5 years after the fall of the democracy
Two
gentlemen sit in the kitchen of a tiny apartment. The apartment overlooks the disheveled
courtyard of the massive housing project the two men live in, the highlight of
which is a dead tree inside the dirty stone ring of a dried out fountain. The grass is patchy and dying made all the
worse by the dark clouds and when added to the dark brown brick façade of the
high rise apartment it created a monochrome world. There wasn’t much point in gathering in the
pea green and mustard yellow kitchen and looking outside but it was a habit these
two men indulged while they waited.
“Jinx,
what are we doing here?” Finally one of them said raising his head off his
hand, taking his thick frame glasses off his prominent nose and rubbing his
eyes.
“We’re
waiting for the bus Bug.” The other replied his head leaning on his closed
fist.
“I mean
with our lives Jinx.” Bug said
exasperated, it was a conversation they’ve had many times since the fence went
up.
“God
damn it…” Jinx said with a sigh before running his hands through his red hair.
“I
mean, why didn’t we join up with Brace when we had the chance?” Bug asked
leaning back his lean frame in his yellow, shabby kitchen chair.
“Because
we weren’t asked and we didn’t want to Bug.
Remember? We wanted the easy life
of collecting pension and living in luxury.” Jinx replied gesticulating with
his hands.
“When
was the last time we even got a check?”
Bug asked side tracked by the concept.
“Not
since they started the fence.” Jinx responded wistfully looking out the window.
You
could see the outline of the fence on the horizon with its dotted watch
towers. They called it a fence but it
was really a wall. A three foot thick
concrete inner wall inside a fifteen foot wire fence topped with razor
wire. The inner wall was probably one
hundred feet from the outer. It was
built about four years ago and designed to keep the citizens of Waukegan inside
the borders.
“Maybe
we can join up with him now…” Bug said
looking at Jinx.
“I
don’t even know if I still have my powers.”
Jinx said slumping in his chair “I could just have a shitty life, it’s
hard to tell sometimes. Besides, how
would we go about that? Go up to the
mayor and announce our status as Honored?
Fuck that, he’d sooner call in our debt then let us go.”
Bug
tapped his fingers on the table impatiently before finally expelling “I’ve been
experimenting.”
“Gross.”
Jinx replied going back to watching out the window.
“I’ve
been able to do… bug stuff.” Bug continued his confessional.
“What
the hell does that even mean?” Jinx asked waving his hand.
“I mean
more than just talking to them. You
know… bug stuff. I can spin webs now
like a spider, secrete caustic chemicals like a yellow-spotted millipede, I can
throw bombs like a bombardier beetle…”
“Gross,
is that what you’ve been doing on your off time?” Jinx interrupted Bug “knock
that shit off, if the mayor finds out he’ll kill you. He will, no shit, not fucking around kill
you. Why do you think we wear these
contacts to hide our eyes? Why do you
think we use our burner ID’s The Coalition gave us? That guy is fucking nuts.”
“Well,
what if we escape?” Bug asked.
The
question sat there like a lump of lead on the table between them. They had often complained about their lot in
life but they had never directly talked about the subject of escaping.
Before
they could continue the conversation the bus pulled in announcing its presence
over a loudspeaker mounted to the roof.
“All
able bodied citizens’ report to the transport for selection.”
Every
day the bus came looking for people to work the fence. The space of land between the inner and outer
wall required constant maintenance.
Trees needed to be trimmed or removed, grass needed to be cut, insects
needed to be killed, holes filled and the fence mended. Much of the outlying territory was turned to
farmland leaving Waukegan an island of a city surrounded by plains.
Bug and
Jinx got up from their chairs and headed down to join the group. Pay for working the fence was $25.00 a
day. Food, which was provided in the
cafeteria in the main building was $10.00 for three meals and rent was $20.00 a
day. The system was designed to create
debt and desperation. There were
frequent brown outs, clean water was at a premium and water rationing assured
you wouldn’t get a shower every day or even every other day but if you spoke up
your debt would be “called in” and you would be subjected to hard labor or
experimentation in order to clear it.
Being picked for wall duty meant limiting your debt for the day. The sad thing was the whole situation happened
so subtly over the last five years that before they knew it Bug and Jinx were
trapped. But things have been at this
point for about two years now.
Bug and
Jinx joined the others in their gray jump suits and waited to be picked. The government workers in the body armor
looked through the crowd and eventually picked them both. They sat next to each other on the converted
school bus and were silent the entire trip with Bug staring out the window and
Jinx staring at the ceiling of the bus.
It was fall
and fall in Illinois meant a lot of gray storm clouds. The threat of rain always loomed but mostly
it was just a bit chilly and it was the season of raking. Several hours into their ten hour shift Bug
stopped raking. It was a slow process,
he started looking through the fence into the farmlands that reclaimed the
suburbs and soon he was doing more looking than raking before finally he
stopped all together and propped himself up on the rake and stared out.
“Bug.”
Jinx said in a low whisper as he raked around a large oak tree near the fence
itself “Bug!” he said a little louder, looking around to make sure the nearby
guard couldn’t hear them.
Bug
just continued to stare and think.
Finally
a guard came up from behind Bug and pushed him with the butt the large rifle that
the guard was carrying. Bug stumbled
forward and turned with an aggressive stance that earned him a blow to the
cheek with the same blunt end of the gun knocking Bug to the ground. Bug looked up at the guard with anger and the
guard looked back in shock, the guard had knocked one of the contacts out of
Bug’s eyes. Seeing this Jinx started to
walk forward grasping the rake like a weapon.
The guard in the tower, watching Jinx walk up behind the guard on the
ground, fired a warning shot into the tree behind Jinx. The shot knocked down a nest of wasps who
were inactive due to the cold weather.
As the
swarm rose up Bug smiled, he told the wasps to attack the guard which they
immediately did. As they swarmed the
guard he began flailing his arms as he tried to scream.
“HONORED! HONORED!” over and over again he yelled the
warning. “HONORED! HONORED!”
The
alarm slowly came to life sounding like a tornado siren.
Jinx
just stood there in shock unable to process everything that was happening. Bug secreted chemicals from his hands, rubbed them
together to create a thick resin and then threw a blob of the resin at the
fence which then exploded eating a giant hole into the fence. As Bug ran past Jinx he grabbed Jinx by the
arm and hurried him out through the fence and into the plains. Bullets whizzed past them as they ran out but
not a single one managed to hit.
=l=
Gordon Clancy aka The Gourmand was working hard in his kitchen as he often did trying to perfect his recipe for gołąbki, which was a Polish cabbage roll. Virtue gave him power over cooking, there was almost nothing he couldn’t make and everything he did make was guaranteed to be the best of that you’ve ever had. This ability gave him international celebrity beyond The Honored One-Hundred. But there was one dish he couldn’t make and that was gołąbki. That sole power was given to Pawel Dunajski aka “Cabbage Patch”. Cabbage Patch’s only power was the ability to make the perfect gołąbki which made Pawel the toast of Poland, the one place Gourmand wasn’t able to get a foothold in the restaurant business. Every night, after work, after the last meal was served Gourmand would work on his gołąbki recipe desperately trying to usurp Cabbage Patch. Every night he would fail. Every night he created totally inedible garbage. Tonight he had hope, something was different tonight. He hesitantly put fork to mouth to discover that this time… it was edible. It wasn’t as good as Cabbage Patch’s, it wasn’t even that good in general, but it was edible. A step in the right direction. As Gourmand thought over what he had done different a hand reached out from behind him and with a loud crack he fell to the floor, his head crushed.
=l=
“How many people know
about this?” the Mayor of Waukegan asked nervously as he walked towards his
office.
“A
couple of guards, a few citizens, it doesn’t seem to have gotten too far out of
hand.” The aide responded.
“Good,
the most important part is containment.
Call in the debt of the citizens who saw it, pay the guards for their
silence. We’ll need to talk to the
senator immediately and let him know something may come up. And what was this about one of them being
Honored…” The mayor said as he opened
the door to his office.
Inside
was the Senator of Illinois seated in the mayor’s chair.
“I’m
sorry Wes, I” was all the senator could manage before his head was crushed by
Brace.
The
door slammed shut with a tall muscular woman standing in front of it between
the mayor and the door. The aide
immediately ran and hid in the corner.
“What
have you done to my city!?!” Brace
yelled from behind the desk.
“I, I,
I, I, I…” was all the mayor managed out.
Brace
was a blur and then suddenly he was standing in front of the mayor.
“This
was NOT how I wanted things! This was
NOT how I left this place!” Brace
continued to yell to the retreating mayor.
The
mayor hit the wall of a woman in front of the door and stopped. Brace grabbed him by the neck and lifted the
mayor into the air.
“You
couldn’t have done this yourself! Who
helped you!?! Who helped you pervert my
vision!?!” Brace yelled. He wasn’t expecting an answer, he was just
angry, he instead tried to probe the mayor’s mind.
The
mayor choked and sputtered and spat white flakes of saliva onto Brace’s black
glove.
Finding
nothing Brace gritted his teeth and crushed the mayor’s neck before tossing him
into the same corner as the aide who screamed in terror.
“What
is it? What did you find?” The woman
asked in a heavy Russian accent.
“Nothing
Tower, I found nothing.”
=I=
Report On Honored Member Codenamed: Jinx (partial)
From: Brace
To: Grandfather
…Jinx has no taste for field work and despite being trained
and demonstrating proficiency in standard combat tactics and practices he
prefers to be sidelined. His powers (to
cause bad luck), while useful in causing misfortune to the enemy seems to be
entirely focused on his own well-being and has equal chance of causing
misfortune to the team. The ability to
cause the enemy to misfire is negligible when you consider most of us are
bulletproof in one way or another…
Report On Honored Member Codenamed: Bug (partial)
From: Brace
To: Grandfather
…I have assigned him, due to his powers (to talk to and
command insects), to the Recon Team.
However his usefulness is questionable when you consider the myriad of
other recon based abilities available to us.
Bug also seems more content to work in the lab or focus on his hobby of entomology
than perform in the field and I am happy to allow him to pursue his passions…
Request for Release
From: Gourmand
To: Grandfather
Grandfather,
I hereby inform you of my desire to be released from The
Honored One-Hundred Program. I have spoken to Brace multiple times about my release but my requests never seem to reach you. I do
appreciate all that you have given me but I am at my wits end acting as a mere
commissary cook for this military operation.
Since being given my powers I have greater aspirations than satisfying
the simple palates of these soldiers.
Thank you.
Regards,
Gourmand
RE: Request for Release
From: Grandfather
To: Gourmand
Your request is denied.
Your services are required for as long as the program is active. However we will put you on “Reserved” status
which will allow you non-operation time to pursue outside interests and achieve
outside goals. I received all your requests through Brace and chose to ignore them, please do not contact myself or Brace about this again.
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