Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Page 4

  Ben also learned, however, that even children like him could be made re-useful. They made excellent and convenient targets for the staff to vent their frustration. In these circumstances, he figured out quickly from experience and observation that the best path was to curl into a ball and cover his head and neck.

  Unwanted children were useful outlets for other adult needs. There was profit in selling kids to the grown ups with more of an appetite for children than for one another. The ones who couldn’t be sold could often be rented to satiate the desires of the less well-to-do.

  Ben’s images from that first day became clearer once he met the pasty-white man who answered the door of the Billings Home for Children. He led Ben to a long empty table, where he ladled a bowl of lukewarm stew and summoned an orderly to fetch him insect-free clothes for the boy. The assistant returned with two sets of gray patchwork coveralls, threadbare socks, and canvas boots. The worker then took Ben further into the bowels of the building, where the warmth of his arrival vanished. He was promptly stripped, deloused, and showered before being led to a bunk in a large dormitory. Its cold cinderblock walls, cement floors, flickering overhead lights, and throng of forlorn faces compounded his fear with a deep sense of dread.

  Within an hour, he was summoned with the other children, fitted with a loose-fitting tunic, and brought to the “audition tank.” They were separated into groups of five before entering a spacious, well-lit room with mirrored windows along the walls. A thick burgundy curtain concealed a small alcove opposite the entrance. The staff instructed them to play quietly until called for. After twenty minutes, they rotated from one tank to the next, until they were either selected or sent back to their dormitory.

  In his second tank, Ben watched curiously as one of his new dorm mates was summoned to the alcove—the “show-me station.” Through the narrow gap between the curtain and the floor, he saw her tunic crumple to the floor, her little feet staggering backwards as two sets of adult boots walked toward her. After a few minutes, her little hands picked up her tunic, and her tiny feet followed the grown-up boots out of sight. Ben never saw her again. He was left to play with the remaining three kids. Then two. He passed through each audition tank without being called. As he shuffled back to the dormitory, he was swamped with feelings of jealousy, fear, and sympathy for the girl . . . and for himself.

  It wasn’t until the next Saturday that Ben was again brought to the show me station, where he found one person from the orphanage’s staff—a thin, pasty man named Sam Kron—escorting two leather-faced badlanders and an Asian woman. Sam Kron unsnapped Ben’s tunic, which fell to the floor.

  “He ain’t too perdy, is he?” remarked the woman.

  “He ain’t gonna win no prizes, that’s for sure,” answered the taller of the badlanders before turning to Kron. “How much for rent?”

  “Joe, you know the rules,” came Kron’s gruff reply. “He’s brand new. Ain’t no renting for three weeks, no matter how ugly he is. I can give you a discount on account of his looks. …say maybe twenny-percent.” He cast a resentful eye on Ben. “But that's off the retail price. ‘Course what you do after purchase’n ‘m ain’t none of our business.”

  “Still too much coin,” Joe replied.

  “How ‘bout you two,” demanded Kron.

  The second badlander stepped closer to Ben. “Maybe if I could get a lil’ taste first—m”

  “Now, dammit, Jefferson,” Kron interrupted, “you know the rules too. We cain’t sell no worn-out goods. I don’t need stock that’s both ugly and spent. You want ‘m twenny percent off or not?”

  All three visitors demurred, prompting Kron to grab Ben roughly by the arm and pass him off to another staff worker, who escorted Ben back to the audition tank.

  So it went, each Saturday for four weeks.

  On the fifth week, Saturday came again, and Ben’s tunic arrived, folded at the foot of his cot, as it always did. On this day, however, there was an orange pin on the chest with the word “Rent” written on it in black. When Kron arrived, he didn’t take Ben to the audition tank, but to an adjacent building.

  Inside it was dim, and the air was close. Video screens and V-plat holograms dotted the warehouse, casting luminous colors through the incense swirling in the air. Mesh drapes hung from the ceiling, forming a labyrinth of narrow pathways and stalls. Through the half-light, he could make out pillows and mattresses in some of the empty rooms. In others, he detected pulsing and gyrating bodies.

  From that day on, Ben envied the kids who were selected and taken away by grown-ups, though in the back of his mind he still suspected he might be better off. The staffers tried to reinforce a sense of appreciation among the rentals for what they had in the Billings Home, telling them stories and showing them news shorts on the V-plat—stories about children found dead in the shanties and wastelands.

  When Ben reached fourteen, he found himself a gangly teenager with bushy, out-of-control hair, and acne. But he had also overcome his childhood scrawniness. In fact, he had grown to be slightly larger and stronger than the other boys his age. Only his friend Felipe Arrivillaga was taller, and only his second friend, Billy Washington, was broader. Ben was also quiet and deliberate, good survival qualities for the long-term residents of the Billings Home for Children.

  The other boys in the orphanage no longer picked fights with him like they did when he as younger, partly because of his easy nature, and partly because he—or his buddies Felipe and Billy—could knock them onto their pockets. Even the staffers left him alone, most of the time. He didn’t generate much revenue in the warehouse anymore—not that he was ever a big seller—so the staff had started substituting his hours there with extra labor on the compound. The same went for Billy and Felipe, so the three became close through the hours of mind-numbing manual labor together.

  Though he worked from sun-up to sun-down, Ben used the modicum of free time he had to consume every lesson the orphanage offered. The staffers encouraged the OmniComms tutorials, suggesting the lessons could save their lives on the outside, though they pushed the vocational training that made the kids more useful in doing work on the compound.

  One upside of neglect, Ben found, was that there was little supervision, leaving Ben, Felipe, and Billy to secretly augment their education with OmniComms’ advanced courses on survival and self defense. The staff didn’t learn of this until late at night on Ben’s fourteenth birthday (or what he thought what might be his birthday).

  On that night, three years ago, Ben was laying on the top bunk, trying to get to sleep, when the dormitory’s heavy double doors squeaked open, and the hallway light shined into his tired eyes. Sheets and blankets shifted and rustled quickly as kids rolled over and tried to cocoon themselves. Ben saw Sam Kron from the corner of his eye before pressing his eyes shut and pretending to sleep. Sam’s soft, padding footsteps passed by Ben on the cold cement floor, and Ben braced himself for the horrible sounds to come. He would try to ignore it, he decided, as he had done a thousand times before.

  Ben was big enough now to avoid the visits himself, but he didn’t dare attempt to help anyone else. Even if Billy and Felipe were with him—and the staff ensured they slept in different dormitory rooms—no one stood up to a staffer. They’d be swarmed, brought down, and then God-knows-what.

  There was a moment of complete stillness before Ben heard steel bed coils squeal under new weight. Then, a young girl shrieked in the darkness—quickly silenced by a harsh, hushed voice.

  Ben’s eyes flashed open at the sound, and something tripped in his mind. A blinding fury rushed through him, and he found himself involuntarily sliding down from his bunk. Without a stopping thought, he tip-toed through the darkness toward the thrusting mound of sheets across the aisle. He yanked back the covers and pulled Sam Kron’s head up by his thinning hair. He gripped Sam’s chin with one hand and his crown with the other and wrenched as hard as he could. A sickening crack echoed through the room.

  Sam’s head went wobbly on its s
houlders, and his body collapsed onto the little girl in the bed before slithering like limp rope onto the concrete floor. Ben looked down at Sam’s still, lifeless body, took a deep breath, and wiped away the tears pooling in his eyes. Then he turned around without a word, walked back to his bunk, and climbed back onto his plasti-foam mattress. He laid there, hyperventilating in the dark, trying to block out the girl’s weeping and the hushed whispers of the other stunned children. A shroud of sleep somehow snuck up on him.

  The next day, Ben awoke to the sound of scurrying footsteps. With dawn’s light peering through the windows, the other kids had no choice but to rise and confront the aftermath. They gathered around the lifeless predator, fascinated by his pale-blue lips and the puddle of piss and shit between his naked legs. His young victim, a tiny mestizo girl, rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around her knees, dried blood on her thin cotton pajamas. Two children sat on her bunk, trying to comfort her.

  A few of the kids looked back at Ben as he sat up. His guilt went without saying, and it didn’t take long for the gawking children to realize they should make themselves scarce before the staff discovered the crime. They rallied the small, teary-eyed victim and filed out toward the cafeteria for breakfast, like nothing had happened. As if on cue, Felipe Arrivillaga and Billy Washington appeared at his side and swept him toward the exit as well.

  Watery drought-oat cereal, bacteria-generated protein fruit paste, and re-hydrated biotein milk greeted the children in the cafeteria. Only a few kids had even put food on their trays when a whistle echoed from the dormitory. Then the alarm. Staffers burst into the cafeteria, and the orphanage was soon consumed with noise and commotion.

  It took over an hour for the territorial police to arrive. The children were shepherded to the recreation room with strict orders to sit quietly. A pale morning sun, shrouded in a wispy gray veil of clouds, stared through the dirty, barred windows. The interrogations started almost immediately, and the victim’s blood-stained nightgown gave her away. As the police took her back into the dormitory and the smaller children beginning to fidget and cry, Erica Gomez, the orphanage’s chief of safety, stormed into the room, fury in her eyes.

  She looks pretty mad—madder than usual. I guess she could lose her job ‘keeping the kids safe,’ Ben thought wryly.

  Almost as if she had heard his thoughts, Gomez bee-lined across the room, grabbed Ben by the collar—digging her fingernails into his skin—and hoisted him to his feet. She immediately handed him off to her enforcer, Tony Marshall, an enormous black man with perennially blood-shot eyes. “Black Mountain,” the kids called him. Erica then stomped over to Felipe and Billy in turn. The three oldest boys in the orphanage, just short of their release-age, each of them was big enough to have broken Sam’s neck, even though Ben was the only one quartered in the dormitory where it happened.

  I should have used a shank, lamented Ben. Even some of the smaller kids could have done it that way. ‘Guess if I were her, I’d come straight for us too. Ben sighed in resignation. …At least they won’t need to hurt too many of the littler ones to get their pound of flesh.

  Ben followed Black Mountain through double doors to the off-limits area and down a hall to the Headmaster’s office. Anxiety turned his stomach.

  How long’ll they put us in solitary? How long’ll they make us go hungry? How viciously’ll they beat us? It’s gonna be bad, for sure, he thought. Wouldn’t be fair for Felipe and Billy to suffer.

  Felipe and Billy, the closest thing he had to family, had made it all these years by carefully avoiding trouble. Trouble-making kids disappeared before they could grow big enough to cause any real damage. Billy had always been the one to come closest to this fate, owing to his temper, but Black Mountain had taken a liking to him and had shielded him from getting himself disappeared. The three boys sat silently outside the Headmaster’s office, trying to discern the conversation happening inside, until Erica Gomez finally emerged with Black Mountain and a tall, thin police officer.

  There was no proof of who perpetrated the killing, and Billy and Felipe would never fink on Ben, though he knew if he didn’t fess-up, the staff would torture all three. Probably the little girl too. The staff would feel a need to let-out their anger and fear—and send a message to the other children—if only to the ensure the kids accepted their roles as victims.

  The punishment’ll be the same for me, he reckoned. But maybe if they get their man quickly, they’ll go easier on the others. So, he got to his feet and looked as defiantly as he could into Erica’s brown eyes. She smiled wickedly at him and gestured for him to enter the office.

  “Have a seat Benjamin,” the headmaster, a korean-latino “mezclado” named Antonio Kang. “This is Officer Carmelo Hernandez.” Ben didn’t bother looking up, choosing to focus exclusively—menacingly—at the headmaster.

  Ben had never seen Kang harm any of his wards. Kang was never in the audition tank, the dormitories late at night, or the showers. For a time, Ben wondered if Kang even knew what was happening. It was almost two years into his tenure when Ben overheard another child complain to Kang about mistreatment. Kang wiped a tear from the child’s cheek and took him by the hand through the double doors to the off-limits area. Ben’s heart soared with hope—until the next morning, when the boy wasn’t at breakfast and was never seen again. The auditions continued on schedule the next day.

  Wearing the hands of a killer all these years later, Ben looked at the wet-lipped headmaster and resolved that if he survived this, he would one day come back and murder Kang—along with Erica Gomez, Black Mountain, and half a dozen of the other staffers. It wouldn’t be as quick as a snapped neck either. It would be slow, and it would reflect the full measure of sickness that lived in the dark holes of Ben’s stomach.

  Kang became visibly uncomfortable with Ben’s virulent, unbending stare. He put his finger on one of three envelopes on his desk and slid it across the desk. Caught a bit off guard, Ben leaned forward, picked-up the envelop, and opened it slowly—all the while determined not to take his eye off Kang.

  “Your release package,” Kang said flatly, leaning back into his chair with a satisfied look. “Your citizenship card. Twenty Kroners already loaded on the chip. Mr. Marshall here,” he continued, pointing at Black Mountain, “will escort you to gather your belongings. Officer Hernandez will take you from the campus to the town transit hub.” Ben felt his vengeful glare become one of bewilderment. Kang leaned forward again and looked Ben in the eye. “Some boys your age end up in ditches, or dumpsters, you know. Some just disappear. No one knows what happens to them. No one has time to go looking. Too many dirty, hungry little faces.”

  Ben was struggling to keep up. Is he really just letting me go? Does he think I’ll just leave and never come back? He can’t be that stupid. Or are the cops going to do his dirty work for him once I leave the compound? He glanced up at the policeman for the first time.

  But if I am free, where do I go? There’s no one for me—anywhere. His heart began to pound in his chest and his hands trembled slightly.

  Kang gave Erica a wink and gestured for Black Mountain to remove Ben from the office. As Black Mountain approached, Ben forced himself to regain his composure, standing up without a word and offering each of them a wide-eyed, maniacal grin. “Thank you, headmaster,” Ben said coolly. “One day I’ll repay your hospitality.” And with their fear now visibly back in his possession, he felt an exhilarating surge of energy rise up through every muscle, bone, vein, and nerve in his body.

  The rush dissipated quickly, though, when he stepped outside behind Officer Hernandez, who turned to him as he shuddered in the icy wind.

  “Whaddaya gonna do now, Boy?” Hernandez asked, gruffly.

  Ben stood silently, offering only his new-found stare of defiance. What the fuck are you going to do, shit-pig? Ben thought to himself. Gonna have your turn, like them fuckers inside? Gonna kill me? You’d best make fucking sure I’m stone-dead, or you'll find your shock-baton up your own ass.
>
  Unmoved by Ben’s expression, Hernandez answered “Twenty Kroners ain’t even gonna get you to the border.” He paused and lit a cigarette. “And there ain’t nothin’ for ya out there anyhow, is there?” He took a long drag and blew the smoke out slowly. “You know the migrants fight over cots in the shelters—and I mean knives and guns. You’ll prob’ly freeze—or die from exposure—inside a day or too, huh?”

  “Might freeze right here,” Ben quipped. “That what you came to see?”

  “You the one who killed the kiddie-fucker in there?” Hernandez continued.

  ‘Kiddie-fucker’? Ben thought. You know what's going on in there? You're a cop, for fuck’s sake. Ben immediately added Officer Hernandez to his hit list, regardless of what came next.

  “You ain’t gotta admit it.” Hernandez exhaling another drag. “S’all the same to me.” He cast his cigarette to the ground and shuffled some dirt over it with his boots. “Don’t have to turn out that way. That’s all I’m sayin’. There’s work for kids like you—”

  Ben took a step forward, his furious scowl a harbinger of violence. Hernandez gripped the handle of his holstered pistol and held up his other hand, warning Ben to reconsider. His partner in the nearby paddy wagon pulled himself out of the vehicle, shotgun at the ready.

  “Now don’t get your dander up, Boy. I don’t mean whorin’. There’s that kinda work too, ‘course, but I’m talking about security.”

  Ben stopped cold.

  “I know folks offerin’ good money for strong lads willin’ to take on errands. Some of the work’s dangerous. Some’s dirty. So, they like fellers who ain’t got no attachments. …Might beat freezing to death. Yer kinda young, but they might make an exception for a neck-breaker. Or, I can take ya to the transit hub. Either way, your gettin’ in the van. …And either way, your gonna go peaceful-like. But ‘least now you got a choice.”