Though they heard gunfire in the woods, it seemed far behind them. Its repetitive din was now just another facet of the landscape, like the rumble of traffic on the interstate. It was a shock, then, when Chancellor Carson’s voice boomed through the woods. It emanated from the trees, surrounding the men.
“Congratulations on successfully navigating your first eight hours of Labor! In sixteen hours, you will be reunited with your family. As many mothers can attest, the deepest hours of the night are often the most uncomfortable. In an effort to ensure a measure of equality, the Authority has taken steps to make your evening in the Labor field difficult.”
A bank of lights suddenly slapped on, bathing the woods in a wash of bright yellow light, the men shielding their faces from the intensity of the glow.
In that moment, a platoon of bulls dressed in brown and black camouflage and night-vision goggles rappelled from the towering trees around the quartet. Norton was the first to register their descent.
“Bulls!” he shouted, just as the soldiers opened fire. Fausto tugged him to the ground by his collar, folding him into a roll in the same efficient motion. Norton watched Eric Blaylock’s head explode in a film of blood and gore.
Fausto shoved him behind the base of a huge spruce tree and then both men were scrambling into a hunched run, zigging and zagging through as bullets chased them into the woods like shrieking hornets.
An anguished cry echoed through the woods—Bill Boyce. “My leg! Oh god, my leg!”
Ruiz and Norton hurtled a fallen oak, their backs to the skirmish. It didn’t seem that the bulls had given chase. Fausto shook his head, distraught, as Boyce’s cries escalated. The big man loosed a string of angry insults that terminated abruptly with a single pistol report.
“Shit,” Norton whispered, his fear an aching, exposed nerve. Death was close, fifty meters away, and likely once again on the march.
“You hit?” Fausto asked.
Bryan didn’t know—hadn’t thought to look. “I don’t think so.”
“Forward then.”
They stood and, despite the exposure of the lights (Bryan could now see their stanchions hovering high above the Labor field), they tried to disappear into the woods.
“Murderers!” The bull’s call was amplified by a megaphone. “You are both murderers! Ruiz and Norton—we’re coming for you!”
“Fuck,” Ruiz muttered. He grabbed Norton’s sleeve and they began to sprint blindly through the woods, blackberry brambles whipping at their faces as they hopped trees and ferns, barreling toward a future as uncertain as a world with twenty billion souls clinging desperately to its scarred surface.
They ran, hammer flushed down, for almost thirty minutes before Norton couldn’t push it any further. “Got to…stop,” he panted, strings of saliva trailing from his chin.
“I know,” Ruiz agreed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s just too…too many of them.”
Norton looked up, shoulder still heaving, and felt his heart grow cold. The man with the mousy eyes was losing faith. It scared him more than Boyce’s shouts or the look of resignation in Derek Gorman’s vacant eyes. “We can’t…we can’t just quit, Fausto.”
Bullets cut the air above their heads, tearing into the trunks of hardwoods and pines, blowing splinters into the air like confetti. Branches fell as the gunfire burned a swath through the forest. Fausto raised his hands and slowly turned to face the forest. Norton followed suit.
The lights above them went black and the world was a void—a dense nothing marked only by the bobbing line of red censors affixed to the bulls’ night goggles.
“Not bad, you two,” one of the bulls called. Norton thought it was the same voice that had echoed through the megaphone. “But it ain’t enough, son. You killed good men tonight, you fucking abortions.”
The venom in the bull’s words was palpable. Norton closed his eyes, an image of Maggie the last thing he registered before the world dissolved into chaos and destruction.
He waited for the bullets to rip him apart—bullets that never came—and then the world went utterly silent. When he opened his eyes, Fausto remained at his side. The lights suddenly blinked back on and there were three men behind them, weapons pointed at the ground. Behind them, there was an opening in the dirt with a set of descending stairs.
“This way! Move your asses!” the closest man said. His enormous grey beard had been tied back with rubber bands; the two sections hung from his chin like stalactites. He had wild eyes, thick arms and broad shoulders.
The others disappeared into the earth and Norton peered back into the woods. The bulls lay still in a lake of blood, picked to bits by the gunfire of their rescuers. Fausto clutched his shoulder and then they were on the steps, descending into the earth.
The man with the beard lingered, scanning the forest for witnesses. Satisfied they had not been seen, he followed them, closing the trapdoor behind him, a digital doorway that disguised the fact that any resisting soldiers had ever visited that place in the woods.
“Move,” the bearded man said, pushing the awestruck Norton in the back with the butt of his rifle. “Just because you wasted those bulls back at Fornoy’s clearing don’t mean you’re finished with this mess. Pick ‘em up, kid.”
Norton shuffled forward. They were, remarkably, in a well-built tunnel, the ceiling strung with bare light bulbs. The walkway beneath their feet was corrugated steel, the angles of the tunnel precise.
Jesus. Someone down there had serious resources.
They navigated the corridor and it slowly widened into a hallway, fortified with thick steel beams. Soon there was a pair of double doors and they pushed through them and into a room that hummed with activity. At least a dozen men monitored the struggle taking place above their heads on closed-circuit televisions.
“In here,” the bearded man said, angling for an office. Fausto and Norton followed him inside. The man took a seat behind the desk; he rummaged in the bottom drawer until he found a bottle of Pendleton Whisky and a couple of glasses.
“Sit,” he said, nodding at the open chairs. He poured three stiff drinks and handed one to Norton and Ruiz. “Hell of a good job so far, men,” he said, and they clinked glasses.
Ruiz sipped, Norton eyed his skeptically, and the bearded man tossed his off without another thought. He reloaded and took a sip.
“I’m Alain Verlander. I manage the military ops down here. You, gentlemen, have chosen a hell of a night to have your babies.”
“Thanks—thanks for saving us,” Fausto said, leaning forward to shake hands with the man. “You work for Fornoy?”
The man shook his head. “Fornoy’s dead. Been dead for nine years. Lung cancer. I’m just the next in a long line of soldiers, brother. It’s a lineage you’d be right at home in, Fausto. We saw what you did up there. You can handle yourself.”
Fausto merely smiled in reply.
“And you,” Verlander said, locking eyes with Norton. “You learning anything from your friend here?”
“I…I guess,” Bryan said. He shook hands with the man, giving him his name. “I’m just lucky to have met Fausto back there in processing. Dumb luck is what it was.”
“Yeah. You could say that,” Verlander agreed. Norton couldn’t tell if the man liked him or not. He seemed pretty unimpressed.
“You going to drink that?” Verlander asked him, eyebrows raised.
“Oh. Yeah, thanks,” Bryan replied. He slugged down half of his drink. It burned his throat and he exploded in a series of ragged coughs.
Verlander and Ruiz chuckled, and Bryan managed a smile when he got himself back under control.
“Come on,” Verlander said when they’d finished their drinks. “I’ll give you the two-dollar tour.”