Deadlocked 5 (7 page)

"We should go back," I said to Stubs. "Do you think there're supplies here?" I looked down at him as if he might answer. I'd only had him for a few days, but the company had already started to affect me. I often found myself carrying on conversations with him, letting his voice be part of my subconscious that I would then answer, as if debating with him. "If there's anything good here, it'll be here when we come back."

Stubs stared up at me, affectless as he licked his nose.

"You're right. Whoever they were trading with could come back any day now. We might lose the chance to pick through the place first if we're not careful. All right, you win, Stubs. We'll check it out."

Talking aloud was asinine. It was something I'd never done in the past, but my extended sojourn into the plains of Wyoming had yielded very little human interaction. I've since accepted that I was suffering from mild dementia as I crept into the colony. The months of solitude had taken their toll and I was left conversing with puppies and making decisions that could've easily led me to my death.

"Let me know if you hear anything."

The metal bridge groaned beneath me as I stepped across. Raindrops caused hundreds of ripples in the murky water below. There was no mold where the water met the ditch, meaning the moat hadn't been still for long. The people of this colony had devised a system of irrigation, and this moat played a part in it somehow, which kept the water moving to avoid stagnation.

I made my way over the bridge and onto the dirt road that ran down the center of town. The yurts were set off the thoroughfare a few yards, and wooden carts were placed along the wide gravel path. It took me a while to realize that this was a marketplace.

The cart closest to me had baskets on it that contained wilted lettuce. I picked up a handful of the vegetable and was surprised to see that it was all the same variety. Normally any vegetables or fruits that were collected ended up being a mix of various species the gatherer had found in the wild. This looked as if it were the product of agriculture. There were other baskets that were filled with other types of fruit and vegetables. The people that tried to sell this had access to a cultivated field.

I picked through a basket of blueberries, but the hot sun had withered the fruit days ago. I set the basket down, but the bottom tilted over the edge of the cart and to my surprise it fell as I walked away. The basket bounced off the dirt, scattering the moldy fruit across the path. I froze in place with a pained expression as if the noise had paused me in the midst of torture.

Once I was sure my clumsiness hadn't alerted anything to my presence, I moved to the closest yurt. I pulled aside the hide that served as a door and looked inside. The circular structure had a skeleton of wooden beams that were covered with various strips of fabric that had been sewn together. The roof rose to a point, and there was a hole at the very top about two feet in diameter. The hole served two purposes. First, it allowed the owner to have a fire pit in the center of the yurt. Second, it afforded them the luxury of collecting rainwater in a basin that could be rolled out over the pit.

The basin hadn't been rolled into place for this storm, and the rain fell in through the hole and collided with the ashen remains of the owner's last fire. The smell of burned wood was reinvigorated by the rain, adding a pleasant aroma to the yurt that was a welcome relief from the sweet smell of death outside.

I studied the basin and the funnels that were housed beneath it. There was also a wooden box containing plastic bottles that had been filled with what I assumed was rainwater funneled from the basin. It was all the proof I needed that this yurt, and perhaps the entire colony, belonged to a group of Greens. The oldest children that had been born after the apocalypse were adults now, and none of them remembered the years of acid rain and chlorine gas-filled skies. No Red I'd ever known would dare drink rainwater without filtering and boiling it first.

The yurt was filled with useful items. I found three pots, a cast iron skillet, a butcher knife, a ceramic wet stone, and three pounds worth of salted pork. I also found smoked fish, which disgusted me. I didn't know there were people out there dumb enough to eat fish. While it was possible to find a few clean springs here and there, the chance of a fish surviving to adulthood without getting loaded with enough chemicals to cause illness was slim to none.

"What the hell were they thinking?" I asked Stubs as I tossed the smoked fish into the basin. "I'm surprised they survived as long as they did."

I collected everything useful I could find in this yurt and set it on a blanket that I then tied into a makeshift sack. The pots clattered as I dragged them out of the hut and close to the bridge. I'd already made enough noise in this place to wake the dead, so if nothing had come running after us yet, they probably never would. I set the sack on the side of the moat and headed back toward the next yurt.

My plan was to gather everything I could find in the colony that was worth the time and energy needed to drag it back to the house. I wouldn't bother wasting space in my gear to carry anything other than what I needed when traveling, but I could stock the dilapidated house with the plunder and then use its location as a bargaining tool later on. Traders were rarely ever willing to give much credit for such obscure promises of hidden bounty, but every now and again you could find someone willing to take a chance.

Stubs squirmed in my pocket and I was comfortable enough with our safety to set him down. He rushed to the fruit stand and urinated on the corner, expelling more liquid than seemed possible for a creature his size to hold. I was thankful he waited to be set down instead of relieving himself in my pocket.

We moved on to the yurt across the street. This yurt was nicer than the first, with uniformed hide used for the walls and a wooden framed door with a handle instead of the cloth draped entrance of the last one.

The intense smell of rotting flesh struck me with near physical force as soon as I opened the door. I staggered back and pressed my hand over my nose as my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. Flies buzzed furiously into my face as if angered by my intrusion and I swatted them away as I tried to glimpse inside. Beyond the buzz of the flies I heard a sound that sickened me. I'd encountered enough dead bodies in my time to become familiar with the various sounds they could make, and the grinding noise that filled the yurt was from maggots worming through a corpse. It was always surprising to hear how loud the sound could get considering it originated from tiny worms slithering through dead flesh, but the grinding was louder than the flies themselves as the maggots wiggled inside the three corpses in this yurt.

I knew what happened the second I saw the bodies. It was a familiar discovery. A mother lay on the floor with a baby in her arms, both of them killed by gunshots. The gun had been placed against the back of their heads, leaving their face a mess of shattered bone and flesh.  The smeared blood on the floor revealed that someone had positioned them lovingly, the baby in its mother's arms, after they'd been killed. It didn't take long to find the father. His body was crumpled in the corner, the top of his head blown off from sticking the pistol in his own mouth. The family had committed suicide before the disease was able to claim them.

It was horribly gruesome, but a good scavenger never leaves a gun behind, even if it is clenched in the fist of a dead man.

I was going to steal the gun when I heard two explosions in the distance. The sound was followed by the squeal of brakes and then tires skidding on asphalt.

Someone had driven over my spike strips.

COBRA DAWN

I heard the pleasant chirp of my alarm and rolled over to set my hand on the display screen beside the bed. It was expected of us to let the Administrators know when were awake. The green light blinked under my palm and the machine hummed as it scanned my biometrics.

Another chime, different from the alarm but no less charming, alerted me that the scan was complete. I took my hand off the glass and swung my legs over the side of my thin mattress. The bed was positioned a few feet off the floor on a white shelf that was supported by two hinged poles that protruded from the wall. The biometric scanner was on a white, rectangular pedestal that jutted out from the similarly colored wall.  When I got off the bed the Administrator sensed the weight shift and the bed folded up, disappearing into the white wall seamlessly, as if it never existed. Every night, after the Administrator scanned my biometrics, the bed would descend with clean, pressed sheets.

"Good morning, Cobra Dawn." The Administrator's calm voice greeted me. "Are you ready for your morning exercises?"

"Yes ma'am."

The view screen on the wall opposite the bed turned on. I positioned myself in the center of the room where the grey footprints were painted on the floor. I set my arms at my side and waited for my mirror image to appear on the wall. My digital representation materialized as a shadow on the screen, and then pixilated until I was looking at a perfect copy of myself.

"Are you okay?" asked the Administrator's voice through the avatar of myself on the screen.

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"You tossed and turned a lot last night. I was worried that you were feeling ill, but your biometrics show no sign of increased white blood cell count. Do you think the purples stopped working?" she asked about the evening pill that helped me fall asleep.

"No, I just couldn't calm down." I looked at the mole under my left eye on the avatar. It was such an ugly blemish that made me stand out from the other Dawns. It had
plagued me since I was a child when it first appeared, barely the size of a grain of sand. Now it was larger, at least three times the size it had been then.

"That's what the purples are for, Cobra. You don't have to suffer like that."

"It's not so bad. I'm okay." I walked to the right, toward the six-foot mirror on the wall, and poked at the blemish. "Is this getting bigger?"

"Your mole?"

I ruffled my blonde hair with the tips of my fingers so that my bangs hung wildly over my cheeks, hiding the mole in the process. "Yes, the mole. Is it bigger?"

"There are no signs of melanoma and the growth has not caused any concerns for the Administrators. You're fine."

"That's not what I asked." I wasn't worried about my health. "I asked if it's gotten any larger."

"In what period of time are you curious about?"

I walked away from the mirror, disgusted by my hideous aberration, and back to the grey footprints. "In the past year."

Another avatar of myself appeared beside the first. The new avatar was a copy of me from exactly one year ago. The younger me smiled and waved as I studied her face.

"Here," said my current copied likeness as she pointed at her own mole. The screen split in two and each view zoomed in on one of my avatar's moles so that I could compare them easier. My suspicion was validated.

"It has grown."

The view zoomed back out and only my current avatar was standing there now. "The change has not been perceptible to the naked eye. It has grown by a fraction of a centimeter."

"At that rate, I'll be hideous in no time."

"It is nothing to be concerned about, Cobra. If it were, we would have it removed. In fact, the Administrators believe it defines your beauty." She referred to herself, and the other people who ran the facility, as the Administrators. They operated as one, and for all we knew they didn't exist. No one had ever met the people on the screens, although most of us assumed the Instructors, who were avatars of older women that appeared on the view screens throughout the day, were digital representations of the Administrators.

I rolled my eyes and sighed at her foolish suggestion that a blemish like the mole under my eye was anything other than disgusting. "I don't think it defines my beauty. It makes me look like one of the Reds." The red haired girls were almost all marred with freckles, completely unlike the Yellows, who got their name because of their blonde hair. The Facility only had Reds and Yellows in it, although an Instructor with brown hair showed up once, which started a flurry of rumors among the girls that Browns existed on the outside. The controversy caused such fervor that the Brown Instructor was replaced by a Yellow one a few weeks later. The damage was done though, and many of the girls began to have nightmares about the brown haired people waiting on the outside. Some of the younger girls were even caught drawing pictures of monstrous Browns in their sketchbooks.

"You're being silly," said my avatar. "Are you ready for your exercises?"

"I need to go to the bathroom first."

"Okay, I'll wait." The screen turned off as I went to the toilet in the corner. I lived in a ten by ten box, with white walls, white furnishing, and a white toilet. No one else was allowed inside of our rooms, a rule that was strictly enforced. Attached to this area was the Readiness Room, which contained a steam shower and a dressing area. It was situated between my room and the main hall that led to the Common Room where we all met for meals.

I slid off my undergarment, sat on the toilet, and listened to the hollow sound as my urine struck the metal plate deep within the pipe below. The Administrators kept careful track of the chemicals expelled in the urine of the girls in the facility, and I had been warned that it was a bad idea to try and trick them. I should've listened.

I'd been tossing and turning the night before because I threw my purple pill into the incinerator. I wanted to see if I could fall asleep without it. I eventually did, but it took far longer than I was used to.

I finished in the bathroom and then walked out of the glass enclosure to get back to my morning exercise. The screen blipped on and my avatar greeted me with a disappointed look.

"Your urine is not showing signs of the purple pill, Cobra."

"That’s weird."

She slunk her shoulders and sighed. "You shouldn't lie to me. I'm your friend. I don't like being lied to."

"Okay, fine. I
admit it. I threw my purple in the incinerator last night."

"When?"

I shrugged and tried to remember. "Not long after I got it. I threw it out with my protein cup."

The view screen changed to display multiple different camera views of my domicile. Each screen fast-forwarded through the previous night's activity until it found the footage of me tossing my empty protein cup into the hole in the wall that led to the incinerator. The screens paused, reversed, and played through the scene multiple times. Upon each repeated viewing, one or more of the various camera angles would disappear until the Administrators isolated the frame that best depicted how I'd deceived them. It played the scene over and over as my avatar appeared again. She walked into frame as if she'd been watching from just to the side of the view screen.

"That was very deceptive, Cobra. The Administrators don't approve of this type of thing."

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to see what it would be like to try and fall asleep on my own."

"And?" she asked with a mocking tone.

"I hated it." I lied to her because the Administrators hated it when any of the girls in the Facility undermined their authority. Truthfully, I cherished the hours I spent alone while the Administrators thought I was asleep. It was exhilarating to disobey. That's probably why I had trouble sleeping - I was too excited.

"The Administrators will discuss this," she said to me with a disapproving glare. "They will inform you of your punishment after Morning Courses. Now, let's start your exercises."

I did as I was told, as usual, for the rest of my morning routine. Exercise was the single most important thing in our lives. Every morning began with a series of stretching exercises, followed by light cardio for exactly twenty two minutes, just enough time to get my body sweating. Other girls told me that their morning routines involved longer, or shorter, cardio regiments. When we asked one of the Instructors about this, we were told that each girl's personal regiment was designed according to their body's specific needs. Some girls had higher metabolisms than others and required less cardio.
Over-exercising could cause muscle degradation, and that was something the Administrators wanted to be careful of.

Morning wasn't the only time we exercised. Our days were split into a series of educational hours and training sessions. Some days we spent hours doing gymnastics, others were spent lifting weights, and my favorite were the times we did light combat training with staves that had foam on the ends to keep us from hurting one another. There was a swimming session
every day, after Lunch, but our usual course had been interrupted recently by the lascivious actions of two girls.

We were never allowed to see one another naked, but the swimming course required us to wear tight suits that were very revealing. One of the girls in my group had been growing increasingly interested in the bodies of the rest of her class, which led to her asking a friend to disrobe while they were in the pool.

No one was certain of the details, but rumors abounded after the incident about how the girls had slipped off the top half of their suits and were playing with each other's nipples. It was a scandalous (and invigorating) story that no one in the Facility seemed capable of going ten minutes without discussing. It became such a distraction that the Administrators were forced to remove the two guilty girls and meet with us as a group to discuss the implications of what they had done.

We were told that actions such as theirs would endanger our chances of achieving Surface Status. We were being trained for a life in paradise, among the girls that went before us, and we would be given the grand title of Graduate once the Administrators deemed us ready. The Graduates were the most celebrated members of the Surface Society, and all of us were lucky to be among those that might achieve such an honor. There wasn't an age limit, or a testing requirement, for achieving Surface Status. Instead, we were told there was a complex system of calculations based on our biometrics that determined when we were ready to ascend. If we were good, and did as the Administrators and Instructors told us to, we could be taken away at any moment to live in the paradise above. I'd always been excited at the prospect of graduation, even if I did go to the surface and discover it was littered with Browns.

The two girls that had been caught defying the Administrator's policy were expelled from the Facility, never to be heard from again. Paris and Echo had been friends of mine, and I often thought about where they might've ended up. Were they on the Surface now?

We were given a re-education on the matters of self-stimulation, and it was explained to us again how doing things to our own bodies was permitted, with the exception of insertion of fingers or other items into the vagina or anus. External stimulation of the clitoris was acceptable, but only when alone, and the act of stimulating one of our fellow Dawns was strictly prohibited.

Many of the girls snickered during the presentation and were forced to explain what they thought was funny. They agreed that the mere thought of stimulating yourself in the presence of another was gross, and the idea of stimulating someone else was nearly unfathomable. Everyone agreed that nothing like the pool incident would happen again, although we still hadn't stopped talking about it, three months later. I thought of it endlessly, especially when I masturbated.

I completed my morning exercise and then stepped into the steam shower in m
y Readiness Room. Minutes later I was preening myself in the mirror and taking every precaution to ensure I looked as perfect as possible. My hair was shoulder length and I did my best to press it flat, but it tended to fluff at the top when dry, despite how I tried to tame it. I stared into the mirror and studied the skin beneath my blue eyes. It seemed that an unfortunate side effect of my previous night's deception was a somewhat tired look that revealed itself in the slightly darker color under my eyes.

I was frustrated with my appearance, but time was running short before breakfast and I was forced to forget about it. The lock on the Readiness Room's front door clicked, signaling that the Administrators were now allowing the girls to exit their rooms. If I stayed much longer, a red light would flash along the ceiling tiles, signaling that I was running late for breakfast.

The gross bags under my eyes weren’t going to get any better, no matter how long I stared at them in the mirror. I decided to head out into the Facility to meet my friends before the Administrators turned the red lights on. I'd already defied them once today, and I hoped that punctuality would help soften any punishment that might await me after Morning Courses.

The hallway beyond my Readiness Room was buzzing with activity, like usual, as a sea of blonde and red headed girls rushed to the Common Room. Each of our rooms sat on a slightly raised portion from the main hall and I descended the short stairs as I searched for someone I liked. The first girl I saw was Hailey Dawn, a Red that lived just six doors down from me. She was one of my best friends and was widely regarded as one of the prettiest of the Dawns. Our eyes locked and she waved excitedly as she rushed to meet up with me.