Resistance: The Gathering Storm

Once the work of processing the dump was complete, Walker was about to look for his wife, when Burl intercepted him.

“There you are,” the big man said. “I’m glad I caught you.”

“Yeah?” Walker replied. “What’s up?”

“Porter tells me the guy you hit in the mouth—Tolly is his name—was seen talking to Collins.”

“So?” Walker demanded. “The committeemen suck up to Collins all the time. It never does them any good. The bitch would sell her own mother for a stick of gum. She couldn’t care less about them.”

“That’s true,” Burl agreed soberly. “But Porter says that as Tolly was speaking to Collins, he was pointing at you. So keep your head down and stay out of sight for a while. We’re all going to heaven—but why hurry?”

Walker laughed, promised Burl that he would be careful, and went looking for Myra. She wasn’t hard to find. Almost from the moment they had arrived she had involved herself with the stink hole’s meager medical facility. It was a rudimentary operation housed in what had once been the supervisor’s pit shack—a wooden structure that sat on skids and could be towed from place to place as the mine deepened.

Sadly, the “med center,” as it was called, had been set up and maintained by a succession of doctors, dentists, nurses, and in one case a pharmacist, all of whom had been marched up the spiral road to the Chimeran processing center on the flat land above. It was presently being run by a midwife, a retired Navy hospital corps- man, and Myra. She hurried over to give her husband a peck on the cheek as he entered.

The couple had always been close, but with death hovering all around, expressions of affection had become more frequent. Myra’s face was thinner now, and there were perpetual circles around her eyes, but they still brimmed with life.

“You’ve been fighting again!” she said accusingly. “I know because the casualties show up here.”

Walker grinned. “Who, me?” he protested as he looked around. There were fifteen or twenty patients crammed into the building—at least three of whom were dying of amoebic dysentery. The rest were getting treatment for cuts and bruises received during the recent dustup. A couple of committeemen were present and glowered at Walker as their injuries were tended to. He ignored them and turned back to Myra.

“Let’s have dinner together,” Walker said. “I’ll take you to the best restaurant in town. To hell with the cost.”

Myra smiled brightly.

“But I don’t have anything to wear!”

“They’re very understanding over at the boil,” Walker assured her. “Dirty, blood-splattered clothes are in this year.”

“Well, in that case, I would be delighted,” Myra replied gravely. “Give me five minutes to finish what I was doing and I’ll be ready to go.”

Walker stepped back outside to wait for her, and watched as the sun descended below the western rim of the pit, and darkness settled into the stink hole. By the time Myra emerged from the med center, another freezing- cold night had begun. The sky was clear, so the couple could see a scattering of stars as they made their way over to the boil, where they fell into line behind a blanket-clad man and his ten-year-old daughter.

Each prisoner received three handcrafted tin tokens per day, which they were free to use as they saw fit. Some hoarded the disks for reasons Walker couldn’t understand. Others used the tokens to pay for items of clothing, or personal services, sometimes including sex. But most people—the Walkers included—were happy to exchange their tokens for three hot meals per day.

Each meal was always the same, with a consistency of oatmeal, yet different because the ingredients varied. So as the line shuffled toward the fire-blackened cauldron, there was always a certain amount of suspense, not to mention rumors, regarding the contents of the occasionally noxious brew.

As Walker’s stomach continued to growl, and he accepted a chromed baby moon hubcap from one of the volunteers, he wondered what sort of gustatory experience was waiting for him. The “glop masters,” as they were jokingly called, were men and women who were willing to cook and serve for an extra token a day, and Walker knew the woman who ladled two dollops of glutinous “boil” onto his makeshift plate. Edith had a halo of gray hair, a broad face, and a big smile.

“Hello, Myra, hello, Henry,” she said cheerfully. “You’re going to like the boil tonight! A couple of cases of meatballs came in today. Most people are getting at least one or two.”

And sure enough, consistent with Edith’s prophecy, both Walkers found meatballs in their mush. A tasty brew that included oatmeal, canned peas, and a scattering of raisins. It was important to eat quickly, because even though the boil was hot, their metal plates were cold and the temperature was dropping. So the Walkers hurried over to the edge of a nearby terrace where layers of rock offered stadium-style seating. Once in place it was time to fish spoons out of their pockets and dig in.

By unspoken agreement there was no conversation during dinner, just eating, so as to consume the food before it grew cold. And even though Myra would have never considered doing such a thing in her Washington home, the former socialite didn’t hesitate to lick her bowl clean once her food was gone.

“Not bad,” Walker said as he put his empty hubcap aside. “Although my mush was a bit overcooked.”

Myra laughed. “I’ll tell the maitre d’. Come on, it’s time to get ready for bed.”

Just about all the stink hole’s prisoners went to bed early. Partly because there was nothing else to do, partly because it was easier to stay warm that way, and partly because just about all of them were bone-tired. There were no formal sleeping arrangements, just hundreds of improvised shelters, many of which had been constructed by people who had been marched up to the processing plant above. The Walkers’ lean-to was no exception.

It consisted of a slab of steel that had once served as a bridge over a drainage ditch. At some point prior to their arrival it had been moved using muscle power, and tipped into position against the second-lowest terrace. That was as high as the humans were allowed to go without being shot by the Bullseye-toting Hybrid guards above. Backed by automatic weapons and mortars, they were in an unassailable position. The Chimera liked the cold temperatures, and glowered down from above as the Walkers ducked under their slanted roof.

Wood was too precious to be used as a floor, so their bedrolls rested on layers of cardboard, which offered a little bit of insulation from the hard frozen ground. One end of the lean-to had been sealed with a piece of raggedy carpet, cut to size. Once inside it was Walker’s job to close the other end with a carefully crafted plug made out of canvas stretched over a wooden frame. An oil lamp similar to the ones being used in the escape tunnels provided what little light there was.

Having opened their slightly damp bedrolls, and climbed inside with their clothes still on, the Walkers were ready to sleep. Or Henry was anyway, because after kissing his wife good night, he soon began to snore. Myra knew the pattern well, and once her husband was asleep, allowed herself to cry. The sobs were muffled by blankets and therefore nearly inaudible, but they lasted for a long time.

Myra awoke to find her husband gone. That was no surprise since he always rose earlier than she did. Daylight was filtering in around the carpet and the canvas “door” behind her head by then.

She would have preferred to remain in bed for a while, comfortably cocooned inside her carefully maintained air pocket, but Myra needed to pee. So she steeled herself against the cold, rolled out of her slightly damp bedding, and remembered all of the steaming-hot baths she had taken for granted during her previous life. Long luxurious soaks that lasted for half an hour or more. But it was best to forget such things, to relegate them to the past along with the joys of clean clothes and hot tea.

After a visit to the nearest four-holer, Myra went to collect her tokens before making her way over to the boil. Myra knew most of her fellow prisoners, as a result of working in the med center, and said hello to them as she passed, but few were willing to do more than mumble a neutral response. And she knew why.

Because even though many of the prisoners had lost track of the calendar date, all of them knew that the Chimera came down into the pit to take people away every third day, which meant that today someone was going to die. So people found it difficult to look one another in the eye and exchange friendly greetings until a new seventy-two-hour clock began. Then it would be time to mourn those who had been taken, commiserate with whatever newbies had been brought in overnight, and try to ignore the horror of what was taking place.

Still, even with that understanding, it seemed as if people were especially taciturn that morning as Myra waited in the line, received her portion of the boil, and went off to eat it. The glutinous mess was almost identical