The Benders (8 page)

“We’re here.” She cruises up to a gated entrance and brakes.

My head snaps up. We approach a high brick wall. The entrance is blocked by a metal gate.
U.S. Air Force
and below that
Kirtland Air Force Base
beside two large silver wings. An air force base? What the hell are we doin’ here?

She pulls the Jeep up to a guard station as a man in black cargo pants and a black T-shirt steps out holdin’ an automatic assault rifle. You don’t see guns like that out on the roads anymore. You can’t find bullets for ’em, so they’re useless ’cept for chucking at rats or propping a door open. Seein’ his makes my hands itch for my revolvers.

Nessa smiles as she greets the young guard. “Dr. Nessa Vandewater and her…guest, Clay Tate.”

“Why’s he in cuffs?” the baby-faced guard asks.

Nessa brushes a lock of hair back from her forehead like a class-A flirt. “Oh, him?” She looks over at me. “He’s being a bad boy.”

The guard frowns, leanin’ over Nessa to look at me. He’s well-fed with most of his teeth and a decent, buzz cut. What’s the end game here? Nessa don’t need no more fire power. The Breeders got everybody on their knees as it is.

“I have clearance,” Nessa finally says, the humor out of her voice. “General Nadir gave it to me himself.”

The guard squints at the piece of paper she holds up, nods and steps out of the way. Nessa waves and drives into the Air Force base.

I feel goddamned sick to my stomach.

We drive past lawns that used to be green and trees that used to spread shade. Now their dead, skeletal limbs are another reminder of the land gone to rot. But the sidewalks are cleared and the buildings seem in good repair. We pass a training field where young men in sand-colored outfits are drillin’ with rifles. A Jeep buzzes past with military men at the wheel. All of this is making my blood crawl. I thought all Nessa had up her sleeve was a handful of guards with guns back at the hospital. This…this is something completely different.

She turns right. I catch a couple of signs—Wherry Elementary School and AFB Fitness Center. The elementary’s boarded up, but the fitness center looks open with more soldiers inside. Where are all these men comin’ from? Better yet, what the hell does my mother plan on doin’ with ’em?

She pulls the Jeep up to the curb of a nondescript building with fresh white paint and new windows. There’s no signs out front, nor any markings of any kind.

“Get out.” She unbuckles herself and reaches for me. When she leans over my body, I recoil. She smells like dead roses. Sensin’ me tense up, she turns, her face inches from mine. Laugh lines crease her forehead and crow’s feet sit at the corners of her blue eyes. She’s always seemed so ageless, probably because everyone else, out in the dust, ages early and often. But up close, I can tell time’s wagin’ its own war with her. It’s uncanny, too, seein’ my eyes in her face.

“You still remind me so much of your father.”

“You let him die,” I whisper, watchin’ her face for a reaction.

Her lips creep up into that dangerous smile again. “You’re the one who shot him.”

I flick my eyes away, not wantin’ to remember. Somehow in the span of an hour she’s managed to dig her fingernails into all of my open wounds and given a good ol’ tug.

“Why’d you bring me here?”

She purses her mouth. “You’ll never understand a mother’s love for her child.”

I snort. “Ain’t nothin’ about this have to do with love. This is about control.” I narrow my eyes. “You can’t stand that I don’t wanna be with you. And if you can’t have me, no one can.”

“Hmm,” she says, tappin’ a red fingernail on her chin. “You got me figured out, baby boy? Know all of Mommy’s tricks now, do you?”

She’s toyin’ with me again, and it makes me want to hit her. I glare out across the field and watch a set of soldiers jog around a track. With one fingernail, she turns my head back toward hers.

“You never gave me a chance back at the hospital.” She sighs and stares out the windshield. “I do really want to be your mother.”

“So, you do that by kidnappin’ me and beatin’ up my girlfriend? If you wanna build a relationship, you can start by tellin’ me where in the seven hells Riley is.”

“You talk just like your father. All ‘goddamnit’ this and ‘seven hells’ that.” She smiles, tryin’ to be light.

“Don’t change the subject.”

My mother runs her nails through her hair. “I don’t want to talk about Riley.”

“Then what’re we doin’ here?” I ask.

“This is my new research facility. I’m working on some…pressing new projects. The Breeders think I’m vital here which means you’re vital here.” She smiles like she’s doin’ me a favor.

“I don’t wanna be vital here. I want you to let me go.”

I wait for a reply, but she’s staring at my injured hand. She trails a nail over my palm and I pull away as much as the seatbelt will allow.

“Did we do that to you?” she asks, touching the hole in my hand.

The puckered dimple of twisted, red scar tissue on the back of my hand is ugly. I turn my eyes away and swallow hard. “Courtesy of your guards. They tried to kill me.” I clench my jaw. “They failed.”

Nessa laughs explosively, making’ me jump. “That’s my boy. Hot shit, coming through,” she says to the empty parking lot. Then she bounds out of the Jeep, rummages around in the back, and walks over to my door. When she opens it, there’s a gun in her hand.

“If I’m transporting hot shit, I’ve got to protect myself,” she says with a smirk. She motions for me to get out of the Jeep.

“What about Ethan?” I ask, glancin’ behind me.

“He’ll be fine.”

“It’s eighty degrees.” I squint up at the rising sun. “The Jeep don’t got no top on it. He’ll fry.”

She frowns. “You’re wasting time. I hate wasting time. Move.”

When I don’t budge, Nessa waves a guard over and he drags my ass out of the Jeep, up stone steps, and through the open glass doors. Inside it’s cool and dark and completely silent. The hallways are tile. The walls are white and plain.

“Forward,” she says.

I walk, my eyes dartin’ ‘round. There’s nothing here. Empty rooms echo with our footsteps. My heart pounds harder into my throat.

“Last room on the left,” she says, pointin’ from behind me.

I walk toward the closed door slowly, my chest tight. On the other side, I hear movement.

“Open it,” she says.

I shake my head, tuggin’ again on my cuffed wrists. “You open it.”

Nessa takes a deep breath like a frustrated mother tryin’ to deal with her disobedient brat. Before she can discipline me, the door opens on its own.

Light blinds me. Then, as my eyes adjust, a man in operating scrubs comes into focus. Inside the room sits an operating table, equipped with trays of instruments—sharp scalpels, scissors, pliers.

“What’s this?” My heart’s beatin’ like a cow in a slaughter chute. I turn to run. To fight.

Something pinches my neck. I lift my hands to the spot and see my mother pulling a goddamned needle back from my skin.

“What’d you do?” I ask, my legs already numb. I turn to face her, to strangle her with my cuffed hands, or run, but it’s like someone pulled a drain at my feet and all my blood’s running out. My arms sag, my head droops. The landscape of the hallways goes fuzzy.

God, I’m fading.

“What’re…
yougonna
… do ta me?” I slur. Everything’s tilting. Blurrin’ all to hell.

“Clay, honey, don’t you worry,” she says coyly as her assistant grabs under my armpits and drags me to the table. I try to fight, but my body’s just air. I’m floatin’.

They lay me down. I wanna run. Wanna fight. My eyes lock on the scalpel blade, glistening in the light. “Don’t.”

Above me, blurred into three shapes, my mother smiles. She raises the scalpel. “We’ve just got a few things to take care of.”

I lie face down in the dirt, letting the pain from my back wash over me. Waves of agony roll up and down my body. The dirt is hot on my cheek and stones dig into my palms and knees, but it’s nothing compared to the howling skin on my back. Am I cut open? Bleeding? It feels like it. My shirt clings to my skin like wet paper. Something warm and wet runs down my ribs and pools under my stomach. Bile rises in my throat.

A hand cinches my arm and pulls. Pain flares along the skin of my back, sharper than before. I stagger to my feet and look at the guard who’s beaten me; his face shows no mercy. He lifts one corner of his mouth and points to a twenty-by-twenty concrete building. When I stare at him, he jabs his finger at the building again.

“Go wash up,” he says, frowning under his big bushy mustache. He’s got dark eyes covered with heavy eyebrows that match his moustache. The shapeless hat, button-down shirt and jeans are standard, but in his hip pocket he’s shoved a book of what? Puzzles?
Sudoku
. “Hurry up. Be in the warehouse in ten minutes.”

I say nothing and stagger toward the washhouse with my arms wrapped around myself.

The washhouse is cool and dark. Two-foot-tall windows run along the top of the white concrete walls. Three porcelain sinks with metal faucets come into focus, and, beyond that, five open stalls hold rusty toilets. On the other side of the room are concrete stalls. Showers? A shower would feel wonderful, but even if they work, I can’t afford to undress. Not when I told Doc I wanted to be a bender.

Goddamn Doc. He acted like he would help me and instead ordered a beating. I shouldn’t have trusted him, but what choice did I have? He would’ve found out my secret anyway. And yet, as far as I know, he didn’t tell them my secret.

I limp over to a metal mirror, grip one of the sinks and look at my reflection.

My face is boney, my cheeks sunken. Dirt smudges one cheek and my clothes. My short black hair stands up in lop-sided spikes. Slowly, I tug up my sticky shirt and turn around to see the damage, but I can’t. I guess I haven’t been injured too bad or there’d be more blood.

When I try the faucet, a small trickle of water dribbles out into my hands. The water is cool and tinged with brown, but it smells clean enough. I run handfuls over my face, neck, and hair. I scoop handfuls onto my back, which stings. Then I lean my face under the facet and gulp water. The cool water is so satisfying I could cry.

Someone knocks hard on the entrance. “Time’s up.”

When I walk out, the guard points with his baton to the large warehouse. He leads me to the open doors, my nerves bundling into a knot.

The warehouse is a large, rectangular building with high, arched ceilings. Skylights throw down squares of light. Rows and rows of tables are laid out around the concrete floor. Benders sit on stools, hunched over their work. In the back, heavy machinery hisses and chugs loudly. They must have electricity here. The benders who work the machines wear goggles, gloves, and heavy boots, but others seem to be working with hardly any protective gear at all. The air is punctuated by all kinds of smells—acrid, smoky, metallic. My eyes scan the different stations, noting each item for its potential use. There’s a lot of great bludgeoning material here, but the guards have guns.

The guard shoves my shoulder with his baton to propel me further in the warehouse. I walk past large metal presses. One bender pushes down a lever with a grunt, and something falls with a
clink
into a barrel on the floor. The next table I pass has several cauldrons the size of soup pots, each melting metal. Around the tables are bins of what looks like copper scrap. One bender walks over and scoops up a bucket of scrap and walks it to the cauldrons.

“Bullets,” I say, staring in wonder.

The guard shoves the tip of his baton between my shoulders and pain flares up my spine. “Yeah, bullets,” he says. “Got plenty. And plenty of guns, too. Don’t go getting any clever
eye-deers
.”

I glower, but say nothing. He shoves me father into the loud, hot building.

As I walk past tables, benders lift their eyes to me, dismiss me and go back to their work. Scarred fingers and burnt hands fold copper casings back and seat lead bullets into their new homes. When I walk past an aging bender, his coarse gray hair sticking out from his head like porcupine quills, he fumbles a newly seated bullet and it clatters onto the concrete. The guard herding me stops. Before I can turn around, a whistling noise cuts through the air; a loud crack and an agonizing cry follow.

I whip around to see the old bender fall off his stool and roll onto the concrete, holding his shoulder.

Another bender at the table—this one younger and more spry, with long brown hair plaited in Indian braids—jumps up with a cry of indignance. “Hey, Bukowski, lay off the baton,” he growls.

“That’s
Mr.
Bukowski to you,” the guard says. “Or Your Supreme Highness. Or Big Daddy. Either way.” One side of his mustache twitches up with glee. “You want a nice crack to match?” He lifts the baton.

Indian Braids backs down, helps the beaten bender off the floor, and both of them hunch over their work.

Bukowski turns back to me, jabbing with that damned baton. He speaks into my ear over the noise of the hissing machinery. “We don’t put up with tomfoolery here at Merek Bullets and Ammo. Lazy
asses
are properly dealt with.” He flexes his baton between both hands and smiles at me.

“And how are bastard guards dealt with?” I mumble under my breath, though no one can hear over the din. I picture several forms of punishment for this particular bastard as he prods me on.

We stop at the back, near a singed metal table. The concrete wall and floor are also charred like there’s been a fire or explosion. Even the air seems charged to blow. As I scan the table, the fine hairs on the back of my neck rise. Handcuffs are welded to the metal table. Down at the far end a petite bender works, cuffed, her chains clanging against the surface as she reaches for a metal spoon. When she lifts her eyes, I recognize Nada. Her swollen, broken face and sunken eyes look dead in this light. If she’s chained up here, they must’ve recognized her after all.

Hands on my wrists jar me from my thoughts. The guard yanks me toward the table.

“Why do I have to be chained up?”