisfied they had not been seen, he
followed them, closing the trapdoor behind him, a digital doorway that
disguised the fact that any resisting soldiers had ever visited that place in
the woods.

“Move,” the bearded man said,
pushing the awestruck Norton in the back with the butt of his rifle. “Just
because you wasted those bulls back at Fornoy’s clearing don’t mean you’re
finished with this mess. Pick ‘em up, kid.”

Norton shuffled forward. They
were, remarkably, in a well-built tunnel, the ceiling strung with bare light
bulbs. The walkway beneath their feet was corrugated steel, the angles of the
tunnel precise.

Jesus. Someone down there had
serious resources.

They navigated the corridor and
it slowly widened into a hallway, fortified with thick steel beams. Soon there
was a pair of double doors and they pushed through them and into a room that
hummed with activity. At least a dozen men monitored the struggle taking place
above their heads on closed-circuit televisions.

“In here,” the bearded man said,
angling for an office. Fausto and Norton followed him inside. The man took a
seat behind the desk; he rummaged in the bottom drawer until he found a bottle
of Pendleton Whisky and a couple of glasses.

“Sit,” he said, nodding at the
open chairs. He poured three stiff drinks and handed  one to Norton and Ruiz.
“Hell of a good job so far, men,” he said, and they clinked glasses.

Ruiz sipped, Norton eyed his
skeptically, and the bearded man tossed his off without another thought. He
reloaded and took a sip.

“I’m Alain Verlander. I manage
the military ops down here. You, gentlemen, have chosen a hell of a night to
have your babies.”

“Thanks—thanks for saving us,”
Fausto said, leaning forward to shake hands with the man. “You work for
Fornoy?”

The man shook his head. “Fornoy’s
dead. Been dead for nine years. Lung cancer. I’m just the next in a long line
of soldiers, brother. It’s a lineage you’d be right at home in, Fausto. We saw
what you did up there. You can handle yourself.”

Fausto merely smiled in reply.

“And you,” Verlander said,
locking eyes with Norton. “You learning anything from your friend here?”

“I…I guess,” Bryan said. He shook
hands with the man, giving him his name. “I’m just lucky to have met Fausto
back there in processing. Dumb luck is what it was.”

“Yeah. You could say that,”
Verlander agreed. Norton couldn’t tell if the man liked him or not. He seemed
pretty unimpressed.

“You going to drink that?”
Verlander asked him, eyebrows raised.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks,” Bryan
replied. He slugged down half of his drink. It burned his throat and he
exploded in a series of ragged coughs.

Verlander and Ruiz chuckled, and
Bryan managed a smile when he got himself back under control.

“Come on,” Verlander said when
they’d finished their drinks. “I’ll give you the two-dollar tour.”

There was an unobtrusive door
behind an immense filing cabinet and Ruiz and Norton followed Verlander into
the hall on the other side.

“Infirmary. Cafeteria. Holding
cells,” Verlander said as they made their way through the network of tunnels.

“I’m sorry,” Fausto interrupted,
“did you say ‘holding cells’?”

Verlander turned and offered them
a wide smile. “You want to see?”

“Sure.”

A moment later they were in a
locked wing. An armed guard sat reading a magazine, on the far side of a pair
of double doors. When he saw Verlander, he hastily stood and keyed in the code
that unlocked the doors.

“Thanks Jimmy,” Verlander said.
The guard nodded and then they were in a series of holding cells. There were
six of them, packed to excess with naked bulls. It had to be ten degrees colder
inside the jail.

Men huddled together for warmth.
No one was self-conscious of his nudity—survival was the order of the day.

“Evening ladies,” Verlander said.
Dozens of hate-filled eyes focused on him. Norton saw a man in the corner of
one cell, prone—still. It didn’t look like he’d ever move again. “Are we
enjoying Labor this evening?”

“Please,” came the gasped plea
from the back of one of the cells. “Please, Alain. I’m ready to talk.”

Verlander scratched his beard in
contemplation. He stared into the cell at the haggard man. “Then I might stop
back by again in a few minutes then, Skinny. Maybe we’ll get you boys some
blankets if you’re willing to share what you know.”

For about the tenth time since
noon, Bryan felt ill. He followed Verlander out of the jail, his gaze lingering
on the miserable bulls before passing through the double doors.

“What are you hoping to learn?”
Fausto said.

Verlander only responded with a
Cheshire grin. “In due time, Fausto. In due time. This is operations control.
Fornoy laid the foundation for our little resistance here in 2167. Over the
last forty-two years, we’ve been steadily adding to the infrastructure down
here.”

“And your goal is to...to what?
Assist men in Labor? Is that it?”

As he walked, Verlander
gesticulated with his hands; he was a charismatic man, a larger-than-life
figure. “We do that from time to time. Obviously, we were invested in helping
you two out back there.” He led them into the cafeteria.

A gaunt man in an apron and
chef’s hat smiled at them. Quick as a flash he filled three plastic bowls to
the brim with white rice and a steaming stew of potatoes and chicken. Verlander
thanked him and the men sat, Norton and Ruiz tearing into their dinners with
zealous ferocity.

“Careful. You’ll burn your mouth.
To answer your question, Fausto, we’re only partially interested in helping
folks along the way. Our primary goal is to topple this here institution. And
as providence would have it, the two of you certainly figure in those plans.”

Fausto finished his mouthful.
“What do you mean? Tonight?”

Verlander shrugged, palms raised.
“Here we are. We find ourselves at that strange intersection, boys, between
coincidence and fate. The regional general for the Authority is here in Portland
this evening. He’s overseeing operations. If we can squeeze Skinny in there for
a little more information, we’ll drill down on his location. We’ve got a
determined group of skilled men, and we’d love to have you both on board. It’s
pretty clear, Fausto, that you know a thing or two about our struggle.” He
spooned a bite of stew into his mouth, chewing slowly, allowing time for the
words to sink in.

Norton scanned back and forth
between the men. He felt a strange confusion in his belly—a mixture of fear and
pride. While he remained petrified of dying, he was excited about the prospect
of playing a role in what might be an historic event. The emotion surprised
him; in his life prior to Labor, he’d never thought of himself as anything
close to an idealist. He’d viewed Labor as a necessary evil, a horrible rite of
passage that would validate his status as a man and grant him the opportunity
to become a father to his child.

But things were changing. He was
warming to the idea of striking a blow for men’s rights, even if it called for
violence. Even if it was nothing more than a symbolic effort.

Fausto, though, appeared
conflicted. “I’m not sure I want to take part in what you have planned, Alain.
I don’t speak for Bryan, and I’m thankful for your help back there—but I didn’t
come to fight a war. I came to secure my rights to fatherhood.”

Alain nodded, chewing his stew
with gusto. When he was finished, he pushed his bowl forward on the table and
crossed his arms on his chest. “Fair enough. Humor me for a minute, though. If
you still want to leave, we’ll give you safe passage back into the forest. You
can get some rest and see how all of this plays out. And what about you, Bryan?
Where do you stand on this?”