Donor 23 (6 page)

The van made its way near Joan and stopped. Peering through the dark window in the back of the van, Joan saw the outline of several people. One of the shapes was not wearing the snatcher uniform cap. Joan couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. He or she was one forlorn donor being carried away.

Out of the corner of her eye, Joan spotted the officer in the front passenger seat looking at her, and she glanced up at him.
Captain Nox
. She froze. Joan, always abiding the law, rarely had contact with snatchers—except for one vile encounter with this one, Nox.

Nox’s Tax Enforcement unit ran her area of the ghetto. To say donors despised and feared him was an understatement. The donors nicknamed him the Master Manipulator, with a myth that he read people’s minds. Joan turned away.

“Hey, you,” he said.

Joan ignored him and stared at the ground.

“You, girl.”

The person in front of Joan nudged her, “I think he’s calling you.”

She forced herself to look at him.

“You look like you’re in good shape. Go help your friend out of the way there,” Nox motioned to a man on crutches in front of the van.

Joan did as told.

As she walked back to her place in line, Nox shouted out, “Always nice to see a donor who’s helpful.”

Against her will, her thoughts dragged back to the last time she saw Nox, eight months ago.

She came home early to her apartment from a day at the Center. Turmoil ensued. Joan rushed in. Body snatchers stomped down the halls, searching the apartments.

She made her way to her apartment. In one of the bedrooms, Joan found her mother replacing part of the wall where a heating unit had been. Joan could see a person squeezed into the small hole.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Her mother glanced up, then moved furniture to block the hole, and hurriedly tried to make it appear as if nothing had been moved. Joan couldn’t believe it. Her mother was hiding an evader! They went into the front room.

“
Mom?” Joan pleaded. “What…?”

“Sh,” was all her mother could say, as the front door burst open.

Nox and two other snatchers rushed in. They forced Joan and her mother against a wall. The officers searched the apartment, finding nothing.

“We’re looking for an evader,” Nox said, holding up a photo. “Have you seen him?”

Joan recognized the man in the photo. It was Frank, the husband of her mother’s good friend, Dolly.

With calmness and reserve, her mother looked Nox directly in the eyes and said authoritatively, “No, we haven’t seen him.”

Nox looked at Joan. She turned away. Her fear and hesitation appeared in her eyes. Nox discerned it, as he was well trained to detect it. Just like any good predator, he instantly chose Joan as his target. He pushed Joan’s mother.

“Take her into the hall,” he ordered the other officers.

Joan now stood alone with him. Captain Nox was an excellent interrogator. In addition to hunting down evaders, the Tax Enforcement Office, or TEO, maintained a lid on subversive activities in the donor population. Many of his colleagues relied on hidden cameras, tracking drones, and scanning machines to monitor their areas. Not Nox. He relished the human touch—information gleaned from the movement of a hand, a dropped word, or, as in this case, a glint of trepidation in the eyes.

He studied Joan for a while, as if studying a map to ascertain the best route to arrive at his destination. She was so young, only seventeen, so it should be easy. He made his decision: first the fear, then the hope.

He said quietly and slowly, “Do you know who I am?”

Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “I’m Captain Nox. I know who you are. I know most all the donors in this quarter. And I know all about them. You’re 23—full number, 1919723.” He uttered the long number unhurriedly, with a sacred tone. “You have an important benefactor.”

He walked methodically back and forth in front of her, coming closer with each step. Joan looked at the floor, avoiding eye contact.

“I’m sure you comprehend the importance of the law. You’ve learned in school how critical it is. It’s everyone’s duty to report criminals. You realize that it’s your duty?”

He stared at Joan, just inches from her face. She swallowed.

“Answer my question, 23,” he spoke calmly.

Joan nodded.

“Speak it,” he said.

She repeated it from memory, “It is the duty of every person in the Alliance to report anyone he or she suspects is, will be, or may be, in violation of any laws.”

She stopped, but he remained silent, so she continued, “Be ever a servant of Our Glorious Governor, and never forget that only the Alliance, acting through Our Governor, can guarantee security.”

“Very good.”

In truth, Nox unwaveringly believed this himself. For Nox, adherence to the law, support of the Alliance, and allegiance to the Governor were his reasons for living—as it should be with everyone.

He paused, still staring at her. He touched her chin, turning up her face to him. His fingers extended too long for his hands. At first his eyes seemed dull and sly, and the whites of them weren’t white at all but a musty yellow. He resembled a lizard, with a long, angular head and a prominent jaw, but his lips were almost nonexistent. His unnaturally thin, gawky body appeared flattened, as if a large shoe stepped on him in the garden. Folded in front of him were his long arms. He wore his hair slicked back, in the same fashion as the Governor.

“You’ve good fortune to live under the protection of the Alliance. It brought us safety after the Impact. It shields us from the dangers outside. Like a father, Our Governor protects you. Doing your duty means you obey the Alliance’s orders without question. You’ve learned that?”

She nodded.

“Your benefactor takes good care of you, doesn’t she?”

Joan nodded.

“What do you think your benefactor would do if she discovered you, whom she’s been supporting these years, flouted the very laws which protect you? What would she think if you did not do your duty? Think of her disappointment in you.”

He walked over to the photo of Governor Gates, which all were required to have in their homes.

“And what would Our Governor think?”

Glancing at the photo, Joan felt as if the Governor himself was there, watching.

She could barely formulate the words, “I swear, sir, Colonel Nox, sir—”

“It’s Captain,” he said soothingly.

“Captain, sir, I swear, I don’t know anything.”

Her reverie ended when the man behind her in line gave her a slight shove. The line had moved, and there was gap in front of her. She picked up her bag and moved ahead.

5

O
nce inside the ghetto she breathed easier, as did most donors. In the city donors had to be on guard—always taking care of what they said and how they acted. But not here—this was their own area. It was a large, walled in city. There were countless ghettos scattered throughout the nation. The Alliance kept each ghetto small, enclosed, and tightly maintained with security.

It hadn’t always been like this. Joan’s father had told her that in his younger days, there were no walls. Donors freely walked and mingled in the nicer citizen neighborhoods, but then a rash of crime occurred. Citizens were up in arms. Blame fell on the donors. Literally overnight, in a well-timed and prepared execution, the Alliance erected walls surrounding each ghetto and restricted travel. Her father surmised the real reason was that citizens feared the size of the growing donor population.

Joan passed her apartment, magnificent by ghetto standards. It stood near the entrance gate. She needed to stop by the market and knew the walking would help her leg feel better.

The marketplace bustled with people, even though most had not yet returned from their day of work in the city. Smoke permeated it, and dirt covered the floor. Joan made her way through the aisles filled with gritty groceries. Many of the sellers also sold black-market items, hidden beneath the counters. Some stalls cooked food over open flames, but not the kind found at the high-priced citizen restaurants. Joan enjoyed the atmosphere and the smells, but it was not her destination. She continued to the back of the market.

“BE SURE YOU DON’T MISS THE NEWLY RELEASED FLICKER ABOUT OUR FIRST GOVERNOR, DEPICTING HIS BRAVE RESCUE OF A VILLAGE FROM A HOARD OF BARBARIANS…”

An elderly security guard stood at a doorway.

“Miss Lion, you’re early today,” he greeted her warmly.

Joan didn’t have a grandfather, but if she did, she imagined he would be like Ed.

“Hi, Ed. Yeah, caught an early bus.”

Joan scanned her tattoo, and he motioned her to go inside. Only those with special clearance could enter this part of the market. The atmosphere in this small room differed from the main market—shining, clean and sterile. The aisles stood empty, except for her. The food, abundant and high quality, was displayed beautifully. In the checkout, Joan swiped her cash card and made her way out with her two bags of groceries. She paused by Ed.

“There’s something on top for you, Ed,” she told him, motioning to a small package wrapped in paper from the butcher section.

“Oh, Miss Lion, you never forget me, do you?”

The food allotted to the ghettos was minimal. The System walked a fine line between keeping donors alive and ensuring they did not become a drain on Alliance resources. Joan had a large stipend, so she purchased a fair amount of food. She had to. She was under instructions to eat a lot of calories. Even so, she had more than enough to spread some around to others. Besides, Joan was lucky enough to eat many meals at the Fitness Center.

She made her way back through the main market and out into the sunlight. She had one more errand to run. Venturing a few streets out of her way, she picked up her pace to reach Dolly’s apartment.

As she turned a corner down a narrow side street, she saw the sidewalk on one side without pedestrians, so she crossed from the busy side to the clear. Trudging along the empty sidewalk, Joan discovered too late the reason people walked on the other side. A poster of the Governor hung vandalized with graffiti on the wall a few feet from her. To the Governor’s smile, the artist added long fangs and a forked, snakelike tongue. The gray streaks in his hair had been changed into an obvious diamond pattern, as on a rattlesnake’s head.

Joan paused when she saw it and had a brief intake of breath. The penalty for desecrating a photograph of the Governor was severe. The Alliance sentenced an offender to a labor camp for life. No donor wanted to be seen near a defiled poster, lest they be accused or implicated in its defilement. Joan stepped out a few steps into the street and hurried on to Dolly’s home.

After a short walk, she stood before a rundown apartment building. Odors of cooking food wafted out of the open windows. The names of each tenant were posted to front door. Every month an empty space appeared where a name had been. The residents had moved out—no mention of them, no aromas carried on the breeze from the shuttered windows. Inevitably, a new name appeared, and the cycle continued.

She knocked on the door. A woman in a wheelchair answered. Dolly’s face brightened.

“Oh, Joan. Come in. Come in.”

Joan entered and walked to the kitchen, setting one of the bags on the counter.

“Sorry I can’t stay and chat today, Dolly.”

Dolly took the bag and began pulling the groceries. “Oh, what would I do without you? You are a blessing.”

Joan flashed to the sight of Dolly’s husband Frank, hidden in her apartment wall.
What would Dolly do without me?
Joan thought. She could be talking to her husband right now, cooking those groceries for him…

“Hey, a special surprise,” Joan smiled broadly and unpacked a few peaches. “These are fresh. Shipped from the South.”

Holding a large peach to her nose to savor the smell, Dolly said, “How do you get these things? Mmm. I was just talking to someone about you the other day, telling them how you tried to save Frank—”

Joan interrupted her sternly, “Dolly.”

“It was a friend.”

“Friends report on friends,” Joan warned, repeating a motto of the ghetto.

It was not that donors had no loyalty to each other, but they were not ashamed to betray a fellow donor. In its wisdom the Alliance promulgated the moral rules—the main one being one’s duty to the Alliance. The Alliance was sacred—all else secondary. But not all donors—or citizens—bought into that. Many knew in their hearts there was more to life.

But for now in the marketplace of the ghettos, betrayal was a commodity—each transaction bringing the seller more food, better living arrangements, and maybe, just maybe, ever so closer to the elusive citizenship.

Of course, even for those not inclined to report on fellow donors, there was ample motivation. The snatchers used
something called “the machine.” No one knew the real name for the machine. Killing off donors for information was not acceptable to the System. That’s where the ingenuity of the machine came into play. The machine was normally utilized once on any given subject. The pain it created was intense and enduring—like a passionate and powerful sunset, the memories of which never fade. Yet it causes no permanent physical damage. But it wasn’t just the pain. The machine invaded a person’s thoughts—his or her mind. It ascertained and assaulted a person’s innermost fears.

By using the machine, the snatchers strapped what they referred jokingly to as “the invitee” into what resembled a rather comfortable bed. Many invitees expressed astonishment at first, never having slept in such a comfortable bed. The satin-like cloth of the cot impressed them. They were unaware the fabric was a unique blend, designed to absorb bodily fluids that would soon leave the donor’s body: sweat, urine, and vomit. The invitee’s notice of the machine next to them, however, obliterated that wonder. Then the begging would begin, “Please. No. I’ve told you everything I know.” And sometimes they had.