This Is the Night (22 page)

“You must take these men!” they heard one of the guards yell.

The response was captured by the layer of metal between them, but a few phrases shone through: insufficient staffing, lack of provisions, and, finally, not enough beds.

“Wherever we are,” one of the men in the truck whispered, “this place is too full to take us.”

Another man slapped him on the side of the head for stating the obvious. Outside, the muffled negotiations continued. On edge, each man was silent, and then the doors opened and the guards again appeared.

“One more,” the tall one said. The short one stood shaking his head.

All the men again looked away. Benny pondered telling them to take the man who had not stopped eyeballing him since he had suggested the last prisoner. But it was too risky. Nothing could make him more vulnerable than another show of strength. Better to stay quiet.

A long line of silence followed until one man, his clothes ripped and askew, leapt to his feet. “Go ahead!” he screamed. “Take me. Take me away!”

And so they did. But there were still quite a few of them left. And as they again began to drive, a creeping knowledge climbed into the men that they were driving for so long, one detention center to another, because there was no place to put them, that the terrible worlds behind the barbed wire were full and spilled over and that in a country the size of the Homeland, either they would drive for quite a long time or someone in some official capacity would have to start construction very, very quickly.

No wonder they were burying the men in military graveyards vertically now, their coffins upright and standing. There were too many dead, they all knew that, but it was in this moment they realized that there was also not enough room for a good chunk of the living.

With the Substance seeping out of their bodies at varying rates, as the more experienced among them knew would happen, the men become very hungry, very quickly. The hunger, though it hit each man on his own internal clock of bruised sobriety, was, upon its arrival, otherworldly. A stomach outside of itself, first a gentle murmuring followed by a heavy rumble that soon gave way to a shocking ache, a protruding message given to the men, few of whom had ever heard anything so clearly: feed me.

Soon the men were pounding on the wall behind the driver’s seat. But the truck stopped for no one. From the cab, the garbled snarl of the two guards’ voices. Finally the back door swung open. Benny blinked, adjusting his eyes to the new light. High-rising walls of rock hemmed in a two-lane road that seemed to be cutting through a narrow canyon. Wherever he was, it was not somewhere he had been.

The sun was setting, the light in the sky a brilliant mixture of tinged pinks and blues. Though he was tired and hungry, Benny could not help but pause to look up at the majestic colors outlined above him.

“Are you trying to kill us?” a man shouted, breaking the mood. “Give us food, let us use the bathroom, give us water!”

The short guard looked at the tall guard. Both crinkled their noses, and Benny heard the tall one curse the Young Savior for the smell wafting toward them.

“There’s a store not too far away,” the short guard said. “We can get you a small bite.”

“With whose Currencies again?” grumbled the tall guard.

“A small bite?” cried one of the men.

“Shut up,” the others yelled, grateful at the promise of anything.

“Let us go to the bathroom?” asked another man, hopefully.

“Fine,” said the short guard.

“And unclip their wrists?” said the tall guard.

But unclip they did, the short guard fetching a curved pair of shears with a rusted blade and snapping their zip ties one by one.

Slowly those who were able to walk were allowed, one at a time, the rifle of the tall guard trained on them, to relieve themselves on the side of the road. Once finished, they were again freshly zip-tied behind the back. Zip ties: the one thing the Homeland seemed to possess in plenty.

When it was Benny’s turn, he leaned in toward the guard. “Please,” he said in a tight whisper, feet on the empty road. “Can’t you give me even a sip of water? You must have something.”

The mouth of the short guard sagged, and he grabbed Benny by his elbow. “Now listen,” he said, his voice low enough for only Benny to hear. “Do you see all those people in the back of this truck? Do you see them? I am just one person, do you understand, one person with a job to do and an angry partner. My own Currencies—not the Homeland’s but mine—that’s where your small portion of food is going to come from. If I did know what to do with you, where to take you, how to really feed you, I could not do anything different for you than I could do for any of these men. All of them are hungry, same as you.”

The men waiting in the truck to use the bathroom began to yell that Benny should hurry up, but the guard continued his rant. “This was not how I was supposed to spend my day. My daughter’s birthday was this afternoon, and I have already missed it. Just so you know, I voted, and I voted for a Coyote, a fact that my partner is aware of and frequently chides me for. For the last five hours I have been arguing with him over my choice to spend my own small paycheck to get you men something to eat. Every place I try and drop you, I am told by the warden that it is too full, that we must keep on moving. I am just one person, and I cannot take the miserable choices you have made with your life and make them any better for you. Now get out of my face.”

As Benny climbed back in the truck, a leftover quote from some old religious class of his youth came to him; perhaps they were even the words of the Young Savior himself. Either way, he saw their truth:
each of us has his own rhythm of suffering
.

While the two guards conferred, the men waited. All were, of course, ravenously hungry, but with the doors open, Benny’s hunger was replaced by the small pleasure of fresh wind on his face.

The tall guard was holding a thick binder. “It says here”—he pointed—“that we are obligated to take them to the next available detox zone before we end our shift.”

“But we’ve taken them to the next available, and the one after that,” the short guard said. His voice was nearly a whine.

“Well, whatever holding center we haven’t yet tried is the next available.”

“You expect me—us—to drive around forever, looking for a place for these men?”

“There must be a place for them somewhere.”

“But how long until we’ve been to every possible location? Should we drive halfway across the Homeland, looking for the next available center, until the last of them has been interred?”

“It’s in the book,” the guard shrugged.

The men felt the truck turn around and head back the way they had come. Though the promised snack had done little to fill their stomachs, the small portions of soupy porridge the short guard had purchased for them had calmed the fire within.

Ever attuned to the movements of the truck, the men felt the jostling motions of a three-point turn. Minutes later, a U-turn, and they were again headed in a new direction. A few minutes after that, another turnaround, and the truck was lumbering, the men were sure, back toward Western City North. The dim light from the crack beneath the doors slowly faded into blackness. Leaning against the back wall, now well acclimated to the thick air and dense stench that surrounded him, Benny closed his eyes and let his head fall to the shoulder of the man next to him. Soon, most of the men drifted off.

A loud and unmistakable bang awoke them, followed by the swerving and swaying of the truck. With hands unavailable for grip and balance, the sharp movements tossed the men to the hard metal floor. The truck skidded to a stop. In the dark, they disentangled themselves from one another. As Benny slid from under another man’s shoulder, three more stuttering pops sounded from the cab of the truck.

“Those,” Benny said, “were gunshots.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said a voice down by his ankles.

But everyone yelled at that man to be quiet. Because coming through the metal separator of bed from cab, they were sure they heard another noise, a new one: the muffled sound of one man crying.

Go, the short guard had told them, lining them up and cutting their zip ties once again. Get out of here. He was heading home to his wife, he said. To his child. He had not signed up to drive around sick, morally pale men for hours on end, and there was, he explained finally, no place to put them.

But go where? It was dark, and none of them knew how far they were from the city. A nighttime chill pushed its way through the open doors of the truck, and a few men attempted to climb back into the truck. The shaken guard lifted his rifle and gestured that no, these men could not stay.

Soon all were gathered on the asphalt of the two-lane road. A swarm of dragonflies buzzed Benny’s ears as his eyes struggled to adjust to the clumps and shadows all around him. A heavy wind pushed against his back. Above, the sky was bare and grey; an unending sheet of clouds drowned out even the closest stars.

His hands finally free, Benny plunged them into his coat, where his fingers encountered all sorts of small objects and strange papers floating around those massive pockets, relics of who he was only a handful of hours ago. His eyes adjusted to the landscape around him. Large trees, most of them scarred by fire, surrounded the road. He was tired, he was hungry, his throat was dry and tight. But as Benny looked at the ragged trees around him, a slow, comforting warmth spread upward from his toes.
I am still free,
he thought.

“You have not seen me!” the guard called to them. “It would be better for me to shoot you all right now. Sadly, I cannot bring myself to do it. But let us be clear: none of us will see each other again!”

“How far till the city?” they pressed the guard. “Which way?” But the guard only shook his head and hopped back in the truck, speeding away.

A few of the men felt their way to the side of the road and curled into sleep. But not Benny. He started to walk, the tiny red taillights of his temporary prison falling further into the night.

19.

Lance’s trial lasted twelve minutes. His volunteer lawyer sputtered vague philosophical arguments and obscure interpretations of lesser-known Homeland documents that she claimed proved the invalidity of the Registry, while a disgusted jury of Homeland Army veterans and their wives looked on. As the lawyer for the Homeland made her case, the elderly judge nodded his head. There were no peers on the jury; Lance’s peers were all in the jungle.

Ideology Five
, he saw one juror mouth to another whenever his lawyer spoke. Next to her, another juror ignored the proceedings completely, her head buried in a cheap magazine that devoted most of its print space to aging movie stars and the rising ages of the leaders of the Homeland.

He had thought news of a trial might bring Lorrie back. She would watch quietly from her seat in the courtroom balcony, her eyes fixed as she followed the defense’s argument, disgusted at the whole charade and more proud of Lance than she’d ever been. But who was he kidding? Every day there were thousands of trials. Only a few of the papers covered them, and most got only an inch or two at best. Today, the big news was the discovery of yet another unexploded charcoal bomb, this particular one smuggled into the luggage compartment beneath a bus of newly drafted soldiers. The judge had mentioned the story from the bench, repulsed; it was not a good day to be tried for resisting.

“Lance Sheets, please stand,” said the judge.

Why should he have to stand? He did not stand.

“Stand!” yelled the judge.

“Please stand,” whispered his lawyer.

Lance gripped the edges of his chair and did not let go.

“Stand up!” yelled an out-of-order juror whose face was round and pretty.

Lance looked over at the observation seats. Empty.

“You will,” the judge intoned, “stand for the Homeland.”

Lorrie could be anywhere.

Two uniformed women came over and jerked Lance to his feet. Lance’s lawyer buried her head in her hands.

The judge spat out a sentence. The jury clapped and cheered. A smile from the prosecuting lawyer, a shrug of apology from his counsel, apathy from the empty observation seats.

Nine to twelve years in a Homeland penitentiary.

An officer of the court moved in with chains the moment gavel struck block. Lance was pulled downstairs to the detention center beneath the courthouse, the guards dragging him through yet another series of long halls that ended in a square office with a metal desk and two sagging chairs.

But it was all for show. Away from the popped eyeballs of the seething jury, one woman uncuffed him while another asked him to fill out some forms and return tomorrow.

“Tomorrow?” Lance said.

“Tomorrow,” grunted the officer. “There’s no room for you yet.”

Like so much in life, the loss of freedom, the officer explained, happens in stages. Lance would be followed, undercover agents would track and surveil his every movement, but until a space opened, he was still, in the slimmest sense of the word, free. As he walked out a side door and into the sun, Lance knew that tonight he would set off into the Homeland. Now was the time to find Lorrie. And to his own surprise, he knew just where to start.

Back in his building, he banged his fists against Tim’s door. Was he too late? How long till Tim said he was shipping out? An outline of a phrase came to him.
A handful.
But what actual number filled that small amount? Perhaps he was too late.

But then a shuffle from the other side of the glass. The moment his neighbor let the door crack, Lance rushed through, breathing heavily. With both hands, he grabbed the collar of Tim’s shirt and shoved him against the wall. Tim, startled and smaller, his hands pinned, could not escape.

“Where is she?” Lance growled.

“What?”

“Where is she?” Lance repeated. He tightened his grip around Tim’s wrists, pressing them hard against the cracked wall. “You know who I’m talking about.”

“Lorrie?” Tim squeaked.

Lance released one of the wrists and angled his forearm across Tim’s hot throat.

“I don’t know.”

More pressure, Tim’s neck contracting and expanding in quick bursts just below Lance’s arm. Tim was shaking, eyes open wide, knees trembling. How would this guy ever make it in the jungle?

“I said I don’t know!” Tim gasped.

Letting him go, Lance walked down Tim’s hallway, into the kitchen. Immediately his eyes fell on a slotted wood block, the black handles of several knives swaying seductively.

“What is this, Lance? What are you doing?” Tim had followed him, protesting his presence in this place where he did not belong. “Is this about the trial? It’s still not too late. You can always—”

Reaching for the knife, Lance pivoted.

“Okay,” Tim said, his hands rising immediately. “Okayokayokayokayokay.”

Lance stood there, knife pointed. With a lift of his eyebrows, he made it clear to Tim that now was the time to start talking.

“But I don’t know where she is!”

With a shake of his head, Lance rotated the blade belly up, gripping the handle hard. In the apartment across the hall, the asthmatic coughed so loud her throat seemed to split in two. After a few loose swipes through the air, Lance rested the sharp tip of the knife against the soft tissue of Tim’s nose. This final act seemed to increase Tim’s desire to talk.

“She wrote me once, okay? You happy? She’s in Interior City. I don’t know where she lives. The return address was some anti-Registry counseling place.”

Lance dropped the knife, its flat spine slapping the floor. Outside, two long blasts from a train whistle, the type of train that no longer took passengers, only conscripts and their weapons.
I love you,
Lance told the Lorrie in his head.
I have loved you always, and I will continue—

“Please,” Tim was saying. “Just go.”

Lance nodded.

“By the way, I leave tomorrow,” Tim said. He was breathing hard. “For the jungle. Shipping out. It’s my last day here in—”

“Not my problem,” Lance told him. Only when the door closed behind him did he realize that he truly meant it. Caring about yet another dead guy was a sensation that had long been lost to him. Time to keep moving.