Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Page 3

  To the State, citizens—anyone who questions their authority, really—were the dangerous ones. Someone who doesn’t obey? Shit, to a slave owner, that’s dangerous. But with ten billion of us on the planet and the dial spinning like a crooked cabbie’s time-ticker, no one noticed one less mouth to feed … until it was theirs.

  — V —

  WHEN THEY SLAM open the metal door to the roof, I’m almost to the ledge. I look for another way down, but it’s a roof! Doesn’t matter—they’re here and I’m fucked.

  I’m almost to the ledge and it’s my “sooner.” I wince at the cramp in my side, then turn as I stumble and fire two rounds, back over my shoulder. Miracle if I hit someone, but I only want to get to the ledge. And that’s it, counting the ones I fired in the alley, I’m out.

  I chuck my Kimber and it lands with a metallic clank and bounces to a stop in a pile of useless metal misery next to a big heating and air-conditioning unit. The rain’s really coming down now.

  Then I hear the words behind me, “Jacob Oliver Blake, you are hereby remanded…” I wince at the sound of my middle name and his voice trails off in my head—I don’t hear the rest. He could’ve saved his breath, though. I memorized the whole thing at the academy. So did every other agent and citizen. If they didn’t—

  “State your compliance!”

  Submit to judgment—that’s what he wants. I know how that ends.

  You’re going to die with an empty gun in the rain. Isn’t that a bitch? Cliché.

  The critic. I’m seriously tired of his shit. I’ll be glad to shut him up. A bright little star—silver lining to the sludge-filled clouds in the sky? Just a couple more steps and—

  I feel the punch in the back of my shoulder as the first bullet hits me. Hell, the son of a bitch only fires one. They have good training, I made sure of that. The Rufflon-tipped lead rips through my back and out the front of the top of my chest, and my arm catches fire and I spin to the ground and yell. I slice my left hand on the sheet metal of the heating and air-conditioning unit on the way down, and blood’s pouring out of the gash in my palm. For some reason, I’m more concerned with my hand. Maybe because I masturbate with that one. Who knows what’s in my head at this point, because my mind is spinning.

  I look, and the blood looks dark—darker than it should be. I’m no blood expert. Hell with it.

  The bullet isn’t gonna kill me, it’s not supposed to. And I can hear the boots and I’m crawling on my knees and pulling with my good arm as fast as I can drag myself and—

  “State your compliance!” As if I didn’t hear him the first time.

  Then—Bam!

  The second bullet tears across my ass. “Son of a bitch!” I yell it at no one. It flips me over and onto my back and I roll sideways, to get on my stomach, take a last look at them. Ten of…? No, eleven. I did drop one in the stairwell, I think. And they are mean-looking, hard-hearted bastards, dressed in all black everything. They look like little demons—my brothers—agents, coming for my soul.

  And they got their singe-spray and billy clubs, and their goggles and their MP7’s—squatty little, toy-looking machine guns—9mm, nice weapon. And there they all are, fifty feet away, maybe. But they’re still coming, so I use all the ranting rage and adrenaline I got left to yell through the pain and stand back up, and then I limp two more feet and wince my way onto the ledge at the edge of the roof.

  Someone behind them yells, “Stop!” and they all freeze. When the guy steps out from behind the pack of hard-hearts—PAIC, I think. And I should know, I used to be one of them. He knows that.

  Officially, neither of us ever existed. That’s the other power they have in Utah. They can make a man disappear, but you’ll swear you can see him right in front of you as he shoves a knife in your gut. This ghost, he doesn’t want a corpse. He can’t interrogate a dead body.

  Hot blood runs down my chest and I turn my head and look over my shoulder. I’m leaning hard on my right leg and the ass-cheek on my left is burning fire. I can feel the blood from that, too. Either way, everything from here is gonna be bad.

  But there they all are—frozen, powerless. And then I know it’s the only way, the one sliver of freedom every citizen has left. Of course it’s illegal, but you can’t imprison a guy for killing himself.

  Though, when too many citizens started getting away before we could pop them the vice—squeeze anything we needed out of their soon-to-be-dead heads—I figured that problem out, too.

  Once the guns were gone, most suicides flapped themselves off a scraper downtown. Now, a “Flapper’s” family has to pay if someone splatters the pavement. But these bastards don’t know where my wife is. I made sure of that. That’s what they want to find out.

  I look back, gaze out across the city. Despite the rain, it’s bright—must be a full moon behind the low fog, and the electro is coming on. It never really gets dark in the urban zones we used to call cities—just a constant, illuminated gray. There’s a million tiny little spikes of brightness, shining their white lies at every crack of the concrete decay most of us live in now. Every once in a while, there’s no clouds and you can see the real ones—the stars, trying to shine the truth.

  I can barely feel the rain as it mixes with my blood and trickles down my chest. The pain is there, but the satisfaction too. Couple of lightning bolts light up the clouds and I count, One thousand one, one thousand two, one—Crack!

  Heaven explodes its disapproval a couple miles away. I have to remind myself that I don’t believe in that shit. If I did—f there is a God—he’s left us all stranded in Hell.

  When I look back at them, I can tell by their body language that they have no idea what to do next. They shoot me, I’m over the ledge and they get nothing, but if they don’t, I might jump anyway. Welcome to everyone’s new free will—power of choice—shitty and shittier. Have a nice day.

  But the PAIC—this guy in charge—he knows how to handle a flapper. You don’t understand something, get rid of it. The rest of them get out of his way and he walks forward a couple of feet, looking at me with that downturned smile I taught them all to use. Then he raises up his big, Sand Eagle, .60 caliber… What an overkill joke that gun is. That’s the one he chose? I think. Must have a tiny dick.

  I know, I know—time for rage is over—but I’m just trying to psych myself up. I look down at my legs and behind me. I don’t think I can…

  Whichever one of them shot me in the ass… that guy probably would fuck his mother. They all would if that PAIC told them to. Twenty-five-year-olds with machine-guns—brainwashed Protection agents, followers. Doesn’t matter much now, but I shout it at them anyway, “Motherfuckers!” Then I jump.

  — VI —

  ANGELS MURMURED AND gasped coos from across Life’s side of the arena. And dark angels cawed and crowed, roaring in triumph from Dal’s side.

  When the sounds of angels, thirsting for judgment, died down, he cawed and crowed wildly. Dark lion that he was, he voiced his amusement like a raven. “Each ti—I began to worry,” he said. “It appeared he might falter.” He turned toward her with an evil grin stretched across his face. “That is your version of life? … Rather unfortunate, in my opinion.”

  Silence fell over the hall as a million cold-hearted snowflakes … angels waited for the warmth of summer. But the winter of the Word was still upon them all. This eternity had not ended yet.

  Life hung her head only slightly before she lifted it back up and turned toward him. “You force them with joyful elation to the darkness,” she said. “How may they find light?”

  “I force them?” Dal said. “You herd them like lemmings over the jagged cliffs of your covenants. There is nothing to discover. Even you realize they are doomed before their attempt. It has always been so.”

  — VII —

  I LOOK, AND the outside of this tall scraper is all glass. I’ll be able to watch myself fall in the mirror. As soon as I see my reflection in the first window, things slow way down. Feels like I’m s
tuck in some kinda sludge. Not falling, more like … oozing my way down.

  “Jake,” a voice says. It sounds far away, but I think … I think it’s my mother’s voice. “Jake?” I recognize the sweet drawl of Southern security.

  Before my dad transplanted her to the Northwest Quarter, her Alabama accent felt like warm apple pie. Shortly after that, her drawl and her smile got covered in a blanket of cold, gray fog.

  What’s she doing here? I think. And for a second, I forget where I am. But that is her voice, no mistake about it.

  “Jake,” she says it again and the sound fills my ears with the security and confidence of being a boy, having someone do all the worrying for me. Before I became cynical—before all the shit—when life was just fishing and hunting and … I can smell the toasted peanut butter, banana and huckleberry jam sandwiches. That’s what she made me for lunch every time he went—

  “Jacob, can’t you hear me? Your father’s back from hunting.”

  And I race to the window of my bedroom above the garage, and then I see him step out of his truck. Looking down, I can see his muddy boots in the back of the bed of the pickup—mud was not allowed in the cab. The color of the mud isn’t much different from the rusty brown paint on his pickup. Not that the truck’s old, mind you. In fact, it looks pretty brand new, down there. Rusty, shit-brown, brand spankin’ new paint. That’s just the way he bought it. Drove my mother nuts. She hated the color of that truck. But the son of a bitch lasted twenty years before he sold it for damn near as many credits as he paid when he got it.

  Less is more—a lesson that my “now” world has forgotten as we all fill the State Refuse Stations with disposable, plastic lives. But that’s how he was—he made things last. He lasted longer than he should have, too. Even a ripped-out heart from the loss of his beloved nation took ten more years to kill him.

  My father? Impossible, I know, because the man is long dead. And he … he hasn’t looked that good in forty years. Hell, he looks younger than me.

  When he pulls his hand back out of the bed of the pickup, three plump and noticeably limp drake Mallard ducks flop in his three-fingered grip—he would never tell me how he lost the fourth—but today he’s got a fourth duck crammed under his third finger.

  That’s a wood duck! I think. Rainbow head and pink bill. The only one he ever shot, and I know exactly what day this is.

  He made me wait until I was nine. Taunting and teasing me with the stories of adventure and the woods until I had to practically beg to go with him—with the men.

  Years later, I realized what he had done. You force a kid into something you want him to do—tell him he has to—he’ll fight you tooth and talon. But if you make him watch and wish—wait and wait—constantly tell him he’s not ready yet, he’ll be begging you to let him in no time at all. That’s the theory we use on little purgatory, cherub rookies, too. By the time they’re cracked—graduate from The Rook, Protection’s academy for citizen-stomping agents—they’ll claw apart anyone you tell them to. So when I finally got to go… This is that day!

  I know I should be panicked—I’m falling from a building, for God’s sake—but I feel kinda … serene. Serene? Why the hell would I use a word like that to describe jumping off a…? What was that last floor? “48,” I think it read? How long will that take?

  It’s weird, because that’s how old I am. Graying hair, downturned lines on my forehead and a permanent scowl where my happy, devious grin used to be. But when I look at my reflection in the first window, that’s not who I see. Well, I’m still me, but I’m—short, barbed-blonde hair, white t-shirt, jeans and black tennis shoes, and a smile that only a boy getting ready for his first hunt with his father can grin. I’m nine again.

  And I can’t feel the bullet in my shoulder anymore, or the one in my ass either, for that matter. All I can think of is gutting ducks.

  That’s my job, what I have to do before we go. That was another one of his lessons—do the shitty jobs first, clean up the last thing before you go to the next. Only problem was, to me, that job was fun.

  You can give a kid an antiseptic-filled, blood-drained frog to dissect in biology class, or you can take him hunting and let him see reality. Train someone to hunt, track down and kill an animal in its own habitat, and then process it from the ground to the greedy, grinding gums of another human being. No class on a conditioning campus can teach you more lessons faster.

  I remember years later, going to the “Bravo Mike” black market, trading .22 caliber bullets for whole chickens the Rural Zone rats brought in.

  To Protection, we’re all rats now. So don’t give me any shit about the Rural Zone vermin—it’s my life, let me enjoy the last of it.

  Regardless, whole chickens were cheaper than the cut-up ones. When I bought them, Kelly looked at me like I was nuts.

  Sure it was illegal, but the real problem was most citizens, sucking on the tit of the State, have lost the ability to put a fork in their own mouths, much less turn a chicken or a dog into package-sized chunks of edible meat.

  But me… These four ducks coming up the driveway, headed to my little processing plant in the garage… I’ve plucked so many ducks in there that I should be covered in feathers. I can gut birds with my eyes closed.

  When I first started, they had a weird, pungent smell when I opened up their stomachs. Even as I fall, I can remember it … vividly. No, I smell it. But it’s a sweet stench now. I never thought how the nature of smells and what you associate with them changes.

  I race to complete the task that was my doorway to the hunt—my ticket to the respect of my father and becoming a man.

  It’s a strange thing to think, I know. But that’s where I am. Where my mind is anyway, because I know I’m almost or already dead. But here I am, gutting ducks in the garage, getting ready to go back out the door with my dad for my first hunt.

  Then the foggy feeling hits me, everything gets blurry and gray, and then I can’t see. Then sounds fade to an unrecognizable murmur … and then … silence. And I’m gone … and so are my parents.

  When the fog clears, the oozing feeling goes away and I’m falling again. Faster than before—rocketing down—and the pain shoots through my shoulder to remind me that I still got two holes, leaking out my life.

  I flip around like a cat falling from a tree and look up just as all the bastards get to the edge of the roof and peer over the edge. Protection agents—a dozen black helmets now. They had six in the elevator, I think. I never had a chance.

  And the PAIC bastard—powerless, watching me fall… All of them look like someone who just dropped their sunglasses over the side of the ferry, dumbfounded and helpless as they watch them disappear into the depths of the “lake.” I manage a smile and mutter, “Fuck you.”

  In the old cinewaves—the archived movies only the rich or connected can get hold of and watch—I probably would’ve pointed my gun back up at them and took a few shots as I said it, but all I can think about is going hunting with my dad. Anyway, I already told you—gun’s empty, I dropped it back on the roof. Guess they got what they came for.

  — VIII —

  EVERY ANGEL IN the grandstands scraped and ruffled their metal feathers, and the clanking of steel wings wafted across the arena, as a million ice-hard snowflakes prepared to return to the duties of the Word.

  Dal smiled at Life and said, “My legions swell well into the billions. Though, I can only estimate, I lost tally eons ago. You make it difficult to keep an accurate count. How many did you say you possessed … again?”

  Life raised her hand and the metallic echoes from the grandstands ceased. She turned and faced her own millions, perched in the stands. There was a foreboding stillness inside the arena before she spoke, “We all know you will never cease counting. You are … you shall never be satisfied, a spoiled infant. There was no hope in your—I gave you everything, and to what end?”

  Dal glanced around the crowd of the faithful. If the war was to begin, it would be at a time
of his choosing, not hers. “Gave me?” he said. “That is the truth of your word, isn’t it. Everything we possess must be given to us … by you, all-powerful protector of eternity.”

  There would be no going back. Once it began, even Life could not stop it. The blustering of politicians before war was like the front edge of a desert sandstorm—nowhere to hide from it. Every angel in the grandstands knew that their best chance to escape its wrath was to take shelter and wait it out. The metallic-ruffling sounds of steel feathers echoed through the grandstands.

  Life turned back toward him. “What do you know of truth?”

  “The truth,” Dal replied, “is that you do not understand the nature of your own creations. You anoint them—you give us powers, make us predators—and then surround us with the bars on the prison of your word. We are all lions in a zoo, fed on your grace. While we…” He pointed angrily at the fall. “They long only to fend for themselves … choose their own fates.”

  The gasps returned. It was not uncommon for the Dark Angel of Light to challenge The Word. That was his way. Yet that made it no less foreboding. The results of his arrogance had, in the past, been more than regrettable. Many had paid a heavy toll, losing talon and tooth, for their devil to voice his insolence. If today was another one of those days, blood would spill … on both sides of the arena.

  Life watched the gallery, searching for signs. War … it was an uncertain, but often necessary tactic. Yet she knew Dal—deeper than any in the grandstands understood—he would not do battle today. He was blustering and posturing, trying to goad her into a fight. But she knew his ways. “I give them love,” she said. “I gave you much more. I asked … I only ever ask for faith in return.”

  Dal threw up his arms and yelled to the gallery, “Conditional love!” he shouted. Then he turned back and gave her a wild-eyed stare. “Only ever? You demand obedience. You do not understand us at all.” Then he pointed to the fall. “Or them.”