Free Survival by Daniel Powell Page A

line over. He was mousy and slight, with a long, thin
nose, wavy black hair and sleepy eyes.
    Bryan stared at him. “What do you
mean?”
    “When that siren went off, a
couple of hundred deserters bit the dust. There will be a lot of clean-up in
the city today. I saw it in your eyes. You were lost there for a minute.”
    Bryan nodded. He’d forgotten
about the microchips. The bulls were de-activating the Promise Sensors. At
least there was that .
    He pictured the aftermath—the
crumpled bodies in city parks, littered along the Oregon Coast, in mountain
retreats. Many men simply walked away—content to let the Promise Sensors finish
the task without ever testing themselves against the gauntlet of Labor.
    “You doing ok?” the mousy fellow
asked.
    “I guess,” Bryan replied. He
extended his hand. “I’m Bryan Norton. I live…I live out in Sellwood.”
    “Fausto,” the man replied.
“Fausto Ruiz. Goose Hollow. I’ve got a beautiful little girl waiting on me.”
The man with the sleepy eyes grinned and it was a relief, like the blink of a
lighthouse on the open ocean, to see a positive emotion in the midst of all
that naked fear.
    Bryan smiled, the thought
suddenly occurring to him that there was a reward on the other side.
Maggie and his little boy. If he could make it through Labor, he’d have a life
with his family.
    “Nice to meet you, Fausto. You,
uh...” He fumbled for the words, and Fausto’s grin widened an inch.
    “No. I haven’t made any
connections yet. But I got a good feeling about you, kid. We can work
together,” he replied.
    Bryan felt a surge of relief.
There were other rules—principles beyond the three he’d discussed with his old
man. Partner up—safety in numbers—was one of them. Look for help on the inside
was another one. Something told him the slight man was solid—a real ally.
    They shuffled forward, maybe a
dozen turns until their own. “A little girl, huh? We’re having a boy. We’ll
call him Eli. He’ll be here in just a few weeks.”
    “That’s a good name—a strong name.
We’re calling our girl Carmen. She’s amazing! Shoot, all those somersaults in
her mother’s belly?” he said, grinning at the thought of it. “We’re going to
have a ballet dancer. She’ll be here before we know it.”
    As they advanced, they swapped
details of their lives before pregnancy. When it was their turn, they stepped
into the booths.
    “Left hand,” the bull grunted,
seizing Bryan’s fingers and running them over the scanner. He wore a hard glare,
his chiseled features all business. Bryan didn’t see so much as a glimmer of
compassion in his eyes. The scanner verified his identity. The guard
deactivated the Promise Sensor and told him to move into holding.
    Fausto waited on the other side
and they migrated toward an open space at the edge of the pen. Bryan craned up
on his toes in an attempt to find his father, but his old man had disappeared
in the sea of distraught supporters.
    “Soooo…right, left or down the
gut?” Fausto said when they’d found a quiet place to chat. All around them, men
were gathering in loose groups—some big, some small.
    “I don’t know. You think there
have been many changes?”
    Fausto shook his head. “I bought
a satellite map three days ago. The Authority hasn’t raised any forest—at least
not that I could see in the map. Of course, you know there’ll be new digital
obstacles. Those we’ll have to deal with when we get to ‘em. But when they open
those gates,” his eyes widened, “this thing is for real. We need to commit to a
plan from the start.”
    Bryan inhaled. “Did the satellite
map show anything?” He envied the man’s wealth and connections. Intelligence on
the layout of the Labor field was fiercely prohibited. His father had offered
to buy a map, but Bryan shot the idea down right away. There was no sense in
committing his family to financial ruin.
    “Yeah, I think we position
ourselves toward the rear of the crowd.