The Marlowe Transmissions: Scavenger's War Page 2

  I plod through the falling snow for three long, bitterly cold, uneventful hours before the wall of Detroit comes into view. I haven’t been here before; I’ve only heard stories of the massive architectural wonder that is McHale’s wall. I stop dead in my tracks half a mile from the gate and gape slack-jawed at monstrosity before me. I’ve heard people claim the wall is fully one hundred and thirteen feet high and thirty feet thick, and looking at it, I can well believe it’s all that, maybe more.

  The legend goes that when McHale seized power twenty years ago, Detroit was mere months away from being completely abandoned, like so many other cities. McHale’s first act was to order the building of a wall around Detroit. He organized a workforce to begin gathering materials by tearing down every derelict building within fifty miles of the city proper, and when he felt enough raw materials were on hand, he began the construction of the wall itself; supervising, designing, and doing actual labor himself, it is said.

  The wall took six years of constant work to complete, with labor coming from volunteers, paid crews, and forced-work gangs rounded up by the nascent Fist of Peace. During this time McHale also successfully defended his hold on power from revolts and assassination attempts, as well as fending off assaults on Detroit by Chicago and Cleveland. After that short, vicious battle against Cleveland, McHale launched a massive reprisal attack, surprising the city just before dawn. His forces decimated Cleveland completely, overrunning it in a matter of hours. Weeks of looting saw the city in flames, with the already-waning population scattering in every direction.

  Refugees from Cleveland did eventually show up in Detroit, and to McHale’s credit, they weren’t turned away, but welcomed with a warning that they had to either contribute and abide by the law or be turned out. Word that Detroit even had laws that were being enforced spread quickly, and refugees began to pour into Detroit by the thousands. McHale welcomed them all, and put them to work on his wall and the ongoing revamping of the city. When the wall was completed, McHale ordered that the flood of incoming refugees be stopped and a quota set. Other attacks were attempted on Detroit, but most were turned away by the mere sight of the wall, and even the most determined of attackers, Chicago, was repulsed within days.

  I approach the gate and its attendant guardhouse, keeping my hands in plain sight and away from my weapons; the guards at the gate are infamous for shooting first and not bothering with questions at all. The guardhouse is a small armored nook built directly into the wall itself, and it’s here that travelers are interrogated before being ushered through into the city. The gate, imposing and gigantic, is built out of recycled steel and titanium and meant to allow convoys of supplies and military forays in and out, with a smaller doorway set into the guardhouse to let individuals through. The wall’s defensive arrangements are drawn straight out of medieval castle design, including crenellations and impulsor cannons along the top of the wall.

  “Stop there,” a guard barks at me from the guardhouse. He unslings a rifle from his shoulder and draws a bead on me. He stops a few feet away, lowering his rifle and looking me up and down. “That musta been you before, doing all that shooting.”

  “Yessir, it was,” I reply, lowering my hands slightly.

  “How many?” He asks, slinging his rifle back on his shoulder and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

  “Five in the first bunch. The rest went up in that explosion. I doubt there’s anything left to loot, but I didn’t check. I’m seeking entry.”

  “Where are you coming from and what’s your business?”

  “I’ve been out alone in the Wastes for months. Found a few scattered towns here and there with some folks in ‘em, but mostly been on my own. I’m just looking for somewhere to hole up for a while. Don’t really have a business as such.”

  “We don’t take slackers here,” he warns. “You gotta pull your weight, one way or another. Ain’t nothing free here.”

  “Nothing ever is.”

  He regards me for several beats. I can feel him scanning my mind. I let him have a look at the surface, letting him see my intentions, but nothing private. He doesn’t try to pry any deeper.

  “I suppose if you’ve made it here,” he says, “on foot, alone, then you probably can hold your own. Run into many Scavengers?”

  “More than I care to count, honestly. They’ve nearly taken over the Wastes outside of New York. I had to fight my way out of there, literally every step of the way. I must’ve taken out nearly thirty packs of ‘em in the month it took me to just get clear of the ruins of the old suburbs. Out here, outside of Detroit, there aren’t quite so many of ‘em, but they’ve got better parts, and they’re better armed.”

  “If you say so. What’d you say your name was?”

  “Dez Marlowe.”

  “We don’t take refugees, Dez Marlowe. You seem an awful lot like a refugee to me. Why should I let you in?”

  “I’m not a refugee. I’m not running from anything. I just need somewhere to cool my heels for a while.” I gesture to the snow flurrying around us, obscuring the world in a curtain of white. “Besides, this storm looks like it’s set to blow for a long while.”

  The guard considers, rifle lowered, but still held at the ready. I have no doubt he’d shoot me in a second.

  “Welcome to Detroit, Dez.” The guard puts out an armor-gloved hand. I shake it, breathing a sigh of relief. That seems easier than I had been expecting, but I don’t stop to argue. He opens the door and leads me down a long, dimly-lit hallway lined on the sides and ceiling with pipes and tubes. The hallway terminates in a small room where my belongings are searched and my weapons registered. After being led by the same guard through another hallway identical to the first, I find myself standing at the top of a stairway overlooking the dark, sleeping city. They’ve built upwards, out of necessity. Walls provide protection, but they also limit expansion, and even in these war-torn, hunger-ravaged times population increases over time. I’ve heard they’ve also expanded downwards under the ground, but that’s more hearsay than fact. Few people leave Detroit once they’re let in, so it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. I shrug my bag higher on my shoulders, loosen my guns in their holsters and set off down the stairs.

  Snow is still falling in a wind-blown curtain of white, providing only brief glimpses of the city. The gate is centered on the central boulevard, a thoroughfare lined with high-rises, tenement buildings, and small shopfronts by the dozen, the main artery of a thriving city. I slog down the street through the ankle-high snow, hunching down into my coat against the driving wind. I should’ve asked the guard for somewhere to stay, I realize. Now I’ll have to trudge through this damned blizzard, freezing my hide off, until I find somewhere that will rent me a room, which might take a while.

  The city is silent except for the wind skirling through the buildings. I pass an intersection, where a street sign tells me I’m walking down Woodward Avenue. I’ve either drastically underestimated the ferocity of this storm, or it’s intensified while I was in the gatehouse; either way, I’m realizing that I have to find shelter, and soon. I’ve gone maybe a mile when I see a sign through the snow: “Lodgers Welcome (cash only)”, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Archaically, a bell dings as I open the door. I stomp my feet and shake my head as I approach the battered desk, at which is sitting a wizened old man. He has a few wisps of hair drifting over a liver-spotted bald scalp, drooping, wrinkled and gaunt features, and a scraggly beard hanging from his chin. His eyes, however, are sharp and alert.

  “What’cha want, boy?” He asks in a thin, rasping voice.

  “A room, obviously. It’s cold as hell out there.”

  “Sure is. You look about froze t’death. Well, a single is $9, local credit or hard currency only. Pay up front.”

  “I just got in from the Wastes, haven’t exchanged anything.”

  “Fucked then, ain’tcha?” The old man chuckles. “Naw, I’m only messin’ with you. Here, gimm
e what you got, and I’ll trade it for you. Got a friend who does exchanges, see. Getcha a good rate, too.” I hand him a thick roll of New York City bills with a handful of loose change, and he thumbs through it, counting silently. “Haven’t seen New York money in an age, I’ll tell you. Don’t get many from over there anymore. How is it there?”

  “Bad,” I say. “Really bad. Scavengers have overrun the outskirts and they’re starting to push into the inhabited areas. Getting bolder than ever. The Anarchists have the whole city on lockdown, and they’re running it into the ground in the meantime. Can’t get a meal without looking over your shoulder the whole way, weapons at the ready. Gangs rove wherever they want, robbing, raping, killing, beating anyone and everyone. ‘Survival of the fittest,’ is all the Anarchist Mob Patrol will say. It’s even worse outside the cities, too. Scavengers are just one of the dangers. There’s glow-pirates, bandit gangs, even a few cannibals here and there. A lot of places have gone wild, gotten taken over by the forest.”

  “Sounds like hell on Earth, to me,” the old man says.

  “It sure is. You have it good here.”

  “I s’pose. Hard to see sometimes. The Fist can be as bad as the gangs you were talkin’ about. McHale will do anything and everything to keep what he calls ‘the peace’. Arrests whoever he wants, on trumped up charges, he’s executed people publicly, and people flock in to watch like it’s a fuckin’ holiday parade. People are sick, these days, I tell you.”

  “Forced peace is better than free chaos, from my perspective. Anarchy is the death of civilization, and the AMP is the weapon used to kill it.”

  “Heh. Well, maybe you’re right. I don’t know if I can say. I lived here in Detroit before McHale took over, and since he did, you can’t move without being afraid of the Fist behind you, watching everything you do.”

  “Lesser of two evils, I guess.”

  “Maybe so. Well, here’s your local credit, minus the charge for the room for one night. Room’s up those stairs and to the left. Best to you.”

  “Thanks, you too.” I find my room, small and sparse, smelling of cigarettes and age, but warm and dry. I haven’t been under a real roof in weeks. I shed layers of clothes, spreading them out to dry in the small bathroom, roll and light a cigarette, and lay on the bed smoking it and wondering what life in Detroit has in store for me.

  * * *

  A week passes with Detroit inundated by a white-out blizzard that keeps the city stifled and silent under a blanket of snow. It finally subsides on my eighth day holed up in the tiny room, eating from a diner next to the hostel, bored and restless but glad to have reached Detroit before I was caught by this storm. I’m exploring the city the day after the snow stops, wandering aimlessly. Jasper, the proprietor of the hostel, was right about the Fist. They are everywhere, poking their helmeted heads into shops and restaurants and homes, thugs given authority, throwing their weight around. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before I have a run-in with them.

  The streets have been cleared of snow, and I’ve gotten to know this city. It’s buzzing again, people coming and going, buying, selling, visiting, all under the watchful eye of the Fist of Peace, who stride arrogantly down the street wearing thick black spidersilk armor glimmering with the telltale haze of a repulsor field, two-foot-long arc sticks in each hand crackling with arcing electricity (thus the name). I haven’t seen anyone but Fist members carrying arc sticks here in Detroit, but back in New York, anyone who can get their hands on them has them. They’re supposedly non-lethal, but get hit with them hard enough and in the right spot and they’re plenty lethal.

  I saw a kid back in the Bad Apple get jumped by a pack of glow-pirates carrying arc sticks. Nasty bastards popped him straight in the throat. Poor kid dropped instantly, vomiting blood like a fountain, like something out of the horrorshows, writhing and arching backwards so hard he snapped his own spine. The pirates had probably tweaked their sticks to produce more juice. These Fists more than likely have theirs set to low power, to stun and debilitate. I haven’t seen them actually harassing anyone yet, but I can see what Jasper was talking about. They’re everywhere, in everything, watching, spying, poking and prodding and questioning, roaming the streets in threes, which most people call a tri.

  As I began to understand the rhythms of the city, I started to notice the changes in behavior in people when the tris were around and when they weren’t. Groups of kids would stand in shivering huddles, smoking, laughing, acting the way kids always have. As soon as the tramp of booted feet on the sidewalks was heard, steps clomping in the packed snow in unison, the kids would drop their smokes in the snow and stamp them out whispering, “A tri is coming, better vanish!” They’d do just that, disappearing into doorways and alleys, reappearing only when the tri had moved on down the street.

  I’ve been in Detroit for a few weeks now, pulling in some credits by doing odd jobs for Jasper and his friends. I’m slogging through a fresh dowsing of snow, well after midnight. Fat flakes float in the air, swirling and drifting, settling on my nose and lashes, stinging my cheeks. The air is still, the sleeping city silent in the thick, muffled way of a late-night snowfall. The hood of my coat is pulled low, and hem sweeps the ground at my heels. The only sound is the skritch-skritch of my boots in the hard-packed snow. My thoughts are wandering long ago and far away, to when I was teenager in NYC, that crumbling Babylon. I had a sister, then. We were only two years apart, she the younger. Stubborn thing she was, always sneaking out with friends, hanging out in abandoned buildings, drinking and smoking pot, being typical teenagers. Nothing anyone said to her made any difference, she thought she knew it all, thought she could handle the big bad city. The last time I saw her alive, I was yelling at her: “Tamara, don’t be stupid! It’s dangerous out there! You’re gonna end up dead if you don’t stop wandering out alone.”

  Fucking prediction came true. My buddy Germaine brought her home, carried her in his arms across three city blocks. At one point, he said, he’d had to put her down to fight off some punks. She’d been raped, beaten bloody, and strangled, left dead in the middle of the street. It was a night just like this, unnaturally light out at midnight, silent and still. Germaine kicked the door open, set her down on the couch, tears and snot frozen in his beard, on his face. Germaine had had a crush on Tamara for years. He’d been waiting for her to grow up some, hoping, hoping.

  That was the first time I hunted someone down and killed them with forethought and intent. Germaine and I went out, bought impulsor pistols, a satchel of clips and hundreds of rounds, ammo belts, holsters, the works. Decked ourselves out like heroes from the 2D Western shows from a couple centuries ago. We were gunmen. Killers for hire. Badasses out for revenge.

  Revenge is exactly what we got. Her assault had been witnessed, but of course this was anarchic New York, when the AMP was still consolidating their power base. No one did anything at all, as there was nothing they could do. But they told us exactly who had done it: six local hoodlums, violent, soulless punk-ass bastards. We hunted them down, each and every one of them. Shot them in the knees, beat them into shapeless pulps with our bare fists and booted feet, hung them from the streetlights. I was never the same after that. Kept the look, kept the attitude. Nothing mattered then. Life was empty, just subsistence from one day to the next; Germaine and I started boozing, partying, trying to kill the grief we both felt over Tamara, trying to drown it in liquor.

  That lasted until Germaine got himself killed in a stupid brawl. I found his body lying just off the road near the Brooklyn Bridge, beaten into raw hamburger. I snapped, went blank. I don’t remember the next few months after that. I woke up in an empty tenement building in a pool of vomit and blood, far from anything, with nothing but ripped, stained, blood-stiff clothing. I never found out what happened to me in the three months of blank memory, even under hypnosis or drugged memory-dredging. Tamara was my only family, our parents having both been taken by the AMP when we were kids. And Germaine…he was as good as family
too, so when I found his barely-recognizable body, I had no one left at all.

  When I woke up in that empty building, I had no reason to live, nowhere to go, and nothing to do. I left New York, stumbling through the chill spring air, my mind empty and echoing, soul shattered, heart hollowed and holed. I gradually regained my equilibrium, physically speaking, and decided to just keep walking. I had no destination, no purpose. I made it three days nonstop before I collapsed from hunger, pneumonia, and exhaustion. I remember staring up at a clear cerulean sky as it spun crazily above me, thinking, Thank God…I’m free…

  No I wasn’t. Nothing is ever that easy. I woke up again, against my better judgment, this time in what seemed to be a cave. Dark, flickering fire-light, stalactites and stalagmites, the sound of trickling water coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Yes, I was in fact in a cave. A cave? Really? Okay, I’m game. Now what?

  “Awake, finally?” A lilting, accented feminine voice spoke to my left. “Thought you’d die for sure, more than once. Nearly did, at that. But yet here you are, waking up, alive and well. Guess I healed you up right and good, I did, eh?”

  I sat up, dizzy, confused, disoriented. When I stumbled and fell in the abandoned ruins of suburban New York City, I hadn’t expected to wake up at all, yet here I was, alive, in a cave with a woman.

  “Where am I and how did I get here? Who are you?” The woman turned out to be young, tall, with short spiked blond hair, decked out in leather, bandoliers, and holsters. She was sitting against a stalagmite, braiding strips of leather. Her eyes were a piercing luminous green, glittering with amusement.

  “You’re in a cave, you dolt, I thought that’d be obvious enough. As for me, my name is Isis Munro. And as for how you got here, my brother Huginn carried you. And your next question, ‘why am I here’…we found you half-dead outside New York, and Ignatius decided you might be useful. I don’t know why. He didn’t say, and I’m not inclined to question him. He knows things others don’t. He is the empath after all.”