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“The Resistance keeps them from taking us back to sticks and stones,” Jones said. “They don’t dare let things drop too far or the Resistance will walk right over them.”
“You mean the Maynes family doesn’t,” Sikorsky said. “There aren’t enough Reapers for everything. It’s the people high up running things for them in the Control and whatnot that we have to hit. Without them, the whole rig collapses like a one-legged scaffolding with the screws pulled out.”
“Yeah,” Rage said. “I say it’s about time we start pulling screws here.”
“Forget that noise, kid,” Sikorsky said. “I used to be like you. You’re young and think you’ll live forever. You’re sick of the whole Conglomerate and think you can pull it down. That landed me here, and I don’t have any more chances coming. Better off hunkering down and doing your job.”
I hope that I have showed that while Number Four had the reputation of being a last stop, the men weren’t the dejected walking corpses that you met in some Kurian work camps, where those marked for destruction puttered away, or philosophized, or lay as though already a corpse, or engaged in a last frenetic bout of drinking and/or sexual activity of one sort or another.
They still had their human spirit—though I think the linguists should come up with another aphorism for that, because it seems nonexistent in many. Perhaps it was just tougher to beat out of these West Virginians, as rocky and difficult to humble as their mountains.
THE FIRST NOTES OF THE CRESCENDO
We had made it to the winter doldrums and I was now in my second year in the Coal Country. Looking back, I believe I was in a poor mood most of the time but could lose myself in the mindless physical labor at the coal face. I will say this: the constant physical strain toughened me even as it numbed my mind. I turned into the broad-shouldered Golden One of my youth. He looked at me from the mirror, a little less hair about the face and longer drop-whiskers.
Though I am ashamed to admit it, the mine office was pleased with me. The foreman, Bleecher, found me better-fitting safety equipment. Mr. Prapa, the director himself, a bracelet-favoring man with an out-of-season oily tan and all the appeal of dried chewing gum found sticking on a bus seat, rather gingerly called me into his office to ask me if there was a tribe of me up in the Pennsylvania hills, perhaps, that I could convince to come into the Coal Country to serve as laborers.
While sniffing through a bowl of fruit he offered me—fresh strawberries, in winter!—I glanced at a simple report; it seemed that every time I worked the coal face with the rest of a usual six-man crew, production went up twenty-five percent.*
I no longer had to produce money at Aym’s trailer.
I’d been playing the “helpful Grog” so long, I became him in a way. Ahn-Kha, who once roamed the Transmississippi as a fighter in a famous regiment, became just another scraping Grog, gently pawing at his masters as he waited for his next drink of flavored corn syrup.
I rarely dreamt of escape anymore, or if I did, I went at the coal face with a pickaxe as though digging a tunnel to freedom. I exhausted my brain into numbness. I fell into bed with grit still dug deep into my hair and awoke without expectation of anything more challenging than wondering if I should eat six eggs or a dozen for breakfast. I didn’t drink, gamble, or rent women on the weekends, so my wages, such as they were, mostly went to the little farmer stalls set up twice a week near the Number Four dormitory. While I enjoyed doing my own cooking, I usually gave a few dollars to one of the mine wives—whichever one caught my eye as the most ragged and careworn—to cook up my purchases for me. With the rest, on the advice of Olson, I set up a New Universal Church Community Investment account. That caused some confusion at the Church’s office, but we simplified matters by having Olson just set up a second account allowing me to draw on it. I trusted Olson, and it was better that I not have too much of a paper trail with the Church, in any case.
For me, life was simple. Work properly, get paid, keep the food supply fresh, and listen for the mine disaster klaxon.
No one made an effort to force me onto the buses for the weekly church services, and when the priests visited, they never spoke to me. My sheets and other laundry were mysteriously washed while I was at the mine.
• • •
Word passed among the miners—at each retelling it gained a different source—that a purge was coming, and soon. T
he Coal Country had quieted after the Maynes bloodletting, but not enough. Now the neighboring Kurian Zones were demanding payments in blood to make up the coal shortfalls.
“It never hits the mines too bad,” Sikorsky said one morning while we waited for Aym to finish with the customers ahead of us. Sikorsky had a Thermos waiting to be filled. He was talking to Olson just behind, who had a flashlight that he kept inserting “new” batteries into, in an effort to find a functional set. I stood just behind Olson. “But for anyone with gray hair, it’s a tense time.”
Sikorsky stepped up and handed his Thermos to Aym. She’d heard what he and Olson were talking about. Probably everyone in line that morning had had the same subject on his mind.
“Every time we go through this, I think I’m going to be the first one scratched. I can’t sleep. People tell me I look like hell.” Aym shrugged. “Then we go through it, and someone like Sikorsky disappears. Good or bad at the job, who cares; something about the selection rubbed the headcount team the wrong way.
“My first one as a postpubescent, I think they were ready to take me away, but my dad volunteered to go in my place. I never knew he liked me that much, my mom was the one who worked with me and found some Braille books, God knows how.
“Do you know anything about it? A church guy tried to tell me once that they hypnotize you like a snake with a bird, so you don’t even know what’s happening, then you go to eternal life as part of the greater Kurian Consciousness, but he was more interested in fingering me in the confession room than explaining how it works.
“Then Ray Jones said the complete opposite. He told me that they torment you for a little bit before killing you. Said it was like a chef cooking a meal; it added flavor to whatever energy they need from people. You know, our souls or auras or whatever. Of course, all his talk is a little wild. He tried to finger me, too, but I was better at defending myself by then. I’m not walking around with a tattoo that reads ‘Finger me’ on my forehead, am I?” She picked up Crumb and stroked him. The purring was almost loud enough to drown out the distant echoes from the coal face.
“Maybe it’s written in invisible ink. I don’t see it.”
I MAKE A FRIEND
I had been trying to make up my mind about Aym for weeks. She was clearly intelligent and skilled at drawing men out. A Kurian agent would have those skills. But then again, so would a popular barkeep.
I needed a friend. I’d been more than a year now in the Kurian Zone without anyone I could trust. I don’t expect most readers to understand—only those who’ve lived it will. I needed to talk to someone so badly, I was willing to chance death for it.
I’d thought about it a couple of times with MacTierney and almost drove over the centerline, but I always steered back again to the safety of the shoulder.
Many times in my life I’ve been praised for fearlessly going across Nomansland and into the Kurian Zones. This praise has usually been from speakers who have never spent a night in one. Fearless? Hardly. To survive the Kurian Zone, you become old friends with fear. You get to know fear so well, it tells you its secrets, whispering them in the long nights when probing flashlights and a firm shake of the shoulder come to escort you away. I let fear lead me through dark paths and nights out in the open, where every snapped branch might be an approaching Reaper.
