Chapter 34

The next day

Time: Thursday, January 24, 2019 10:20 AM

Segundo was feeling very pleased with himself as he marched relentlessly down the black spiral line towards home. Fuck those bitches! The two muchachos were going to make it! He and Geraldo were going to make it home! He felt totally vindicated now in their decision to leave Ernesto behind. In the situation they were in, Ernesto’s hand wound was fatal, and they all would have died if they had stayed together. Segundo thought he made exactly the right decision.

And it was also exactly the right decision to keep up the pace they were setting. Six kilometers per hour, plus they had also taken two four-hour sleep periods, the first near the hub, and the second just a kilometer back. Segundo smiled with cracked lips as they passed a particular novelty store. He remembered it well, and knew the Black Mall sky-bridge was just one more kilometer up ahead. They were definitely on the home leg of the journey.

Another twenty-five kilometers or so, he thought, maybe a bit more. In less than five hours, they’d be at that open CVS Pharmacy a few hundred meters past Rabbies Dram. They had bottled water in that store, lots of bottled water. Oh, those beautiful bottles of water, those beautiful bottles of tasty water!

Segundo couldn’t imagine a more beautiful sight, or a more perfectly pleasing thought. How could he have ever ignored such beauty, the sweet loveliness of delicious water? Lots and lots of bottled water. The phrase started to become a mantra in his mind. Lots and lots of bottled water. Segundo played it over and over, synching it with the tired pace of his footsteps. “LOTs and LOTs of BOTlled WAter ... LOTs and LOTs of BOTlled WAter...”

Geraldo picked up his ears and looked nervously at his companion. Was Segundo losing it? The man had started softly whimpering as he walked. Segundo was mumbling something with each step, and he didn’t even seem to know it.

“What are you staring at?” Segundo growled through his dry mouth. It was difficult to talk. His tongue and upper palate felt like dry and brittle leather. Geraldo just shook his head, not wanting to talk either. It would be too physically painful. They continued their march in silence.

Five minutes later, Segundo began to feel confused. Walking along the outside edge of the spiral, he could see the sky-bridge just as he expected. But beneath it, perhaps directly beneath it, there was something unfamiliar, something that seemed to sparkle in the flat recessed lights of the mall. Segundo fought down a rising tide of apprehension and the two men continued their plodding, deliberate pace.

Five minutes later they stood less than two meters away before a monstrosity in the corridor. The idea for it was born in Fatima’s mind, and then greatly expanded by the expertise of Chico and Toro. The two men had worked summers together as rough carpenters, framing houses and additions for local builders.

Fatima had suggested they uncoil some of the rolls of barbed wire and razor wire that they had discovered in a surface warehouse near Red Mall’s home complex. The transportation setup was ideal, an elevator by an apple orchard right next to the warehouse, one that could transport the wire directly to the Black Mall sky-bridge.

Chico and Toro volunteered to do much of the heavy lifting, and then had an even better idea once they were at the warehouse. The numerous posts and rails would make a superb frame to anchor the wire. They spent hours hammering and drilling a single massive frame that covered a full six meters of the length of the corridor, with cross beams along the floor that held the rim posts along the walls in tight compression. Even without the wire, the frame would be impossible to budge without hours of disassembly.

And then the coils of wire were unleashed. Amazingly springy steel, razor wire of much higher quality than anything Chico had ever heard of. They anchored the tight coils into the frame with screws and bolts, and then triggered their openings with remote pull chains. The end result was a tangled and interlocking mass of deadly wire, with a footprint of six meters square, and with an average height of over two meters. The wire was so dense, Segundo could barely see through it, standing at one end and trying to look to the other.

And the sky-bridge was the perfect place for the roadblock. The entrances to Rubin’s Kosher Deli and the Modern Coin Superstore were thirty meters apart, and the six-meter barrier was centered between them. With control of both stores, one could simply use the sky-bridge as a detour. The barrier was no obstacle to the residents of Red Mall. But without access to the stores, it would take a small army of people with wire-cutters to punch through the deadly tangle.

Geraldo stared blankly for a long moment into the hedge of springy stainless steel. There were so many coils of wire, some of which didn’t have room to fully expand, and the residual compression would make it dangerous to even touch the wire. And there were so many different colors, with each color holding a different horror. There was silver for razors, light green for thin needles, darker green for barbs, and light blue for wicked looking fishhooks held by tiny wires to thicker wire. And the brown wire. This one looked really bizarre, covered with miniature harpoons or porcupine quills. Geraldo turned to Segundo and croaked, “What the hell do we do?”

Segundo was speechless. He had no idea.

Two days later at the Green Mall lounge.

Time: Saturday, January 26, 2019 10:34 AM

An emotionally tired Jada sat down by the eastern windows in the lounge, sinking into a very comfortable chair. “At last!” she thought. “A half hour block of time that is completely unscheduled!” She took a deep sigh as she felt her body unwinding, and a minute later enjoyed the day’s first orange light striking the top rim of Green Mall’s home hexagon.

Jada glanced at the time and nodded. The predictions from Mark’s notes were exact to the minute. The winter solstice had occurred eight days ago, one full day where the orange sun came tantalizingly close to breaking the horizon but never quite making it. And here they were now enjoying almost three hours of daylight. So fast!

From the kitchen came numerous sounds of a large brunch being prepared. Around 11:05 AM, as soon as Kiyoko came up from her morning lesson in the library, their entire group would sit down and chat over a very nice meal. And the topic? Allison suggested it at last night’s work session. She wanted to kick around some ideas of what their permanent government should be like.

For Jada the suggestion was pure gold. She didn’t have the ego to rule be decree, and she was convinced Mark didn’t either. She looked forward to the time when she would leave her position of absolute ruler. Perhaps she would still be in government, but if so she would be inside a system with checks and balances, where the governmental roles were firmly rooted in servanthood.

She smiled and looked again at the winter wonderland of the park. It had snowed more than a meter the last two days, light fluffy snow in the bitter cold darkness with occasional grayness. But then before midnight yesterday, the skies had turned crystal clear, and the overnight low earlier this morning had been -25C, a new record.

Emily was nonchalant about the temperature. She had seen much colder in Alaska and even in Burlington, Vermont. Jada though shivered for a moment as she gazed out over the shimmering snow, and it wasn’t just from the frigid landscape. The memory of yesterday’s video and the utter brutality of Segundo were still fresh in her mind.