The Collector (9 page)

Paiton doesn’t care. Their bodies sway in unison to the slow rhythm of the music.

At that same moment, elsewhere near the outskirts of Sector A where the road splits the sector in two, Slayter’s utility truck rolls into view. It’s just as Leon warned. The iron vehicle passes Nineteenth Century brick buildings on each side as the processing facility looms behind on the horizon. Neil reads directions from his PDA. “Turn left. Should be around the corner.”

Soon Slayter parks the truck. He nods, “For breaking his oath, enemy to the Agency.”

Neil nods back, taking a deep breath.

With that, they file out.

The music comes to a stop inside the bungalow’s kitchen, leaving only the crackle of the needle pressing against the vinyl disc. Paiton can feel the stiffness in Wade’s body, the tightness of his arms. He’s never held her like this before, and given the circumstances, she realizes this is their last embrace. “We’re not going anywhere, are we?” She looks him in the eye, already knowing the answer. “We got caught up in the moment,” she admits, then painfully asks, “When?”

Wade’s face betrays his silence to give away the answer – any minute. He holds her by the shoulders and pulls her close to comfort her.

“This must be how it feels to be a volunteer,” she says.

She rests her head on Wade’s chest as tears form in her eyes. They rock back and forth, lost in each other’s embrace, continuing to hold each other in complete silence, until
BLAM!
The front door bursts open, Neil and Slayter shattering the moment. Neil steps forward, betrayed.

“I’m sorry. It just happened,” Wade says.

Suddenly Slayter bashes Wade with his baton. Without hesitation he strikes again.
WHAM!

“Stop it! Get off him!” Paiton shouts
.

Neil fails to restrain Paiton as she tries to pull Slayter away, but Slayter whips her into the counter. She falls and winces in pain.

“Pick him up,” Slayter orders Neil.

“Let’s just take him and go.”

“I said pick him up,” Slayter demands again.

Neil follows the command. He lifts Wade while Slayter taunts him with the tip of the shock baton, bolts of electricity sparking node to node. Grinning, Slayter shocks him. Wade’s body spasms.

“Nobody’s above the Agency,” Slayter seethes through his teeth.

Neil keeps Wade upright as Slayter wields the baton, about to shock him again when Paiton lunges forward and stabs Slayter in the back with the knife used to cut the figs. The sharp blade hardly penetrates Slayter’s combat uniform, only mere inches, before a layer of armor stops the knife. Slayter turns around, smirking, as Paiton drops the weapon.

“You wanna play, huh?”

She trembles, her eyes wide. Slayter backhands her with the baton.

“Leave her alone!” Wade shouts. He rushes towards Slayter, but Neil cracks him in the leg with his own baton and wrestles him down.

Slayter grabs a handful of figs from the counter, his teeth piercing into them and the red juice dripping down his chin. Every aspect about this man is raw. Animalistic. Primal.

Paiton crawls towards the living room, her cheek bruised and bloodied, with Slayter looming above and stalking his prey. He toys with her, shoving her with his boot.

“This is who you broke your oath for?” Slayter taunts as he shoves Paiton again. “The Agency girls weren’t good enough?”

Slayter rears back and kicks her in the stomach, then kicks her again before kneeling and grabbing her face. He wipes the blood trickling from her mouth, “She must be better than them,” then smashes her head into the floorboards. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Wade tries again to break free from Neil, but continues to fail. “She’s got nothing to do with this,” Wade pleads to his former partner.

Neil agrees. “Slayter, she’s not the mission,” he shouts.

Slayter pops open the buttons from Paiton’s shirt one by one, humiliating her. “She needs to learn her place.”

“We’re assigned to Wade,” Neil reminds him.

“You don’t give the orders,” Slayter snaps back.

Just then Paiton calls out, “Wade, help!”

Slayter growls as he smacks her again, pinning her arms down and easily overpowering her. She squirms as he exposes her bra.

“Let me go,” Wade begs to Neil. “Nobody has to know.”

“You’re already in the system.”

“Exactly,” Wade pleads.

Neil refuses to turn a blind eye.

Slayter leans in close and violates Paiton’s body with his hands, until suddenly Paiton bites him in the neck. She latches on, drawing blood followed by a loud shriek from the beast. Slayter loses a chunk of skin as he yanks his body upright. It gives Paiton a brief moment to scramble to her feet and bolt towards the side door, spitting out Slayter’s flesh. He goes after her.

“He’s going to kill her,” Wade exclaims. He makes one final attempt to break free, but Neil doesn’t budge.

Paiton sprints outside down the road, limping, her clothes ripped and torn. She glances back to see Slayter appear from the doorstep of her bungalow. He draws his gun and takes aim at his wounded prey.

Paiton gasps for air, gaining distance, nearly rounding a corner to escape when suddenly…

BANG!
The gunshot reverberates throughout the thin walls inside the bungalow. Wade’s heart sinks. He loses it, breaking down in tears as Neil places his hand on his former rookie’s shoulder.

“Let’s get you to the truck.”

“Kill me. Just shoot me.”

“That’s against protocol,” Neil reminds him.

“What about him? How’s that for your protocol?” Wade begins to shout in hysteria. “Shoot me. Shoot me goddammit or give me the gun and I’ll do it myself.”

Neil lifts Wade to his feet just as Slayter returns with Paiton’s limp body. Slayter tosses her to the floor, bleeding from the chest, barely alive.

“Murderer!” Wade screams. He finally pushes past Neil and falls to her side. “Paiton. Paiton, wait for me. I’ll be there soon, wait for me.”

Paiton smiles at him, fading, no longer in pain. “I love you,” she whispers. Her eyes close. Wade hunches over.

Neil pulls Slayter aside. “Was that necessary?”

“Penal code 15.70.b. Wade is not her issued partner,” Slayter recites the penal code coldly and without remorse. “We’re done here.” He wipes the crusted fig juice from his chin and lumbers away.

The red camcorder light blinks as Neil slouches in the chair opposite the psychologist.

“Now I’m going to ask you a series of questions and I want you to answer honestly and openly,” the psychologist instructs using exactly the same words as before.

Neil forces himself to nod.

“Do you ever have thoughts too terrible to tell another person?”

“No.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the necessity of the Collections Agency?”

“Ten.”

“Do you prefer flowers or clouds?”

“Flowers.” The psychologist cocks her head at Neil’s selection this time. He promptly corrects himself, “Neither.”

“Do you hear voices in your head?”

Mazer watches closely through the one-sided observation window, mouthing along with Neil’s response. “Just my own,” Neil replies. Neil’s eyes break from the window, seemingly avoiding Mazer’s. The psychologist hesitates before checking PASS on the bottom of the evaluation form.

Later that night in the Agency bullpen, Neil removes Wade’s photo from the bulletin board. The four Brigade leaders remain.

Behind him, Mazer supervises through the observation window while Slayter interrogates Wade in the evaluation room. Wade’s been beaten so bad he can barely remain upright. Neil watches only long enough to see Wade shake his head and mouth the words, “I don’t know,” before he slinks away out the back stairwell unnoticed. Except Mazer notices. Mazer looks to his old pocket watch, stopped again, but with a few taps it ticks forward.

Neil stands under the dripping showerhead back in his apartment bathroom, his mind racing. He holds the water release button as the DAILY RATIONS digital counter reaches 0L, buzzing once it runs dry and waking him from his daze.

Wrapped in a towel, Neil opens the door to reveal Leslie, young in her early twenties, her sultry red lingerie barely visible beneath her overcoat. “You must be Neil,” she says as she lets herself in.

Neil pounds Leslie from behind in the bedroom, still dressed in her lingerie. Beads of sweat form across his brow as he grips her thighs, his nails digging into her skin. It’s her job to enjoy it.

******

Art or Graffiti

There’s a new painting on the side of a collapsed bread bakery in Sector A. Someone used the mugshot of Leon, one of the Brigade Leaders seen all over the billboards, and merged half his face with the face of Bill Mazer, head of the Collections Agency. A question is written along the bottom – “Who really breached their contract with the city?”

Hmmmm, makes you think, right? No matter which side you’re on, I think it’s pretty cool!

-Quado

9

N
eil overlooks the city from a cliff. He enjoys it up here where it’s quiet. No matter how hard the Agency tries to distract them – the Collectors, the SEOs, the citizens – there are only a few ways inside the claustrophobic Wall where one can mentally get away. Many escape by way of alcohol or drugs, but for Neil the view of the horseshoe city, his city, the one surrounding the bay, does the trick.

The cool morning breeze swirls in from the body of water and nibbles at his skin, seemingly carrying soft whispers with it. The whispers direct Neil’s eyes down towards the landfill where sure enough he spots the tiny image of a woman – who he now knows is Inna – again sifting through the towers of junk. Neil smiles to himself as almost simultaneously the wind picks up, and
Inna’s melody
more clearly mixes with it.

Neil takes it in, better than the view, the melody soothing his soul. It is as if the dreary sky brightened, the parched land turned fertile, or the black water became clear – a juxtaposition of memories from the past returning.

Suddenly a voice startles Neil out of his thoughts. “I’m glad they sent you,” the voice says.

Neil turns around to see Zack, the young off-duty Enforcement Officer from the SectorLink. This time his shirt is tucked in, prim and proper.

“C’mon, he’s over here,” Zack says.

Neil looks back to the landfill just as the breeze dies down, bringing silence. Once again Inna is gone.

Neil and Zack hike towards the towering Wall enclosing the city, even more ominous and intimidating up close. Its massive height, damaged exterior, and rusted spikes mounted across the top give only a brief glimpse into the many tales of violence the Wall surely had to withstand during the Water Wars, let alone the rest of its fifty-year reign.

Zack leads Neil near Gate #2, one of only five gates leading in and out of the city where two SEOS patrol the upper ledge of the Wall, barely visible behind the spikes, while two more guard the gate’s passageway at its base, on alert near a kiosk check-in station.

They reach a haggard middle-aged man in a dirt-stained suit sitting against the Wall, his hands bound.

“Brigade?” Neil asks.

“No, I’ve never seen this before,” Zack responds.

“What? In your three months of duty?” Neil quips.

“Six.”

Neil smiles. He kind of likes this kid. He wonders maybe that’s why he tends to get paired with the younger rookie Collectors since he seems to more easily get along with them. He nods for Zack to proceed.

“It says he’s thirteen days past due. And he was carrying these,” Zack says. He hands over a
travel visa
and ID listing the man’s name as “Sergio Escobar”.

“He look like a Sergio to you?” Neil asks Zack to test him. The haggard man’s skin is pale and his hair with a hint of red. Not many people with his looks are named Sergio.

“Exactly,” Zack agrees. “And he came up as Howard Marlow. Supposedly sold himself to you guys.”

“Hey, are you Howard or Sergio?” Neil asks the haggard man. “Or neither,” he adds.

No response.

“Check him again,” Neil tells Zack. “Same sample point. Consider it early Collector training.”

Zack rolls up the haggard man’s sleeves, revealing light bruising and a needle imprint from a recently taken sample. Using his gun-shaped device, Zack fills a cartridge with blood and runs it against the identity database on the Wall’s check-in kiosk. The scrolling database finds a profile match for Sergio Escobar, a clean identity.

“Hmph, now it’s a match,” Zack says as he scratches his head.

“When’s the last time you had yours serviced?” Neil asks, pointing to Zack’s sample device.

“A month ago, as scheduled,” Zack says. He inspects his device before holstering it. “I didn’t mean to waste your time, Neil. I’ll let him through.”

Zack unbinds the haggard man’s hands, but something catches Neil’s eye – small blood stains on the left side of the haggard man’s chest. The haggard man notices and shifts his suit jacket to conceal it.

“Wait,” Neil orders.

Neil reaches to inspect the shirt when the haggard man suddenly makes a mad dash towards the gate. Zack reaches for his gun, but Neil gives chase and quickly brings him down, immediately ripping open the haggard man’s shirt to reveal three
scabbed puncture wounds
over his heart.

“Where’d you get this done?” Neil demands, his eyes wide.

Zack waives off the other four SEOs with their guns drawn. He squats down next to Neil to take a closer look.

“Who did this for you?” Neil questions. “You do this with Sage on the black market?”

“What is it, some sort of heart transplant?” Zack asks.

“Transfusion. With Sergio’s blood.”

“Why?”

“You want to be a Collector and you’re asking questions like that?” Neil fires back.

Zack thinks on it. “To get the fake papers to match what’s in the database,” he says to himself as he puts the pieces together.

“Closest thing to a guarantee of not getting caught,” Neil confirms before turning back to the haggard man. “Isn’t that right, Howard? Where are those gypsies hiding? Where’s Sage?”