Chapter Fourteen

In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

A profound, full-body snore juddered Brad out of his slumber. His back stiffened, he grabbed the steering wheel, he mashed the brake pedal to the floor. His adrenaline spiked. Strangling the wheel, crushing the pedal, he eventually calmed down enough to remember that he wasn’t driving. His truck was parked. He was outside some hospital. In Austin. Lorinda Moon, lovely Lorinda, was inside that hospital. He looked around. His head was starting to clear. He looked over to where her Ryonbong was parked, but the car wasn’t there. The spot was now empty. 

Lorinda drove like a lunatic away from the hospital and toward … she had no idea. She was unaccustomed to driving in populated areas, but that didn’t slow her down. She just knew she had to get away. 

After running a red light, it occurred to her that there were cops in Austin, and that she was going to be stopped if she kept this up. And then it occurred to her that the phony doctor, Janelle Stark, might still be alive, and if she was alive she probably told the police what Lorinda had done. Told the police? She probably was the police. Her stomach knotted up as she realized that they would be looking for her car. Lorinda turned off the main street, drove for a minute on an industrial-looking side street, saw a shadowy alley, made a too-fast turn into it, and immediately jumped on the brake to avoid smashing into a dozen raggedy old men and women sitting — on chairs, boxes, upturned buckets, piles of trash — around a campfire. Those closest to the screeching car, and in the most danger, either froze or toppled off their perches. Some in the back stood up quickly and waved their fists; others had trouble standing and settled for hurling loud obscenities. 

Eyes wide, Lorinda sat motionless behind the wheel for a good ten seconds, the prow of her car mere inches from her closest near-victim, a man with long gray hair and a bushy gray beard, with strikingly deep worry lines embossed on his dusty forehead. He managed to unfreeze himself, hoist himself to his feet using the hood of the car for leverage, and scream, “You coulda killed me you fucking fucking fuck!” 

 “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” Lorinda said out her open window “I didn’t know y’all were there.”

“No one does,” cracked a woman with a dull red scarf over her head. 

“I’m gonna break you in half,” the bearded old man said, without showing any signs that he could actually do it.

“I said I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Lorinda opened the door and stepped out of her car. The old man moved painfully to the side of the car and took a step toward her. Lorinda took her gun out her bag. She half-consciously noted that it seemed a little wet. Slippery. 

“Hah,” said the graybeard, his anger replaced by amusement. “You call that a gun?” He turned to the others. “Do you see that?”

“You need a bigger gun, sugar,” said the woman with the red scarf. 

Ignoring that, Lorinda did a quick scan of the sorry gathering, watching the ones who had fallen pick themselves up and the ones who were standing sit themselves back down. Then, selecting an old woman with a kind face who was wrapped in what appeared to be an old blanket, asked, “Is it okay if I leave my car here?”

“Leave the key,” said the woman. “Leave the key and give us some money.”

Lorinda slipped the gun back into her bag and started to dig for her wallet before remembering that she’d left home with only a few hundred dollars, barely enough for a half-decent breakfast. Her fingers grazed her phone and she realized that it was no doubt broadcasting her location to the authorities. “I don’t have money,” she said. “Can you use a phone?”

“Give it here,” said a man in a tattered business suit. He extended a hand, palm up. It reminded her of Janelle Stark demanding her gun. Everybody is this city wanted something. 

She tossed it to him. 

He caught it with one hand. “You’re being followed?” he said. “We can drive it around until the car runs out of gas. A joyride.” He turned to the others. “Anyone remember how to drive?”

“Thank you,” Lorinda said. She turned to walk back toward the street but stopped and turned back to the group. “What are you people doing here?”

The man who had caught her phone answered her as though she were a child. “We live here.”

Lorinda had never heard of, let alone seen, anything like this. No one lived on the street in Perfecton. It was impossible and unthinkable. “But … why?” she asked.

“Why.” He addressed the others. “I forget. Why are we here?”

“We don’t like being comfortable,” someone said.

“We keep forgetting where we live,” someone else said.

Lorinda floundered. “And the fire. I mean, it’s so warm out.”

“It’s something to look at,” the woman with the red scarf said. 

“What else are we gonna do?” said the man with her phone. “No money, no home, no family that wants us. So here we are. Staring at a fire.”

“I’m sorry,” Lorinda said lamely, then turned around and strode toward the street. She walked fast but, she hoped, not conspicuously so, keeping her head down, trying to decide what to do, trying not to think about the old people with no families and no money. It was upsetting. Maybe that was why, when she or Zeke had asked their parents if they could take a trip to “the big city,” they had replied with variations of “We’ve got everything we need right here. They’ve got things there you don’t need to see.”

She passed another alley and saw a larger group of old people apparently living there. Same thing with a vacant lot she passed. She wondered if all the old people in Austin lived like this. Then she found herself wondering if one day she would live like this.

After passing another inhabited alley, this one with a few tents and lots of old people, she stopped in the shadow of a doorway to breathe deeply and try to focus on … focusing. Then she remembered her gun. She took it out of her purse. No, she hadn’t imagined that it was slippery: there was a little drying blood on the bottom and sides of its pink butt. She decided it was probably a bad idea to walk around town with that woman’s DNA on her gun. She fished in her purse and found a tissue she could use to wipe it clean. 

Brad finally got out of his truck and walked to the entrance of the hospital. What else was there to do? He couldn’t just turn around and drive the five hours back to Perfecton. At the reception counter he momentarily froze. What was he supposed to say?

“Are you all right, sir?” asked one of the receptionists.

“Hi, good morning,” he said. “I wonder. I’m looking for a patient. Maybe she’s a patient, I’m not sure….”

“Yes, sir?” said the receptionist.

“It’s a girl. A woman. Her name is Lorinda Moon.”

The receptionist tapped her keyboard and sat poised to enter information. “I’m sorry — her name again, sir?”

“Lorinda Moon,” Brad said loudly, just as Janelle Stark rushed into the reception area, now wearing a black jumpsuit that had the squared-off, unflattering shape of a uniform. Her head was swathed in fresh bandages, some of which covered her right eye. Accompanying her, and huffing to keep up, was a small entourage of burly men, led by a gigantic bald goon with bulging muscles that threatened to burst the seams of his tight black T-shirt. A couple of the others were also in plain clothes, while the rest wore CCSA Domestic Security uniforms.

“Hold him!” she commanded. The big bald one stopped moving and allowed two of the Domestic Security men to grab Brad’s arms and spin him around to face Stark.

“What’s this?” Brad blurted. “What’d I do?”

“How do you know Lorinda Moon?” Stark growled, thrusting her grotesquely wrapped face to within inches of his.

“Lorinda Moon? I mean, I don’t know —”

Stark grabbed him by the shirt, gave him a hard shake, then slapped his face. “How do you know her?” 

“Who are you?!” There were tears in his eyes. 

“I’m a Confederation security chief. And if you want to stay out of a jail cell tonight, you’ll answer me right now.” She raised her hand to slap him again. The others in her circle tried not to laugh. But not the bald one, who never laughed. Instead, belying his bulk, he moved quickly past Stark, grabbed Brad by the armpits, lifted him high in the air, and tossed him like a doll. Brad’s trajectory was interrupted by a wall. He crumpled, moaning, to the floor.

“Skippy!” The bald thug was about to move in for the kill, but Stark’s roar made him hesitate.

“Skippy!” she growled again. He continued to glare at Brad. “Edgar!” There was less volume but more menace in her voice this time. He took one hesitant step toward the young man on the floor. “Edgar,” she said calmly. “We’ve talked about this before. You don’t need to kill everyone. Now just stand down. He’s mine.”

Skippy — no one knew why this was Edgar’s nickname — took a step back.

“Very good, Skippy.” She approached Brad, who was trying to stand up. “Now where were we?” She kicked his shin.

“Oww,” he moaned, scrambling to his feet. “Okay, okay. I know her from Perfecton. She’s a bartender.”

“That’s better. Did you fuck her?”

“What?!”

She cocked her hand for another whack at his face. He flinched and blurted, “Yes! Okay, yes! Just once!”

“You come with us.”

"But —"

 “You’re joining the team.”  

The two Domestic Security thugs manhandled him in the direction of the elevators as Stark and the others followed.

 

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NEXT: Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

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