The Detainee Page 2

  I tell you, some days it makes me so mad I want to run around and smash every lean-to I can down to the ground. Just to make them react, to make them say something for once, but instead I become more and more insular, more bad-tempered, more a person that, I know, most Villagers go out of their way to avoid.

  We reached the corrosives pool, accompanied by a mob of flies that knew there was a banquet somewhere, but weren’t exactly sure where. The woman’s head fell out as we were unwrapping the plastic and Jimmy looked away as I toe-poked it down the slope. Almost the instant it hit the waiting greenish liquid you could see the flesh starting to pucker away from the bone. It was like some creature we fed, devouring everything we gave it yet always hungry for more.

  For a few moments we stood and watched as the two headless torsos slipped out of sight and existence, then Jimmy turned and, with a sudden sense of purpose, began to peg it back toward the Village, unconcerned that he was leaving me some yards behind.

  Along the way, from the top of one of many mountains of garbage, I could see almost the entire Island. The vomited sprawl of the Village, the ruins of the Old City, and in the distance the pier where the garbage boats come in every day (actually, it’s not a “pier,” but all that remains of the bridge that used to stretch out here from the Mainland. It was demolished one foggy night by a tanker, and, as a matter of convenience, never rebuilt). Down in the Camp they had their usual fire going, its rising column of black smoke circling around the Island like some huge snake slowly choking the life out of us.

  Of all the hells that humankind’s ever created, this is surely one of the worst. Nothing but mile after mile of waste, discharge, and debris; the ass end of civilization. And we’re left choking in its shit, just as one day, you suspect, everyone else will have to do the same.

  I turned and looked across toward the Mainland. There was still a layer of last night’s fog lingering in the bay and the city rose up out of it like an orchestra, its walls rinsed pink by the early-morning sun. That new building certainly does dominate. Jimmy reckons it belongs to one of the utility companies, but I’m not so sure. Whatever, it’s the major piece on the chessboard. I mean, it could be heaven. Or maybe the Promised Land. Not that I’m saying I envy what they got over there—I don’t. They can keep their wealth, their warmth, and their privileged lives. I don’t even care that they don’t have to worry about who comes for us on a dark, foggy night. There’s only one thing they got I want. Mind you, I want it so badly, sometimes it feels as if, deep inside me, I’m crying out for it every moment of the day and night.

  I want to be allowed to go free. To get off this foul and sickening pile of crap, fill my lungs with fresh air, my heart with hope, and believe in people again.

  But I might as well sit and howl for the moon. No one’s ever got off the Island. No one. They seen to that good and proper. Once you’re out here, the only way you leave is by dying. By the wings of your spirit lifting you up and flying you out of this godforsaken place.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For the rest of the day everyone in the Village kept a real close eye on the weather. The sun’s always appreciated at this time of year, giving a bit of relief to old and creaking joints—like a squirt of warm oil. But the fact that it means the fog might return later, and that it might bring them with it, is another matter.

  I remember someone explaining to me once why it is we get so much fog out here. Something to do with currents and landmass—I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening. All I do know is that, during some periods of the year, you can go for a week without seeing the Mainland. It’s strange, almost as if they’ve managed to cut us loose. The world goes on spinning while we’re cast adrift in some silent gray pocket of sodden space. Out of sight, out of mind, and by inference, everything that happens to us out here happens with their blessing.

  On the way back from dumping the bodies, Jimmy made some excuse and headed off on his own. I wasn’t altogether surprised when later he came struggling up the row with an armful of junk he’d obviously taken from the victims’ lean-to.

  “I should’ve guessed,” I grunted, immediately realizing that this had been his ulterior motive for helping to move the bodies in the first place.

  “Got some really cool stuff,” he told me, indicating the large box that, despite his walking stick, he was still managing to carry.

  He angled it toward me so I could look inside and I caught a glimpse of a load of odds and ends that it would be optimistic to call junk: part of an old radio, a metal tube, lengths of wire. God knows what he’s going to do with it.

  I just nodded. It’s not exactly an unwritten law, but having cleared up the bodies, I guess he had every right to be the first to sort through their stuff—and he knows I wouldn’t be interested.

  He tossed the box down into the entrance of his lean-to and turned to head back for some more. He hadn’t got more than a dozen paces before Delilah came rushing out.

  “Jimmy! What the hell’s this?” she shouted, taking a heavy kick at the box.

  The little guy hunched up his shoulders, lowered his bald head into them like some shy turtle, and limped on as if he couldn’t hear a thing. Though, if he couldn’t, he was about the only person this side of the Island.

  “Jimmy!”

  Delilah’s Jimmy’s companion. I would say lover, but I think companion’s more accurate on account of the fact that they keep a great deal of company but don’t show a lot of love. She’s this great long, twisted stick of a woman, so thin you wouldn’t think she had the strength to stand, but actually she’s as tough as old nails. If the human race ever reached a point where the genes of every nationality were poured into one person, I reckon they’d be in her. Her complexion’s that browny-gray color you get when you’ve been mixing too many paints together and you know you gotta start all over again. Her broad nose, angular cheekbones, huge mouth—any of her facial features—could easily be laid claim to by a number of ethnic groups. Her temper could only be derived from the most fiery.

  Jeez, do her and Jimmy fight. I’ve known him to come rushing out of there at night, not giving a damn about who or what might be outside, only knowing that it was preferable to what was within.

  How long they been together, even they couldn’t rightly say. It’s a matter of whether you want to include the times she’s left him or not. Which, I guess, makes them sound pretty fragile, but you know how those things are; sometimes they can go on forever.

  It went through my head to go over to the Old City in the afternoon and do some scavenging. But with every chance of the fog rolling back in, I decided to stay in the Village and do some of the chores I’d been putting off, like sewing up that big tear in my old overcoat. I hunted out a needle and thread and went to sit outside in the pale warmth of the winter afternoon. I was one of many out there trying to uncurl their locked old spines and I felt a touch embarrassed by my display of domesticity; a guy like me doing needlework.

  I’d only been out there a short while when I heard Jimmy screaming for me. I looked up to see him hopping and stepping wildly in my direction, pushing people out of his way, stumbling along with some crazy chasing after him.

  “Big Guy! Big Guy!” he cried.

  It was pretty obvious what had happened. Jimmy’d been sorting through the dead couple’s lean-to for more stuff and this crazy had decided to join him. The little guy wouldn’t have liked that. He probably got all snippy, tried to shoo the intruder away, to tell him everything was his, and a fight had broken out.

  “Big Guy, help!”

  It was a noticeably uneven race. Jimmy hop-stepping it along, his stick flailing in the air, legs going at all angles, while his pursuer, a look of concentrated fury on his face, was rapidly gaining on him.

  My first instinct was to laugh. I mean, he really does ask for it sometimes. But something about how single-minded the crazy looked and how frightened Jimmy was made me realize this was a bit more than the usual squabbles we get around here.

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nbsp; “Big Guy!” Jimmy wailed, rapidly running out of breath.

  With that, his bad leg gave way and he fell over, lurching into the side of someone’s lean-to, almost collapsing it.

  The crazy was on him in a moment, straddling him, and it was only then—as he drew it out, as he raised it up—that I realized why Jimmy was so frightened. The guy had an ax—big and heavy, with a blade polished and shiny from being forever sharpened.

  I jumped to my feet and started to make my way over, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I shouted as the ax momentarily hung there, like a bird of prey about to dive, then the guy brought it down as hard as he could onto Jimmy’s naked head.

  Only thing was, it never made it. There was a sound something like the snap of short-circuiting electricity, and the next thing I knew the crazy was flat on his face, his body twitching like he was having a fit.

  I tell you, I seen it before, but never up that close. It’s so sudden. So absolute. One moment the guy had been about to take Jimmy out, the next he’d been taken out himself.

  “Jesus!” Jimmy whined, struggling free of the convulsing body. “What the hell happened?”

  “Satellite,” I growled with a calm I certainly didn’t feel.

  Jimmy tried to scramble to his feet, his good leg no more steady than his bad. “Is he alive?”

  “Yeah. Must’ve seen it as Violent Assault. Or Bearing a Weapon.”

  For several moments we stood there looking at the crazy twitching on the ground, his eyes gaping like they were ready to burst out of their sockets, a string of drool sliding from his mouth.

  A crowd began to gather, moving tentatively in, as if they were ready to turn and flee at any moment. I mean, it’s really something—our new God, this judgment from on high—and to see it up close like that left you feeling like you’d just witnessed some terrible miracle.

  I don’t rightly know how to explain to you about satellite policing. I guess its roots lie in the early part of this century, when so many cities decided to install surveillance cameras. Gradually, as they cut crime in the immediate area, more and more appeared, but criminals just reacted by going farther out. Into the leafier suburbs, the country, the very places that up until then had been more or less free of such things—places where the rich tended to have their rural retreats. A lot of pressure was brought to bear and, finally, some smartass came up with an idea that everyone thought would put an end to crime forever: surveillance drone-satellites. Hundreds of them. Low-orbit coordinated navigation, stretching from one side of the country to the other.

  Suddenly there was nowhere you could go and not be watched. The countryside, the forest, the desert, the wilderness, it didn’t matter. They were spying on you everywhere, with cameras so powerful they could count the flakes of dandruff on your shoulders.

  A lot of us panicked and started talking about going straight. I mean, we really did think it was all over . . . till it dawned on us that seeing what was happening wasn’t any use if you couldn’t get there to stop it. The police were spread too thin. If you chose your spot—well away from any of the chopper stations they set up—you could just about do whatever you wanted. Soon, everyone was talking about it: how the police couldn’t possibly cover such a wide area; about “inadequate response times,” or no response at all. Instead of the ultimate crime deterrent, it became a source of cheap jokes.

  But in the end they came up with something that stopped the laughter, that changed our society forever. That gave power to certain people, and tipped the balance in favor of something that should never have existed. I mean, of course, punishment satellites.

  Whenever one of those things sees a crime—zap!—it takes you out. Not only that, but in the split second before it hits you, it assesses the seriousness of the offense and delivers the appropriate punishment. If it’s a minor misdemeanor—Creating an Affray or Criminal Damage—it’ll just knock you out for a few hours. If it’s something more serious—Armed Robbery or Violent Assault (like the guy who attacked Jimmy)—it’ll hit you so hard it’ll take months, sometimes even years, for you to regain your full health and mobility. And if it’s Murder, or a Crime Against the State, then say good-bye, cuz there ain’t nothing can save you from those things.

  So who needs the police? Who needs the entire judicial system when you can be caught in the act, tried, sentenced, and punished, all in the matter of a split second? For sure, it was a helluva savings for the government: instant justice from on high, not from God, but through a security system installed by a democratically elected government with the full mandate of the people.

  The only problem is, I didn’t vote for them, and I didn’t vote for the satellites, either. Nor did anyone else I know. But the thing is, you’re only allowed to vote if you got a permanent home. Bricks and mortar. Which means that just over forty percent of the population controls the rest. Forty percent who’ve got one helluvan interest in maintaining the status quo.

  Okay, so some days if you’re out on the landfills getting hassled, being threatened, you can thank the Lord for satellite policing. Plenty of people I know have been saved from a beating. Or maybe far worse. But it ain’t the answer, nor is it one hundred percent reliable. Sometimes, in electrical storms, they’ll start firing all over the place. Sixteen people got killed a few years back. And of course, on nights when it’s really foggy, when there’s not the slightest source of light and we’re locked into total darkness, they stop functioning altogether. Which is why there’s all this concern about the weather. This fog paranoia. ’Cuz as soon as those we’re protected from know we’re not protected anymore, they go crazy. Streaming over here, killing and maiming, bathing their bodies in our blood.

  You’re probably thinking that’s all the more reason to keep it then, if most of the time it does a pretty good job. But it ain’t that simple. See, I don’t believe those satellites are there to protect us at all. Law and order’s just a side issue. The real reason they’re there is to protect the status quo. To keep an eye on the unwanted majority—all the places they’ve hidden us away—and make sure we’re not doing anything that might threaten them. Which is why one of those “Crimes Against the State” is attempting to leave the Island. A satellite’ll take you out for that. Just blow you away. So in case you haven’t already guessed why we’re out here, let me tell you. Sure as hell it ain’t to be “pioneers in self-sufficiency.” What we are, in fact, is prisoners; forced to live on this stinking pile of filth until the day we die.

  I escorted Jimmy back over to his lean-to. Delilah took one look at him, at how shaken he was, and instantly flipped to another side of her character. Not exactly sympathetic, but certainly fiercely and unreservedly loyal.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Some nut,” Jimmy told her. “Damn near killed me. Satellite saved me.”

  “What? For chrissake! They shouldn’t send those people out here!” she complained. “Haven’t we got enough problems?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t crazy when he arrived,” I ventured.

  “Yeah. That’d be right . . . Ohhh, Jimmy,” she soothed, putting her arms around him, pushing his face into her bony chest and kissing the top of his bald head.

  I stood there for a while, feeling like I was intruding, then turned to leave.

  “Hey. Where you going?” Delilah asked.

  “Yeah, Big Guy. You can’t go,” Jimmy agreed, emerging out of Delilah’s embrace. He took a step toward me, dropping his voice like he had an announcement to make that he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “They’re ready.”

  “Really?” I asked, immediately knowing what he meant.

  “Sure are.”

  Jimmy’s been growing these MSI patented vegetables in a kind of false wall at the back of their lean-to. Not the normal sad and straggly crap the rest of us grow and have to soak and season to try to transform into something edible, but big clear white potatoes and rich velvet-leaved cabbages. He fixed this guy up with a water tank and got paid in black-m
arket seeds. It’s an offense, of course, and he could get into a lot of trouble cuz of it, but Jimmy don’t care. Which is one of the reasons I’m so fond of the little guy. Unlike most people out here, he hasn’t given up. You can’t just sit around and wait for death to come, the only unknown factor being what form it’ll take. You gotta find reasons to keep going, to nurture hope, and his is through his invention.

  I mean, you can probably appreciate, no one’s lean-to’s exactly a work of art—what with the materials we got available—but Jimmy’s turned theirs into something more akin to a carnival tent than a lean-to. He’s got all this weird stuff hanging off it. A clock that’s powered by rainwater, windmills that—if he ever scavenges the right parts—he reckons he’ll be able to create natural energy from. He’s even got this idea about revolving solar panels that’ll suck power from both the wind and the sun.

  Inside, you can’t move for stuff he’s retrieved from the dumps that he’s sure’ll come in useful one day. You and me might think of it as junk. Certainly Delilah does. Which is why, every now and then, she’ll lose her temper and throw the lot out, but to Jimmy, every last piece is a spare part to a possible future.

  ’Course, most of it is junk, and he knows it. Jimmy’s dearest wish is to be allowed to go through the garbage when it first arrives from the Mainland, before it’s sorted, before all the good stuff’s taken out. He talks about it all the time. Some days he drives me crazy with it. What he might find, what he could do, how he could change everyone’s lives. I don’t know if I believe him or not. I guess I’ve heard him say it so many times, I don’t even think about it anymore. One way or another, it don’t matter. Jimmy ain’t ever likely to be allowed on the new garbage. None of us are.

  “Sure, you remember!” the little guy was telling me. “On Union Street. Down toward the end.”

  The meal might’ve been a bit special, particularly the potatoes we smeared with a little fat and roasted on the fire, but our conversation was pretty much the same as ever. We were talking about the “old days,” life on the Mainland. A time when we pale, exiled old ghosts had been normal healthy humans leading normal healthy lives.