Kristen Simmons: Breaking Point

THEWayland Inn was behind the slums, on the west end of Knoxville. It was a place that had festered since the War, buzzing with flies that bred in the clogged sewers, stinking of dirty river water brought in on the afternoon breeze. A place that attracted those who thrived in the shadows. People you had to seek to find.

The motel’s brick exterior, veined with dead ivy and pockmarked by black mold, blended with every other boarded-up office building on the street. The water was ice-cold when it ran at all, the baseboards were cracked with mouse holes, and there was only one bathroom on each floor. Sometimes it even worked.

It was the perfect location for the resistance: hidden in plain sight, on a block so rotten even the soldiers stayed in their patrol cars.

We met outside the supply room before dawn, when the standardized power resumed, for Wallace’s orders. The night patrols were still out guarding our perimeter and those with stationary posts—the stairway door, the roof, and radio surveillance—were awaiting relief from the day shift. Curfew would be up soon, and they were hungry.

I stayed back against the wall, letting those who had been here longer settle to the front row. The rest of the hallway filled in quickly; if you were late, Wallace assigned you extra duties, the kind no one wanted. The supply room door was open, and though I couldn’t see our hard-nosed leader from my angle, the candlelight threw a thin, distorted shadow against the inside wall.

He was talking to someone on the radio; a soft crackling filled the space while he waited for a response. I thought it might be the team he’d put on special assignment two days ago: Cara, the only other girl at the Wayland Inn, and three big guys that had been kicked out of the Federal Bureau of Reformation—or, as we’d called the soldiers who’d taken over after the War, the Moral Militia. Curiosity had me leaning toward the sound, but I didn’t get too close. The more you knew, the more the MM could take from you.

“Be safe.” I recognized Wallace’s voice, but not the concern in it. Never had I heard him soften in the presence of others.

Sean Banks, my old guard from the Girls’ Reformatory and Rehabilitation Center, staggered out of his room, pulling his shirt down over his ribs. Too thin, I thought, but at least he’d slept a little—his deep blue eyes were calmer than before, not so strained. He found a place on the wall beside me, rubbing at the pillow marks still on his face.

“ Always am, handsome, ” came Cara’s muffled response, and then the radio went dead.

“Handsome?” parroted an AWOL named Houston. His red hair was growing out and flipped in the back like the tail feathers of a chicken. “ Handsome? ” he said again. The volume in the hall had increased; several of the guys were snickering.

“You called?” Lincoln, whose freckles always looked like someone had splashed black paint across his hollow cheeks, appeared beside Houston. They’d joined together last year, and in my time here I’d yet to see one without the other.

The chatter faded as Wallace came around the corner. He needed a shower; his shoulder-length peppered hair was greasy in clumps, and the skin of his face was tight with fatigue, but even in the muted yellow glow of the flashlights it was obvious his ears had gone pink. One pointed glare, and Houston melted back toward Lincoln.

My brows rose. Wallace seemed too old for Cara; she was twenty-two while he might have been twice that age. Besides, he was married to the cause. Everything else, every one else, would always come second.

Not my business, I reminded myself.

The narrow corridor had crowded with eleven guys awaiting instruction. Not all of them had served; some were just noncompliant with the Statutes, like me. We all had our reasons for being here.

My heart tripped in my chest when Houston moved aside to reveal Chase Jennings, leaning against the opposite wall ten feet down. His hands were wrist-deep in the pockets of his jeans, and a white undershirt peeked through the holes of a gray, threadbare sweater. Only remnants of his incarceration in the MM base remained, a dark half-moon painted beneath one eye and a thin band of scar tissue across the bridge of his nose. He’d just gotten off the night shift securing the building’s perimeter; I hadn’t seen him come in.

As he watched me, the corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly.

I looked down when I realized my lips had done the same.

“All right, quiet down,” began Wallace, voice gruff once again. He hesitated, tapping the handheld radio, now silent, against his leg. I caught a glimpse of the black tattoo on his forearm that twisted beneath his frayed sleeve.

“What happened?” said Riggins, suspicious only when not outright paranoid. His fingers wove over the top of his buzzed, can-shaped head as though he expected the ceiling might suddenly cave in on us.

“Last night half the Square went without rations.” Wallace’s frown deepened. “Seems our blue friends are withholding.”

Pity was a hard sell. Most of us went straight to anger. We all knew the MM had the food; our scouts had counted two extra Horizons trucks—the only government-sanctioned food distributers—entering the base just yesterday.

Houston balked. “If they’re hoping to clear town, they’re outta luck. Tent City’ll starve to death first. People got nowhere else to go.”

He was right. When the major cities had been destroyed or evacuated in the War, people had migrated inland, to places like Knoxville, or my home, Louisville, in search of food and shelter. They’d found only the bare minimum—soup kitchens and communities of vagrants, like the city of tents that had taken over the lot on the northern side of the city square.

“Thank you, Houston,” said Wallace. “I think that’s the point.”

I shivered. Chase and I hadn’t left the Wayland Inn since we’d pledged to the resistance, almost a month ago. If possible, the city seemed even bleaker than when we had last seen it.

“Now,” continued Wallace. “Billy caught a radio thread yesterday on an upcoming draft in the Square. We don’t know when, but my guess is it’ll be soon, and they’ll be offering signing bonuses.”

“I didn’t get a bonus,” someone whispered.

“Rations, jackass,” muttered Sean.

A collective groan filled the hallway. Soldiers using the promise of food to recruit more soldiers. They’d have a whole new army in a week.

“And forgiveness of Statute violations, of course.” Wallace smiled cynically. More groans followed.

Work was slim these days. The only businesses still running required background checks, which meant applicants had better be compliant with the Moral Statutes—a list of regulations that took away women’s rights, mandated a “whole” family, and prohibited things like divorce, speaking out against the government, and, of course, being born out of wedlock, like me. This had always been one of the MM’s prime recruiting strategies. Men who couldn’t get a job because of their record could still serve their country. And even if it meant selling their souls, soldiers got paid.

“What’re we going to do about it?” Lincoln asked.

“Nothing,” said Riggins. “We hit something like that, they’ll smoke out this whole town till they find us.”

I straightened, envisioning the MM coming here, raiding the Wayland Inn. As far as they knew, Chase and I were dead, “completed” in the holding cells at the base. I’d made certain of it before our escape. We didn’t want to give them reason to believe otherwise.