Blight Page 2

  I stare down at my bowl. Ellison Long wants to try me out for his team. If I do well on a mission with him, everyone will forget my sloppy shooting this morning. Maybe he’ll even ask me to join him on a regular basis. That would shut Seth up. No more midnight guard duties, only special assignments and intensive training and sitting with Ellison’s team at meals. Sitting with Ellison.

  Whoa. I bring myself back down to earth. First things first, Torres. Do your job. No more screwing up. No more soft-headed mercy for scavengers. Ellison wants only the best.

  I shovel down my breakfast and swing by the women’s showers to splash cold water on my face. As I stand hunched over the sink, the door creaks open behind me, and a parade of bleary-eyed girls from the children’s quarters stumble in to brush their teeth.

  Their minder, a bear of a woman with pale skin and heavy brown bangs, shrugs apologetically. “Sorry. Water’s out in kid land again.”

  “No problem.” I smile at the girls in what I hope is a kind way. These are kids like I was, charity cases and the children of AgraStar employees who’ve died in the line of duty—mostly transport drivers and security forces on duty rotations outside the compound. The oldest one is probably eight, the youngest five. They stare at me with big, nervous eyes.

  “It’s all right, girls,” their minder says. “Security forces are our friends. They keep us safe, right?”

  The girls all nod solemnly.

  The minder sighs and gives me an apologetic eye roll over the tops of their heads. Kids, you know?

  I keep the smile plastered on my face, but something heavy settles in my gut. I back out the door and take the stairs to Requisitions for the spare parts I’ll need to fix the fence. Metal corrugate, welding mask and torch, gloves.

  The sun has broken the horizon by the time I make it outside, and the world is heating up. Soon the bunker with its vents hissing lukewarm air will be the coolest place for miles. I tramp past the grain elevators and down a red-dirt service road cut through the acres of corn. La milpa, my brain tries to say, but I swat the word away. English only. That’s the official language of AgraStar. I learned that lesson my first year on the compound. I sigh, annoyed with myself. If I want to be the perfect AgraStar recruit—good enough for Ellison’s team—I have to get rid of these last vestiges of the things my father tried to program into me before he died.

  The crickets keep up their calls from the shade—they don’t know it’s day yet—and the thin whist of the sharecroppers spraying pesticide somewhere in the tall green rows floats over their voices. Harvest is almost here, and then the rumble of combines will overtake this quiet morning song. Near the perimeter, I come upon a sharecropper refilling his backpack tank from a drum parked along the side of the road.

  He’s old enough to be my father, but he tips his hat at me. “Ma’am.” The sun has baked his skin the deep red of the dirt.

  I smile and return his salute. Not all sharecroppers are so polite. Some of them, the young ones mostly, resent those of us on security forces, call us pigs and cogs. But they could have chosen to go out for the forces, the same as I could have chosen to start sharecropping.

  When I turned twelve, the recruitment officers took me aside, just like everyone else. I had been living, eating, learning to read and write, all at AgraStar’s expense, since the company found me outside the gates of our compound, SCP-52, when I was five. I could start working in the fields immediately, they said, paying back my debt, and either be free to leave the compound or begin working toward a homestead of my own by the time I was nineteen. One year of work for every year I’d been under the company’s wing. Or I could continue my training and education. I could study and become a scientist for them, or a teacher, or a member of the security force. My years of debt service would be longer, but I’d have more variety in my work. I’d learn special skills. The company would value me. I could grow up to be somebody.

  I finished my training and earned my first security post the year I turned fifteen. Eight more years, and my debt will be paid back. I can start contracting with the company on my own by the time I’m twenty-five. Not bad for someone who could have ended up a shirk.

  I reach the perimeter. The sun is out in full force now, no clouds, no wind, only a white-hot sky cut by a twenty-foot tall chain-link fence festooned in stripes of razor wire. Our compound covers a few hundred square miles, most of that land devoted to growing corn. Four security substations are positioned north, south, east, and west, with an R&D facility and ethanol production plant at the heart of the territory. The security fence encircles it all, keeping out the shirks and road gangs and anarchists. A breach puts nearly six thousand loyal AgraStar contractors and sharecroppers at risk.

  I drop the corrugate against the links, fit the welding mask over my head, and tug on my gloves. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can go back and grab some sleep.

  I kneel in the dirt and let the torch’s blue flame kiss metal. Embers spark and fall around me, cooling from white to red by the time they hit the ground. Slowly I fuse the arm-long square of corrugate to the links, then stand back and inspect my work as it cools. It’s a simple job, but a good weld. I pull off my mask. Sweat rolls down my back and my hair is soaked through. I shade my eyes and look down the line of fence to where it disappears into the curve of cornstalks. Reinforced squares like mine dot the length of it as far as I can see. Someday the entire lower third of this fence is going to be nothing but overlapping metal patchwork.

  Something glints in the scrub grass beside the fence some ten paces down the line. I walk over and squat in the dirt. What . . . ?

  I lie down and work my hand through the bottommost link. There. The metal is hot from lying in the sun, but I pull it through anyway. I sit up and examine my find. The cutters, the ones the scavenger boy was using last night. A scoop of metal is missing from the outer edge of the business end, where my bullet must have hit it after clipping the boy’s hand.

  The still air pulses with heat. I stare out at the forest, insects trilling in my ears. What happened to that boy? Is he lying in the heat somewhere, sweating out a fever from the wound? Is that girl with him, laying her cool palm over his forehead? Are they waiting for darkness to fall so they can try again? The image of their hands laced together surges in my mind again, but this time, all I feel is hate. No one has ever held my hand that way. No one has ever led me through the dark. I do fine on my own, thanks. I’m no shirk who needs to live off other people. I should have done everyone a favor and put them both out of their misery.

  I stand and brush the dust from my shirt. No use beating myself up. I know what to do next time. I stuff the cutters in my pocket, gather my welding torch and mask, and start walking back through the shimmering heat to the bunker. If I don’t stop thinking about it, I’m never going to get to sleep. I need to be rested for my first mission with Ellison.

  .2.

  HONEYSUCKLE

  LONICERA JAPONICA

  I stand outside the motor pool with my rifle over my shoulder. I’ve traded my sniping gear for a short-sleeved day uniform with the company’s signature starburst emblazoned over my heart. My hair is pulled back in a braid, still damp from the shower. I caught a few hours’ sleep in the women’s dormitory, but I could have used more. The day has that unreal feeling it takes on when you wake up in midafternoon, like you’re out of step with the rest of the world.

  I shift from one foot to the other. It’s 1559. No sign of Ellison yet. My chest tightens. Should I have come earlier? Are they already gone? Or was this some cruel joke all along? Ellison’s never seemed like the type to play pranks, but maybe I’ve had him wrong. After all, who am I to think I deserve a shot like this? Tempest with the dead shirk dad, capable enough not to be singled out for hatred, but not vibrant or legacy or enough of anything to be welcomed in, either. I should stick to spending my time shadowing Crake in the Eye or, better yet, at the firing range, convincing everyone I really did miss and I’m trying to make up for it.
<
br />   The readout on my data band flips over to 1600. On cue, an open-topped truck swings into the motor yard, spitting a cloud of dust in its wake and filling the air with the smell of burning corn oil. Two boys and a girl, all sporting bare, tanned arms and mirrored sunglasses, fill the backseat. I know them by sight. The girl is Danica Hwang, and the boys are Will Betts and Marco Etowah. Ellison’s handpicked team. The tightness in my chest releases.

  “Torres!” Ellison waves to me from the driver’s seat.

  I jog after them and stow my rifle alongside the others in the gun rack bolted to the back of the truck. Ellison’s teammates watch me like foxes. They’re all a few years older than I am, close to Ellison’s age. I swallow and try to smile, but I think I might come off more nervous and crazed than friendly and competent. Don’t screw this up, Tempest.

  Ellison pats the seat beside him in the front. “C’mon, Torres. Saddle up.”

  I boost myself into the cab and clip the seat belt across my chest. The wire cutters press against my lower back. I don’t know why I’ve kept them. As a reminder, maybe, to do my job, not to be soft when duty calls.

  Ellison twists around in his seat. He’s left his uniform unbuttoned in the heat, so the white of his undershirt shows. “Torres, this is Hwang, Betts, and Etowah. Y’all, this is Torres. She’s filling in for Max today. She’s a solid shot.”

  “Usually,” I add, and am relieved to see Danica crack a smile. So they’ve heard.

  Ellison shifts the truck into drive and swings us around. As we pull out of the motor-pool yard, we pass Seth trudging back to the bunker. His eyes catch mine, and for one brief second I have the satisfaction of seeing them go wide. Then we’re gone, past our outpost’s thick concrete walls and onto one of the long streaks of dirt road that radiate out from the heart of the compound.

  A thrill runs through my stomach as the truck jounces over the uneven road. I’m on a mission with Ellison Long. Soon my poor marksmanship will be nothing more than a funny story I tell new recruits to cheer them up.

  Fields and fields of head-high corn go by, broken only by secondary roads and the occasional glimpse of sharecroppers bent among the bright green rows.

  Marco leans forward. “Where we off to, boss?” I can barely hear him over the engine and the wind whipping past my ears.

  “Mile marker two-two-six.” Ellison squints at the road and fishes up the pair of sunglasses hooked to his shirt.

  “The Kingfisher share again?” Danica asks.

  Ellison nods. “One of the pest eradication patrols up in the northeast sector found some nonstandard seed varieties floating around. They want us to look in, see what we can see. It could simply be an invasive species drifting in on the wind—”

  “Or it could be Harry Kingfisher.” Marco finishes for him.

  I crane my neck to look back at Marco. “You think he’s growing an invasive species on purpose?”

  “Not just growing,” Marco says. “Distributing.”

  Even Will, who’s been staring out the window through his black mirrored sunglasses this whole time, nods.

  “But . . .” I frown. I can’t think of a good reason why anyone would jeopardize our harvest by planting invasive, nonstandard seeds. Our R&D teams pour so much work into calibrating and tweaking AgraStar seeds to produce the most disease-resistant, high-yield crops possible. “Why? Who’d want them?”

  Ellison shakes his head. “Not everyone’s an upstanding citizen like you, Torres. If you ride with us, you’re going to see the ugly side of things.” He spares a glance at me. “You up for that?”

  “Of course.” I wish I could see his eyes, but all I can see is the reflection of myself, sitting ramrod straight in the passenger seat, tendrils of dark brown hair escaping my braid in the wind. I tuck the wayward strands behind my ears. “Whatever you’ve got, I’m up for it.”

  “That’s my girl.” Ellison holds out one hand and locks our wrists together in a quick, tight grip.

  We bump over the unpaved roads at top speed. Mile 224. 225. 226. Abruptly, the corn drops away to reveal a standard sharecropper homestead—red tin roof, cinder-block walls, a simple vinyl awning stretched over a porch along the front of the house. A small boy dressed only in a pair of old canvas pants sits under the awning, scratching a greasy-looking beagle behind the ears. His head snaps up at the sound of our engine. He takes one look at us, overturns his chair, and lights out across the small patch of unplanted dirt in front of the house. He crashes into the corn and disappears before Ellison can even kill the engine.

  “See,” Marco says. “What’d I tell you?”

  “Bad sign,” Ellison agrees.

  We step out of the truck. The dog rises to its feet and lets loose an uneasy half bark, half growl.

  “Rifles,” Ellison reminds us. “Safety on.”

  I wait my turn and unload my gun from the rack. This is what everyone loves about Ellison. He’s tough-minded, but fair. He looks out for people like Harry Kingfisher, even when those people flout the company rules and put us all at risk with their own stupidity. He was that same way with us trainees when I was younger—he’d call us out for being careless with our weapons or talking shit about the company, but he wouldn’t report us if we shaped up. And wanting him to like us was enough reason to shape up. I shoulder my rifle and approach the house alongside Will, Ellison, and Danica. Marco stays posted, standing in the back of the truck.

  The Kingfishers don’t grow pleasant runs of company-issued chrysanthemums and black-eyed Susans in front of their house, like most sharecroppers. Instead, they’ve filled the ground around their porch with untamed bushes of flowering chamomile and great, shaggy tomato plants bearing purple-red fruit. A run of white honeysuckle engulfs one end of the porch and spills up onto the roof, a blatant violation. I can see why Ellison and his crew suspect Harry Kingfisher. As invasive species go, honeysuckle comes in second only to the kudzu that creeps up from the forest surrounding the compound.

  A tall, stocky man with a full head of gray hair pulled back in a ponytail appears in the shadow behind the screen door. His face is brown and lined.

  “Harry Kingfisher?” Ellison calls.

  The dog sounds a warning bark and takes a step forward.

  “Easy, girl.” The man pushes open the door. “What d’ you want this time?” The dog backs behind his legs with a snarl.

  “You want to tell me what this is about?” Ellison waves at the honeysuckle.

  “I told you before, the stuff just grows.” Kingfisher crosses his arms. “Nothing for it.”

  Danica tosses a look over her shoulder and rolls her eyes at me.

  “What about the tomatoes?” Ellison nods at the plants. “You got a permit for them?” Since the company considers sharecroppers independent contractors leasing company land, rather than company employees like us, they don’t get a share of produce from other facilities, except when their land becomes part of the Fallows once every six years. Instead, they’re allowed to grow a certain number of subsistence crops—tomatoes or green beans, maybe—to supplement their diet. So long as they meet their corn quota, anyway.

  “Course I got a permit.” Kingfisher steps out into the yard and lets the screen door slam behind him. “What, do I look stupid? Growing contraband in my own front yard?”

  “Let’s see it, then,” Ellison says.

  The man’s eyes tighten. “I showed it to you last month when you were out here.”

  “If you’ll just oblige us, sir.”

  Kingfisher curses and reaches into his back pocket. “One day a bunch of self-important kids are going to show up on your doorstep and harass you about some meaningless bullshit, you know.” He pulls out a well-creased paper and shakes it at Ellison. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” Ellison says.

  “You know, people like us used to stick together.” Kingfisher shakes his head. “Life’s hard enough without some suits picking apart everything we do.”

  Ellison raises an eyebrow. “People like
us?”

  “You know what I mean.” Kingfisher nods at Ellison’s bare forearms, and I realize he’s talking about his skin. Kingfisher looks at me. “You too, miss. You ought to be looking out for us, not grinding us down.”

  A bone-deep discomfort rears up in me. I scowl and adjust my grip on my rifle. That’s the old way of thinking, from before the company came in and made everything fair and equal. No wonder Harry Kingfisher’s always getting himself in trouble.

  “You know it’s not like that anymore,” Ellison says without looking up, and from the tired way he says it, I can tell they’ve had this conversation before. “If somebody hears you talking that way, corporate’s going to hit you with a libel citation.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” Kingfisher says. “Someday you’re going to learn who’s really looking out for you and who’s using you. I just hope it’s not too late.”

  Will backs up next to me and stares at the homestead’s roof, careful not to look my way. “Boss man and I can keep him dancing. Walk the perimeter. See if you spot anything.”

  I nod and start around the house in a wide circle as Ellison unfolds the permit and inspects it. A peeling black oil tank hunches along the building’s side, surrounded by weeds. The dirt under my feet is hard packed as concrete.

  “Hey,” Kingfisher calls out behind me. “Where’s she going?”

  “Mr. Kingfisher—”

  “Hey, girl! There’s nothing you need over there.”

  “Mr. Kingfisher.” Ellison’s voice rings out, loud and commanding. “You don’t need to concern yourself with her. You only need to worry about our conversation, right here.”

  I refocus, keep walking. Nothing unusual at the back of the house. Faded bedsheets and a woman’s blue denim dress flap on the laundry lines strung between two T-shaped poles. A rusty generator against the house. A plywood chicken coop. In fact, nothing is strange about the Kingfisher homestead at all, except how quiet it is. No sounds carry over the corn, not voices, not even the gentle hiss of pesticide raining down on crops. All the other homesteads I’ve visited have been lousy with kids scampering across the lawn or busy at some chore or another, their parents shouting for them to hurry up with this or fetch that. It’s far too quiet.