The Purge of District 89 (A Grower's War Book 1) Read online

  There were a few subsidies, too. Credits made back to him for keeping his head down and doing what he was told. Walter Baucom had two subsidies, and he knew damn well that without them his financial ends would not meet, no matter how much creative stretching he and Carolyn could do. There was his Land Patronage subsidy, and his Best Career subsidy—for sticking to farming, because that’s what his Aptitude Test said he’d be good at.

  Scrolling through all of this, Walt stopped and jabbed a finger at something he hadn’t expected to see. “Ecosystem Recovery Act?” he looked up at Merl. “The hell is that?”

  Merl just shook his head and continued into the bar. “Come on, y’knocker. You ever read your corporate mail?”

  Walt walked after him, only half-paying attention to where he was going. Mostly focused on that culprit of his missing money. “Ayuh,” he murmured. “When I get around to it.”

  Merl grabbed a seat at the bar. “Close that shit. I’m fuckin’ parched.”

  Walt snapped his PD shut, but didn’t sit.

  Merl looked up at him. “SoDro sent the memo about that shit. Fed’s twisted their arm into—” he put up air quotes “—‘revitalizing the ecosystems damaged by chemical runoff.’ Our hydroponics, basically.”

  “And we have to foot the bill?” Walt grumbled to himself.

  “So the wind blows.” Merl propped his elbows on the bar. “Relax. It’s only two-hundred and thirty-four bucks.”

  Walt made a raspberry noise. “Easy for you to say, Moneybags. I only got two in my house. Pops’s retirement barely counts.”

  Merl was married, his pops was still working, and his grandpa had not been “disappeared” like Walt’s. He was a five-income house, which was pretty normal. Walt’s was only a two-income house—just he and Carolyn. Walt’s father’s income barely contributed because he insisted on living alone.

  Independent, he called it. Like people used to live.

  And nearly every penny of his retirement subsidy went to paying his rent.

  It hadn’t always been like that.

  Life had dealt its blows. It had taken much.

  Merl cleared his throat. “No moneybags here. I got two chaps.”

  Walt nodded silently. Didn’t have a reply to that. It never failed to feel like a jab in the gut, and Walt tried like hell to hide his change in demeanor—squinting at the beer taps, or looking away. The moment was there and then gone, just a small, unconscious reaction that Walt mitigated as quickly as possible. Because in the end, he shouldn’t begrudge Merl his kids, even if he and Carolyn couldn’t have their own.

  Merl realized he’d tread himself into sensitive areas. He raised his hand. “Good God. Can two guys just grab a beer and quit talking about this shit?”

  Walt gestured to his PD. “You sure you’re good buyin’ me a beer? That deduction ain’t gonna put you in the red?”

  “Naw, man.” Merl waved him off, then raised his hand to the bartender and requested two beers.

  Walt took a seat at the bar. It burned a little bit. He knew damn well that Merl had offered to buy him the beers because he knew the deduction from SoDro would likely have put him and Carolyn too close to the edge this month.

  Growers could be stubborn. Especially about accepting kindness from others.

  But…they were also a close community. Money troubles were no stranger to them. And there was a delicate social dance that they all knew that allowed them to help each other out in the leaner times without making each other feel beholden. It was a small thing, an understanding. Today, Merl was the one with a few extra dollars. Next week, it might be Walt.

  No tally was necessary.

  Merl knew Walt would get him back when he could.

  The bartender placed the two beers in front of them. Caps already removed. And by then it was too late to refuse, even if Walt had wanted to. And right then, that sweating cold beer looked like he didn’t want to.

  They took their bottles of beer.

  Merl raised his. “Cheers. To a good planting.”

  They clicked bottles and drank.

  ***

  Walt remembered the night that the Baucom house had lost one of its own.

  It hadn’t been the first time. But it was the time that he remembered the most. Before that time, it had been his Grandpa Clarence that they’d come for, but he’d been young when that happened, and he only remembered the absence, and not the incident itself.

  This time, he’d been there when it happened.

  It had been evening. Late in the evening, because he remembered it was summertime and it was dark out. So it had to have been after nine. It was the summer before his senior year in high school. He was seventeen and spent most of his time in the evenings glued to his PD because it was still relatively newfangled to him.

  The days he spent learning the ropes as a knocker—a bottom of the barrel, know-nothing rookie--on the hydroponics maintenance rigs, and, occasionally, begging a tractor operator to let him ride along to absorb some of the tricks.

  That summer, his brother, Roy, had butted heads to the point of fists with his Pops over how vocally anti-CoAx he was. But even after all of that, Roy took his Aptitude Test and it told him he would be working on software maintenance for the planting tractors. And in a strangely defeatist way, Roy accepted his fate. He’d met a girl named Shana, and he spent most of his time with her. Walt and his family rarely saw him anymore. There was a strange distance there.

  But on that one, late-summer evening, Roy had come back to them.

  This was after a month or so when none of them had seen or heard from Roy and they’d all assumed he was out with Shana. So it was a nice surprise to see him show up at their door that night, just before dinner, and Walt had almost been giddy to help set an extra place at the table.

  The house was very boring by himself with no one to convince him to get into trouble.

  Roy seemed different that night, but in a good way. Gone was the resignation and the bitterness. He seemed to have found some sort of purpose in his life again, and it didn’t seem like he held anything against Walt, or Mom, or even Pops. He seemed happy to see them again.

  “How’s Shana?” Walt ventured as they were finishing their dinner plates and Pops was rooting around the pantry for moonshine.

  Roy smiled. “She’s good, man. Real good.”

  “What’s she doin’ with herself?”

  “She’s workin’ at the Barn.”

  “Really?” Walt was surprised. “I never see her.”

  “She works first shift hours. Parts Requisitions.”

  “Ah.” Walt nodded. “I’m third shift on the maintenance rigs right now.”

  “I heard.” Roy gave him a look that said he was almost proud of Walt. “Helpin’ Mom and Pops pay the bills?”

  Walt nodded. “Just a little bit. Crossing my fingers for the Aptitude Test.”

  Something dark passed over Roy’s face. “Ayuh.”

  Pops reappeared with a mason jar of moonshine. He set it onto the table with a flourish. “Now, there it is.” He motioned for Roy. “You missed the last batch. Go ahead. Guest of honor.”

  Walt glanced into the kitchen and Mom was sipping coffee, shaking her head at them, but she had a smile on her lips. Good to see the boys back together again. It was nice to pretend that everything was okay. To hope that everything would be smooth sailing from there on out.

  Roy was looking down into the clear liquid in the mason jar, and Walt could tell that he was struggling with whether to say something or not. There was a slight frown across his eyebrows, and his lips twitched just a bit with unsaid words. He seemed not to want to ruin the moment.

  Pops slapped him on the shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Good to have my boys back under one roof,” he said.

  If Roy had been close to saying anything, that pulled him back. The look of hesitation left him and he forced a smile that, after a moment, became a little more natural. He lifted the mason jar. “Ayuh, Pops. It’s good to hang out with y
ou guys.”

  Then he drank and passed the jar to Walt.

  They sipped and laughed and even Mom joined them for a few nips.

  An hour passed, talking about childhood memories when Walt had followed Roy around to getting in trouble in nearly every corner of the damn District. Talking about when Roy was going to pop the question to Shana. It went back and forth between the subjects of Roy’s future and Pops’s imminent retirement—still a few years away, but for which he fervently looked forward to. And eventually the conversation came back to Walt, and to his hopes, and his nervousness about the Aptitude Test, and Mom and Pops’s nervousness about whether Walt might test out.

  Without Grandpa Clarence, they were down to two incomes. Roy still helped, but if he married Shana there was a good chance he would join his finances to her family. And Walt was barely helping out—his twenty hours a week paid for maybe one or two of the smaller bills. They would never tell him to fix his test scores, but if he managed to test out, and Roy combined finances with Shana’s family, then their parents were going to be living very close to the red.

  Not that it really mattered, as Walt observed.

  Growers didn’t test out very often.

  But Walt remembered his brother looking at him, holding that jar of moonshine in one hand, and Walt knew he was buzzed, but his eyes were sharp nonetheless. He pointed at Walt with an index finger from the hand that held the jar.

  “You listen to me, little brother. Those tests?” he paused, mason jar hovering in the air, and his eyes grew watery and he looked away from Walt with a small shake of his head. “We’re smarter than they think we are. We could be better. But they won’t let us.”

  “Roy,” Pops intoned, warningly. “Do we have to?”

  Roy set the jar down decisively. “No. I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”

  Those were the last words that Walt ever heard his big brother say.

  In that moment, at about ten o’clock, Walt heard the sound of rotors. He heard how they reverberated the house, how they shook the dishes in the cabinets, clattered the pots and pans. And for a half-second, he felt annoyance, because their house sat underneath a very common route for the gunships, so this was not an abnormal thing to hear them roar overhead.

  But then he saw the look on Roy’s face, the sudden, clenched terror in it.

  And then it became very clear that the rotors were not passing over them.

  They were hovering.

  And then the spotlight hit.

  The windows were suddenly bright.

  Pops looked at Roy, their eyes coming together with some unspoken knowledge.

  “Go!” Pops hissed.

  And Roy went.

  He shot out of his seat and ran for the back door. Walter remained sitting, not knowing what to do or what to say or even what to think. His mind was blank, hanging open like a door left unlatched in a storm, letting every horrible thing of that moment in without filter.

  Huge, concussive explosions, one after the other, from the front and the back of the house. Bright, buzzing light that seared his retinas like he’d been looking into the sun. His ears rang like church bells. His dazzled eyes watched Roy’s silhouette shoulder his way through the back door. He ran full-tilt, his arms up to shield his eyes from the light.

  The front door exploded in.

  Walter’s Mom began to scream.

  Faceless men in hardarmor and battleshrouds bellowed over her screams, telling them to get on the ground. Mom couldn’t hear them, or didn’t register what this nightmare was. She just stood there. And Walt watched one of the New Breed soldiers grab her by the back of her neck and slam her face-first into the floor. He watched her face mush into the wood, her eyes closed tight, her mouth open even as the scream was cut off by a knee being driven into her back.

  Pops didn’t even try to move. He watched Walt’s Mom taken down with a sort of sad resignation, and then he was swept to the ground as well. His chair flew out and clattered to the other side of the kitchen table.

  Walt felt rough hands across his body, searching for weapons, and there was the sound of boots flowing smoothly and efficiently through the house. Commands were called. Rooms cleared.

  All in just a few seconds.

  Walt turned his head to see out the open back door.

  He could still see Roy running, across the backyard like they had when they were kids, escaping into the cornfields, escaping the boredom of a summertime stuck with Grandpa Clarence and his bottle of whiskey. He watched the spotlight from the gunship shift, tracking with Roy, and black shapes came out of the cornfields, moving swiftly onto him, driving him to the ground.

  The rotor wash kicked dust and debris off the small back porch and into Walt’s face, but he couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t avert them, and he watched as the gunship lowered down, and his brother’s hands were yanked behind his back, and a black sack was placed over his head and he was hauled into the back of the gunship with four soldiers.

  Then the gunship lifted off, and Roy was gone.

  Disappeared.

  Chapter 3

  Walt hung at the bar for about an hour. Merl bought him another beer because he saw that Walt was nursing the first and it apparently irritated him. Walt was just starting the second beer when his PD chirped at him.

  He checked the preview monitor and saw the text of the message, and who had sent it. It simply read: Need help. Now.

  Walt felt something creep up the back of his throat, like nervous bile.

  Shit. Tonight?

  He leaned away from the bar so Merl could not see, and then he pulled up his full monitor and stabbed out a quick response: standby 5.

  He closed the monitor and leaned onto the bar. Clutched his beer in fingers that had gone suddenly cold and bloodless.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  He realized he was gripping his bottle hard. He forced himself to relax. Breathe.

  You gotta do it. For Carolyn. For both of you. This is the only way.

  But, he didn’t want to be rude. Merl had spent his hard-earned money on that beer in his hand, and just because he had five in his house didn’t mean he could afford to be buying Walt drinks. Like Merl pointed out, he had two kids.

  So Walt finished the second beer over the course of a few minutes, even though his nerves made the beer taste flat and over-cold, almost painful on his empty stomach. Merl offered to buy another, but Walt refused, citing early bedtimes and wife expectations. Merl nodded understandingly and raised his bottle again.

  “Good work today,” Merl said. “More next week.”

  “Always.” Walt smiled. Convincingly, he felt.

  They were commissioned for 2,500 more acres next week.

  “Night,” Merl said.

  “Night.”

  Walt managed to edge out of the bar just after 8 o’clock. He felt guilty about lying to Merl. Even worse about lying to Carolyn. He would tell Merl that he was heading home. And he would tell Carolyn that he’d been at the bar with Merl. The two of them didn’t exactly talk to each other much, so Walt could only cross his fingers and hope the truth didn’t come out.

  Outside, the Russian patrol was gone.

  The wind had picked up. He pulled the top of his worn tans closed and zipped it up as he walked along the street. Two men were walking toward Brown’s. More growers in their stained tans. One of them raised a hand to him in greeting. A younger guy with tight, skeletal features. Walt recognized him. Another regular at Brown’s, though he didn’t know the guy’s name and had never really talked to him outside of occasional sports commentary.

  “Hey, man,” the grower said.

  “Hey.” Walt smiled, kept walking.

  “They got checkpoints up on the roads out,” the guy said as they drew abreast of each other.

  Walt stopped and turned slightly to face him. “Really?”

  “Ayuh.”

  “Why?”

  The guy shrugged. His friend was nodding along.

  �
�No idea,” the younger guy said. “Doin’ their own thing, I guess.”

  “Aigh’ then.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Thanks.”

  Walt kept walking. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Felt the little piece of news settle on him like a brick in his gut.

  Checkpoints on the roads out.

  All the roads?

  He clenched his hands together in his pockets.

  He made it back to his old truck and climbed inside. The vinyl seats were cold. Torn and leaking batting in places. He started his truck and turned the heat on. He flicked his PD monitor up and looked at the message again.

  Need help. Now.

  He had no reason to think that the closing of 8089’s borders was connected to this request for help. But he couldn’t help thinking that it was. And that ratcheted up the stakes in Walt’s mind, almost to an unacceptable level.

  But…he needed the money.

  And cashing in on his peculiar talent was getting harder and harder.

  Shit. Walt, what are you getting yourself into?

  He glanced around him, but there was no one around. Even if there had been, they wouldn’t have been able to read his monitor while he was sitting in his truck. But his heart was beating in that hard, fast way that it did when you were a kid and you knew you were on the threshold of getting in Big Trouble.

  He blew air out of pursed lips, and keyed out a message with his right hand.

  On the way. Where?

  The reply was almost immediate. They were waiting on him.

  Same place. ETA?

  He keyed back: 10

  He backed out of his parking space and drove slowly out of the town center. On the main drag, a pair of guntrucks roared by at their usual breakneck speed, darting in and out of cars that were trying to shuffle out of the way like scared sheep.

  Something was going on.

  He pulled out onto the main drag, heading the opposite way as the guntrucks, and then hung a left at the next intersection. This road was quiet. Two lane. He accelerated up, but didn’t break the speed limit.