Survival Read online

  survival

  Daniel Powell

  DISTILLATIONS PRESS

  JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

  PUBLISHED BY DISTILLATIONS PRESS

  JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

  KINDLE EDITION

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  COVER DESIGN BY CANOPY STUDIOS

  Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Powell

  ASIN: B0053SOZAU

  All Rights Reserved

  survival

  The man and his son braced themselves against the cold, huddled there on the park bench, their breath punctuated by little blasts of steam. The boy made fists tight as frozen potatoes, clenching and unclenching his hands as his father drilled the words into him.

  “Ok, you’ve made it this far, Son. You remember that when things get hairy in there. I don’t have to tell you how many folks never even make it to Labor, do I? But your old man made it, and you will too. I’m sure of it. Ok, kid, what’s the first rule?”

  “Look for cover.”

  “Damn straight. You kill time that way. Killing time is the name of this here game. Rule two?”

  “Cover ground by night.”

  “Good. That’s right, Son. You wait for dusk and get a lead on those bastards. Don’t let ‘em lull you into complacency. It’s an old trick. When the sun goes down, you get moving. Rule three?”

  The boy looked into his father’s eyes, a pair of ruddy brown pools, the whites streaked though with crimson veins. Sleep had been fleeting for all of them in the weeks since the baby’s due date fell into testing range. He swallowed hard.

  “A kill is as good as a victory,” he replied, the words barely above a whisper.

  His father nodded. He stared at his son, tears welling in his eyes. He reached across the bench and pulled him into an embrace, the young man’s thin shoulder blades sharp as pottery shards beneath his windbreaker. “I know it’s tough, Bryan. God, but I know it, Son. But you do what you have to do, you understand? They’ll kill you in there. You do what you have to do to ensure your survival,” he said.

  The boy flinched. His father had called him by his given name—a rarity indeed. The sudden intimacy kicked his pulse up another notch. Jesus, this was happening.

  “You ready?” the old man said.

  The boy’s name was Bryan Norton. He was tall and thin, still awkward in his youth, with cords of muscle and quick, nervous blue eyes. If he survived the world on the other side of the iron wall, he would emerge from the test a man.

  And he would be a father.

  “I think so, Pop. Tell Mom that I love her. Tell her I’d like some of her lasagna tomorrow night for supper.” He choked on a sob. “And tell Maggie that I’ll be there, Dad. Tell her...tell her that I promise,” his voice cracked, “that I’ll be there.”

  A tear tracked down the old man’s face as he regarded his only son. He opened his mouth but his words were swallowed by the din of the air-raid siren. Labor had officially begun. All around them, men in blue jeans, long-sleeved thermal tops and white wind breakers began to walk toward the processing stations, their left hands extended for fingerprint verification.

  Grief reigned on the periphery of the processing area. Parents and siblings wailed as they watched their loved ones disappear into the stalls where they would be processed before entering the Labor field.

  In Portland, the survival rate for men entering Labor hovered around 60%, far better than in many places. A general belief held that America’s western cities had kinder bulls—that places like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco were easier to survive than the Labor fields in Pittsburgh or Detroit.

  Bryan spared a single glance over his shoulder at his father, his old man a haggard shadow of his usual gregarious self. He waved and stepped into line. There were maybe a few hundred of them, awaiting entry to a world of blood and violence.

  The chutes were staffed by armed bulls—junior cadets who would one day graduate from Processing to Equality Enhancement and Population Control. Bryan shuffled forward, watching the bulls fingerprint the nervous men. Hand-picked by the Authority, most weren’t much older than him. He wondered what would have happened if he’d been tagged for service, all those years before.

  Would he have had the stomach to work for the Authority?

  “Better not to think of it,” a man said in the next line over. He was mousy and slight, with a long, thin nose, wavy black hair and sleepy eyes.

  Bryan stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “When that siren went off, a couple of hundred deserters bit the dust. There will be a lot of clean-up in the city today. I saw it in your eyes. You were lost there for a minute.”

  Bryan nodded. He’d forgotten about the microchips. The bulls were de-activating the Promise Sensors. At least there was that.

  He pictured the aftermath—the crumpled bodies in city parks, littered along the Oregon Coast, in mountain retreats. Many men simply walked away—content to let the Promise Sensors finish the task without ever testing themselves against the gauntlet of Labor.

  “You doing ok?” the mousy fellow asked.

  “I guess,” Bryan replied. He extended his hand. “I’m Bryan Norton. I live…I live out in Sellwood.”

  “Fausto,” the man replied. “Fausto Ruiz. Goose Hollow. I’ve got a beautiful little girl waiting on me.” The man with the sleepy eyes grinned and it was a relief, like the blink of a lighthouse on the open ocean, to see a positive emotion in the midst of all that naked fear.

  Bryan smiled, the thought suddenly occurring to him that there was a reward on the other side. Maggie and his little boy. If he could make it through Labor, he’d have a life with his family.

  “Nice to meet you, Fausto. You, uh...” He fumbled for the words, and Fausto’s grin widened an inch.

  “No. I haven’t made any connections yet. But I got a good feeling about you, kid. We can work together,” he replied.

  Bryan felt a surge of relief. There were other rules—principles beyond the three he’d discussed with his old man. Partner up—safety in numbers—was one of them. Look for help on the inside was another one. Something told him the slight man was solid—a real ally.

  They shuffled forward, maybe a dozen turns until their own. “A little girl, huh? We’re having a boy. We’ll call him Eli. He’ll be here in just a few weeks.”

  “That’s a good name—a strong name. We’re calling our girl Carmen. She’s amazing! Shoot, all those somersaults in her mother’s belly?” he said, grinning at the thought of it. “We’re going to have a ballet dancer. She’ll be here before we know it.”

  As they advanced, they swapped details of their lives before pregnancy. When it was their turn, they stepped into the booths.

  “Left hand,” the bull grunted, seizing Bryan’s fingers and running them over the scanner. He wore a hard glare, his chiseled features all business. Bryan didn’t see so much as a glimmer of compassion in his eyes. The scanner verified his identity. The guard deactivated the Promise Sensor and told him to move into holding.

  Fausto waited on the other side and they migrated toward an open space at the edge of the pen. Bryan craned up on his toes in an attempt to find his father, but his old man had disappeared in the sea of distraught supporters.

  “Soooo…right, left or down the gut?” Fausto said when they’d found a quiet place to chat. All around them, men were gathering in loose groups—some big, some small.

  “I don’t know. You think there have been many changes?”

  Fausto shook his head. “I bought a satellite map three days ago. The Authority hasn’t raised any forest—at least not that I could see in the map. Of course, you know there’ll be new digital obstacles. Those we’ll have to deal with when we get to ‘em. But when they open those gates,” his eyes widened, “this thing is for real. We need to commit to a plan from the start.”

  Bryan inhaled. “Did the satellite map show anything?” He envied the man’s wealth and connections. Intelligence on the layout of the Labor field was fiercely prohibited. His father had offered to buy a map, but Bryan shot the idea down right away. There was no sense in committing his family to financial ruin.

  “Yeah, I think we position ourselves toward the rear of the crowd. When the lead expires, the bulls will flank us—they almost always do, so we don’t want to be in the very back. They’ll cut us down. But I think we make a play toward the northwestern quadrant of the field. There’s cover there, and lots of different terrain. My information indicates there’s an angel in those woods as well. Now, if we can just get to him...”

  Bryan made a second appraisal of his new friend. The man might be slight, but he was razor sharp. Despite the sleepy eyes and quick grin, he had a bit of timber wolf in him. Bryan could only guess what kind of man he was outside of all this madness.

  “Jesus,” he said reverently. “An angel.”

  “That’s what my contact said, anyway. We’ll see if we can find him. The bulls will try to cut our number in half in that first hour. If we make it to 3:00 p.m., we just might have a chance.”

  Men were beginning to assemble near the entrance to the field. Fausto and Bryan cut into the crowd and worked toward a position near the back of the throng. The junior cadets had finished processing and were locking down the chutes.

  “Welcome,” a voice said, booming over the landscape from a pair of speakers on either side of a di
gital jumbotron, “to the miracle of the birthing process.”

  A groan rose from the crowd at the sound of the Chancellor’s voice. The most vocal supporter of Equality Enhancement and Population Control yet, Adrian Carson was anathema to the men forced to wager their lives for the chance to raise a family. Her severe features—sharp, angular nose and Patrician cheek bones, filled the screen. She had icy blue eyes; Bryan thought he detected a hint of glee in them.

  “You have been chosen today to experience the sacrifice and struggle of what it means to become a parent. For the last nine months, your spouse or partner has devoted herself to the health and development of your child. She has forsaken many of the comforts of our modern existence and endured great physical pain and transition for the singular purpose of bearing your child.

  “Now, it’s your turn to join her on this journey.”

  Another groan.

  “Go fuck yourself!” someone shouted. Bryan watched as one of the bulls raised his head, scanning the crowd for the perpetrator.

  “You have my sincere congratulations on making it this far. For twelve months, you’ve avoided caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. You’ve gone without comforting medications and you’ve subjected yourself to the Authority’s most realistic equality technology to date—the sleep interval disrupter.”

  “Jesus. That thing,” Fausto muttered; Bryan merely nodded in agreement.

  “As you are well aware, the world’s population has expanded beyond our planet’s capacity to sustain a healthy global community. America, in concert with the New Global Initiative, is a foundational participant in the Darwin Culling Process.”

  Carson paused there in her recorded speech, no doubt aware that the largest protests would follow her statement.

  “It is time to return to the principles that made this country great,” she continued, that smile expanding on the screen, her perfect canine teeth impossibly white, “survival of the fittest. It is time for you to share in the pain and the euphoria of a successful Labor process.

  “The Darwin Culling Process has met with great success. Our society no longer takes its children for granted. Our culture is no longer scarred by the residual effects of children whose parents have little use for them. Parenthood has taken its rightful place at the forefront of American life. Only the strongest may have children. Only the strongest survive Labor.”

  A hush fell over the crowd as the words found their mark. Men turned to regard each other—allies in an ordeal that would mark them for the rest of their lives. Bryan knew the statistics showed that about 5% of those assembled were trying for a second child. The enormity of going through Labor twice was staggering.

  “I wish you luck in your journey. The clock began to expire with the noon siren. If you evade Authority forces over the next twenty-four hours, a rich future as a father awaits you.”

  Carson offered a final serene smile—simultaneously smarmy and patronizing—and then the digital screen went blank. A pair of monstrous metallic thunks shook the ground as the latches sprung on either side of the gate and the great iron wall split in two, the halves slowly sliding aside to grant entry to the Labor field.

  “Ok,” Fausto said, “stay packed in close here and follow me. If we make it to the woods, we move from tree to tree. Look for something to arm yourself with. I know the bulls patrol for contraband, but you can’t keep a tree from tossing a branch. Listen to me,” he stared into the boy’s eyes, “we’ll make it, Bryan.”

  Norton nodded. For the first time since he’d met the man, Fausto’s eyes were wide and alert. The iron gates inched maddeningly across the ground and finally stopped, the red light atop the gateway blinking green.

  They had two minutes before the bulls began the slaughter.

  The crowd emitted a dim roar as it surged through the open gate and men from all facets of life surged toward the grand ideal of fatherhood. Accountants and mechanics and school teachers and landscapers raced across the open expanse, seeking cover in the distant forest. United by their desire to raise a family, they sprinted into the future.

  Bryan and Fausto went with the flow of the crowd, warily trotting into the engineered environment of the great test.

  There were five Labor fields in Oregon: Eugene, Salem, Bend, Klamath Falls and Portland. In the middle of the twenty-first century, when the world’s population had exceeded eleven billion and the misery of a warm and congested Earth had made life nearly intolerable, the Darwin Initiative had gained traction.

  Major American cities cleared space within their borders for immense, wooded Labor fields. In Portland, the field stretched from the banks of the Willamette River up to the university’s border and the Park Blocks—eleven square miles of treacherous terrain patrolled by 500 bulls intent on thinning the population.

  If it weren’t so horrible, the irony would be humorous. The influences of man had inalterably shifted the future of the natural world. Now, man was aiding nature in restoring a balance.

  They passed through the gates and onto an apron of compacted dirt. A battalion of a couple hundred bulls, clad in brown military fatigues, their automatic weapons hugged tightly to their chests, stood before a dense forest. The trees were immense, the forest a thick tangle of towering conifers and hardwoods.

  Men began to sprint in earnest, Fausto and Bryan among them, for the forest as the clock ticked under a minute. Fifty-eight seconds until the culling.

  “There!” Fausto shouted, pointing to the left flank of the bulls. “Pick ‘em up, Bryan! It’s going to be close!”

  300 yards—maybe a little less. Men scattered, a majority sprinting directly through the columns of bulls, trying to disappear into the womb of forest. Fausto selected a spot and began to separate, running in a straight line for his goal.

  The man could scoot. Bryan pumped his arms, pulling even as the voice intoned thirty seconds over the loud speaker.

  They reached the line of soldiers, Bryan glancing into the eyes of the closest. The bull didn’t flinch, his gaze trained forward, staring at nothing at all. He was a machine, a simple machine without an ounce of compassion, designed to exterminate those who would dare to compound the Authority’s population problem.

  To rid the world of another set of lungs—of another mouth to feed, another source of procreation.

  “We’re close!” Fausto gasped as they reached the first copse of trees. There were paths in the woods, worn routes that snaked through thickets of fern and blackberry brush. A carpet of pine needles and maple leaves crunched beneath their feet.

  Twenty seconds.

  Bryan thought it was impossible to go any faster, but they found yet another gear. Every second was precious, and in each unit of time was a glimpse at what could be. A son or a daughter. A future. A life.

  They angled through trees, a smattering of others sprinting through the woods near them, though Bryan sensed that most had chosen the densest portion of the forest, directly beyond that first battery of bulls.

  Lungs searing, quads stretched to capacity, Ruiz and Norton strained across the terrain, leaping logs, darting from tree to tree, hurtling brush.

  Ten seconds.

  “There!” Fausto shouted. Sixty yards away, a gentle hill was peppered with enormous, wispy ferns. There were few trees—few places to take shelter.

  Labor…has…begun! echoed the robotic voice, signaling the start of the test. The din of automatic gunfire instantly ripped into the air, a ruckus of destruction and ruin that arced fresh pangs of fear through Bryan Norton’s heart.

  Fausto hit the hill, began to scramble up it, rolled to the ground and simply vanished.

  It happened that fast.

  “Fausto!” Bryan shouted, lurching up the bank. A hand shot out from beneath a fern.

  “Down, damn it! Move!” the man hissed, and Bryan hit the deck, rolling beneath a canopy of fronds. Fausto was furiously scooping leaves and soil over himself, smearing dirt onto his face, smashing it into his hair.

  Bryan followed suit, petrified that they hadn’t created enough separation. Here was their first test; they would hide in plain view.

  “Quiet now,” Fausto whispered, his tone moderating. “We are nothing—nothing more than mushrooms, Bryan. We exist in the soil, beneath the protection of these ferns. We are safe, secure down here in the earth.”