We Had Flags (Toxic World Book 3) (3 page)

The scavenger gathered the rest of her things and left. The Doctor stood.

“Now what’s next?” he asked.

“Annette Cruz.”

“Leave her to last.”

“She’s right over there.”

“Wonderful,” The Doctor sighed.

Marcus chuckled. “Get ready, here she comes.”

The Doctor watched as the sheriff of the Burbs strolled over. If he had been attracted to women he guessed he’d find her good-looking, beautiful even. Despite being in her early thirties she had no trace of cancer or boils or skin infection, not even so much as a sore on her lip. Living in the Burbs like she did, that was a medical miracle. She had dusky skin and long brown hair that she kept tied in a bun when she was on the job. Her eyes were dark too, and had an annoying ability to hold his gaze.

Most people couldn’t. That Korean scavenger could, though.

Annette sauntered up to them. An empty pistol holster hung on her hip and another holster for a sawed-off shotgun, also empty, was strapped to her back. If she had been outside the gates those holsters would have been full, but noncitizens weren’t allowed to carry weapons inside New City. Hell, they weren’t even allowed to enter without permission, a rule Annette had developed a bad habit of ignoring. Somehow she was able to intimidate the guards into letting her pass.

“How may I help you, Sheriff Cruz?” The Doctor said in a suitably sarcastic voice.

“Different attitude for one,” she said. “Besides that, you need to hear today’s crime report.”

“Ahmed reported nothing serious.”

“No serious injuries, but I had to detain three different people for hate speech.”

The Doctor frowned. When he had founded New City after the fall of North Cape almost forty years ago, one of the first laws he’d passed was against hate speech. Hate was what had wrecked everything.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A drunk scavenger at $87,953 called Roy an ugly old black bastard.”

“Ugly? Not when he was younger. Quite the contrary.”

Annette was unphased. She was never phased by anything he said. It was one of her more irritating traits.

“It’s still hate speech,” she said.

“Like he’s never heard that before. His fault running a bar in the Burbs. So his bouncer beat up the latter-day white supremacist and you threw him in that new jail you’re so proud of. Next.”

“A market trader got in an argument with the deacon of the Baptist church and called him a Bronze Age throwback.”

“Ha! That’s a good one. What was the third?”

“Another drunk scavenger. I was arresting him for public disturbance. He was pissing on one of the water pumps—”

“This is what I love about the Burbs. So refined.”

“—and he called me a Spic.”

“Hate speech against the sheriff? A towering genius, to be sure. So what do you want me to do about all this?”

“Nothing. We can take care of our own law and order. All three are in jail and had to pay restitution to the victims, except the guy who insulted me. He’s paid an extra fine to Burb city funds.”

“And probably got his ass kicked in the process.”

A trace of a smile on Annette’s lips told him he was right. The smile quickly changed to a worried frown.

“Hate speech has been on the rise. It’s the Righteous Horde that touched it off. Brought up too many memories of the religious wars.”

“Anyone starting to Blame?”

That would be just what he needed, for people to start Blaming each other for the fall of civilization.

Annette shook her head. “I’d tell you if that happened. I don’t want to see anyone branded any more than you do, but we can’t have that.”

“Does your deputy agree?”

Annette glared at him. “Jackson is loyal.”

“Jackson is a Blamer.”

“He’s had his punishment, thanks to you, and that was years ago. I’m just telling you that while I can keep a lid on fistfights and stabbings, there’s not much I can do if everyone goes back to Blaming, and we’re not far off from that. I hope you can come up with something to head that off because I don’t have any ideas.”

With that she turned and stalked towards the New City gate.

“Always a pleasure, Annette,” The Doctor sighed, rubbing his temples. He felt a killer headache coming on.

After a moment Marcus spoke. “Want to get some tea before we see Philip? I’m sure Rosie’s got a kettle going.”

The Doctor shook his head. The last thing he needed right now was going to Marcus’ house to get served by his relentlessly chipper wife. The only thing more annoying than people who caused trouble were people who ignored it existed.

“No, let’s see Philip. Where is he?”

“On the roof, where else?”

Philip was New City’s best electrician and an expert on solar panels, as much as there was an expert on anything technological in this fallen age. Too young to remember the City-State Wars or the fall of North Cape, he was nevertheless as tied to the Old Times through his love of technology as any of the older citizens were through their fond childhood memories of the days when the lights never went out.

Philip was a scrawny man in his early forties with a receding hairline who wore thick glasses and moved with a nervous energy. As soon as The Doctor, Marcus, and Kent climbed up the stairs to the warehouse’s graveled roof, Philip ran to them through a forest of solar panels.

“What seems to be the trouble?” The Doctor asked.

“Electricity generation is down eight percent this month!” Philip said in something close to a panicked howl. The Doctor always found his manner irritating, but at least he cut through the bullshit and got straight to the point.

“Why? And why haven’t we seen a drop in power supply?” The Doctor asked.

“Second question first. Know how it’s been windy and stormy lately? That’s helped the wind turbines pick up the slack, but even so the power cells aren’t at full capacity like they usually are.”

“So what’s causing the drop?”

Philip gave the nearest solar panel a nervous glance. “Some of these panels are fifty years old. They’re wearing out.”

“Solar panels wear out?”

Philip nodded, his thick glasses flashing in the sunlight. “It takes decades, but they do.”

“Well, fix them!”

“I can’t! The substance inside them is a compound that includes rare earths that aren’t found on this region. Hell, they’re hardly even found on this continent. The mines were exhausted ages ago.”

The Doctor paused. A strange tingling sensation went through him.

“There’s nothing you could use instead?”

Philip shook his head.

“How long?” The Doctor asked.

“The deterioration speeds up quickly. Within a year, some of these panels will be at half capacity, some will be totally dead. Then the newer panels, the ones made in the final years of the City-States, those will start to go. And you know the wind turbines and tidal generator won’t be able to compensate. No way we can build a tidal generator ourselves, and while we can make more turbines, we don’t have the materials to make enough. Unless we find some rare earths, it will be lights out for the Burbs in a year. We won’t have sufficient power within the walls either.”

The Doctor walked away without replying. There wasn’t anything to say anyway.

The rest of the day was a blur. He treated a sprained wrist, checked on the half-empty grain silos, took status reports from the outlying farms, negotiated a quarrel between the fishermen and some market traders, diagnosed Marcus as suffering from angina, and did a thousand other things. But through it all floated one image in the back of his mind—the lights going out in the Burbs. The shantytown outside New City’s walls had always been chaotic and independent. The Burb Council and Sheriff Ballbreaker were just the latest manifestation of an old problem. They’d always been dependent on New City for power, though, and that helped keep them in line. Take that away, and he didn’t even want to think what might happen.

The only other thought that came to his head was a hope for the day to end. Finally, sixteen nonstop hours after he first opened the door, he went back through it. After telling the evening guards that he was not to be disturbed, he locked the door, closed his eyes, and rested his back against it. A long, despairing sigh passed his lips, followed by a guttural sound that came out like a growl, moan, and sob all in one.

His eyes opened. Taking a deep breath, he made a beeline to the medicine cabinet in his dispensary. He’d almost forgotten to treat himself.

Opening a medical kit that bore the proud and all-but-forgotten emblem of the Red Cross, Crescent, and Star, he picked out a vial of white cell rejuvenators, snapped it into a hypo, and gave himself an injection.

He nodded, satisfied. Another two weeks with a normal immune system.

The sight of the empty hypo gave him a tug of regret. How many people could he have saved over the years with the medicine he used on himself? But if he had let the virus in his bloodstream kill him, who would be around to save them? He sighed and shook his head as he sterilized the hypo and put it away.

“Now for the real medicine,” he said to himself.

Opening another cabinet, he pulled out a sealed bag that contained fresh marijuana buds grown on his personal farmland. Excellent for pain relief, nausea, glaucoma, and a wealth of other complaints. It was the pain relief he was after.

Tearing off a pungent bud, the green laced with red threads and sparkling with the little crystals that spoke of a fine sativa, he packed a pipe as he walked into the living room, slumped on the sofa, and put a disc in what for all he knew was one of the last eight functioning stereo systems in the world. Abraham Weissman, that traitor, had one of the others over in his breakaway settlement of Weissberg. Roy had another in his bar. The rest were owned by various other citizens.

As the beats of a Neotrance band that had been dead for half a century pulsed through his windowless living room, he fired up his pipe and did what he hadn’t done all day—smile.

CHAPTER THREE

Pablo Cruz tossed his baseball to Wang Hong-gi, who swung his bat and connected with a loud crack. The ball flew low and fast, shooting straight past Greg Miller and hitting a chicken right in the butt.

The chicken squawked and flapped its wings, waddling away as the three boys rolled in the dirt and howled with laughter.

“Home run! I call home run!” Hong-gi shouted.

“That’s
totally
a home run,” Pablo replied.

“Two home runs if it sticks in his butthole,” Greg said. The boys howled with laughter again.

“Yeah, but he has to pull it out,” Pablo said.

“Eeeew,” Hong-gi said, making a face. “Hey, Pablo! Remember when your mom shouted at you for biting your nails? Maybe she should put a chicken’s butt juice on them!”

“Gross!” Pablo said. That was a good one, good enough that he forgot to be angry when someone mentioned his mom.

The boys played in an open area at the edge of the market. It was just after breakfast and the stalls were beginning to open up. Already they could smell the birds roasting in Joe’s Chicken Shack and the bread baking in the New City bakery. Adults were laying out stuff at their stands and calling out what they had to trade. Two fishermen, a skinny man and an even skinnier women, both with red patches on their skin from standing in the sea too much, passed by with rows of fish hanging from sticks balanced on their shoulders.

“Fresh fish! Fresh fish!”

“Fresh chicken poop!” Pablo called out. His two friends laughed.

Pablo suddenly felt bad. Hong-gi’s boss made him eat fish sometimes.

And there was old Mr. Fartbag now, a grumpy man who owned a farm and kept a market stall that he made Hong-gi run most of the day.

“Come on, come on, come on!” Mr. Fartbag shouted, clapping his hands at Hong-gi as he walked towards them. Clapping his hands at people made Mr. Fartbag feel important. “I don’t feed you and put a roof over your head to have you play on my time. The grain isn’t going to trade itself. Move your skinny butt to the stall and get to work.”

Hong-gi’s face fell. He dropped the bat in the dust and started walking away.

“See you after work?” Pablo called out to him.

“OK,” Hong-gi said in a soft voice.

When Mr. Fartbag turned his back, Pablo gave him the finger. Hong-gi smiled at Pablo before slouching off to the market.

Pablo turned to Greg. “Can you stay?”

Greg shook his head. “Naw. I better get to the workshop. Dad got some new lumber in we need to cut.”

Pablo slouched. “Oh, all right.”

“Hey, did you see that scavenger who came in last night? She had a great set of knockers,” Greg said, cupping his hands over his chest to show how big they were.

Pablo rolled his eyes. Greg was twelve, two years older than him, and never shut up about knockers.

“Maybe she’ll come into the workshop for stuff to build a shack. I’d love to trade with her,” Greg gave him a weird smile.

Pablo waved as Greg walked off. He suddenly felt sad like he did every morning. All his friends had jobs. Mom always told him how lucky he was that he didn’t have to work like most Burbs kids. She didn’t know how boring it was to be alone all day.

He tossed his baseball up in the air and caught it. Then he spun around for a while to make himself dizzy and tried to walk over to the bat. He wobbled like the people in Uncle Roy’s bar. Too bad he didn’t live there anymore. When Mom got elected sheriff she got her own shack. That sucked. He had more space, but didn’t get to hang around with Uncle Roy as much.

Pablo picked up the bat. It was just a stick, not like that cracker of a bat Mitch had been carving for him. Pablo kept that hidden under his bed so Mom wouldn’t see. She had told him to throw it away. He’d never throw it away. He was going to get Kevin and Rachel to put it on that lathe thing in the machine shop and finish it up and he’d hit home runs every time just like Mitch said he would.

That’s what he could do, go get Kevin and Rachel to finish the bat! Then when his friends got off work they could play. Hong-gi would pitch and Greg would be outfielder and he’d shoot the ball right by both of them and be the best batter in the Burbs.

Pablo slumped.

No. He’d asked the mechanics three times this week and they’d been busy every time. And Hong-gi would probably be too tired to play tonight anyway.

Pablo kicked the dust. Mr. Fartbag made Hong-gi work every day, and he was only ten, just like Pablo! At least Greg got to work with his father. Hong-gi’s parents were dead and now he had to work for Mr. Fartbag to get food and shelter. At least Mr. Fartbag wasn’t a weirdo. A weirdo had shown his thing to Emily last month and asked her to touch it. What the weirdo didn’t know was that Emily was Clyde Devon’s niece and Mr. Devon was Head of the Watch. Emily ran right to the Operations Center and told him. Mr. Devon and Mom invited the weirdo to a necktie party.

That weirdo deserved a necktie, but what made Pablo mad was they’d given Mitch a necktie too, just for being in the Righteous Horde. Mitch hadn’t been a weirdo, and he hadn’t been a bad guy either. They let some of the Righteous Horde people stay and become fishermen and farm workers and stuff, so why did they kill Mitch?

Pablo would never forgive Mom for that. Never. Not ever. Not if he lived to be 28 million years old.

Pablo walked along the main street of the marketplace. He passed by Hong-gi’s grain stand and saw his friend busy haggling with some scavengers over a trade. A few stalls away, Lupita was helping her father put out the trade they’d scavenged that autumn. Lupita was cool, but she was a scavenger and was only around in the winters. Maybe he could become a scavenger too. Would Lupita’s family let him join? They spoke Spanish together and he could speak Spanish. They wouldn’t even have to speak English like they had to with most people. Maybe he should ask. They looked busy, though. Greg would be busy too, cutting that lumber.

Boooooriiiiing!

There was nothing to do when everyone was working. He needed to get a job. He wouldn’t work for Mr. Fartbag, though. He’d find someone cool to work with and get enough trade to get his own shack and Hong-gi could sleep there too instead of sleeping on top of the grain sacks in Mr. Fartbag’s barn.

Pablo kicked the dust again and swung his bat in lazy circles. Yeah, he should start asking around for a job. Like that would work. Mom would tell them not to hire him. Why did she always mess everything up?

His bat clanked against a bag of old tools. The trader at the stall shouted at him. Pablo mumbled an apology and walked away.

What was he going to do all day? Uncle Roy was probably sleeping after running the bar all night. He could say hi to Aunt Rosie. She’d be all alone since Uncle Marcus worked all day, but their house was kind of boring unless Jessica was there.

Wait, Jessica! He almost forgot! Today was the day!

Pablo sprinted out of the market and through the Burbs towards the beach. He dropped the bat so he could run better. It was just a lousy stick anyway. He kept a tight grip on his baseball, though. He had the best in the Burbs, a real ball from the Old Times, not some blob made of melted rubber or old socks.

He headed north, out past the last of the tents, before making a big circle around some of the farms and cutting west towards the beach and their secret spot. Nobody knew about this place except them. It was
totally
secret. The fishermen never went there and the kids from the Burbs swam closer to town.

Pablo didn’t like swimming. The water made his skin itch and his eyes sting. Mom said it wasn’t healthy to swim. That was one thing Mom got right.

He passed through farm fields, the earth bare since all the crops had been harvested. Not many farmers were around. Most were at the market or sitting inside working on whatever they did when they weren’t tending crops. Pablo stopped to take off his jacket. Even though it was winter and a bit chilly, running had made him hot.

He stuffed his baseball in one of the pockets, put his jacket under his arm, and kept running. He was already late. Jessica got mad when he was late. “This is an important mission,” she always said. “Don’t be a spaz and forget stuff.”

Jessica was fourteen and a scavenger and scavengers were always tough. She lived with Uncle Marcus and Aunt Rosie ever since her father had dropped her off before the siege. Jessica never talked about her father much except to say she was glad to be living in New City because he was a real hardass, not a weirdo or a Mr. Fartbag, but a bit crazy like lots of the scavengers. He was called The Giver and was King of the Scavengers and didn’t take shit from anyone. Mom almost shot him once for trying to poke some guy’s eyes out in Uncle Roy’s bar.

Pablo passed through the last cultivated field and saw the dunes up ahead. He couldn’t believe he had almost forgotten today was the day. He hoped Jessica wouldn’t be too mad.

He made his way through the sand dunes and came to their secret spot. Jessica was already there, digging at the sand next to the rock they had put there as a marker, like “X marks the spot” for pirate treasure.

This was way cooler than pirate treasure, though.

Her long blond hair ran down her back. He liked her hair. It sure was pretty the way it shined on sunny days. Sometimes he felt like touching it but he’d never had the guts to ask.

Jessica heard him and whipped around, pulling a little automatic pistol from her pocket. Nobody in the whole wide world knew about that pistol except Pablo. Well, maybe her father, but nobody else. She hid it somewhere outside of town so nobody would find it and only carried it when she went into the dunes.

“You’re late,” she said with a frown.

“Sorry.”

“Come on and help me with this,” she said, putting away her pistol and starting to dig again. “No, wait. First go to the top of the dune and keep a lookout.”

Pablo did as he was told. From the top of the nearest dune he could see pretty far in every direction. The other dunes ran in a lumpy line along the shore, looking like a bunch of people sleeping under brown blankets. Through the gaps in the dunes he could see the farmland. Way, way far away he saw someone walking through the field with a tool over their shoulder. A farmer. They never came out this way. He studied each and every dune he could see, especially the low bits between them. Sometimes tweakers came out here. That’s probably why Jessica had the gun. He didn’t see any, though. No scavengers either. Everything this close to town had been scavenged before he was born. Before Jessica had been born, even.

Then he looked out to sea. He had a really good view. The water sparkled in the sunlight. Not far off New City stuck out on a bit of land. Beyond that the shore curved away and some rocky hills hid the entrance of Toxic Bay from view. He could see the chemical slick in the water, though. It reached far out into the sea. A breeze made his nostrils tingle and chilled him. He put his jacket back on.

At the base of the dune, Jessica had pulled out the burlap bag. Opening it, she pulled out the plastic box. Then she opened the box and took out the radio.

Pablo’s heart beat fast in his chest. Using the radio was the coolest thing he had done since Rachel let him ride in one of the Hummers.

Jessica glanced up at him and he made a show of looking around for intruders. He didn’t want her to get mad again. She had threatened not to let him use the radio once when he had been really, really late. He had to beg and plead to be allowed to use it until she finally gave in. He wondered why she never used it. Didn’t she know how much fun it was?

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She set up the radio, a black metal rectangle with all sorts of dials and switches and a round little grill of a speaker, attached the microphone, and unspooled the antenna. It was a big long wire that stretched halfway up the dune. Once she was done she motioned for him to join her. He gave a last look around, for real this time, and saw no one. With a delighted yelp he ran down to her.

She gave him a smile and Pablo smiled back. She was so cool. He had never had a big sister until she came around. He hoped her father never, ever came to take her back into the wildlands.

“Ready for some fun?” she asked.

“I don’t work for free!” Pablo said in a singsong voice.

“All right,” she said, sitting cross-legged and putting her hands on her knees. She fixed her bright blue eyes on him. “What is it this time?”

Pablo thought for a moment. An apple? Help with his chores? He could ask anything as long as he didn’t get too greedy.

Then he had an idea. “One answer to one question.”

Jessica’s face darkened. “You know I don’t like questions.”

“Pleeease?”

She sighed. “What’s the question?”

“Well, um, you know that piece of paper in the bag with all those numbers? Whose handwriting is that? And why are the numbers you write down for me to say different from those numbers?”

“That’s two questions.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Jessica said, looking over her shoulder and leaning in close to whisper to him. “Our mission is almost done anyway. Those numbers were written by my father. But we’re giving them our own numbers.”