Survival

survival

Daniel
Powell

DISTILLATIONS
PRESS

JACKSONVILLE,
FLORIDA

PUBLISHED BY
DISTILLATIONS PRESS

JACKSONVILLE,
FLORIDA

KINDLE
EDITION

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

COVER DESIGN BY
CANOPY STUDIOS

Copyright © 2011 by
Daniel Powell

ASIN:
B0053SOZAU

All Rights Reserved

survival

The man and his son braced
themselves against the cold, huddled there on the park bench, their breath
punctuated by little blasts of steam. The boy made fists tight as frozen
potatoes, clenching and unclenching his hands as his father drilled the words
into him.

“Ok, you’ve made it this far,
Son. You remember that when things get hairy in there. I don’t have to tell you
how many folks never even make it to Labor, do I? But your old man made it, and
you will too. I’m sure of it. Ok, kid, what’s the first rule?”

“Look for cover.”

“Damn straight. You kill time
that way. Killing time is the name of this here game. Rule two?”

“Cover ground by night.”

“Good. That’s right, Son. You
wait for dusk and get a lead on those bastards. Don’t let ‘em lull you into
complacency. It’s an old trick. When the sun goes down,
you
get moving.
Rule three?”

The boy looked into his father’s
eyes, a pair of ruddy brown pools, the whites streaked though with crimson
veins. Sleep had been fleeting for all of them in the weeks since the baby’s
due date fell into testing range. He swallowed hard.

“A kill is as good as a victory,”
he replied, the words barely above a whisper.

His father nodded. He stared at
his son, tears welling in his eyes. He reached across the bench and pulled him
into an embrace, the young man’s thin shoulder blades sharp as pottery shards
beneath his windbreaker. “I know it’s tough, Bryan. God, but I know it, Son.
But you do what you have to do, you understand? They’ll
kill
you in
there. You do what you have to do to ensure
your survival
,” he said.

The boy flinched. His father had
called him by his given name—a rarity indeed. The sudden intimacy kicked his
pulse up another notch. Jesus, this was happening.

“You ready?” the old man said.

The boy’s name was Bryan Norton.
He was tall and thin, still awkward in his youth, with cords of muscle and
quick, nervous blue eyes. If he survived the world on the other side of the
iron wall, he would emerge from the test a man.

And he would be a father.

“I think so, Pop. Tell Mom that I
love her. Tell her I’d like some of her lasagna tomorrow night for supper.” He
choked on a sob. “And tell Maggie that I’ll be there, Dad. Tell her...tell her
that I promise,” his voice cracked, “that I’ll be there.”

A tear tracked down the old man’s
face as he regarded his only son. He opened his mouth but his words were
swallowed by the din of the air-raid siren. Labor had officially begun. All
around them, men in blue jeans, long-sleeved thermal tops and white wind breakers
began to walk toward the processing stations, their left hands extended for
fingerprint verification.

Grief reigned on the periphery of
the processing area. Parents and siblings wailed as they watched their loved
ones disappear into the stalls where they would be processed before entering
the Labor field.

In Portland, the survival rate
for men entering Labor hovered around 60%, far better than in many places. A
general belief held that America’s western cities had kinder bulls—that places
like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco were easier to survive than the Labor
fields in Pittsburgh or Detroit.

Bryan spared a single glance over
his shoulder at his father, his old man a haggard shadow of his usual
gregarious self. He waved and stepped into line. There were maybe a few hundred
of them, awaiting entry to a world of blood and violence.

The chutes were staffed by armed
bulls—junior cadets who would one day graduate from Processing to Equality
Enhancement and Population Control. Bryan shuffled forward, watching the bulls
fingerprint the nervous men. Hand-picked by the Authority, most weren’t much
older than him. He wondered what would have happened if he’d been tagged for
service, all those years before.

Would he have had the stomach to
work for the Authority?

“Better not to think of it,” a
man said in the next line over. He was mousy and slight, with a long, thin
nose, wavy black hair and sleepy eyes.

Bryan stared at him. “What do you
mean?”

“When that siren went off, a
couple of hundred deserters bit the dust. There will be a lot of clean-up in
the city today. I saw it in your eyes. You were lost there for a minute.”

Bryan nodded. He’d forgotten
about the microchips. The bulls were de-activating the Promise Sensors. At
least there was
that
.

He pictured the aftermath—the
crumpled bodies in city parks, littered along the Oregon Coast, in mountain
retreats. Many men simply walked away—content to let the Promise Sensors finish
the task without ever testing themselves against the gauntlet of Labor.

“You doing ok?” the mousy fellow
asked.

“I guess,” Bryan replied. He
extended his hand. “I’m Bryan Norton. I live…I live out in Sellwood.”

“Fausto,” the man replied.
“Fausto Ruiz. Goose Hollow. I’ve got a beautiful little girl waiting on me.”
The man with the sleepy eyes grinned and it was a relief, like the blink of a
lighthouse on the open ocean, to see a positive emotion in the midst of all
that naked fear.

Bryan smiled, the thought
suddenly occurring to him that there
was
a reward on the other side.
Maggie and his little boy. If he could make it through Labor, he’d have a life
with his family.

“Nice to meet you, Fausto. You,
uh...” He fumbled for the words, and Fausto’s grin widened an inch.

“No. I haven’t made any
connections yet. But I got a good feeling about you, kid. We can work
together,” he replied.

Bryan felt a surge of relief.
There were other rules—principles beyond the three he’d discussed with his old
man. Partner up—safety in numbers—was one of them. Look for help on the inside
was another one. Something told him the slight man was solid—a real ally.

They shuffled forward, maybe a
dozen turns until their own. “A little girl, huh? We’re having a boy. We’ll
call him Eli. He’ll be here in just a few weeks.”

“That’s a good name—a strong name.
We’re calling our girl Carmen. She’s amazing! Shoot, all those somersaults in
her mother’s belly?” he said, grinning at the thought of it. “We’re going to
have a ballet dancer. She’ll be here before we know it.”

As they advanced, they swapped
details of their lives before pregnancy. When it was their turn, they stepped
into the booths.

“Left hand,” the bull grunted,
seizing Bryan’s fingers and running them over the scanner. He wore a hard glare,
his chiseled features all business. Bryan didn’t see so much as a glimmer of
compassion in his eyes. The scanner verified his identity. The guard
deactivated the Promise Sensor and told him to move into holding.

Fausto waited on the other side
and they migrated toward an open space at the edge of the pen. Bryan craned up
on his toes in an attempt to find his father, but his old man had disappeared
in the sea of distraught supporters.

“Soooo…right, left or down the
gut?” Fausto said when they’d found a quiet place to chat. All around them, men
were gathering in loose groups—some big, some small.

“I don’t know. You think there
have been many changes?”

Fausto shook his head. “I bought
a satellite map three days ago. The Authority hasn’t raised any forest—at least
not that I could see in the map. Of course, you know there’ll be new digital
obstacles. Those we’ll have to deal with when we get to ‘em. But when they open
those gates,” his eyes widened, “this thing is for real. We need to commit to a
plan from the start.”

Bryan inhaled. “Did the satellite
map show anything?” He envied the man’s wealth and connections. Intelligence on
the layout of the Labor field was fiercely prohibited. His father had offered
to buy a map, but Bryan shot the idea down right away. There was no sense in
committing his family to financial ruin.

“Yeah, I think we position
ourselves toward the rear of the crowd. When the lead expires, the bulls will
flank us—they almost always do, so we don’t want to be in the
very
back.
They’ll cut us down. But I think we make a play toward the northwestern
quadrant of the field. There’s cover there, and lots of different terrain. My
information indicates there’s an angel in those woods as well. Now, if we can
just get to him...”

Bryan made a second appraisal of
his new friend. The man might be slight, but he was razor sharp. Despite the
sleepy eyes and quick grin, he had a bit of timber wolf in him. Bryan could
only guess what kind of man he was outside of all this madness.

“Jesus,” he said reverently. “An
angel
.”

“That’s what my contact said,
anyway. We’ll see if we can find him. The bulls will try to cut our number in
half in that first hour. If we make it to 3:00 p.m., we just might have a
chance.”

  Men were beginning to assemble
near the entrance to the field. Fausto and Bryan cut into the crowd and worked
toward a position near the back of the throng. The junior cadets had finished
processing and were locking down the chutes.

“Welcome,” a voice said, booming
over the landscape from a pair of speakers on either side of a digital
jumbotron, “to the miracle of the birthing process.”

A groan rose from the crowd at
the sound of the Chancellor’s voice. The most vocal supporter of Equality
Enhancement and Population Control yet, Adrian Carson was anathema to the men
forced to wager their lives for the chance to raise a family. Her severe
features—sharp, angular nose and Patrician cheek bones, filled the screen. She
had icy blue eyes; Bryan thought he detected a hint of glee in them.

“You have been chosen today to
experience the sacrifice and struggle of what it means to become a parent. For
the last nine months, your spouse or partner has
devoted herself
to the
health and development of
your
child. She has forsaken many of the
comforts of our modern existence and endured great physical pain and transition
for the singular purpose of bearing
your
child.

“Now, it’s your turn to join her
on this journey.”

Another groan.

“Go fuck yourself!” someone
shouted. Bryan watched as one of the bulls raised his head, scanning the crowd
for the perpetrator.

“You have my sincere
congratulations on making it this far. For twelve months, you’ve avoided
caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. You’ve gone without comforting medications and
you’ve subjected yourself to the Authority’s most realistic equality technology
to date—the sleep interval disrupter.”

“Jesus.
That
thing,”
Fausto muttered; Bryan merely nodded in agreement.

“As you are well aware, the
world’s population has expanded beyond our planet’s capacity to sustain a
healthy global community. America, in concert with the New Global Initiative,
is a foundational participant in the Darwin Culling Process.”

Carson paused there in her
recorded speech, no doubt aware that the largest protests would follow her
statement.

“It is time to return to the
principles that made this country great,” she continued, that smile expanding
on the screen, her perfect canine teeth impossibly white, “
survival of the
fittest
. It is time for you to share in the pain
and
the euphoria of
a successful Labor process.

“The Darwin Culling Process has
met with great success. Our society no longer takes its children for granted.
Our culture is no longer scarred by the residual effects of children whose
parents have little use for them. Parenthood has taken its rightful place at
the forefront of American life. Only the
strongest
may have children.
Only the
strongest
survive Labor.”

A hush fell over the crowd as the
words found their mark. Men turned to regard each other—allies in an ordeal
that would mark them for the rest of their lives. Bryan knew the statistics
showed that about 5% of those assembled were trying for a second child. The
enormity of going through Labor twice was staggering.

“I wish you luck in your journey.
The clock began to expire with the noon siren. If you evade Authority forces
over the next twenty-four hours, a rich future as a father awaits you.”

Carson offered a final serene
smile—simultaneously smarmy and patronizing—and then the digital screen went
blank. A pair of monstrous metallic thunks shook the ground as the latches
sprung on either side of the gate and the great iron wall split in two, the
halves slowly sliding aside to grant entry to the Labor field.

“Ok,” Fausto said, “stay packed
in close here and follow me. If we make it to the woods, we move from tree to
tree. Look for something to arm yourself with. I know the bulls patrol for
contraband, but you can’t keep a tree from tossing a branch. Listen to me,” he
stared into the boy’s eyes, “we’ll make it, Bryan.”

Norton nodded. For the first time
since he’d met the man, Fausto’s eyes were wide and alert. The iron gates
inched maddeningly across the ground and finally stopped, the red light atop
the gateway blinking green.