Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (10 page)

“Fighting with fierce abandon,” Blakely said. “With all the grit the great cosmic machine has given them.”

Sadie considered Blakely’s words, deciding they were mostly bad instead of just all bad. She blew a raspberry.

“Robert Frost you ain’t,” Sadie said.

After walking another block they saw a yard cleared of dust. Cold frames had been placed in neat, straight rows in front of it, protecting lettuces and cabbages that were sprouting surprisingly well. Near the old blue house some ferns still lived—kept alive by an old man spraying copious amounts of water out of spray bottles he had lined up on his front porch.

The ferns were growing in the flowerbeds running along the front porch of the late nineteenth century house. The house had once been sheltered by four massive oak trees. Now the trees were dead—coated with gray dust like every other tree they’d seen.

Blakely and Sadie stopped and watched the old man work. He had a pistol in a holster on his hip and he was spraying water on the fern leaves, then wiping them with rags.

“You see a blonde girl come by here?” he yelled, but the old man ignored him and kept wiping dust away from the leaves.

Sadie and Blakely walked onward, moving east then turning north toward the bridge and the university as they saw more people walking along the side streets. They passed more and more inhabited houses, and began to hear more and more voices—talking, laughing, shouting, pleading—all concentrated into one area. At the next intersection they could see where the road entered the university, and what looked like an open air market right on the campus grounds, tucked into an area between the university’s buildings.

Hundreds of people were milling around in the market and both Blakely and Sadie stopped to stare. Neither of them had seen so many people in one place in nearly a year.

A pair of armed men were walking toward them, scanning the street and the houses lining it as they came.

“Have you seen my friend?” Sadie asked when they got closer. “My age and blonde? Got here this morning or last night.”

“Your friend, huh?” the man on the right said. His partner glared.

“What?” Sadie asked. “You’ve seen her?”

“We’ve seen her,” the other man said. He seemed angry, unlike the first man who’d spoken. “Everybody’s seen her.”

“Where?”

“You won’t have any trouble finding her.”

The guard pointed, and his angry pal stomped away, his head swiveling left and right as he moved along the street. The guard who’d pointed joined him.

Blakely turned to look at the raucous mass of humanity.

“Damn,” Blakely said, and started walking.

Chapter 11

They found Callie in the market zone, where rows of makeshift wooden stalls had been constructed in a grassy area between buildings. Inside each stall, people were selling clothes, rope, canned goods, plastic baggies of pasta, rice, wheat, MREs, newly smoked barbecue, homemade beer, wine, moonshine, pre-Crisis cigarettes, rare bottles of pre-Crisis cabernets and merlots and bourbons, hydroponic marijuana and tobacco, boxes of ammunition of all calibers, pistols, rifles, shotguns, swords, knives, nail-spiked bats, and any number of other exotic weapons—many of them resembling devices from the medieval period.

A few stalls had larger items for sale. Sadie recognized wheat mills and flour grinders, but had no idea what some of the old machinery was. One stall was selling animal traps and cages. Several of the cages were occupied by vicious looking dogs with eyes that glared out at the crowd of humans examining them.

Dozens of people—mostly men—wandered from stall to stall, browsing, haggling, arguing, cursing, and laughing. They all seemed to be having a great time, despite the end of the world. It almost gave Sadie a feeling of hope for humanity.

Then she saw Callie, and all hope for humanity collapsed.

Callie was naked and standing in a line next to five other women. Her arms were zip-tied behind her at her wrists, and a chain had been looped twice around her ankle and its links bolted together so that it was tight against her flesh. The other end of the chain led to a metal ring resting on the dusty ground. The chain was linked to the ring with a Masterlock.

The women next to Sadie were of various ages. One was a blonde, middle-aged mother. Her blonde twenty-something daughter stood next to her. A brunette with a sad dragon tattoo stenciled in black across her emaciated belly slouched next to a middle-aged black woman with short hair and two latina sisters—one of whom couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

Six feet from the women was an aluminum prefab lawnmower shed like people had once put in their backyards. This one had been painted black. In front of it stood a rectangular, white wooden box. Sloppy red letters had been painted across the front. They spelled “Auctions—12:00 pm and 6:00 pm.”

Sadie felt like vomiting.

She’d seen photos of confederate slave markets when she was in college. Now here was a slave market in front of her, looking as brutal and disgusting as its ancestors.

The lawnmower shed’s door was cracked open six inches, and Sadie could see the glow of a lantern inside.

A small cluster of men and teenage boys and a few young women stood in front of the posts. They were staring and laughing, pointing at each girl in turn.

“Is one of them your girl?” Blakely asked as he checked his watch.

Sadie nodded.

Callie was chained to the post farthest from the shed. Her head was down and her hair was over her face and she looked as if she was about to collapse.

“Which one?” Blakely asked.

Sadie ignored him.

“Stay here,” she said, “I don’t want anyone to see you.”

“Fuck that,” Blakely said. “We need to know who’s got that Geiger counter. That’s all that matters.”

“Callie matters,” Sadie said. “And if you’d stop and think instead of just shooting people and blowing shit up you’d realize it’s best if they don’t know there are two of us. The element of surprise and all that. I assume you learned what tactics are when you were off playing G.I. Joe.”

Blakely ground his teeth, but he knew Sadie was right about splitting up, just not about what mattered and didn’t.

“Okay,” Blakely said. “You find out what’s up. I’ll go shopping.”

“Give me a smoke grenade,” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “You know I’ll need it.”

“Which is why I should go. Just tell me which one she is. I’ll get her out of there.”

“No way,” she said. “You’ll go after the Geiger counter and leave her.”

He took a step toward the slave market, and Sadie grabbed his arm.

“I’ll shoot you in the back if you try it.”

“Then maybe I’ll just take back those bullets.”

Sadie jumped away from him and said. “I’ll yell ‘rape’ and offer to blow the first man who shoots you in the head.”

Blakely looked around and saw people staring at them. He wasn’t going to get his way unless he wanted to kill Sadie or knock her out. So he unslung his pack, dug into it, and pulled out a smoke grenade. Sadie transferred the cylinder into her own pack.

“Here,” she said, and handed Blakely four MREs. “Be a gentleman.”

“But I’m not a gentleman,” he said as he took the MREs and stuffed them into his pack.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Sadie muttered as she re-slung her pack and rifle, remembering what had happened on the pool table the day before. She pulled her parka hood over her head and stalked away, entering the crush of people in the market zone. She didn’t go directly to the auction area, but instead wandered from stall to stall, pretending to browse. Even though most of the men shopping in the open air market were probably okay human beings, she felt alone and vulnerable

A few men said “hi,” but they were her age or not much older. She got a few whistles and a catcall, but at least no one ran up and tried to rape her on the spot. Most men would stare at her and move on, too interested in guns or food or vicious attack dogs to interact with her, most figuring she must belong to someone who would fight to keep her.

The only women she saw not chained to a ring were making it obvious they were under the protection of a male. Most of them were matronly and past child-bearing years, though she saw several younger ones who seemed to relish the attention being a rare commodity brought them. They’d dressed to show a lot of skin—despite the cold temperature and stormy weather.

As she got closer to the slave market she became more surreptitious in her movements, pretending to look at knives and maces and flails. One stall was selling armor—used police vests and riot uniforms, surplus Dragon Skin military vests, paper armor—obviously homemade—that had been folded and laminated and decorated with a New York Times headline about the volcano across the front of the chest piece.

The vest Sadie was really interested in was the silk one. Someone had sewn thirty layers of silk together to create a chest protector.

“It’ll stop a .44 slug,” the merchant selling it told a young bearded man who was looking at it.

“How do you know?” the bearded man asked.

“I tested it myself.”

“You put this on and let someone shoot you with a .44?” the bearded man asked. His mouth hung open and his eyes were wide.

“Are you crazy,” the merchant said. “I made one of my slave bitches wear it.”

“And?” the bearded man asked.

“Three broken ribs.”

The bearded man laughed.

“Hey, at least she lived,” the merchant said. “Couldn’t hardly fuck her for a whole week on account of all the crying and squirming she done when I climbed on her.”

The bearded man burst into laughter, and the merchant joined him. Sadie suspected the story was a made up joke, but who could tell? She was standing twenty feet away from a slave market.

“How much?” the bearded man asked.

“Twenty thousand calories,” the merchant said.

“Pffff—suck it,” the bearded man said.

Sadie glanced at Callie, who was only twenty feet away. She hoped Callie had noticed her presence, but she hadn’t.

“Two ounces of gold,” the merchant said.

“One ounce,” the bearded man offered.

“You suck it,” the merchant said. “You know how many hours went into this?

“So buy you another slave bitch to do it, limp dick,” the bearded man said. “That little one over there can probably sew you a hard-on.”

The merchant laughed.

“Shit,” he said. “I been hard since they chained her up this morning.”

The men laughed some more, and Sadie frowned and moved closer to Callie. The people who’d gathered to yell insults and threats and offers of sexual violation at the six women were still there, in Sadie’s way. They were, however, keeping their distance from the women, standing behind a white line someone had painted on the ground. The line was jagged and imprecise, as if the painter had been drunk while working, or was trying to draw a lightning bolt instead. The line was ten feet in front of the women. It ran across the front of the slave market, then turned in a sloppy half circle and ran behind the women and stopped at the lawn mower shed.

Sadie walked to the jagged line.

“Callie!” she said in a soft voice she hoped projected from beneath her hood.

It didn’t.

“Callie!” she said again, a little louder. With her peripheral vision she saw a teenage boy next to her turn to look. He was wearing a black hoodie and black jeans. Sadie didn’t acknowledge him. Instead she kept her face down and her hood pulled low over her face.

Sadie saw that Callie crying. Tears had dripped down onto her chest and washed away the gray dust and ash clinging to her skin, leaving a thin white trail of flesh.

Sadie heard a drunken voice say, “Waaatch this, Joe.” Then she heard someone snort and spit. A white gob of phlegm flew through the air in a high arc and descended to splatter over one woman’s belly.

“That’s where I’m gonna put my baby!” the drunken voice yelled.

The men around the drunken spitter burst out laughing. They began to snort and spit as well. Even some of the girls joined in, though the boy in the black hoodie moved back and pulled the hood of his coat over his head and mumbled something Sadie couldn’t understand.

As the spitting continued, Sadie had to fight the urge to go for a gun. A helpless rage swelled in her chest—the kind of helpless rage a child feels when faced with some unjust accusation or terrible affront to fairness.

But Sadie didn’t count on the fight left in Callie.

When the spit began to fly, Callie looked up. Her face was composed and proud, though her eyes were blazing with anger, and she stared at the men spitting phlegm her way. One at a time, she made eye contact…held their gazes…tried to make them see her as a human being whether they wanted to or not. Even when a wad of spittle splashed over her chin she didn’t falter. She kept looking from man to man, shaming them each in turn until all but the first spitter stopped. He redoubled his effort, sending gob after gob at Callie, each one splattering her face or chest or hair. But Callie wouldn’t look away from him. She kept her eyes locked on his, sending a clear message—if you’re looking to break me, this won’t even come close to doing it.