The Feeders mostly grow funguses and bugs down in the caverns below the Hill, then mash ‘em all together into patties for Feed, which is what most of us eat most of the time. The nush paste, or “nourishment substance” as the Feeders want us to call it, is lighter weight so us Guns can take it on patrol and all, but it really does taste awful. If the Feeders I was with as a kid made Feed or nush, I probably would have been happier there. But the ones I was with grew meats.
I can’t really tell you what meats are; what sort of “organism” I mean. It’s like the Feeders and Fixers combined all sorts of different creatures into these things they grow in vats. The meats are alive, though they can’t move as their legs and wings and all, when they have them, are spindly and wasted. They don’t make noise either as all that throat stuff gets taken out of them. They just sort of lay there, taking in nush and putting out fertilizer for other caves, until they get so fat and bloated that the Feeders slaughter one. Food from them costs double: Two chits for a day’s worth, but I never liked the taste for them. They always scared me when I was kid, so that’s why the Feeders started calling me “Meats.” When I got big, and sent to the Guns, the name stuck.
***
Specs thought we should take the seeds home, so we did. Not just to the Hill I mean; we kept them hidden when we got back to town and took them to our billet.
The Hill itself is a big, tall knob among a whole bunch of other hills, so from a distance it doesn’t look any different. It’s mostly hollow inside and the Priests live up in the top part, where there are a lot of windows all hidden down in cracks and crevices, polarized glass so there’s never any tell-tale sun glare from a distance. The Priests are always watching you when you’re in town, that’s what everybody says.
There’s a defensive wall out from the base of the Hill, though again it doesn’t look like it as it is earthworks that blend into the landscape. Between the Hill and the wall is where everybody lives in houses or billets, which are basically the same thing. But Feeders and Fixers call them “houses” in their neighborhoods, and us Guns call them “billets” in ours. All are sort of dumpy and rundown as the town has been here a long time now, and all seal up tight against the dust and weather and bad air. That’s actually what the Fixers spend most of their time doing: Making sure the seals and the gaskets all hold. We all trade chits for what we need. Guns guard the place, Fixers maintain it, Feeders feed us all.
Me and Specs are in Billet 423, a two-story place on a corner between the southwest gate and a Feeder neighborhood by the entrance to their caves. There are five of us in the billet which is about average. More than that, it gets too crowded. Less keeps each member too busy all the time. Shotty is in charge, he is our “sergeant.” He’s had that name for something like twenty-five winters, since the last time a full feral horde attacked the Hill and breached the wall. I was just a kid so all I remember is hiding in the Feeder caves while fighting went on outside for three days. Shotty was barely more than a kid back then, but he made his reputation and name with an M1014 auto he still uses. Besides him, me, and Specs, there are two females in the billet – Gappy and Shoes. Gappy got her two front teeth knocked out in a fight with a Gun from 799 awhile back, and Shoes is a longer story.
Once Specs and me got all the way out of our gear so we could breathe normal in the sealed billet, we had to have a really quick meeting before Shotty and Gappy left for another four-day patrol. It’s not all that often all five of us are in the billet at the same time, because we mostly have to keep pulling duty on patrol or the wall to keep us in enough chits to eat regular. At least one of us has to stay there at all times though, or else other Gun billets will raid us for chits, food, guns; anything they can steal. We do the same to them.
Specs opened the can and showed the seeds to everybody. I was sort of watching Shoes, because she’s nice to look at, and I’m pretty sure her eyes widened and her mouth got this little quirk it gets sometimes. But she made it go away real fast. Shoes lived up with the Priests most of her life, so she knows a lot more about a lot of things than the rest of us do who have never been “Up the Hill” since we were babies. From her look, I thought maybe she knew something about the seeds, but she didn’t say anything. I sort of forgot about it once everybody started arguing.
I usually stay out of arguments, as when people start making their points and thinking things through, it gets a little hard for me to follow. I know Specs thought we could trade the seeds to the Feeders for a ton of chits, maybe enough for us to kick back for a while without having to walk patrol or stand the wall. Gappy thought we should try to grow them. She said real seeds grew real food; the kind none of us, except maybe Shoes, had ever seen or tasted in our lives. We didn’t decide anything before Gappy and Shotty had to head out on patrol, so the sergeant just put the can away in our lock-up and said we’d figure it out after he got back. He ordered none of us to touch the lock-up, and said he’d go upside our skull if we did. We all believed him.
We didn’t make a decision four days later either, or for the days and days and days after that. All five of us were well and healthy at the time, so we were pulling full duties and keeping up good in chits. Even building a surplus. Without anybody really saying anything, I thought we all sort of agreed to leave the seeds for a time we needed them, as all billets hit a patch of bad luck once in a while. Somebody gets hurt or somebody gets sick, and the rest of the billet has to take up the slack while they are down. Or something major breaks; a respirator, a rifle worse than we can fix it ourselves, or maybe the environment seals on the billet start to wear out. Then we have to trade surplus with the Fixers while still eating every day. We’d been on a good run, but those never last, and the seeds seemed like something we would know we had for an emergency, and could feel good about having.
At least that’s what I thought. I didn’t think anything of it when instead of rolling through different patrol pairs in our normal order, Shotty and Shoes started going out together more than half the time. After a while though, I did start to notice Shoes wasn’t looking like she normally does. She seemed tired all the time even in town, and had bags under her big blue eyes. And even while just sitting around off duty, she’d move her tongue around her mouth a lot and open and close it like it was always dry. She had headaches, and even though she’s never been real chatty, she got even shorter with everybody than usual.
I knew the signs. She wasn’t drinking enough water.
***
It was still more days after that before I was alone in the billet and I started thinking more hard about it. Specs and Gappy were out on patrol, Shoes was on the wall, and Shotty had agreed to go beat up some Fixer another Fixer in the same house had a problem with, for five chits.
We were trading chits to the Feeders for our normal amount of good water and food, so we were all on full daily rations. Shoes still went on patrol with a full camel pack every time, but I thought it had been a while since she was drinking her normal intake each day. I didn’t know why and I thought I should maybe just ask her, but I couldn’t really think of a way to bring it up. Shoes and me aren’t really close. We’ve had sex a few times when we were both stuck in the billet together and she got bored, but we’ve never talked much.
While I was sitting there in the dark, mainly thinking about having sex with Shoes at that point, I thought of the seeds for some reason. I hadn’t really thought about them in days and days and days, but I turned my head toward the steel door of the lock-up. Whoever kept watch at home always carried the key, and I had it around my neck on a cord.
None of us were supposed to open the lock-up while we were alone, but I’m pretty sure we all had. There’s really nothing to do in the billet for the hours and hours you’re alone, watching the door. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and because of the environment seals the whole place is stale. Even though we mostly go over to the Feeders to piss and shit in troughs and buckets so they can get use out of it, the billet still stinks insid
e after generations of Guns sweating and farting and screwing.
I fished the key out from under my fatigues and lit a candle with a flint and steel. I unlocked the door in the small light and opened it just enough to feel inside and unhook the string that otherwise would have fired a shotgun had the door swung open all the way.
The room was small and packed in tight with shelves and boxes. Rifles and pistols, ammo, the small tools we could use to fix or make simple things ourselves. Extra gear from boots and gloves to respirators and camel packs; everything stacked up neat, numbered and labeled, with an inventory sheet nailed to the back of the door. At least three of us got together to do inventory regular enough to make sure nobody was stealing. I’d done it with Shotty and Specs last time, so I knew where the seeds were. I stepped under the shotgun and went to the back of one shelf where the can was stuck inside a rubber boot without a matching one to make a set.
I’d only held the can the one time, before Specs carried it back to the Hill. Not long, but when I held it in my hand now, flat on my palm, I think it did feel lighter but I wasn’t sure. Shoes had told us to leave it screwed shut so the seeds would keep longer, but I unscrewed it and held it under the candle on a shelf.
There were maybe three-quarters of as many seeds as there had been when I’d taken the can off the dead feral.
***
I didn’t say anything. Not even to Shoes the next time we were alone in the billet which was quite a few days later. She had a headache again and just sat by a polarized window, looking sickly in the gray light that came in through the thick bars.
I was mad about the seeds. Billets only work if everybody in one is straight with each other. Secrets just break them apart. I liked 423 better than the other billets I had been in, one of which had disbanded over infighting, and the other I’d left because Shotty convinced me his was better. Shotty was a hard man but he was fair, and I got on well enough with Specs and Gappy. The fact that Gappy or Shoes were willing to screw around when they were in the mood, or bored, was a bonus.
Still, I didn’t say anything. I figured Shoes had taken some seeds from the can, and was using her water to grow them somewhere. She sure wasn’t doing it anywhere around the Hill, so I figured that meant when she and Shotty patrolled together, which was most of the time by now, they were tending the seeds out there somewhere. As bad as the powdery, poison dirt was all around us for days in any direction I didn’t know where they might be doing that, but Shoes is smart and Shotty’s an old, cunning Gun. They must have found a place or a way, and they weren’t telling me about it. Because Specs and Gappy never seemed to act or say or do anything different than they ever had, I didn’t think they knew about it, either. Just Shoes, who was even more quiet and standoffish than usual. And Shotty because he must have been in on it with her, or else I really didn’t think she would have dared cross him.
I didn’t like thinking of the two of them together out there, somewhere, maybe eating something they had worked together to grow. I’ve never seen a thing grown from real seeds, but nobody ever stopped telling stories about the way food used to be before. There are all sorts of words that used to describe things – succulent, tasty, luscious, sweet – that people only use now when they are talking about things none of us have ever seen. Or ever tasted. But it’s like we all remember it somehow. Or maybe we’ve just imagined it so many times that we think we do.
And that’s why I broke Shotty’s leg.
It was easy. A few nights later a dust storm came through; a real bad one that tore the roofs off a couple billets and shredded ours enough that powder was gathering up in the attic. The attic wasn’t environment sealed to the rest of the billet, but we didn’t want extra weight up there building on the joists. Shotty traded the Fixers enough chits for new shingles, but he wasn’t about to pay to have them installed. He and I took an off day together and went up on the roof to see to the work ourselves. I did most of the yanking broken shingles and nailing down new ones while Shotty sat on the edge of the roof, heavy boots hanging over the eaves and heels bumping the wall. He kept his shotgun near at hand and a gogged eye on our door below to make sure no neighbors tried anything while we were up top.
I was pretty tired after the work, which had to be done in full gear to repel the bright, baking sunlight. I was wheezing through my respirator by the time I finished up, so Shotty sent me down the ladder first to hold it steady while he came down carrying shotgun, tools, and all the extra nails and such. The ladder kept trying to shift out of my hands as Shotty awkwardly stepped on a rung, holding on with one hand as the other was full. All of a sudden I just let the ladder go.
I hadn’t planned to do it, but I guess I’d been angry for a while. Shotty shouted and the ladder went over sideways, dropping him hard on the baked footpath between billet houses and snapping his lower right leg with a crack. I rushed over and said sorry but he laid into me pretty good, screaming and shaking, though he wasn’t as mad as if it had been somebody other than me. That’s the good thing about people knowing you are stupid – they don’t expect much.
The break was clean and us Guns are used to caring for that kind of thing. I got Shotty inside and patched him up, setting and splinting the leg while he growled and ground his teeth. He’d be fine, but he was going to be down for a while. So the next day, I went out on patrol with Shoes.
***
All children are born Up the Hill, from the Priests. If there is nothing wrong with them, that’s where they stay. Otherwise, once some imperfection crops up they get sterilized and sent down the Hill for assignment to either the Feeders or the Fixers, based on aptitude or need. Some Fixers and Feeders become Guns later on, if they turn out to be the kind of people who can.
It was different for Shoes. She had been a Priest for her first nineteen or twenty winters, but she had turned out to be barren. Born sterile. She was sent down alone one day, not escorted by a Priest who would have found her a place with somebody. She had come down without any gear, just a white dress, with her feet all banged up and bruised from the climb as she hadn’t even had a pair of shoes. A house of Fixers had given her a pair, but they made her do stuff for them. Or at least that’s the story.
Not much later Shotty was trading with the Fixers for some repairs, and he saw something in the young female they were keeping. She moved in with us at Billet 423, to be a Gun. She’s a good one. Smart. Works hard. She fit in just fine.
One day after a couple winters had come and gone, she walked back over to the Fixers’ house carrying that same pair of shoes she’d got from them, and a Kriss Super V SMG. She killed the five people living in House 065, and left those shoes on the stoop.
That’s how she got the name.
***
Each billet usually patrols the same ground time after time, as that’s the best way for us to spot anything different or out of place in our sector. Me and Shoes marched out for a day and ended up not too far away from where I’d found the seeds with Specs in the first place.
I had a feeling like Shoes was going to say something, and around noon on the second day out, she did. We were heading north above the riverbed, Shoes ahead of me a ways with her sub, while I had the Remington zipped up on my shoulder. She had been looking east across the river a lot, more than just to keep an eye in that direction, and after a while she stopped walking and waited for me to catch up to her. It wasn’t standard procedure while on patrol, but I walked up to her anyway.
“Meats,” she said. “You trust me, right? We trust each other.”
“Sure, Shoes.” I said. “We’re billet mates.”
“Yeah.”
Shoes looked east across the dry river again, beyond the wreckage of some sort of vast boat. Her respirator clicked several times and I couldn’t see her eyes through the dark lenses of her goggs. She turned back to me.
“There is something I have to go check on, over there. Past the river. I need to do it alone. You can wait right here, and I’ll be back before it ge
ts dark.”
“We aren’t supposed to split up on patrol,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I know we’re not supposed to, Meats, but I’ll be fine. I don’t have to go far, and this sector has been quiet all autumn.”
“All what?”
“For days and days and days. It’s quiet, and I promised Shotty I would check on this thing, okay? He’s our sergeant, and we have to do what he says, right?”
“Then I should go with you,” I said.
“You weren’t ordered to do it,” Shoes said. “You should stay here in the patrol sector, and I will be back soon.”
I could have argued more, but I didn’t bother. I hunkered down and watched Shoes move away down the bank of the old river, then start across the dry bed moving widely around the boat wreckage while still keeping her weapon trained on it. Good Gun. I lost sight of her in the distance owing to the glare of the day.
The powder covering everything outside is real fine, and prints don’t last very long when there is even a breath of wind. But the day was still, so Shoes was easy to follow. I followed the marks of her combat boots down the west bank, straight across the riverbed, and back up the east side. At the top they headed toward a steep, rocky knob of a hill about a mile away. Halfway there, still following her tracks but keeping an eye out all around, I heard shots.
I picked up the pace, not running because the protective gear is noisy when you really drive your legs, and I knew whatever was happening I’d be more useful if I got there without anybody knowing. There were more shots - the rattle of Shoes’ sub and big booms from high powered rifles. When I could see puffs ahead from home-load ammo, I stretched out on top of a flat rock about a meter high and unzipped the Remington, then glassed ahead with the scope.
I could see two ferals, sheltering behind two rocks. I could have taken more time to assess but I got a bead on one and cracked off a shot. I rushed it, and the round slapped into the rock beside the head of a male feral in a floppy hat, with a bright red scarf over his neck. He was still peering around wildly when my second shot took the top of his head off.