Page 9 of Privilege

4

VALE

The roadsin Baltimore are so smooth. It’s like the pavement is as soft as the people down here. I ride in the passenger seat of a large WPA van. When I turn around, I see a group of men sitting in the back of the van on padded benches through a glass pane. There are seatbelts back there.

I snort and turn back to the driver. “Don’t speed.”

He taps the brake as we crawl back to a painful thirty mph. We have two more men to pick up before heading out of the city. We won’t be able to use this WPA van many more times before we switch things up. I’ll miss it. It’s way more comfortable than the network of tunnels and smelly garbage scows we were using before this.

The streets of Baltimore are swarming with people this morning. School is out for the summer so parents and kids are on their way to parks and camps. Every block I see the ubiquitous security stations of the Peaceful Society, ready to bring a swarm of PS soldiers at the slightest infraction.

We tinted the windows of this van a little bit, just enough to disrupt the facial recognition technology, but not enough to draw the attention of the soldiers. There are WPA vans everywhere, filled with men mostly, heading to work sites and parks. We blend right in.

I turn and press a button to project my voice into the back.

“Make sure you change into the uniforms before we get to the checkpoint,” I growl. They’d better get on that. If we get caught at the checkpoint on the way out of town we’ll all be sent to Frederick and shot full of drugs before I can even get a message to the Forge.

I focus on my breathing while intrusive thoughts about Amity Bloome keep disturbing me. Oddly, she’s a friend of our recruit. The last time I saw her she was a scrawny fourth grader, playing tag and bossing her little brother around, covered in freckles with wide blue eyes.

Now she’s tall, and stunning, and she wasn’t afraid of me, only confused to see me and worried about her friend. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. She didn’t seem like typical PS, only fit to live a soft, padded life within the checkpoints of their little paradise.

I’ve known my whole life how Greater Maryland is a failed state, how they made up their own religion and ran rampant with it across Maryland and beyond, DC and Philly too, forcing everyone to take their Oath. Performing their sick punishments on anyone who breaks it.

My father’s bitter words come back to me. “They will do anything to feel safe. They didn’t care about your mom, Vale, they sent her off to Natanz knowing it was a death sentence. They think they can change us, drug us,brainwash out the aggression. It’s not our nature. We were meant to run free, to fight and protect and take back what’s ours.”

That’s my father for you. He means what he says. My upbringing, once we left Baltimore, was big on training and fighting. I’ve still got scars from what I went through with him. Send Vale to train, get the doctor to fix Vale up. Rinse and repeat.

I should forget about Amity along with everything else in this evil city. I’m sure she stood there and took her Oath, ready to go deeper into the sick web of women exacting their revenge on a world they hate and a reality they refuse to accept.

I crack my knuckles, and the feel of her wrist in my hand flashes back to me. The wild part inside me, that natural part of being human they talk about back at the Forge, roars at the memory of her skin and the flash of her blue eyes.

I don’t want to destroy her, no matter how many times I’ve been told that’s what we must do to the PS. I want something different. I want to protect her, to feel her in my arms.

It must be a messed-up reaction to what people are like down here, like lambs to the slaughter, at least the ones who aren’t soldiers. It’s like no one’s ever told them the facts of life: we live, we fight, and we die.

There’s no point to all this nonsense: the security, the smooth, perfect roads and the clean, sanitized sidewalks. All the nonviolence training in the world won’t change the truth. Life is short and you die, and you take none of your pretty things with you.

I prefer it up north where we don’t pretend. It’s not a problem when a man gets angry, it’s just human nature. It doesn’t mean things have gone wrong and we need to medicate him. It’s a natural feeling in a natural body and nothing else.

The van stops and one of my father’s undercover lieutenants appears on the sidewalk with two worried-looking men—boys really—behind him. This time of year is crazy for us.

Making all the kids take the Oath at the same time separates the boys from the men who don’t want to lie down and take orders from women, build their gardens and plant their trees for the rest of their lives. That means more recruits for us.

“The uniforms are in the side locker,” I remind them through the speaker. “When we stop at the checkpoint, we are members of the WPA heading to a worksite near Morgantown, West Virginia. You expect to be gone several weeks. You are all Citizens. Any questions?”

None come. These guys are scared, and that’s fair. But I do this a lot and the chances are pretty good we get through and this all works out. If it doesn’t, be scared then. But they’ve been raised here, and it’s going to be a long road for them to become the kind of men who survive the Forge, who can make it up north. Alaska is not for the weak.

That was our last stop but we drive for a little longer on the streets, staying under the speed limit. We’re not waiting for any particular signal to head toward the checkpoint out of the city. As the ranking officer here, it’s up to me and my instinct for when the time is right.

“Turn here, let’s get on the highway,” I tell the driver.

He nods and we head carefully onto the ramp, gathering speed and heading up and out of the city. There are not a lot of cars on the road. Vehicles are heavily regulated, like everything else down here: dangerous, polluting, blah, blah, blah.

When we get to the last exit before the checkpoint I have the driver pull over for a minute. I walk around the back and pull the door open. The guys are in their uniforms. They seem fine except for the scared faces.

“Hey,” I snap. “Smile a little, relax your shoulders. You’re going to work. It’s going to be boring.” They paint their faces with tense smiles and slump slightly. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

“Grab some tools,” I direct them, and each man reaches for a shovel or bucket and one carefully balances the Weedwhacker on his lap. That looks better.

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