The Line Book One: Carrier Page 3

  Auberge, like so many other international conglomerates, had purchased territories after the economic fall of the world governments and deemed the area an independent state. Auberge had gone one step further and built a gargantuan cement wall around their state, supposedly to keep the population “safe” from the outside world. Within, it was widely known that the wall existed to maintain control over the population, even going so far as to mandate how many children you were allowed to have, where you were allowed to work and travel and where you could live.

  Inside the walls, Auberge owned everything.

  Literally.

  They owned the banks, the police, the schools, the hospital, the Line, every building. Everything. If you had a job, you worked for one of Auberge’s companies. If you didn’t, you were on your own, which was why crime was out of control and the black market was a bustling business.

  If you got caught dabbling in either, you were never seen again. Many assumed you were killed and dumped over the wall. But if that were true, the stench from generations of rotting corpses would have overflowed the walls and overpowered the smell of garbage by now, and that wasn’t the case.

  My family had been from East, that much I remembered.

  I thought of going there. If only I knew which way that was.

  I walked along the sidewalks on 10th and tried to picture where I had lived as a child. But all I could remember was the inside of our apartment and my parents’ faces. The images only deepened my feelings of isolation. And no matter how hard I wracked my brain, I couldn’t recall their real names. Just Mama and Daddy. Little good that did me. It would be impossible to find them without knowing who they were, which was too bad, since I could have used some motherly advice just then.

  Besides...they’d probably forgotten all about me.

  Probably.

  I shook the thoughts from my head, pulling my hair away from my face.

  I was alone. There was no point in dwelling on what I didn’t have or didn’t know. It was best to concentrate on the here and now, which was in Central. And from the looks of it, the place hadn’t changed much since last I’d seen it. It was still sticky cement, dirty buildings, smelly unemployed people and mountains of garbage.

  I walked past some kids playing games on the sidewalk with dice. Women sat watching over them and sewed ragged-looking cloth, chatting among themselves on stoops.

  They gave me crusty looks as I went by.

  Friendly.

  First things first, I had to find a place to stay; the streets were too hectic and dangerous. Then I could worry about finding a job. The Line had set me up with some credits courtesy of Auberge Bank to float me in the meantime.

  After the reception nurse had given me a brief lecture about pregnancy in the first trimester (morning sickness, what was that?), she’d handed me my new clothes and escorted me to the front door. Then there was a five-minute speech while I got dressed on how not to spend the credits, particularly on things she considered “luxury items.”

  “Like what?” I had asked.

  “Clothing, shoes, jewelry, entertainment,” she’d said.

  “What about baby clothes? Food? A place to stay?”

  “These credits are to assist you with food and shelter for up to seven months. That’s it. Each transaction will be scrutinized. If they feel you’re abusing your credits, they’ll cut you off. Completely. You understand?”

  I could tell from her face she wasn’t telling me something. Still, I nodded. “And if I get the job done before the seventh month?”

  “The credits end.”

  “I see.”

  The reception nurse gazed at the manager’s door and lowered her voice to a whisper. “But after that, the tracking chip is deactivated and you’ll be free to go wherever you want.”

  “Within Auberge, of course,” I said as I slipped on my shoes.

  The nurse eyed the manager’s door again. “Perhaps.”

  I shrugged. There was no perhaps about it.

  * * *

  Around the next corner from the women on the stoops there were some trading posts on Avenue S. Produce, grain and lumber were shipped in from West and sold in Central at a huge markup. There were electronics and such from East, textiles and the like from North. I asked a few shopkeepers if they were hiring. They took one look at me and shooed me away. I could tell from their expressions they didn’t trust me. I didn’t blame them. I didn’t trust them either.

  After the fourth or fifth post, I got lost in my frustration and didn’t realize what was happening. Three men, old, ruddy, bulky, were walking behind me. It took me a few more blocks before I noticed they were following me.

  Hell.

  I turned a sharp corner, trying to lose them, and saw my mistake. Back alley. Dead end.

  Hell!

  The back wall of the alley was a crumbling brick building with no door, and windows way up out of reach. The wall was piled high with a mountain of trash and a rusted fire escape dangling precariously upside down. On either side of the alley were doorways to other buildings, squeezed in between wooden barrels collecting run-off rainwater. I turned a couple of knobs. They were all locked. I knocked on a few doors. Nobody answered.

  I found it pretty hard to believe there wasn’t anyone home, but it didn’t matter. No one was going to help me. Why would they start now?

  I checked behind me, and the men were still there, blocking my only exit and looking around to see if we were alone. But even if there were people around, they wouldn’t do anything. That was just how things were.

  When the three men nodded to each other and turned toward me, I knew what was coming.

  Hell no.

  Twenty minutes out the door, and my life was already a disaster. I was in no condition for this. The asshole had told me that if I miscarried I’d be sent back to the Line, and I couldn’t have that. The whole reasoning behind my release was questionable at best, and the last thing I wanted to do was to test it.

  My eyes darted about the alley, searching for some means of escape, but the only things there were the giant pile of trash and the barrels. My palms slicked with panicked sweat.

  The men spread out, in case I tried to bolt.

  Desperate, I kicked one of the barrels with all my strength and cracked the side open, sending a wave of dirty water spilling into the alley. The men didn’t think much of it; in fact, the one in the middle laughed.

  I kicked the barrel again and splintered the wood into a million pieces. Cutting my hands on the scraps, I gripped two large shards and flung them straight at the closest man.

  He ducked. The first plank missed his face but grazed his shoulder, and he swayed. The second plank smacked him right on the forehead.

  The man on the left bolted straight for me, while the one in the middle laughed again.

  I tried to grasp another plank from the broken water barrel, but it was taking too long, so I scrambled up the mountain of trash like a rat.

  My feet slipped.

  I felt a hand on my foot and kicked it off. I grabbed at the trash pile, climbing as it slid out from under me like sand.

  “Come here, you bitch!” one of the men growled.

  I kept climbing. My hands dug through the trash, searching for a weapon—a bottle, a scrap of metal, anything hard or sharp—but I couldn’t really stop to look and I was losing my lead. The men were right behind me, trying to scramble up the pile, cussing and yelling at me the whole time. They were too heavy and sunk like stones with every step. A heap of garbage was piling up between us.

  Then I saw it, the ladder from the old fire escape. It was only a few feet above the top of the pile of trash.

  If I could just get to it.

  I wasn’t sure if the fire escape was still attached to the building, or if my shaking
arms would even hold me, but I skittered like a cockroach to the top of the pile. With one great heave, I jumped as far as I could.

  The pile of trash gave out from under the pressure of my jump. I looked down quickly and saw that the man who was closest had been buried under a pile of garbage and the other two had backed away, cursing. I had three fingers on the last rung of the ladder.

  I pulled as hard as I could. My arms burned and my sliced palms throbbed with pain, but I got my thumb wrapped around. When I had a firm grasp I flung up the other hand and gripped with both. I dangled like a worm on a hook.

  The men below were furious. Covered in garbage and panting like dogs, they glowered at me.

  “She won’t last long like that. Just wait,” one man said. He had a cut over his eye where I’d smacked him with the plank. Blood dripped down his eyebrow and across his temple. He didn’t seem to notice.

  The other man was pilfering through the trash, trying to dig the buried one out. He kept repeating “Stupid little bitch,” over and over.

  It was a miracle the fire escape was holding. I swung up one leg and tried to hook it to the last rung of the ladder. It took a few tries, since I could barely catch my breath, but I managed to do it.

  “You’re gonna pay for this, bitch,” the man said from inside the trash heap. He was finally free, but he was covered head to toe in muck. He shook his hands like flippers and brushed some limp, rotted lettuce from his long and matted hair.

  “Get down here and take it like a good girl,” one of the others said.

  Hell no!

  I stood on the last rung and climbed up. My legs protested, but I pulled them along. Maybe I could make it to the roof or an open window. The three men in the alley weren’t bright enough to split up and come around the other side of the building, and I wasn’t about to suggest it.

  A few rungs up, the fire escape shuddered and the men hooted and hollered in delight. Then they groaned in disappointment as I regained my balance and climbed farther up the ladder.

  I heard one guy bet another five credits that I’d fall.

  I reached the first landing, if you could call it that, since it hung sideways from the building. I pried open a cracked window with one hand.

  I heard the men cussing at me as I slid through the open window and thumped to a coarse wooden floor on the inside.

  I sat up and glanced around just quick enough to get clocked in the head with a frying pan.

  Everything went dark.

  * * *

  When I came to, a toothless old woman stood over me with the pan in her hand. She waved it around like a club. “I got nothing for you! Get out!”

  I staggered to my feet and felt the bump on my head. I was covered in trash juice, top to bottom.

  “Get out! Get out, dirty girl! I have nothing! Nothing!” the old woman bellowed. Her clouded eyes were wide with terror.

  I took a step back. “Easy, I was just trying to escape these men—”

  “Out!”

  “All right.” I moved toward her front door, but she lifted the pan over her head again as if she was about to take a swing at me.

  “Out! I got nothing for you!” She pointed to the window.

  Fuck that.

  “I get it. You got nothing. But I can’t go back that way or I’ll get gang raped.”

  The lady lowered her pan. Slightly. “Three men?”

  I had her attention. I nodded.

  She walked past me to the window and checked outside. She grimaced so deeply I thought new wrinkles could have been created on her cavernous face right then and there. She looked back at me, a little more softly, and pointed to the front door. I walked across the apartment toward it. Purple paint peeled off every surface of the shabby room. There were a couple of padded chairs, a pull-out sofa bed and a tiny kitchen that smelled of bacon grease. To my surprise, some beat-up toys lay in the corner by the door: a rag doll, a metal toy car and a jump rope.

  This stopped me. I suddenly remembered playing with a jump rope similar to the one on the floor. At home. I had a sudden memory of standing in my living room and shouting at my mother. “Look, Mama! Look at me!”

  I had just figured out how to use the jump rope, which was actually a length of rope with a large knot on each end for gripping. But it worked just the same.

  Mama smiled at me from the kitchen. She was cooking something, as always. Luscious smells from fried rice and stir-fry vegetables filled the air in our tiny apartment.

  “You go,” said the old woman, snapping me back to reality. “Before bad men come looking for you.”

  She went ahead of me to the purple door, put the frying pan under her arm and unlocked about a half dozen bolts. When she stepped back, I pried my eyes off the jump rope and walked by her. The door handle was broken but I managed to turn what was left of the knob.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The old woman appeared taken aback, as if I’d said something shocking. She stared at me.

  Hard.

  She seemed conflicted. There was a visible battle between her mouth and her head that took place on her face.

  I stopped and waited for her to find the words.

  Her milky eyes shone. “Those men, bad. Killed my granddaughter last summer. Best you get a ride.”

  She seemed so sad all of a sudden. “I’m sorry,” I said to her, and I meant it.

  The old lady’s expression quickly turned to a look of annoyance as she shoved me out the door. In the dusty hallway of the building, a bare bulb hung from the ceiling and flickered on and off with a buzz. The dead bolts locked behind me.

  If I was lucky, the men wouldn’t be waiting for me out front, but nothing about me was ever lucky. I just hoped they were stupid enough to still be staring at the window I’d crawled through.

  In the darkened lobby of the building, I craned my head around the corner. I didn’t see them. What I did see was a dented yellow cab on the curb with a flickering lamp on top and the driver half asleep. His head kept bobbing up and down.

  I went outside. The smell of the trash in the streets nearly knocked me over.

  Holding my breath to keep from vomiting, I rapped on the taxi window. The driver snorted and shot upright, then looked me over, smirked sexily and wagged his eyebrows.

  I gave him the finger.

  The cabbie rolled his eyes. “Got any credits?” he asked. He had bright white skin and a wrinkled linen shirt with stains under the arms. His long grey hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

  I held out my palm and indicated the banking scanner, a thin rectangular glass tablet on the seat beside him, but he shook his head as if to say never mind and unlocked the doors with the push of a button. I opened the back and slid into the cab. It didn’t smell quite as badly on the inside, and the cracked leather seats were at least clean.

  Somewhat.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

  I blinked for a moment. I probably should have thought of that. “Know a place where I can stay?”

  “Boarding house?” the driver suggested.

  “Okay.”

  The taxi jerked into motion as he wordlessly pulled into the throng of traffic on 7th The streets and avenues went by, looking much the same. Vendors on the streets avoided Auberge security cruisers by hastily rolling their carts into back alleys, followed closely behind by a line of vexed customers. Homeless people stood around on corners, looking into car windows for someone to help them. No one did. A smoke stack caught my attention in the distance; it belched black clouds from behind a row of rundown skyscrapers, a third of their windows boarded up with corrugated steel. At least one of the factories was operational. I wondered if they were hiring.

  Plans flitted in and out of my head as buildings went by. Item number one: find a temporary pla
ce to stay. Number two: get a job. Three: earn some credits. Four: buy some food and some clothes, for me and for the babies. And diapers. I had a feeling, with two babies, that I would need a lot of cloth diapers. Then, I needed to find a permanent place to live, maybe one that already had furniture. And then find a way to work and care for the babies after they were born.

  That one was the most daunting.

  The list overwhelmed me at item two. I’d never lived alone before or had my own place. I’d never done much of anything, aside from washing dishes and taking appointments.

  I had no idea how to start my new life, but I couldn’t let that stop me. I was sure I would figure it out somehow. If I had anything going for me, I knew I wasn’t dumb—a little inexperienced in life, maybe, but not stupid.

  After a bit, the taxi screeched to a halt in front of a large brownstone in the middle of Avenue K. I held my palm to the banking scanner the cabbie held out for me and waved away his attempt to text me a receipt.

  The boarding house was a stone building three stories high. Up the cracked stoop and into the building, I stopped in the lobby. It had a battered black-and-white marble floor, a monitor hanging from the wall listing the beds available and the rates, and underneath that, a banking scanner.

  The building smelled like wet dog.

  Lovely.

  Still, I was in no position to be choosy.

  I stared at the listings on the screen. I’d learned to read, but that was years ago, when I’d first come to the Line. Girl 8, who had called herself Mame, was an avid reader and had lent me a tablet one of her regular appointments had smuggled in for her. She’d spent some time teaching me how to read, which hadn’t taken long since I’d remembered my letters from when I’d lived at home.

  Home. I wished I knew where that was.

  I had a vague memory of my mother showing me small rectangular cards with letters on them and smiling at me when I got one right.