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u out.”
That wasn’t quite hold my bazooka. But he could work with it. “Hawaii is still afloat. New Orleans too. Bird flu isn’t rampant, neither is Ebola, or leprosy. There are no food riots, and no one is cooking cats to survive. There’s no martial law. Measles might be on the rise, but it’s not an epidemic. Oh, sure there’s crippling racism and unemployment and disadvantage, crooked politicians, and the weather is fighting back, but it’s not so different out there from what you’d remember.”
“That can’t be.” Mike rubbed his face. “Things were deteriorating rapidly.”
“Life is complicated. Shit happens. And depending on the color of your skin and where you live, it can be a horror show. But it’s not all bad and it’s not like they’re telling us.” He added, “Not yet,” because Mike looked dazed and he didn’t want this to turn into a conversation about why he was here if he wasn’t a believer.
“You think I could walk into a hospital and get some treatment? Maybe beat this thing again?”
Mike’s biggest problem would be finding a way to pay for medical care. But Tres would sort that out. “I know you could.”
“Aw, hell. A desperate man’ll believe anything. I was desperate to start a new life in here, had the money to invest and I was convinced it was the only way to survive. I’m desperate again, because I’m scared of dying. I don’t even know what I’m saying. People don’t leave Abundance. You sign on for life. There is no coming and going anytime you please like it’s one of them Costcos. They still have them?”
“They’re still out there. Selling everything you can imagine.”
“No one has ever left here.”
“Why is that?”
“Why would you?”
Zeke pushed his hair out of his eyes. Blind belief was a difficult thing to combat and no amount of logic was useful. “I can think of a hundred reasons.”
“No one out there cares about me. That’s the same for lots of us. This place suits us.”
“Even if it’s a lie?”
Mike gave him a sideways glance. What Zeke had said had to be close to treasonous. “I don’t want to think about that now. Scratch the surface of most of us you get doubt but we all came because we were filled with fear and doubt. If that makes us overlook some shady practices from time to time, well, it still looks like a fair deal to me.”
But not if you were dying in here and you could get treatment out there. “You could make a run for it.”
Mike grunted. “I’ve got maybe thirty years on you and I can’t eat or sleep. I bleed when I shit. I’m not running anywhere so who am I kidding? Time to take my licks. Planned on dying here anyway, just not so soon.”
“What if I could help you with more than a headline update?” He could get Mike out, have someone meet him outside the fence, take care of him in exchange for something concrete he could use.
“You already did, son. Cured my madness.”
“The way I see it, you just drive out those gates.”
“With what? Even if I could steal the key to a truck and took it for a joyride, I don’t have a bean to my name to feed myself out there. No one here does.”
“It’s possible if there’s someone on the other side to take care of you.”
“What are you saying, son?”
They talked long into the night. Mike gave up the fact the weapons were stored in the mountains and the settlement was broke.
“Expanded too fast. Too many dang babies born. Folks got nothing to do at night but get naked and monkey around. Some of us tried to tell Orrin all that free love, grow your own population business was going to be a problem. He stopped listening to anyone else a long time ago and Spencer hasn’t been able to recruit new money fast enough to cover what we need to bring in from outside to survive. We were supposed to be self-sufficient by now but that’s not how it’s turned out. Orrin says we need austerity measures and this recruitment drive is an adjustment period before we’re forced to lockdown for good.”
The longer they talked, the more despondent Mike was, the more information he gave up, but it might simply be his desperation talking. Until Zeke could verify some of the details, it wasn’t enough to shut the place down permanently.
The stars were starting to wink out when Mike said, “You can’t talk about any of this. Orrin has plans for you and you already crossed him over Susan. You have a whole pile of black marks against you. You can’t be caught repeating any of this or helping me out.”
In response, he told Mike he’d get the key to a truck big enough to plow through the gate into his hands and that he’d have a friend meet him on the other side and take care of him.
Mike had a lot of questions, but he cut himself off from asking them. A desperate man will believe anything that might save his life.
Zeke hoped it wasn’t too risky to save Mike’s.
