I was a thief, a damned good one. I’m two meters tall and then some, and I look like a big clumsy oaf. But looks can be deceiving. I can sneak around without anybody hearing me, and I can strip everything valuable out of a warehouse in the time it takes a guard to finish his rounds.
I was only sixteen, but I had my own crew. We had our base in an old suburb outside Houston. The fringe areas had been mostly abandoned by the government, and when the police and other services went, so did the residents…or at least most of them. Anyone who tried to stick it out gave up after Houston was nuked; they built New Houston about 50 klicks west of the old city, and the fallout-contaminated exurbs surrounding the radioactive ruins sat almost totally empty for a century.
The radiation had long since ceased to be a major hazard, at least this far out, and the place made a great base of operations. None of the monitors and detection devices that were so thick in the inhabited areas. We hijacked freight shipments, and we raided the Cogs living around New Houston. Since the original city had been destroyed, New Houston didn’t have the ancient factories and decaying slums most of the other metro areas did. The Cogs lived in cheap prefab housing units and tent cites set up around the big plasti-crete and chemical plants the megacorps had built there. They had it a little better than those in some other cities. There was crime, certainly, but there wasn’t as much of an organized gang presence as in other places. It was more a series of company towns, and while the inhabitants lived just above sustenance levels, they were a little more prosperous than Cogs elsewhere. They had a bit more material wealth, and we tried to steal it all.
We snuck into the city sometimes and stole there too. We always targeted the middle classes, never the rich. Going after the upper classes was a fool’s game. The wealthy have power and influence; become too much of a problem for them and your days are numbered. But what is some engineer going to do?
I was prosperous, at least my own version of it. I set myself up in a big old abandoned house. It must have been a politician or executive who built the place, because it was huge. There was a big double staircase right inside the entry and a high ceiling – at least six meters. It looked like the floors had been marble at one time and the walls covered with paneling, but there were only a few bits and pieces left; the rest had been stripped long ago by some scavenger who got there a few generations before I did.
I’d traveled a long way to get where I was. My father’s name was Gregory Jax, and I have no idea what possessed him to name me Darius. He was a Cropper, a Cog recruited by a megacorp to work on one of the big agricultural preserves. The work was difficult and dangerous, but no worse than working in one of the factories, and the farming campuses were a little safer than the outer ghettoes of the cities. I think he took the job because he thought it would be better for me; at least I’d grow up away from the Gangs, which were really bad in the Louisville slums where I was born. My mother was gone. She died when I was young; I’m not really sure how. My father couldn’t even talk about her without getting upset, even years later. I know her name was Risa, but that’s about all. I always meant to ask him to tell me more about her, but the days went by and I never did. Then, one day, he was gone too, and I had no one to ask. I was alone.
He died in an accident on the farm. They never told me exactly how it happened, but the machinery was mostly old and poorly maintained, and accidents were common. It was easier and cheaper to replace workers than it was to inspect and maintain the equipment. The Megacorp was owned by the government, and they established a production quota and a budget. The Corporate Magnates who ran the thing got to keep whatever was left unspent, and they weren’t going to lose sleep over a few dead or crippled Croppers. Not as long as profits were rolling in.
I was only twelve, but I was already taller and bigger than most of the adults, so they assigned me to take over my father’s workload. Technically, he still owed the corporation for transport and housing, so I had to work off the debt. It was all bullshit; the whole system was a scam run by the megacorp, and no one ever got out of debt. They just kept working on the farm until they were too weak or hurt to continue, and then they were discharged, which probably meant they starved to death.
I did the work for a while, but I had no intention of spending the rest of my life in those forsaken fields. One of the supervisors rode me constantly – I think he had been in some sort of quarrel with my father, and now he took it out on me. He was a miserable bastard, and he was relentless. I tried my best to put up with it, but I blamed him for my father’s death and one day I’d had enough. He was giving me a hard time about nothing, and I just grabbed him and twisted his head. His neck snapped like a dry twig. I can still remember the feeling of his body jerking around, then going limp while I still held him and the hideous stench as his bowels released in death. It was the first time I’d ever stood up for myself, the first time I’d ever killed anyone.
After the initial adrenalin rush, I panicked. The other supervisors backed away, but they were all calling frantically for security. I knew I’d be lucky if they gave me the formality of a trial before gassing me…most likely they just shoot me down on sight. So I ran. I ran, and somehow I got away, past the checkpoints and over the perimeter fence.
I was alone, hiding in the rugged ground east of the farm complex, terrified, frantically trying to think of what to do. I knew I had to get my implant out or it would lead them right to me. I sat for what seemed like a long time, working up my courage. Finally, reaching behind me, I sliced into my back, digging for the implant. I didn’t have a knife, but I’d found a jagged shard of metal when I was running – probably part of a broken farm tool. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew the chips were implanted in the lower back. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t even get a good grip on the makeshift blade as I dug it into my back. I gritted my teeth against the agony, and I could feel my hands getting slick with my own blood. I got nauseous and almost threw up, but I managed to stay focused. I knew I was as good as dead with the damned implant still in me broadcasting. I can’t remember how long it took – it seemed like hours – but I finally found the thing and got it out.
I lay there a long time, tears streaming down my face. I’d never been in so much pain. The bottom of my shirt was soaked with blood. I’m going to die here, I thought. But I finally managed to get control of myself and think clearly for a few seconds. I smashed the implant with a rock; it wouldn’t be tracking me anymore. But it would lead them here, to the last known position it had transmitted. So I had to move on.
I tried to get up, but I was dizzy and it took me a while to steady myself. I took off my shirt and tore it into long strips, wrapping it around me the best I could to bind the wound. I thought about just lying there until it was all over, but again, something inside me drove me to live. I staggered my way over the rocky hills in the fading light until I couldn’t take another step…then I collapsed and passed out.
I couldn’t have gotten more than a couple klicks at most. I don’t know how they didn’t find me, but they didn’t. I woke up – it must have been hours later because the sun was high in the sky. My back hurt like fire, but I managed to drag myself to my feet and start heading south. I had no idea where I was going; south was an arbitrary decision. I just kept stumbling on my way, putting more kilometers between me and that damned megafarm.
I knew most water outside filtration plants was polluted, sometimes dangerously so, but I didn’t have much choice, so I drank from the streams I passed. Most of them seemed OK, except for one that smelled so badly of chemicals I passed it by. I did my best to wash the wound every time I reached a body of water, but it got infected anyway. I had a few feverish days when I was too weak to do anything, but finally it broke, and I started to feel better. I’d been eating what I could scavenge, but that wasn’t much. The fear first, and then the fever had blunted my appetite, but now I was ravenous.