Twisted World: A Broken World Novel (23 page)

T
he second day
on trash duty was even worse than the first. Partly because it was hotter than it had been the day before, but mostly because we found ourselves in shantytown shoveling up piles of trash.

Here life was harder. The people who inhabited these sorry excuses for homes rarely had enough of anything. Food was often scarce and electricity nonexistent. They cleaned themselves no more than once a week, if at all, utilizing the city bathhouses. They didn’t have enough credits to buy the necessities, let alone bags or cans to store their garbage in. Typically, the trash was tossed into the alleys that ran between the houses where it was left to bake in the sun, rotting slowly and filling the air with the stink of failure and wanting and disappointment.

I did my best to focus on the job at hand so I didn’t have to think about
what
I was shoveling, but the smell made it almost impossible. By the time trash day rolled around, the stench of shantytown was so foul that it was probably only matched by the stink of the zombies.

“Water break!” my crew leader called out, his voice ringing through the air and rising above the sound of shovels scraping against the ground.

I wiped the moisture from my forehead as I turned, using the sleeve of my jumpsuit even though I knew it was a bad idea. There was no way some of this filth hadn’t gotten on my clothes, and odds were it was now smeared across my face.

Only two shacks over, the other people on trash detail were busy sucking down lukewarm water. My own mouth felt like sandpaper, but I’d only taken one step when someone popped out of the alley right in front of me. The shovel was still in my hand when I reared back, and my heart was beating like mad, but the beady eyes that greeted me made me freeze before I’d had a chance to bash the guy’s face in.

“Ticker?” I said, reaching to pull my mask away from my mouth and nose, then thinking better of it. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then grabbed his arm and pulled him behind a shack where we would be hidden from the rest of the workers. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Ticker’s right shoulder jerked. “Hiding. Matt and Jimmy, they went missing. Gone. Just like Stevie. Ticker’s not going to let them get him, though. Not again.” His eyes darted back and forth, for once not stopping on my chest. Not that he would be able to see anything with the jumpsuit I was wearing, but the fact that he wasn’t even trying said something about his state of mind.

He looked terrified, his eyes even beadier than usual as they bounced around, not focusing on anything for more than two seconds before moving on to look at something else. And the spasm in his shoulder was constant. Up, down. Twitch, twitch. He looked like he was on the verge of a dance or having some kind of fit. Like seizures that never went away but were only mildly annoying. Ticker had never owned his name as much as he did right now.

“Calm down, Ticker. Tell me what happened,” I said, trying to get him to focus on my face. “Did it have something to do with what you guys told me at Dragon’s?” If it did, it might not be a good idea to talk there after all. Maybe there was nowhere safe from the prying ears and eyes of this new government.

Big Brother is watching…

A shiver ran through me when I remembered the party slogan from that old novel I’d read in school. One of the few books that had stuck with me even after all these years, and only partly because it had chilled me to the bone. It had
felt
familiar. The decrepit state of the world those characters had lived in, crumbling buildings and broken lives. The first time I’d read it, I’d felt like the author had looked into the future and seen how things would turn out. Walls that, although sturdy, appeared hastily thrown together, their parts growing more and more rusted with each passing season. The flickering of lights in the hall that led to my apartment and the elevator that groaned in protest when it worked at all. That book had felt like the most prophetic thing I’d ever come across, and I’d found myself thinking that if the people in this city were smart, they’d study and worship it rather than bothering to pray to a man that had been nothing more than a loud-mouth asshole who’d just happened to be immune to all this shit.

Ticker’s shoulder jerked, but he didn’t answer my question.

“Are Matt and Jimmy dead?” I asked as calmly as I could, even though under my dirt covered and sweat-soaked jumpsuit, a shiver had run up my spine.

The kid shook his head twice, then nodded. “Don’t know. No. I don’t think so. After we met up with you, we went to another bar. Saw some guys there. Some guys we knew from work. They asked about you. Asked what happened outside the walls. How you lived. It was real weird.” Ticker bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “Matt didn’t like the questions. Then Jimmy, he isn’t that bright, he told them that we’d just seen you. That we talked. The guys at the bar had a lot more questions after that, but we got out of there. Jimmy isn’t that bright.”

People were asking about me. I wasn’t sure who’d sent them, but I knew they were checking up on me and it very well could have put my crew’s lives in danger.

“I’m sorry, Ticker,” I said reaching out to him before I remembered that my gloves were covered in garbage. I dropped my arm to my side, clenching my hand into a fist like I was ready to punch someone.

“Watch your back. You hear?” Ticker’s shoulder jerked again, and this time, his whole head bobbed. “They’ll kill us all if they think we know something.”

“I will, Ticker. Thank you.”

His head bobbed a few times as he backed away, his eyes darting around like crazy. Then, without saying another word or even looking back at me, he spun on his heel and took off, disappearing around a corner only a few houses away.

When he was gone, I let out a deep breath. This was getting out of hand. Ticker, Matt, and Jimmy hadn’t really told me anything concrete. They’d only repeated rumors. They hadn’t hurt anyone or told me anything that I couldn’t have found out on my own. Sure it had added to my suspicions, but they’d had no way of knowing that was going to happen.

“James!” someone called, making me jump.

“Coming.” I took a deep breath, barely noticing the stench that surrounded me, before heading back around the corner.

My crew leader greeted me with narrowed eyes as he held a cup of water out. “When we take a water break, you drink. If you don’t, you’ll die of heat exhaustion out here.”

He shoved the cup in my hand, then yelled for everyone to get back to work. I didn’t even taste the water when I downed it, and for the rest of the day, I was so preoccupied that I barely smelled the trash I was shoveling.

I
didn’t have
a lot of time after my shift, which meant I found myself running through the streets toward my apartment. My clothes were stuck to my body and the stench of chemicals from the decontamination shower stung my nostrils, but I didn’t slow. I needed to get showered and changed—and hopefully cool off in the process—and check on Mom. She’d been out cold last night when I got home from talking to Parvarti, and even though I wanted to know if she was as lucid as she’d been the night before, I couldn’t help being relieved. I wanted her back, but right now I didn’t know what to tell her about Dad or Parv, or the mysterious gray man who’d popped into my life twice now.

The apartment was so quiet when I stepped into the living room that at first, I was sure she wasn’t going to be home. Before I’d even had a chance to shut the front door, hope had bubbled up inside me. Maybe she’d gone to work today. Maybe she was back to her normal self and we’d be able to catch up soon, and then I could quit this stinking job.

But when I pushed her bedroom door open, all that hope melted away. Mom was asleep, curled up in the center of the bed with her mouth hanging open. She looked more like someone who had passed out from exhaustion than someone who was taking an afternoon nap, but she hadn’t done a single thing in weeks that would make her this tired. Something just wasn’t right here. It couldn’t be.

Only, I didn’t have time to think it through. I needed to get moving if I wanted to see Jackson before heading to Dragon’s Lair. We needed to mend our relationship if I was going to get any information out of him.

When I was showered and once again wearing the black dress—with the plaid shirt over it—I headed out. The long sleeve shirt was going to make me start sweating all over again, but I needed to wear it until I could spill the beans about my new job to Jackson.

His house was on the other side of the settlement, and just like I’d thought, I was sweating by the time I reached it. I stopped on the doorstep and looked up, marveling at the luxury in front of me.

Even though Jackson and I had been friends for years and I’d always trusted him, there was a part of me that had never felt comfortable inside the Regulator’s mansion. It wasn’t until I’d gotten older that I’d realized why, though. How they lived had always felt
wrong
. Most of the people in Atlanta lived in buildings that had been renovated after the walls went up, and their apartments were small and cheap, often not even painted. Most had community bathrooms, meaning people had to fight for showers. Only a small percentage of the population had a real apartment, but even the converted office buildings were better than the shacks a lot of people lived in. Those people had nothing.

Now, standing in front of the house of the person I’d always thought I knew so well, I realized that I should have taken more notice of stuff like this earlier. Jackson had always been so good at playing on my emotions that it was easy for me to brush things off on his father, but it shouldn’t have been. In all the years that we’d known each other, Jackson had never once acknowledged the struggles other people in this city lived with on a daily basis. He’d never looked at the shantytown and compared it with his own house, and he’d never acted the least bit guilty for taking so much and giving so little in return.

If I didn’t need to get information out of Jackson, I’d be more than happy to have him out of my life completely.

But I did need him, so I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, and less than a minute later, the door opened.

Jackson didn’t smile when he saw me, and he didn’t pull the door open wider or ask me to come in. His gaze was cold and guarded, and I was pretty sure that for the first time in our friendship, I was getting a glimpse of the real Jackson Star.

“Meg,” he said flatly.

The sun’s rays seemed to be intensified by the plaid shirt I was wearing, and his gaze wasn’t helping. A bead of sweat ran down my back and I shifted from foot to foot, pushing the sleeves up in a futile attempt to cool off.

Jackson’s gaze moved over my shirt and he pulled the door open a bit wider, but he didn’t look concerned about my comfort. Just curious. “Why are you wearing that? It’s ninety degrees.”

“I’m an idiot.” I let out a nervous laugh and unbuttoned the shirt.

My hands were shaking when I slid it off, and the expression that flashed in Jackson’s eyes only made it worse. The look of indifference was gone, and it now seemed like he was trying to memorize how I looked.

“Why the hell are you wearing that?” he asked with a little more animation in his voice.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain everything to you. Why I was upset the other night and why I pushed you away. Things have been so backward and upside down for me, and I’ve been feeling so alone for the last few weeks. I knew you would try to take the burden from me if I let you, and it just didn’t seem fair. It still doesn’t. We’ve been going around and around for years, and even though I always knew you wanted more out of our relationship, I also knew I couldn’t give it to you. And I thought taking things from you when I wasn’t ready to commit to more would be unfair, and I didn’t want to hurt you, but I didn’t have the energy to do more than just push you away.” I took a deep breath, looking away from Jackson’s intense gaze when heat spread across my cheeks. “I had to get a job in the entertainment district so Mom and I wouldn’t lose our apartment. I’ve been waitressing at Dragon’s Lair.”