The Underground (9 page)

“I already told you. You’re with the Underground, and that’s all you need to know,” he said loudly, almost yelling. “We’ve got to get going,” he said staring hard at Nathaniel with the look of a bull about to charge. “Now, don’t try anything funny. We’re on your side, pal, and we’d like to keep it that way. Understand?” he asked.

Nathaniel slowly nodded, even though he was more confused than ever. The Underground?

A knock at the door broke the tension, and Nathaniel was grateful. Simon answered the door, and took a cafeteria-style tray from mysterious arms that Nathaniel was barely able to see.

“We’re leaving in 20 minutes,” he said as he placed the tray on the mattress next to Nathaniel. After he left, Nathaniel heard and watched each lock click into place, reinforcing his imprisonment. Nathaniel inhaled the food, very soggy cereal with raisins in milk, and cold, dry toast. What he really craved was a cup of coffee, even if it wasn’t from Chester’s Bakery. But this certainly wasn’t like the hotel he had just shared with Shayla where room service was delivered in style. This wasn’t the kind of place where you could order anything.

After eating, he splashed freezing water on his face. No soap, but it was better than nothing. He still felt ripe with sweat from the journey. With nothing else to do, he sat on the mattress, the old blanket wrapped around him as he tried to keep warm and wondered what might be next.

“Time to go,” Simon said when he returned.

“You’re not going to lasso me again, are you?” Nathaniel asked.

“As long as you won’t give me a hard time. One wrong move, though, and I’ll have to tie you down. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Being on Simon’s good side seemed imperative. Nathaniel walked through the building sandwiched between a masked guard in front of him and Simon behind. The corridors were lined with closed doors, and while he could hear movement and voices behind them, there was nothing distinctive to hold onto as they quickly walked.

“Is there any chance of seeing Brigg today?” Nathaniel asked Simon.

“No. There is no Brigg, so don’t ask about him,” Simon snapped as they led him to the back row of a humongous garage. There had to be a hundred black vans in it.

“Get in,” Simon said.

Nathaniel climbed into the van. One of the masked men secured him into a rear-facing vinyl seat with yellow foam popping out where the old seat cushion stitching had given way. Nathaniel was grateful to be in a seat. He was neither hog-tied nor drugged. This was a limousine ride in comparison to the last one. Wherever he was going, it had to be better than the C Center. For just a moment he felt relieved, but then the motor started.

——–

Simon was glad there was just one more stop with this Grounder. The new ones were always full of questions, but answering them was not part of his job.

Better to leave the Underground’s orientation to the instructors who were more patient. He knew his limitations. Plus, that gave each new Grounder a uniform experience with clear, consistent rules, regulations, and training.
 

Simon preferred to stick to his job’s strict delivery parameters: Pick them up at point A, and drop them off at point B. No small-talk, no bullshit, no glamour, but very necessary to the organization’s success.

And Simon wanted the Underground to succeed. Badly. Actually, he wanted them to
exceed
their mission. He wanted more than just equality for all men as the Underground’s mission officially proclaimed. He wanted that evil bitch that America called the Queen to be filleted, but he knew it wasn’t prudent to broadcast that. Technically speaking, it was outside of the Underground’s official agenda. Still, if he ever got the chance, he would do it. She deserved it as punishment for all the men castrated under her rule. Yes, she inherited the laws as they were, but there’s no question she could change the laws. That’s the kind of power, unfortunately, the Queen held.

“Simon here,” he said, answering his cell phone as he drove along the highway, dusk turning quickly to darkness along the country’s plains.

“You close?”
 

“Be there in a few hours, why?”

“Got another assignment for you. Not close to home, but important. Drop him off and then you’ll be off again.”

 
“Got it. I’ll be ready,” Simon said, hanging up and knowing this meant a short overnight at the Underground headquarters.

“I’ve gotta take a crap, are we almost there?” he heard Nathaniel yell. Simon didn’t answer. Some new Grounders grated on his nerves more than others. This guy was a needy pain in the ass. Where’s Brigg? Where’s Brigg? Are we almost there? Simon wanted to smack him. Nathaniel didn’t need help, as far as he was concerned. Simon couldn’t understand why he, and countless others, had to risk their lives for a guy who already had a fiancée. If Simon’s brother had had a fiancée, he surely wouldn’t have been castrated and then committed suicide from his depression.

Nathaniel must be pretty connected because they didn’t rescue people who were engaged. Simon tried to dig up the dirt on Nathaniel, but all he learned was that the guy’s fiancée was difficult. Poor boy. Maybe he didn’t love her. After all Simon had seen, he didn’t believe in love. Lust? That was another story. He still enjoyed occasional trysts with Eudora, the head Underground Sexpert instructor. The thought of that made him smile. He hoped she was free tonight. He could use a good fuck after all this driving. She was, technically speaking, his wife, which she had done to keep him out of the C Centers.

“How much longer?” Simon heard from a hoarse sounding Nathaniel.

Simon turned the on stereo, selected his favorite CD and cranked the volume, not giving a shit if Nathaniel was an AC/DC fan or not.

——–

Nathaniel knew Janice was either worried sick or sick from drinking. Either way, she would surely blame Nathaniel for his disappearance even if she found out at some point that it was against his will. She was probably drinking vodka by the bottle to “calm her nerves,” as she used to say.

He couldn’t worry about Janice right now. He had his own shit to deal with, like figuring out who the hell he was traveling with. He tried to think of any unusual past disappearances. He didn’t know anyone who had gone AWOL. Maybe some people who went on the record as murder victims were really members of this Underground? Would they declare him dead after he was gone for a certain amount of time?

Still, he felt a little bad for Janice, but not as bad as he did for Shayla. She would expect a phone call if he wasn't coming to work, and Nathaniel never missed work.

“I don’t want you to go,”
she playfully said as she grabbed him one last time before he got dressed when they were in the hotel.
“I wish you could stay the night,”
she pleaded.

“I do too, but I will see you in the morning with a blueberry muffin and coffee,” he had whispered in her ear the day before he was kidnapped.

“Come early.”

“I promise,” he had said before a lingering kiss.

Just the thought of it made him grow hard. He didn’t think he could last without her. He had to contact her somehow, and soon.

When the engine finally turned off, Nathaniel was escorted from the van into an elevator that went down for so long he felt the pressure in his ears. This was not an elevator with an inspection sticker signed by the state. It was not that kind of place.

The elevator doors opened to a dark hallway, illuminated only by humming fluorescents. Nathaniel noticed the words painted on the wall behind the guard’s desk:
Keep your Laws off my Body.
Equal Rights and Justice for all Men.
He knew these words well.
Reminder of Truth
had them at the end of each chapter, and he would soon see these words everywhere. The Underground’s mantra was painted on the shower stalls, cafeteria, lining the warren of hallways that were his new home and in every cell men slept in.

“Welcome back, Simon,” the guard said without fanfare.

“Barely here for a rest, but here is my delivery,” he said, as though Nathaniel was a box of office supplies. Nathaniel nodded quietly, which seemed safest.

“Good luck, son. You’ll need it,” Simon said before heading down a corridor.

“Thank you,” Nathaniel managed, but Simon didn’t turn back. Nathaniel hoped that appearing polite and appreciative might help him get off on the right foot as the next set of chaperones watched closely. While his expectations were low, he hoped they were friendlier than Simon. They simply had to be.

He was led down a long corridor lined with metal doors, each having a keypad on the wall to the left. His escort stopped in front of one, punched in a code and the door unlocked.

“Wait here,” he was told, and knew better than to question authority.

As the door locked behind him, Nathaniel was relieved to be alone, but his nerves were frazzled. There were two chairs around a small table. A single bulb dangled from above. The light rattled on and off, threatening complete darkness at any moment. There was a stainless steel prison-issue toilet in the corner, and nothing else inside the grey cinder-block room. Not a picture on the wall to focus his thoughts or a pad of paper, pencil, book, pamphlet or magazine. He sat on one of the two folding chairs and put his head down on the small cold metal table for what seemed like forever.

When the door finally opened, Nathaniel sat up quickly and a small man with closely cropped black hair and a well-sculpted goatee walked in. A black uniform, that everyone seemed to wear, covered his petite 5-foot frame. A tiny pink triangle dangled from his left ear lobe, a distinctive decoration compared to the others.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Crosby. Welcome to the Underground,” he said followed by a sparkly smile as he held his hand out. Crosby’s gesture was one of a friendly salesman, greatly contrasting Simon’s curtness.

Crosby spoke quickly, not allowing Nathaniel a word. “Now, I know you probably have a lot of questions, and I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can. First things first. Look over this family history to make sure it’s one hundred percent accurate. Then, we’ll move on,” he said smiling as he handed Nathaniel a thick printout, clipped to a board with a dangling pen attached. “Oh, and I’m guessing you’re a little hungry, so here’s something to tide you over,” Crosby said. He put a tightly saran wrapped submarine sandwich and a big bottle of water on the table.
 

Nathaniel warily took the sandwich, ripping it open and greedily took a bite. Would they poison him if they didn’t like how he’d behaved so far? He hoped not, but was too hungry to let that stop him.

“I’ll be back soon,” Crosby said as he closed the door behind him.

“Thanks!” Nathaniel said, before devouring the large sandwich. He had hoped for meat, but there was only tofu and vegetables inside. Still, food was food and he was starving and thirsty.

He picked up the booklet Crosby left. It was filled with such precise information about Nathaniel’s life that it was downright creepy. Not only did it list his birthplace and family tree, but there were also details about his childhood that weren’t so easy to dig up. They mentioned that he had a scar on his left ankle and noted it happened after he fell off his bike at age ten. How did they know? They had a copy of his first place certificate for an engineering contest, from high school, where he had to fix a broken engine in a fixed time period. Winning that opened the door to his job at the Cambridge Public Works.

There were addresses, health records, and work records. It also had a chronology of the few women he dated, including an in-depth description of his unpleasant relationship with Janice.
 
It was as though someone had gathered Nathaniel up and summarized him in 40 sterile pages. Now he was supposed to sign off on the accuracy. It felt strange to read. Someone had done his homework, presumably with a lot of help from Brigg. Not a word about Shayla was mentioned, and he felt keenly satisfied keeping this secret. He feared for her safety. While she was the Queen’s daughter, she had taken pride doing without a full-time security detail, and these guys didn’t appear to be the law-abiding types. If they knew about the two of them… he didn’t want to think about what could happen.

He read the full summary a second time, since there was nothing else to do. Occasionally, he heard steps echo quietly on the concrete corridor outside his door. He hoped to hear them halt and enter, but it was quite sometime before that happened.

“Was all the info okay?” Crosby asked as soon as he walked in, flashing a quick smile.
 

Nathaniel nodded.

“Can I ask some questions?” Nathaniel asked, hopefully.

“Not yet, but soon. I promise. I’ll be back. Sit tight,” he said with a sing song excitement before disappearing as quickly as he had entered.

Nathaniel’s patience waned, but he knew that lashing out was useless. He was far outside his own territory, and alienating anyone was unwise. Besides, Crosby seemed nice.

True to his promise, Crosby reappeared a few minutes later. After locking the door, he sat down, crossing his legs in an exaggerated effeminate way.

“I’m here to orient you to the Underground. After I’m done, I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have,” he said in a friendly tone. “The Underground was started 25 years ago by a great man who decided it was time for men to regain equality. He believed mandatory castration must stop and he provided the seed money for The Underground. If you are wondering how this all works, we induct men into our system and retrain them to be very attractive to women in all ways. We then strategically place men, called Grounders, around the country. As the powerful women in our nation select Grounders for marriage, we infiltrate the country’s power-system to meet our goal. We are already making headway with our network of Grounders married to high-powered women.”