Interest (17 page)

Dukkha Roshi’s provocations
were
a test, Len realized, only the test had nothing to do with him, Buddhism, or enlightenment. Dukkha Roshi was probably a Tchogol, and he’d been testing Len for subservience. It was simply inborn behavior. A cat doesn’t consciously think, “I need to bury this piece of shit in the sand.” It just does it because that’s what its DNA has programmed it to do. Tchogols were programmed to recruit Saskels as followers but to weed out Xreths. The reason was simple: Saskels would put up with abuse from authority and would carry out the most heinous of orders, but an Xreth wouldn’t do either.

In the beginning, Len thought, Buddhism really was about ending delusion, just as the founders of the United States honestly sought to end tyranny. In the end, however, both institutions caused even more of what they were originally trying to prevent. Sitting out there on the ramparts of the Freehold in the desert air, processing all of this, Len began to appreciate the genius of Neith’s flu. Before the flu, it was inevitable that an institution would drift away from its guiding principles, because any organization with a vertical power structure would become infested with smooth, cold-blooded people at the top and thoughtless bootlickers at the bottom. Religion, government, corporations: it was all the same thing. Any human attempt to make the world a better place was subverted by the Dranthyx’s Tchogol-Saskel control paradigm. The human race’s entire pre-flu history had been screwed by design.

31

Seventeen days after Len, Natalia, and Octavia had arrived at the compound, news came in over the CB radio that the Dranthyx had just crossed the border in Carlsbad, New Mexico. A crowd gathered around the transceiver, shouting questions over one another about what was going on. A trucker who had been detained and then released by the Dranthyx explained the situation over the radio. From listening to conversation, Len gathered that the Dranthyx’s ruinous landing campaign had been mostly for shock-and-awe purposes. Once worldwide television communication had been disrupted, the creatures proceeded inland in a very orderly manner, careful to avoid destroying any more infrastructure. The trucker told them that the highways and airports were still functioning and described tall, well-armed octopus men going door to door, rounding people up. The Dranthyx tested the genetics of each person they captured, then used a laser device to tattoo the results on everyone’s necks and wrists.

“The mark of the beast!” someone shouted. Fear was thicker than static in the little radio room.
This isn’t good,
Len thought. Anytime the Freehold had a conversation over the radio, they were giving the Dranthyx the opportunity to triangulate the signal and discover their location.

The trucker went on to relate how several citizen groups had tried taking an armed stand against the Dranthyx but were completely obliterated in a matter of minutes.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Donald said, standing sweatily over the radio equipment, “this is it. They’re across the border in Carlsbad. They’ll be here within twenty-four hours. We need every available man at his post and ready for battle.”

Men grabbed their rifles and headed up to the ramparts.

“Please come with us,” a bonnet-wearing woman said softly to Natalia.

“What do you mean?”

“Women and children must go below ground, to the bunker. These are our battle plans.”

“I don’t want to hide,” Natalia said in disgust. “I want to fight!”

Donald and the bonnet lady were taken aback, but Len could tell Donald admired Natalia’s pluck.

“Do you have any military experience?” Donald asked incredulously.

“Of course! I serve in Russian army for five years. I was in second Chechen war!”

“And you know how to use our American weapons?” Donald asked.

“I don’t think you know who you’re talking to,” Len snickered.

Donald shrugged and handed Natalia an AR-15.

“I didn’t know you were in the army,” Len said as they left the room.

“My father made me and brothers join. He didn’t want us to be soft rich kids. Also, how can you sell military weapons with no military experience? You take this rifle. I have better guns in van.”

Len made sure Octavia got down to the bunker. There, at the door, he hugged her one last time.

“Daddy. Why are you scared?”

Len couldn’t hide emotions from her sometimes. For her age, she had a remarkable talent for reading people. “Well, we’re about to get in a big fight with the bad guys. I don’t know how it will end. But you stay down here with the other kids, OK?”

“Daddy, don’t worry. I know you’ll win. Fight hard, OK?”

“OK.”

Len sighed, hugged her again, and watched as one of the bonneted ladies shooed her into the bunker, then closed its vault-like door. Len put on his body armor and headed up to the wall.

The Freehold appeared terraced like an old Mayan pyramid, but really there was only one long terrace that swirled as a continuous ramp, like the inside of the Guggenheim Museum. The terrace, the huge circular ramp, was bounded on the outside by a short concrete wall about four feet high and a foot thick to provide cover in firefights. The short wall had balistrariae at regular intervals so people could lie down and stick firearms through, which is what Len did.

Natalia came up a few minutes later, with three guys helping her carry her arsenal, and set up shop about five feet from Len. It was noon and the desert sun was beating down. Len lit two smokes and handed one to Natalia as she fed an ammo belt into the M60.

Len looked around at the people who would be dying with him today. Some as young as seventeen, some as old as seventy.
So this is what the Alamo felt like.

The quiet was interrupted by several people shouting excitedly. Len stood up to see what they were going on about. From the Freehold’s mountaintop, it was possible to see north, south, and east for fifty miles until distant atmospheric haze limited the view. The view to the west was obscured by other mountains.

Len had expected to sit around waiting all day, but the Dranthyx began their advance before Len even had a chance to finish his cigarette. The floating ones appeared on the northern horizon first. They were huge, flat purple objects the size of aircraft carriers, like the ones Len had seen on TV right before the satellite attack. They moved slowly but in a beeline for the Freehold.

“Hold your fire until they get closer!” someone shouted from one of the Freehold’s spotting towers.

This was a suicide stand, Len thought to himself. The Dranthyx had already run roughshod over the world’s most developed militaries. Yet here they were, sitting on a pile of concrete in the open desert with crude projectile weapons, hoping for what, exactly? The Freehold was run by religious zealots who believed in an afterlife, and who were convinced that they were about to fight the good fight against Satan. The outcome of this battle didn’t matter to them—they were fighting on principle. Len wasn’t afraid to die himself, but he was terrified of his daughter not having a chance to live her life.

Well, what was the alternative? Surrender? The Dranthyx would round them up and kill them all anyway. Even if the Dranthyx let the Freeholders go, as they had the trucker on the CB radio, they’d go on living the rest of their lives in abject slavery. The choice became clear. Fighting meant certain death, whereas surrender would equal certain servitude.

“Fuck it,” Len said under his breath. “Time to make a stand.”

The Dranthyx continued pushing forward like a steamroller. Len’s hands were sweating all over his rifle. When they were about ten miles away, Len could see them more clearly despite the rising waves of heat rippling the air. Underneath the large flying ships rolled about a hundred of the balls that shot electricity. It seemed the Dranthyx had taken the time to plan this. They knew the Freehold wasn’t a soft target.

Two miles from the Freehold, they stopped. The airships hung there, purple and glistening like beached whales.

“Ha! They just told us to surrender over the radio!” said a wild-eyed man with a walkie-talkie farther down the wall.

“What was our reply?” Len asked.

“Donald just told them to go f—well, I won’t repeat it in mixed company.” He glanced at Natalia. “He said no way.”

Just then, a bolt of lightning blasted out of one of the rolling orbs and slammed into one of the Freehold’s spotting towers. The tower was instantly pulverized and rained debris down onto the ramparts below.

“Let’s let ’em have it!” someone yelled.

From somewhere in the Freehold, a battery of missiles let go and roared off toward the Dranthyx aircraft. The missiles made it about half the distance to the ship, then just dropped out of the air as though they’d run out of gas. They fell to the base of the mountain with audible thuds and without exploding, neutered somehow by superior technology. Len’s heart fell with the missiles.

The large floating aircrafts set down on the desert floor as the small round ones resumed their advance up the side of the mountain. People all along the ramparts began shooting at the Dranthyx vehicles, making a sound like two hundred bags of popcorn had been stuffed into a gigantic microwave.

Len took a few shots at the rollers, then stopped in dread when he saw what was happening through his rifle scope. From doors underneath the fliers came hundreds, maybe thousands of Dranthyx ground troops. They filed out and ran toward the Freehold, carrying weapons.

The rollers advancing up the side of the mountain fired their blue lightning balls, pounding the Freehold. A hole was smashed into the wall farther down from Len, and he watched, pulse pounding in his head, as limp bodies tumbled from the hole and rolled down the side of the mountain.

As if God were a twelve-year-old boy using a lighter to burn the faces off his G.I. Joes and then laughing at their misery, the horror of the firefight was interrupted by something even more disturbing. Everyone was so caught up in the battle that they didn’t see it coming: an enormous passenger jet, somehow off course and its engine smoking, came roaring out of the blue sky. It passed directly over the freehold at six hundred miles per hour, barreling directly toward the Dranthyx lines. Clear as day, Len saw this errant aircraft collide with one of the Dranthyx airships, blowing a huge hole into it.
Boom.

What the hell had just happened? Where had the airplane come from? Len struggled to get a better view through his scope. The Dranthyx flier was burning, octopuses were running out of it. While he was straining to get a better view, and trying to snipe the escaping Dranthyx, a ball of electricity blasted a nearby tower. The concussion of the blast knocked Len to the floor.

____

Len suddenly felt clearheaded despite things exploding around him and the Dranthyx advancing up the side of the mountain. He was now sitting right where the destroyed tower used to be. He looked down and, to his amazement, saw a man dressed just the way he was, lying there on the rampart behind the wall. The man, who was facedown on the concrete, was even built the way Len was. The man’s rifle lay next to his body. Odd, it looked just like the rifle Donald had given him. A few feet away from the prostrate man was a black-haired woman with a machine gun. She looked over, saw the body of the man on the ground, and screamed a terrible scream. She fired her big gun with rage now,
babada-babada-babada
. Her eyes were angry and afraid.

Wait…what the fuck was going on here?

Len observed silently, unable to interfere as the Dranthyx infantry overran the walls of the Freehold. They were tall and disgusting looking, wearing shiny black uniforms and carrying weapons that looked like big tuning forks pulsing with tiny blue lights. Natalia picked up a rifle and aimed it at one of the Dranthyx. Before she could get off a shot, the Dranthyx fired its own weapon at her, and Natalia collapsed into a heap. Len wanted to cry out but had no mouth.

Hundreds of Dranthyx climbed into the Freehold through the holes they’d punched in the wall. One of them flipped the man’s limp body over, presumably to check it for vitals. Len saw his own face from above. Eyes closed. Middle-aged. Tired.

The creature pricked Len’s body’s pinky with an odd device. A small drop of blood came out of his finger. The Dranthyx then used the same device to suck the blood up. After a second, a small glowing screen on the machine displayed unusual symbols Len couldn’t read. The octopus lifted Len’s head up and put the device on the back of his neck. Len’s body twitched. Then the creature put the contraption on the underside of Len’s wrist and pressed another button.

Is this how it ends?
Len wondered.
Is this what the afterlife is like, the misery of seeing our former bodies being abused and helplessly watching while people we care for succumb in misery?

As though he’d blinked and missed something, Len found himself back on the ground, looking up at the foul creature through his own eyes. The hideous beast smelled like the Dumpster behind a sushi restaurant, and the device it was using on his wrist was causing a searing pain. The Dranthyx was preoccupied with the testing equipment and hadn’t noticed that Len had regained consciousness. Without moving his head, Len looked over and saw a twisted shard of rebar lying on the floor among the debris. As fast as he could, Len grabbed the sharp piece of metal and jammed it into the creature’s eye. Another Dranthyx nearby saw this and ran over. Len scrambled over to his rifle, but the second Dranthyx grabbed it with powerful tentacles and ripped it out of Len’s hands. Then the creature shot Len with the same kind of dart that Natalia had been shot with.

32

Fuzzy. Lights. Noise. Rocking back and forth. Talking. Air, breeze.

Looking around, Len made out the vague shapes of people. He heard nervous chatter and babies crying. Wherever he was, it was crowded. Over the din, he heard the rhythmic clacking of wheels on rails. Len was on a train.

As his vision returned, he saw that he was on the dirty floor of a livestock car that was packed with people. Two of the people he recognized from the Freehold, but most of them he’d never seen before. Then, panic.

“Octavia! Natalia!”

Len struggled to get up, unable to control his muscles.

“It’s OK. Just relax,” a man answered. “They drugged you. It’ll wear off in a few hours.”

“Where are Octavia and Natalia?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. They’re probably somewhere on this train.”

“Who are you? Where are we?”

“My name is Miguel. They loaded us onto this train in El Paso.”

Len looked him over. Miguel was a Latino-looking guy with a border accent and large, sympathetic eyes.

“Where are they taking us?”

“North somewhere. Colorado, maybe.”

Len’s arm and neck hurt. As he looked down, he noticed a bizarre design on his wrist right where you’d take someone’s pulse. Dots and bars with a big X in the middle. Len tried to rub it off only to find out that it wasn’t removable. It was either a tattoo or he was hallucinating from the drugs.

“What the hell is this?” he asked Miguel.

“A tattoo, I think. We all have them. They took everyone in my town, lined us up, tested us, and zapped us with some laser thingy that leaves these marks. Everyone got either an X or an S. Those fucking octopuses can scan the tattoos with a bar-code reader. Anyone who refused was drugged. I guess that’s what happened to you?”

“Something like that.”

“Before you woke up, we were just saying that everyone on this train has an X. The octopuses let the S people stay home. I don’t know what they want with us, man.”

Len’s head was fuzzy, but he knew damn well what it meant.

After a long pause, Miguel asked, “What’s your name?”

“Leonard Savitz.”

“Where you from?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“Pittsburgh? You’re a long way from home,
vato
!”

“Yeah. Look, my daughter and my friend were with me when I was taken. Maybe you saw them get on the train?”

“I dunno, man. There was a whole mess of people at the station.”

“My friend is Russian. She’s about five-foot-eight. Blue eyes, black hair.”

“I didn’t see no one like that. But like I said, there were like a million people at the station,
esé
. They made us all get on the trains at the same time and it was a damn zoo.”

“My daughter is five. Blond curly hair, big eyes, about this tall.” Len held his hand up.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t see her, either. There were a lot of kids.”

Len looked out through the slats of the rail car at the blurry desert going by. So this is what it felt like, he thought to himself, eyes watering.