The Whole World Lost Its Head
Josh Stallings
01. Up to the Hilltop
“Do you remember music?”
“Music?”
“iTunes? Radio?”
“No.”
They have music on Hill Top. Down in the Wetlands we got mud, water, rice, sewage, and more mud. I was a kid back in the dry days, I remember thirst. Before the oligarchs took charge and fixed the planet. Back then we had music and the flick box to distract us, now we have body rot and hunger.
“We had music on an iPod when you were a baby.”
“Did I like it?”
“Yes. Made you giggle. You wanted to be spun round and round to the beat.”
“What happened to it?”
“Traded the iPod for penicillin. You had a fever. Saved your life.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Hell yes, kid.”
And it was. Even today, with my son gone six months into the Sad Lands, maybe never coming home. If all the music in the world only bought us thirteen years with him, it would be a good deal.
“Arm,” the soldier at the outer gate demands. Four flights above the mud, wall of chain link and razor wire. I don’t bother telling the soldier I have been summoned to Hill Top. I push my arm in through a hole in the fence. He stabs my wrist with a needle and smears my blood on the Gene-O-Gran. Ten minutes for results. Everything is slow, old tech on the lower terraces. While I wait, the soldier’s partner aims his pistol at my head. Life is cheap, so I keep my mouth shut. They don’t speak to outer ring surfs. Why would they? They neither know, nor would care that I once lived in Terrace One. Fifty feet and a bridge away from Hill Top. My quarters were dry and warm. My food plentiful. Break a rule, pay the price. Fall in love with a Hill Top girl, bad. Act on said love, double bad. Plant a Terrace One seed in a Hill Top girl and you both find yourselves up to your asses in a rice paddy.
The Gene-O-Gran pops green. I keep my eyes focused down and step onto the grate. A plow boy uses a fire hose to blast the mud and algae off me, making me clean enough for the Farm Terrace. The gate opens. I follow the green brick trail through an industrial park of massive greenhouses. Over my head the path has a tin roof, rain pings down a steady tattoo.
Six flights up lead to a fifteen-foot-high cement block wall. Gun towers jut up another twenty feet. Ninety thousand lumen halogen spotlights sear beams into the wet air. Inside a sally port a soldier in dress whites watches me, hand on a holstered pistol. Ready. Next to him a petty bureaucrat sits at a work station.
“Please…” The bureaucrat motions for me to press my eyes into the retinal scanner. The flash blinds me momentarily. Out of a white, indistinct world, images start to reemerge, fuzzy and haloed. Spots dance around the bureaucrat’s head. His screen lights up, casting his face blue. “Name?”
I know it’s on his screen. I answer anyway. “Johnathan Seeger.”
“Reason for moating?”
“Summons. I was…” He knows all this but wants me to say it. “Gee-cee-five-dash-seven-two-Alpha.” He gives me blank dead eyes. “Truth, got no idea as to the why of the summons. You?”
“Why is not relevant.” The bureaucrat stamps his hand down on a circular button. A reinforced blast door opens onto the wide parade ground. Soldiers in dress whites march and drill. Men in white coveralls drive forklifts, moving pallets in and out of warehouses. This terrace houses military barracks and supply distribution centers. From clean coal to chocolate covered cockroaches, if it exists and you have the credits, this is where you get it. Just make sure your request forms are in triplicate.
A white granite path leads to the next staircase, this one wider than all the others. White steps with brass handrails. Half way up is a landing. A similar looking bureaucrat motions me past a thick steel door cut into the side of the hill. In a sterile shower stall a matron in a white dress and head scarf tells me to undress. Iodine and bleach laced water splashes down. Every cut, scab and nick screams out at the disinfectant’s touch. I lock my jaw and close my eyes. After hot air jets me dry, the matron gives me fresh tan pants and shirt. Tan tie and tan blazer, even tan canvas shoes. A monochromatic symbol of my terrace, or lack thereof. Tan for the mud surfs. John Deere green for farming. White for distribution. Forget your station and you lose your rank. A white becomes green, and a tan, well, we have only six feet lower to go, so they take a foot or a finger or a hand.
Only one ring remains before Hill Top. It is protected by a low brick wall, that and men in black trench coats, fedoras, and jack boots. They have no need to do anything as obvious as brandishing firepower. Their danger is hidden, unspoken, and ultimate. A tap on the shoulder, a finger snapping, and you disappear. Poof. You go not gently into that dark night. Oh no. You go screaming, spitting teeth and selling out every value you have while begging for a bullet in the brain.
I was one of them. I wonder if I lost my son as karmic justice. Only, I don’t believe in karma. Chaos and rare serendipity are the only constants I understand. If karma was a thing, Hill Top would have erupted like Vesuvius and left only ash shadows to remind us of our esteemed oligarchs.
A man in a black leather trench with silver chevrons looks me over as I enter. A glowing cigarette butt hangs from his lower lip. “Been a while, Seeger.” Blue smoke curls around his words.
“Smoke still smells good.” I breathe in a whiff.
“I’d offer you one, but—”
“Rules.”
“Yeah.” He cracks wry. “You know how it goes for rule breakers, right?”
I nod. Say nothing. I can think of six or seven ways I could kill the smug son of a bitch. Drop him before he tapped his com. Fantasy ya-ya. Reality, there is an entire shock troop ready to replace him. Hunt me down. Kill all I care about.
“Straight through. Right? Don’t even imagine straying off the black bricks.”
“I know the drill.”
“I know you do.” He looks away, puffs his butt, I no longer mean anything to him. I am less than a dust fleck dancing in candle light.
I remember his name. Harris, Flynn Harris. I remember late nights, drinking, laughing, playing black jack. I guess loyalty went the way of the ice caps.
This final terrace is military elite, police services, courtesans, and entertainers. It is a ring of streets, apartment buildings, bars, brothels, and a theater district. It is where Hill Toppers slum it. It stinks of lust, blood, black market narcotics, pain, and desperation. It once smelled like home. Not anymore.
At the end of the black bricks is a small rise leading to a wide, fast-moving, river-like moat that circles Hill Top. An elegant stone wall rises beyond the water. Its crenels and parapets give it the look of a medieval castle. At the base of the wall, gargoyles stand with water pluming from their mouths. Hill Top’s wall is five or six miles around. Inside the wall are a series of interlinked buildings, covered pathways, and courtyards. An intricate gutter system moves the constant rain water through the gargoyles and into the moat below.
A master stone mason’s dream bridge crosses the moat. It is covered but wind lashes rain sideways in on me. It strikes my face like a million needles. I lean into it, quickening my pace. Crossing an open drawbridge, I am delivered into a grand reception hall. No visible soldiers or guns. Hill Top needs only propriety to protect itself. Make it this far and you’ll do anything not to fall down. The hall is lined with oversized paintings and sculptures of past and present Hill Top heroes. People who, generations ago, made fortunes selling cheap goods to underemployed poor folk. Or gave them just enough credit to keep them begging not to have their crappy cars taken from them. People who made fortunes selling, repossessing and selling again, the same shitty homes to the same desperate folks. People who destroyed democracies and installed dictators. No statues stand iconizing the current crop of Hill Top residents. The new batch’s only claim to their position is an accident of birth. Great grandfather invented a pill to make old men’s dicks stay hard all weekend, so press my suit and cook me a slice of flesh that you and your lowly children will never taste. Tiny Tim has scurvy? God must not love him. He isn’t special like my children.
My feet sink into the deep Berber carpet, it runs the length of the hall. How many Moroccans went blind to cover this floor? The hall is, by design, built to make the visitors feel insignificant. This knowledge doesn’t remove its power.
At the end of the hall, a fop in a sky-blue velvet suit leans back, his kid leather clad feet resting on a massive oak table. In the old world that desk would have been a large family’s dinner table. Now it holds an ashtray, a crystal tumbler half full of amber liquid, and a scan wand.
The fop lets me stand while he picks at a hang nail. Only after biting off the offending gristle does he look up. He seems slightly amused to find me standing before him. Almost casually, he passes the wand in my direction. My tan suit renders me virtually invisible to him. And then my name scrolls up. He goes all eye popping and gasping. Looks at the name. At me. At the name. At me. “Detective Seeger?” Total disbelief.
“I used to be.”
“But, what…” He is having a hard time connecting the handsome young detective he knew with the broken old man standing before him. Years in the Wetlands are dog years. I don’t tell him the toll exacted just to keep breathing down there. Why would I?
“Sorry, I have to…” His hands tremble when he attaches my tracker bracelet. “You are cleared to Koch manner. Do, um, do you need a map?”
“No.” This used to be my beat, and the fop knows it.
Trying to reestablish his superior position, he over explains how the tracker works. My pass is only good for the next twenty minutes, long enough to get me to Koch’s if I hurry. Once there, a Koch admin needs to extend it, or the boys in black will come looking for me. None of this is new information, but I keep my yap closed, drop my eyes deferentially and walk past him into Hill Top.
Billy Koch, William to his lessers and Mr. Koch to the help, is using every artifice to fool time. He is eighty-seven, I know ’cause like I said, this used to be my beat. His skin is as taut as a scalpel can make it. Hair plugs keep his hairline from rising. Spray tan gives him a healthy glow. Even an industrial strength girdle can’t hide his pear-shape. Body fat is a luxury only Hill Toppers can afford, and he wants to hide it. I’ll never understand him or his kin.
“Detective, how pleasant to see you again.” He doesn’t stand or give me permission to sit. He holds out a bejeweled hand.
“If you’re waiting for me to kiss the ring I’m going to need an extension for my pass.” I speak without heat, just the facts. Koch watches me, he could go either way on this. Off with my head or he laughs. Survival up here depends on giving them just enough shit so they think you might have enough balls to be valuable, and thereby worth keeping around. He lets me sweat up my armpits before he drops his hand and leaks out a small smile.
“Your brand of impudence has been missed. New breed is all grovel and no brains.”
“Brains got me kicked to the bottom.”
“No, sticking your wee Willy into Chad Walton’s granddaughter’s cunny is what did that. Brains are what might bring you back up the hill.” He drops a chance to regain my life, as if it was nothing. My pulse races at the thought. I keep my face neutral. I tell him I like my life in the mud. Tell him being a simple rice farmer and dung sifter brings me peace. He laughs. I’m not a good enough actor to sell it. Nobody is.
A maid brings in a tray of burgers, real vegetables, iced tea. Koch invites me to sit, join him for lunch. I wolf into a burger; sweet grease runs down my chin. I wipe it off with a crisp white cloth napkin. I haven’t tasted anything this good in many years. Don’t get me wrong. My wife can stew a rat better than most, but come on, beef? Unreal. We finish the meal off with a short shot of real scotch. I know he is playing Devil to my Faust. I know the price will be more than I have. I know I will say no. Or I think I will.
“My great-granddaughter is missing.”
“Sounds like a job for security forces.”
“It would be. Do you smoke?”
I nod, it is a lie, to smoke you need to have tobacco. I still dream about smoking. But no, I don’t. He tosses me a pack and tells me to keep them, the silver lighter too, he has closets full of both. I take a cigarette from the waxed cardboard box, roll it between my fingers, sniff it. I don’t light it. “Why am I here?”
“Won’t light up until you know the price, right?” He chuckles, jiggling several of his multiple chins. “This case needs a level of discretion that the blunt-witted head of our security forces lacks.”
“By which you mean, someone who can keep his mouth shut. Someone you can flush if it goes tits up, right?”
“More or less.” He moves his big ugly head back and forth like a pendulum. Out of his vest pocket he pulls two black I.D. badges. “Do this, and you and your wife move to Terrace One.”
And there it is. I see Kaitlin, mud streaking her beautiful face. I see her rail thin, malnourished body. I know the average life expectancy in the mud is fifty. “If I don’t survive, I want my wife safe.”
“Where is the fun in that?” He mock frowns. “No. If you fail, she stays in the mud. Succeed and we all get a happy ending.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Good man. Aileen,” he says, passing me a picture of a pretty, if slightly petulant looking teenage girl, “is a good girl. Gone wrong. She is deeply troubled to the point of delusion. But she is family. I want her back.”
“Where was she last seen?”
“A scout believes he saw her heading into the Sad Lands.” And the other penny drops. Hypocrites on Hill Top have zero tolerance. Hill Toppers caught using illegal drugs are sentenced to death. Lower terrace citizens are given a winking pass, but the top dogs hold themselves to higher standards. This isn’t Rome. William Koch isn’t Caligula. No, if Hill Toppers want to do drugs they need to get a script from Dr. Feelgood.
“Any chance I can talk to this scout?”
“Unfortunate accident. Poor lad fell off the wall.”
I already knew this. No way was Koch going to let the scout live. I just wanted to hear him say it. Remind myself of who I was working for. “If she’s dead?”
“Then bring me her body, barring that, some proof of death. I won’t sleep until I know where she is.” Koch’s voice is full of the pain and loss that his face lacks. I’d be willing to bet all I own that he is sleeping warm and dry, thumb in his mouth. But I don’t own shit diddly so who would take that bet?
I leave Koch manor with Aileen’s picture, a wrist tracker filled up enough to get me off Hill Top, a pocket com to reach the old man, and a hearty pat on the back. These Hill Top guys are real nice for as long as they need something from you.
02. Into the Sad Lands
The beach where I pull the pirogue ashore is rock and trash strewn. Granite hills and spires rise from the shallow lake, creating stark islands. In the distance stands the crumbling remains of a city, infrastructure too far gone to ever expect recovery. It is home to the outcast and the disenfranchised, dissidents and mutineers, addicts and the mumbling mentally ill. In the terraced kingdoms they have no room for nonproductive surfs. So unless you are a Hill Topper, you best be one hundred percent A.O.K.
The Sad Lands is no easy place to survive. What you need is won by barter or battle. When I asked Koch for supplies to trade with and a gun in case they aren’t in a trading mood, he laughed and told me that arming a citizen of the mud was a capital offense. As for bartering, he said the optics of me leaving his home with a pack of goods might lead others to wonder what I was doing for him. “No, I am confident you will achieve our objective without my help.” His eyes were dead as stones.
Back when I worked for the police services, a Hill Topper lost his shit and carved up the head of a rival family. Rumor was he had a long running habit of hunting prostitutes and farm boys down in the terraces. When pieces of his wife were found in a trash bin, we knew he did it but were told to back off. Wasn’t until he killed another lord that we were allowed to bring him in. Even this mad fucker knew he had crossed a line that could not be uncrossed. He disappeared into the Sad Lands. Lost or dead. We were told to drop the case, write it off as closed. I saw the bodies of his victims, bagged pieces of his wife. I had nightmares that left me wide eyed and sweat soaked. Him alive wasn’t a real option. For two weeks I tracked this rogue oligarch deep into the Sad Lands. He traveled with a small squad of mercenaries. They did him no good, neither did his pleading, or promises of making me a rich man. I dropped his head on the front stairs of Koch manor. I was the only detective to have left the terraces and returned. This is why I was chosen. This is why I’m climbing up a crumbling cliff face.
That isn’t exactly truthful. That is why Koch sent me.
But I am here to save my wife from the mud.
And that is a half lie. If I am completely honest, I hold the deep unspoken hope that I’ll find my son. That he’ll run into my arms and ask me to take him home. That simply by showing up, I will cure his addiction and pain. The guilt for his troubles weighs heavy on my shoulders. I made the mistake of raising him to hold his head high. I told him he was as good as any other. That the Hill Toppers were weaklings whose only right to rule came from the police and soldiers beneath them. I raised my son to stand up, and then was surprised when the yoke chafed and ripped at his flesh.
My wife warned me.
We fought over the way I was raising our son.
She was raised in Hill Top, what did she know?
I told her I was a man. He was a male child. I knew what I was doing.
I was wrong.
The highway is a raised wide path of broken asphalt. Trees and brush grow through the cracks. Rain drips from the tall hanging off-ramp signs. Rust and bullet holes have rendered them unreadable. Doesn’t matter. Off-ramps drop into a vast rain forest and disappear. It is impenetrable without a bulldozer and the fuel to drive it.
I can feel eyes on me. Someone has been clocking me since I landed. I don’t look around. I don’t give away that their cover is blown. I wish I had convinced Koch to get me a gun. But if wishes were .38s, beggars would all be strapped.
I walk for hours, water sluicing off the poncho I fashioned from a discarded tarp. Somewhere above the rain clouds the sun sets, transforming the gloom into inky black. The cement ribbon I walk is straight, so little chance of getting lost. I do need to be careful to not run into one of the rusted automotive corpses that litter the terrain. A rusty gash can kill you fast as any blade.
Behind me, footsteps, faint to the point of nearly silent, follow me. I tune out the sound of rain, I scan for that which is not rain. There it is again, a boot scraping and the slightest tap of a heel touching down. Whoever it is is getting closer. Rain pelts a large vehicle in front of me. Like echolocation, I hear it is a tractor trailer. As I pass it, I fold down onto my belly, quietlike. I roll under the truck. Someone has slept here before me; three wooden pallets are lined up like a bed. On them I am dry, or, more precisely, not getting any wetter. I’ll take it and be grateful.
I hold my breath when two distinct sets of feet move past me. They are close enough for me to smell. Musky human funk, wood smoke, and the always constant mildew. Under it is another note, it takes me time to place the scent. And then I have it. Gun oil. The Sad Lands were supposed to have run out of bullets decades ago. Without gunpowder and manufacturing capabilities they should only be armed with bladed weapons, cudgels, wooden bows and arrows. Whoever is following me are either soldiers from the terraces or…Or. Could be soldiers from Bettencourt, a kingdom two hundred clicks to the west of the Sad Lands. No reason for them to be here. No reason for me to be here. Fuck it. As the footsteps fade I close my eyes. Survival rule one, if there is no action to take, take no action. Rule two, when it is safe to sleep, sleep.
At dawn, the subtle shift in light wakes me. I don’t move. I flick my eyes around but see nothing. I strain my ears, hearing nothing but rain slapping the truck above me. I wait. Unmoving. I dreamed about my son last night. He was ten years old. Happy. We were in a field flying a model airplane. It wasn’t raining, that’s how I knew it was a dream. If there was a drug that allowed me to stay in that dream…My son isn’t weak. He is brave enough to risk his life to try and find a life that doesn’t hurt so bad. If I see him again I’ll tell him.
My last words to him weren’t pretty. I found his stash. I was so afraid for him, for us. “Why can’t you just stay clean?” We were both caked in mud, and neither saw the irony of my statement.
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“Weak. Get clean or get the hell out of my house.”
“Your house? Really? The Hill Toppers own it, they own you, tooth and nail. If you had any balls you’d see that.”
“Fuck you,” I yelled. The next day, he was gone. I am left with those two words ringing in my memory. Fuck you.
Fifteen minutes and nothing is moving. I move out, stay low using cars and trucks for cover. I walk several miles without company. The remains of the city grow larger on the horizon. The sheer enormity of it is both awesome and bleak. Once, there were enough people to fill this city, more, hundreds of cities, thousands perhaps. Now, it is the rotting body of who we used to be.
I don’t hear the blow coming. One moment I am looking at the city. The next my head is struck. My knees buckle. The second blow drives me to the deck. I crawl, try to stand. A boot connects with my chest, flipping me over and forcing the air from my lungs. I grab the boot and twist. I roll, pulling whoever is connected to that boot down. A second person kicks me in the face. My nose cartilage breaks with an angry crunch. Blood sprays. I lay on my back. A boot pins me.
“It’s over.” A buff young woman aims a bolt action rifle at my head. “Stop moving, or I’ll shoot you.”
The guy I tripped stands, and I can see he is also in freakishly good shape. It takes protein to build muscles. The wealthy have all the protein they want but never lift a finger. The rest of us work around the clock, but without protein, no muscle mass. I try and place them, so I can figure how to play it. Dressed in mismatched leather and jeans, heavy work boots, not soldiers or police.
“You’re pretty tough, old man.” The young woman starts to lift her boot off me, pauses and asks, “You done, or you want to go another round?”
“Done.” I wipe my bloody face on the arm of my jacket. Standing, I find my poncho is torn beyond any usefulness. I shrug and let it fall. My tan suit is wet and streaked pink and red with blood.
The young woman reaches into her pack, offers me a piece of cloth. “Hold it on your nose. Stop the bleeding.”
I do as told and I’m rewarded by the young man giving me a thin but effective rain jacket. He looks at my torn canvas shoes and shakes his head. “Nothing we can do about them.”
These two don’t work for any kingdom, they are way too nice. Other than breaking my nose and cracking a few ribs, they’re down right polite. She asks before searching me. Finding my cigarettes and lighter, she doesn’t steal them. He apologizes when tying my hands behind my back and pulling a black hood over my head. “Try not to make noise. We spotted scavengers in the area.”
“Coyotes, ravens?”
“Humans.” She says, voice littered with disgust.
03. Revolting
“Freedom had been hunted ’round the globe, reason was considered as rebellion, and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.” The words slip into my sleep and pull me up. A young passionate woman speaking, her voice reverberates. A small group murmurs in hushed agreement. “Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?”
I am on a mattress with a blanket over me. I am naked, dry, and warm. The ceiling is low, made of iron beams and cement. The lack of the sound of rain makes me feel queasy.
“We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.” Her fists thud down on something solid. I tilt my head. Twenty feet from me, a dozen or so people sit in a circle around a tall dark-skinned woman with a mane of dreadlocks. She slams the book in her hand down on a jerry-rigged lectern. “Choice is ours. Me, I’m done accepting their boots on my neck. How about you?”
The circle stomps its feet and chants “Liberty or death. Liberty or death. Liberty or death.”
Her name is Izara. She has eyes like none I have seen. Diamond hard, but without cruelty. She will kill me if I answer wrong. But she won’t like doing it. I am dressed in my tan suit, now clean and dry. We sit at a small table, my belly full and a warm mug of willow bark tea in my hand. Izara sits across from me. Two bulked up men stand behind me. Close enough to grab me should I wish to do her harm, I don’t, and I tell them so. They don’t move.
“Nice speech,” I say. She places a thick book on the table and turns it to me. The cover is dirt stained and falling apart. The Collected Works of Thomas Paine & Patrick Henry. “Who’re they?”
Izara smiles. “Revolutionaries. Guiding lights. Prophets, if we choose them to be.”
“Yeah, where are they?”
“In history. They were once, and could be again, the moral voices in the building of a new nation.” She stops all movement. Stares at me. Making a decision. “Why are you here?”
“I told your people. I’m looking for a girl, then I’m gone.”
“Why are you here?”
“I told you.”
“Are you a spy?”
“No. I’m a rice farmer, here to find—”
She cuts me off with a sharp exhale. “Repeating a lie does not make it true. You are in a quandary, tell the truth and defy your masters, or lie and die where you sit.” She shows no weapon. Cocks no pistol. No posturing. But she will kill me. Soon. “You have options. What you don’t have is time.”
I tell her the truth. The fall from detective. The wife in the mud. The junkie son. She stops on that one, tells me the Sad Lands have addicts, but not everyone here is one. And not all who come here addicted stay that way. I want to believer her. I want to hope. But it hurts too much.
“You are finally here with us, Detective. When someone lies, I see them out of focus, soft blurry features.”
“A human lie detector huh?”
“Bit deeper than that.”
“The girl? You know where she is?”
“I do. And I will make you a deal, an agreement. You can plead your case to her. She chooses to go with you, she’s free to. She doesn’t? You leave. Either way I want tribute.”
“I have shit diddly.” I drop the smokes and lighter on the table. She is unimpressed.
“Keep those death sticks. We need medical supplies.”
“I’m in the mud, no way…” I stop explaining. She doesn’t care why I can’t. “How much?”
“One field surgery pack.”
“That all?” I smirk.
“Yes.” She plays it like my question was real. Or maybe she thinks it was. She seems to only see truth or lie. Sarcasm doesn’t fit in either category. And there are her spooky eyes staring me down. So, I agree. She nods her head and stands. “I believe we will meet again.”
“Alright, you say so.”
“You are a better man than you think.” A ghost of a smile passes over her face and she is gone. Her silent sentries follow her out. If anyone can convince a horde to toss their lives away attacking Hill Top it’ll be her.
“She likes you. Who’d a thunk it.” The woman from the highway sits down beside me. On the walk she told me her name is Dagný. She doesn’t ask my name. Doesn’t want to get to know me because odds were Izara would kill me.
“Likes me, really? Felt more like tolerate.”
“You breathing?” I take a deep breath and slowly blow it out. “Down here, you are either liked, or dead. We have zero room for ambiguity.”
Aileen’s face is protected by baby fat. She is twelve. Younger than her picture represented. She clings to Dagný’s arm. Refuses to talk to me unless Dagný stays with her. I tell her I won’t hurt her. She does not believe me. “Dagný, tell her I’m a good guy.”
Dagný looks me over then shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m not a liar.” She winks at the girl, shoots her a smile. I give her my best hang dog. They both laugh, but even laughing the girl looks haunted. “Okay, he may not be a good guy, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a bad guy.”
“Rousing endorsement, thank you, Dagný.” The banter relaxes Aileen enough so that she can make eye contact without a panic attack. “I’m here to take you home.”
Eyes saucer. “No. You can’t. Can he?” she asks Dagný, digging her nails into the older woman’s arm.
“I didn’t mean take, like force,” I keep my voice low and calm. “I meant take like, if you want to go I’ll help you get there.”
The girl stares at Dagný, silently pleading.
“It’s okay. You’re safe,” Dagný tells her, stroking the girl’s hair out of her face. “I’m gonna go brutal battle bot on anyone who tries to hurt you.”
I’ve seen enough traumatized victims to recognize the signs. “I am safe,” I tell her and more, I talk about my son when he was a child and how I would do anything to protect him. I tell her about my wife, that I would never let anyone hurt her. “What I’m trying to say, badly, is that if you are one of mine, I’ll keep you safe.”
04. Death Comes to Hill Top
I am standing on the wall, rain whipping around me. In the distance the lights on the bridge sparkle into the night. Through one of the cutouts in the wall I can see down to the moat. I hear the rushing water fall as it cascades down to the mud hundreds of feet below. The reek of sewage reminds me that this is the point where the Hill Topper’s waste is piped to mix with rainwater and delivered to my place in this world.
Koch is late for our meet. It’s a power move, remind me who is in control. That he chose to meet where his scout died is not lost on me. I told him his only hope of seeing the girl was to come alone. He does. Late, but alone. One thing about constant rain is I don’t worry about prying eyes or a sniper’s bullet.
“Where is she?” He sounds as if he is ordering up a steak.
“No ‘how do you do’? No ‘was it a difficult run’? No pleasantries at all?”
“Cut the crap, Detective. Where is my girl?”
I cup my mouth and let out a two-note whistle. I point and Koch squints using his hand to keep the water from his eyes. He strains to see her. Far down the wall a figure is moving from out of the shadows. “Tell her to come closer.” Orders, never requests. I obey. I whistle three notes and she starts toward us.
“Aileen told me what you did to her,” I say causally.
“What? Told you what?” His anger flairs, puffing and reddening his face. “What did that crazy little bitch tell you?”
“She didn’t say anything. But now I know. Overplayed your hand, Billy boy.”
“You know nothing.” He is ready to throttle me.
“Whoa, ease up pal, I don’t care who you screw. Really. That’s all Hill Top ya-ya.”
“Good.” His shoulders drop. He relaxes. All the chess pieces are back to their assigned stations. The girl is almost to us.
“You aren’t going to relocate me and my wife to tier one, are you?”
“Can’t do that. You got a Hill Topper pregnant, and she fucked a terrace boy. There’s no coming back from that. Look at it this way, you got a good meal, glass of my best scotch, pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Consider yourself paid in full.”
I take the cigarettes from my pocket and toss them over the wall.
“Why?” Koch watches the pack as it arcs high until gravity pulls it toward the moat. He isn’t as heavy as he looks. Or maybe anger is loaning me strength. Crouching. I wrap my arms around his knees. I stand up, lifting him off his feet. We are slipping and sliding on the wet stone. He squeals, high and wild. I heave him over the edge and he is gone. His screams disappear into the wind and rain. The splash is only audible because I am listening for it. The water streams over the edge, current too strong for an Olympian to fight. The fat fuck is rushing inexorably to fall and die choking on Hill Topper feces.
Dagný flips back the hood of her poncho. She looks over the edge for Koch, he is gone. “You were supposed to distract him. That was the plan.” She holds a shiv and looks put out.
“Sorry. Shit happens.”
I will find a way to steal the med pack as promised. I will smuggle Dagný to the lake. And if I survive all that, I will collect my wife and we will join Izara’s revolution. And under a fallen city I will sit with brothers and sisters, stomp my feet and chant, “Liberty or death. Liberty or death. Liberty or death.”