And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

“Water’s brown.”

“Shit.” Ellie Cauley ground her cigarette out on the hallway floor, her leg rattling her shower bucket. She had to be at work in less than half an hour. She could pull her hair back into a ponytail; the grease would just make the blonde look darker. The problem was she still stank of sex with Guy, that peculiar smell somewhere between copper and chlorine that sweated out of his skin from the protection meds. She also reeked of weed, but that was nothing new. “Shit.” It was all she could think to say as she turned back toward her room. Anything would smell better than the water when it was brown, even actual shit.

“Water’s brown.” She repeated the message to a young mother herding her children down the hall toward the showers and heard the exact same response from the harried woman. The word spread quickly up and down the hallway, and all around her doors slammed and expletives flew. She squeezed past a couple arguing in front of the toilet closets and could hear, behind one of the thin doors, the sound of vomiting. Probably Rachel, she thought. Her roommate was hell-bent on getting to Vegas.

Inside their small room, Ellie tossed the shower bucket onto the crowded shelf over the hotplate and fished around for her hairbrush. The mirror over the sink was filthy, neither she nor Rachel being overly inclined to keep things tidy. It was just as well. She knew what she looked like as she dragged the brush through her straight, oily hair, then fastened it with a rubber band at the nape of her neck. Dropping her bathrobe onto the floor, she bent over and picked through the pile of clothes beside her bed, catching a whiff of her own scent. Flowertown, indeed, she thought. Shittiest smelling flowers I’ve ever heard of.

Flowertown was the derogatory, and therefore customary, term for the PennCo Containment Area. It used to be the west end of Dalesbrook, Iowa, in the northeast corner of Penn County, until six years ago when Feno Chemical spilled an experimental and highly dangerous pesticide along the interstate and into Furman Creek, which ran directly to the reservoir that served the area. At first the county had issued a shelter-in-place order and Ellie, along with all the other unsuspecting residents of the area, complied. It wasn’t the first time a truck had wrecked on the highway and at the time didn’t seem nearly as interesting as when the truck full of live turkeys had overturned out near Brunswick. It got a lot more interesting when the United States Army showed up and barricaded the town while men dressed in space suits poured from unmarked trucks to round up the open-mouthed Iowans like the terrified and stupid turkeys from the summer before.

Contamination and containment became the buzzwords, replaced quickly with quarantine and treatment, all to the musical backdrop of international media and outrage as the world demanded to know who was responsible for the poisoning of seven and a half square miles of America’s heartland. There were Senate hearings and criminal investigations. Some people died and many more people suffered, but as weeks turned into months, most outside of the Penn County spill zone went back to their jobs and their newscasts and their horror at the other atrocities available on every continent, on every channel. But the people of Penn County, Iowa, now the PennCo Containment Area, stayed where they were. They pissed into cups and took fistfuls of pills and, as the insidious chemical leeched into their systems, noticed their skin put off a sickeningly sweet smell, like the smell of too many flowers in too small a room. That’s when PennCo became Flowertown, and when seven and a half square miles became a world unto itself.

Rachel left the door open when she came into the room, not bothering to notice Ellie standing naked, examining a shirt for stains. Rachel spit into the sink, resting her head against the cool metal. “Tell me again how cool Las Vegas is.”

“Not that cool.”

“Wrong answer.” Rachel pulled a jug of iced tea from the small refrigerator and began to chug. When she’d finished and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “You’re supposed to talk about the outrageous clubs and the fabulous shows and all the hot guys. And the buffets. Don’t forget the buffets where filet mignon is only a dollar and baked potatoes are the size of a dog’s head.”

Ellie decided the shirt was clean enough and pulled it over her head. “If I were you, I wouldn’t plan too much on enjoying the buffets. You’ll be lucky to swallow toast by the time you’re done with your detox.”

Rachel flopped down on her bed, kicking away a pile of clean laundry. “It’s all your fault. You’re the one who told me about that sick bachelorette party you went to, where the cop turned out to be a stripper and you puked hurricanes all over your bridesmaid dress.”

“Yeah, well that was back in the glory days when we could still use public toilets and actually get in our cars and go wherever we wanted.”

“Fogey.” It was Rachel’s nickname for Ellie whenever the conversation turned to life before the spill. Rachel was only twenty-two, ten years younger than her roommate, and determined to survive the four-week detox regimen required to leave the containment area for a weekend. The meds brutalized the body and the mandatory enemas shattered the dignity, but for the young farm girl who had only seen Sin City on the small screen, any amount of sacrifice was worth it to meet up with her family for her sister’s wedding. “Nice bruises.”

Ellie looked down and saw the dark purple marks coming out on her thighs. They’d match nicely the brick scrapes on the small of her back. “Guy’s a romantic.”

“Yeah, where was it this time? The dumpster?”

“The back stairwell.” She pulled on a pair of jeans, not bothering with underwear. “He let me touch his gun.”

Rachel laughed as she lit up a fat joint, blowing the timing and coughing up a lungful of smoke. “I bet he did. Did he at least kiss you on the lips?”

Ellie took the joint and hit it. “Depends on what lips you’re talking about.” She bit back a cough, holding in the smoke, as Rachel made gagging sounds. “Here, take the rest of this. I smoked up before I thought I was going to get a shower.”

“I don’t know how you go to work high, Ellie.”

“I work in the records office. Trust me. I’m not splitting the atom.”

The PennCo Records Office took up two-thirds of the second floor of what had been a tractor supply store. Out of habit, Ellie flashed her badge to the guard, who didn’t look at it, and cut through the front corridor of cubicles to get to the stairs. Human resources took up the entire first floor, each cubicle filled with the clicking of keyboards trying to keep up with the tsunami of bureaucracy the long quarantine had created. Ellie peeked over the sea of beige walls, looking for Bing, her friend in export/travel. At first she couldn’t see him, but as she turned the final corner for the steps, she saw his skinny back slumped over his desk, his fist pounding the side of his leg. He was on the phone, and whatever he was being told was clearly not what he wanted to hear. He popped up just before Ellie cleared his area and held the phone out to her. Over the din of the office, she couldn’t make out any sound but easily understood the onefingered hand gesture Bing was making at the receiver. She laughed and waved and flipped off the caller in his honor before heading up to her office.

Bing had once told her she was lucky to work upstairs away from all the noise and telephones. The records office was hushed, but she had tried to explain that the silence he heard was the last sighing breath of despair. There was no rush in records. Once your file made it here, whatever you had been fighting for or fighting against had been resolved. This was the evidence graveyard of Flowertown, where petitions and complaints and suggestions came to die, the red rubber-stamped “Closed” their only epitaphs. It was a job made bearable only by being very high, which worked out well for Ellie, who preferred to stay that way.

She threaded her way through file cabinets and piles of document boxes to her desk in the back of the room. She could hear Big Martha, her boss, trying not to lose her cool with a young woman up front. Ellie couldn’t think of the girl’s name. She knew she had transferred up from HR and had big ideas on how to update and streamline the records process. From the first day, Ellie had ignored her completely, but Big Martha had no choice but to try to explain to the ardent young woman that expediency was not a high priority in records–it was more a game of outwaiting and outlasting–but the girl wanted none of it. She fancied herself quite the firecracker, Ellie wagered, flopping into her crooked office chair and turning on her computer, letting her hazy thoughts play with images of firecrackers and the endless boxes of paper. She liked the image–the sight of all of this going up in flames, burning hot and smoky and acrid enough to cut through the putrid smell of flowers that she till had not gotten used to after all these years.

A short stack of envelopes sat in her inbox. The first she recognized from the much-wrinkled, worn, and marked interoffice envelope. Flowertown was probably the last place in the industrialized world to use these things. Like so many other things in the zone, Internet access was so spectacularly unreliable that most people had pretty much given up on it. Messages were sent the old-fashioned way, on paper, which made them no harder to ignore. Her bosses expected her to attend a mandatory staff meeting that Thursday. It amazed her that anyone within the confines of Flowertown thought that anything could be mandatory anymore, anything other than meds, tests, and check-ins. What were they going to do if she didn’t attend the meeting? Fire her? Kick her out? Regardless of her state of employment, she would still receive her quarantine stipend check. It went without saying that her medical was covered, and she had been grandfathered into her living quarters. The only purpose this shadow of a job served was to put some sort of artificial shape to the hours of her day. She showed up, she moved some papers around, she went back to the shoebox she shared with Rachel. And occasionally, if Guy was MP on her floor that night, she slipped off with him for a diversion of the hip-banging kind. It was a freedom that the outside world could never understand and, like her job, was better appreciated very, very high.

The next envelope contained a badly printed flyer from VolCorp, one of the many charitable groups that had crossed the quarantine barrier in the early years to help the contaminated. The message was the usual lamenting and threatening and impassioned plea for resources and volunteers. Ellie didn’t know why these messages kept coming to her or who had put her name out there as somebody who could or did give a shit about it. The only involvement she’d ever had with VolCorp was when they were giving away lemonade to anyone who would help repaint the community center. The lemonade had tasted like iodine, and Ellie hadn’t painted a thing. She tossed the paper into the recycling bin.

The third envelope stood out from the rest. It was a real envelope, an actual U.S. Postal Service delivery, stamp and all. From the mashed-up look of it, the delivery had been rough, but that wasn’t what made her hesitate to open it. It was from her sister, Bev, in Hershey. Ellie ripped open the envelope before she had time to know she didn’t want to read it, and confetti showered to her desk. The message invited everyone to a surprise birthday party for their mother three weeks from today at a community park Ellie had never heard of. There would be a pig roast and kegs, and for those family members coming in from out of town, a block of rooms at the Best Western were being held at a special rate but they were going fast because everybody was planning on coming in for Rosalind Seaton Cauley’s big sixtieth birthday party! Bev had even inserted maps with directions to the party from every compass point, but Ellie closed the invitation without reading them. She felt pretty certain nobody had mapped out the path from Flowertown to Hershey, and even if she had thought of going, three weeks was not enough time to detox and get the paperwork to leave the site. She also felt pretty certain that Bev knew this and tried not to think of what her sister’s motivations might be for sending the festive little note. She dangled the invitation over the recycling bin, wanting to drop it, to make it disappear, but couldn’t. Instead she shoved it in a drawer and reached for the final envelope.

She didn’t recognize the fourth envelope. The writing on the front was just a series of jumbled letters and numbers. It didn’t even have her name on it, but Ellie thought even a brochure for another volunteer rally was better than ending on her sister’s message. She unfolded the crisp white paper, seeing nothing but two lines of type:

All You Want.
Arm yourself.

Beneath the message, a cartoon clock danced on the margin. Ellie flipped the paper over, but the rest of the page was white. With a laugh, she scribbled Bing’s name on the envelope, tagging it “New Staff Meeting Agenda,” and put it in her outbox. Feeling lucky, she tried to open her Internet connection. The screen went white for a long moment and Ellie kicked back in her chair. The odds of getting online were slim to none, but what the hell? She contemplated bumming a cigarette from Big Martha while she waited, but her morning high had just reached that point where time got sort of stretchy, so she just closed her eyes and waited for the screen to come to life.

She drifted, the warmth of the office and the whispers of papers settling over her like a soft throw. She crossed her feet on an open drawer and crossed her arms over her head, once again catching her unwashed scent. This time it didn’t remind her of the broken water system or the daily irritations of quarantine. This time her thoughts wandered back to Guy, to the thick twist of muscles in his biceps, etched with a tribal tattoo, to the cut of that muscle that led down to his pelvis. God, she loved that cut. The first time she had seen him, he had been unloading crates outside of her building. His army-issued T-shirt had come loose from his fatigues, and when he reached up to grab a heavy crate from the truck, she had seen those muscles in his stomach. She hadn’t even bothered to pretend to not watch him. Guy was short and thick and dark, nothing like her usual type, especially in army clothes. But he wore those clothes and those muscles like he had something dirty on his mind, which, she happily learned, he did. She rubbed her hands over her face, fully prepared to let her mind wander as far afield as it wanted until a voice boomed out before her.

“In Flowertown, secrets can KILL you!”

“Fuck!” Ellie tipped forward in her seat, scrambling for the knob to turn down her speakers. A preview of a new cop drama filled the screen, flashes of a gorgeous starlet, a hail of gunfire, and serious-looking men flickering in and out of sight. Ellie clicked and clicked on the little “x” in the corner, swearing all the while.

“Why don’t you just kick the screen in?” She hadn’t noticed Bing come up behind her.

Finally the commercial ended, but the image of the show’s logo remained frozen on the screen. “Seriously?” Ellie threw the mouse in disgust. “I don’t have enough juice to download Championship Sudoku but this shit will play? And stay? I can’t get this crap off my screen.”

“That’s because they want you to see it.”

“Of course they do, Bing.”

“They want us to see it and they want the folks outside to see it. And they want us to know the folks outside have seen it. They want us to know what we look like to them.”

“Obviously. It makes perfect sense. The same people who can’t keep the water on in two buildings at the same time have a master plan to hijack the web. They can’t keep track of how many paperclips to order, but they can link up satellites and brainwash TV producers.”

“It’s all part of the plan, Ellie. Trust me.” Bing pushed her empty inbox to the side and sat on the corner of her desk, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoking?”

“I’m in a room full of dry boxes of paper and no ventilation. Of course I’m smoking.”

She led her friend toward the back of the office, where the metal sheeting of the walls lay exposed, covered only with thin sheets of plastic nailed to framework. The floor around the area was marked off in scuffed red paint, a warning to anyone up here that this area was for Feno Chemical paperwork only. Document boxes sealed with red tape and mismatched file cabinets that someone had once carefully organized were now rearranged into a functional if uncomfortable sitting area. Ellie hopped up onto a pale gray threedrawer cabinet set perpendicular to a tall, six-drawer tower. The arrangement suited her needs perfectly, giving her room to stretch her legs while leaning back comfortably. It should suit her; she was the one who had rearranged the boxes and cartons into a mazelike warren.

Bing settled down on a low, square cardboard box against the wall. Had he been even twenty pounds heavier, the box would have collapsed under his weight, but it suited him perfectly, and he referred to it as his beanbag. Beside him, the handhold opening of a sealed file box provided a perfect ashtray. A teetering wall of matching sealed file boxes cut the area off from the rest of the office. He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack and lighter to Ellie.

“What would happen if we just burned this whole place to the ground?”

Ellie laughed, blowing out a smoke ring as she tossed the pack back to Bing. “Funny you should say that. I was just thinking that very thing. Maybe it’s that new weed you’re growing.”

“Unlike you, young lady, I don’t get high before I come to work.” He flicked a long ash into the file box. “Like other respectable Flowertownians, I wait until lunchtime to get wasted.”

“See? That’s the problem with you HR drones. You never take the initiative.” She rested the back of her head against the cool file cabinet, hearing the familiar ka-thunk of the thin metal bending under the weight of her skull. “I got a letter from Bev. They’re having a surprise party for Mom. Kegs and everything.”

“You going?”

“I was thinking about it. Oh, no, wait!” Ellie smacked her hand against her forehead. “I forgot. I’m in quarantine! Shit! I better call them back.”

Bing said nothing, only shaped his ash against the red security tape.

“It’s in three weeks. There isn’t time to get out even if I wanted to.”

“When did you get it?”

“This morning.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.” She held the ember of her cigarette against the edge of the cabinet she sat on, adding to a long line of scorch marks. “You’re gonna get a little something in the mail from me today too.”

“I try not to check my mail at work, knowing what’s coming. It’s not from that stupid missionary group, is it? I swear to God, those crazy bastards have given me a new religion, the Church of I’m Gonna Kick Your Ass. If they request one more Kirk Cameron video–”

“Whenever I get those I send them to that bitch in the front office. She loves crushing people’s hopes and dreams.” Ellie ground out her cigarette and wedged it into a dent in the back of the cabinet. “No, this was weird. The address looked like code. You know, R four two two six Alpha Dogstar kind of crap. Like mail from a Klingon.”

Bing fished another cigarette from his pack and talked around the smoke. “Maybe you have family in Nigeria who need help getting their money out of the country. I’ve heard that’s been happening a lot lately. Sounds lucrative.”

“I wish. All this had was this little dancing clock and this totally cryptic message, like ‘You’re doomed’ or something.”

“It actually said ‘doomed’? Who says ‘doomed’?”

“It was something like that.” Ellie rubbed her eyes, trying to think through her morning buzz for the exact message. “Wait, I remember. It was ‘All you want.’ I remember thinking ‘You don’t even want to know what I want right now’ because I had just read Bev’s–”

“You didn’t send it to me, did you?”

“What?” She laughed at his sharp tone. “Yeah, why?”

“Shit, don’t you ever pay attention to anything? All You Want? That doesn’t ring any bells for you? You haven’t seen those words plastered all over buildings everywhere you look?”

“Oh please, Bing, don’t. Don’t start with your crazy government master plan shit. You know I love you. You are my best friend, but I swear I cannot take another second of–”

“This isn’t Area 51 crap, Ellie. This isn’t a bunch of geeks looking to get off–”

“You of all people should know the innate ineffectiveness of government and bureaucracy and political pork. It’s ludicrous–”

“I’m not the only one who thinks this, Ellie!” He finally succeeded in shouting her down. She rolled her eyes but let him speak. “This isn’t about a government master plan. This isn’t the censorship that is going on right under our noses, even though it’s a fact that every word of our correspondence, digital and paper, is filtered before entering or leaving–”

“Bing…”

“Okay, okay, let’s just put that totally off to the side.” He leaned forward on his box, threatening the strength of the sealing tape. “This is something totally different. This is simple economics: supply and demand, widgets and gadgets.”

“Garbage in, garbage out.”

“Exactly.” He pointed his finger at her, and Ellie tried not to smile at how much he looked like a bird at this moment, a big pissed-off bird. “The problem is there is no garbage out. There is only garbage in and the system is overloaded. PennCo was designed to accommodate a limited number of residents for a limited amount of time. Not seven years, I can guaran-fucking-tee you that.”

“No argument here, brother. What’s your point?”

“Yeah, well not only has the time frame been stretched way too long, so has the population matrix.”

“Population matrix?” Ellie asked. “I’m outta here.”

“This was supposed to be a quarantine zone for a potentially fatal chemical, but instead of the population shrinking, it has grown. And continues to grow. Rescue workers, military, civil engineers…”

“Racketeers, extortionists–Walmart, for the love of Pete.” This part of the argument Ellie knew well and agreed with. Flowertown had become a high-risk/high-pay zone for a number of ambitious and ruthless businesses hoping to make a quick buck on the sudden need for infrastructure. For those healthy and greedy enough to give it a try, the lucrative contracts, whether from Feno or the government, made the sickening prevention meds worth the trouble. The problem was that infrastructures don’t pop up overnight and they don’t maintain themselves, so the seven and a half miles of restricted space became more congested by the month.

“So what happens when we outgrow our resources?” Bing had worked himself into a state, perched on the edge of the box. “What happens when our contained water and waste supply breaks down? When our food storage systems can’t meet safety regulations and food ration lines turn into riots? What happens when the power grid fails from yet another amateur entrepreneur overtaxing it to put up another third-rate rat trap of apartments?”

Ellie knew better than to try to interrupt her friend when he was on a tear, so she simply shook her head and waited.

“I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen: the government is not going to step in and save us. PennCo bleeds millions of dollars from the American taxpayers every year, and if it looks like there’s a chance to ease that burden, don’t think for a second this administration or the next will hesitate to plug that hole. And the beauty of it is they won’t even have to do anything. All they’ll have to do is withdraw the troops, recall the security forces, and let natural human entropy work its magic. Think about it, Ellie: no law, no power grid, no communication. Just Flowertown. The only people left standing would be those who thought ahead and armed themselves now while there’s still time.”

“Oh my God, I never thought of it like that. If what you say is true, if that’s really what’s going to happen, then it can only mean one thing.” Ellie put her hand to her forehead. “It would mean that…Soylent Green…is…people.”

“Fuck you, Ellie!” Bing leapt from his seat, kicking at the file box between them.

“Sorry. My Charlton Heston’s a bit rusty, but I thought it was okay.”

“Yeah, sure, you know what?” Bing jammed his hand in his pocket and pulled out a baggie of weed. “Get fucking high. Just get high and hide out here and bang your little soldier boy while you can, and then when the shit goes down, you can sit there like all the other sheep and go ‘Somebody help us! Somebody save us!’ Except there’s not going to be anybody. Nobody’s coming to save you, Ellie. Nobody. Let me hear you say it.”

“Nobody’s coming to save me.”

“Fuck you, Ellie. I don’t know why I waste my time on you.”

“Because you want to bang my roommate.”

Bing’s face flushed deep red, but he bit back whatever nasty retort threatened to escape. Ellie could hear the breath tearing through his large nose as he struggled to contain his temper, and then he stomped out of the office and down the stairs. She reached into the baggie and pulled out a halfsmoked joint. As she coughed back the harsh smoke, she could hear the alarm going off on her cell phone on her desk. Eleven thirty, time for her meds appointment.

She held in the smoke so long she began to get lightheaded. There was no need for her to hurry to her appointment. She hadn’t bothered to share the news with her friends, but after last month’s checkup she had received her new medical status–blue tag. It meant she wouldn’t have to stand in line with the other hundred people at the dispensary getting their handfuls of maintenance medications. Nope, now she could swipe the crisp new keychain tag under the scanner and be let into the hallway to the left of registration, to the blue tag lounge. It wasn’t as crowded in there, and last month there had even been snacks on the table. It seemed a nice perk for finding out her liver had betrayed her.

When HF-16 had first been spilled, thousands had been contaminated. The actual numbers were never released, but statistics snuck out to the press. Approximately 17 percent of those contaminated died within two months, including her boyfriend, Josh. Six percent showed no signs of chemical absorption and were released. That left 73 percent of the population required to undertake a maintenance/rehabilitation medication regimen that killed 12 percent of participants in the first year. Adjustments were made to the medications, and if the reports could be believed, as contamination levels slowly receded, the health of Flowertownians remained steady. Mostly steady, that is. One small sector of the population remained resistant to the medications, their livers choosing instead to throw in the towel and leave the rest of the organs to a slow and miserable death. Those residents were switched from the sickening maintenance medications to simply “quality of life” treatments. And their medical records were transferred to the blue folders. These residents were known as blue tags.

Ellie finally exhaled.

“Nobody’s coming to save me.”

CHAPTER TWO

Ellie picked through the tray of Twinkies and granola bars until she found the Little Debbie snack cakes she’d been looking for. She grabbed a Nutty Bar for herself, slipping an extra Swiss Roll into her purse on her way to the examination room. Her cottonmouth had not receded with her morning high and she considered turning back for some coffee, but the doctor was already waiting for her. The blue tag lounge had that to recommend it: the service was certainly prompt.

“Good morning. I’m Dr. Lavange. Please have a seat.”

Ellie nodded, trying to suck the dry chocolate off her teeth as she allowed the tall woman to hold the door open for her. Dr. Lavange had that skinny, thin-haired look that could have put her anywhere between an unhealthy thirty and a fantastic sixty, and her tendency to talk with her head cocked in permanent sympathy irritated Ellie.

“Why don’t I get you set up with your sample cups, and as soon as you get back–”

“I can do it here.” Ellie snatched the urine sample cup from the doctor’s hands and, before the older woman could protest, dropped her pants and squatted. Six years of urine samples on demand had turned most Flowertown residents into pissing sharpshooters.

Ellie handed the warm cup back to her, not a drop out of place. Dr. Lavange succeeded in hiding her discomfort, and Ellie tried not to grin as the doctor got her fingers damp snapping the plastic lid back on. “I keep telling my roommate that’ll be quite a party trick when we get out of quarantine.”

“I’m sure it will be.” The doctor put the sample on a sliding tray in the wall. In the older woman’s eyes she saw the certainty that, urinating abilities aside, Ellie would never be leaving quarantine. “We will also need a blood sample before you leave. Or can you do that too?”

Ellie tried to smirk, but felt that familiar smothering sensation of panic trying to overwhelm her. She shook her head and hopped up on the paper-covered examining table. Dr. Lavange opened her file and began to read.

“It says here you are an admittedly heavy user of marijuana. Is that still the case?”

“More than ever.”

She tilted her head even farther to the side. “Ms. Cauley,” her eyes flickered to the file then back up, “Ellie, I know the laws regarding illegal drug use within the containment area have been relaxed a great deal. After all, security certainly has enough on their hands, don’t they?” Ellie sighed, wondering if Dr. Lavange could actually touch her ear to her shoulder. “But just because there are few criminal consequences for marijuana use, it doesn’t mean there are no medical repercussions.”

“You mean like liver failure?”

Dr. Lavange’s face puckered into a sympathetic mess that made Ellie want to smack it back and forth. “It certainly doesn’t help.”

“Yeah, well, I’m thinking your HF-sixteen did a lot more damage to my liver than a few dank buds, and with a lot less fun attached.”

“It wasn’t my HF-sixteen.”

“You work for Feno Chemical.”

Ellie liked the way the doctor’s head jerked. “No, sorry. Not me. I work with Barlay Pharmaceuticals. As an independent contractor.”

“Who signs your check?”

“Who signs yours?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Ellie could see the doctor’s regret at having allowed herself to be baited so. Lavange turned back to the file, her fingernail tapping out her irritation. Everyone knew Barlay Pharma was a subsidiary of the multinational that also owned Feno Chemical. It made sense, at least to Ellie. Feno had made the mess; their parent company had to clean it up. Why everyone acted like it was some dirty little secret was beyond her. It came in handy, though, when one of the med-techs needed to be put back a step.

Speaking to Ellie’s file, the doctor said, “I suppose it would be a waste of both of our times to suggest that you reduce, if not completely stop, your use of marijuana.”

“I suspect that is true.”

The doctor kept her eyes on the paper. “Have you been informed of the comprehensive counseling services we offer for quality of life treatment?”

“They sound very comprehensive.”

She flipped through several pages of the file, searching for something, then closed the folder, clutched it to her chest, and looked at Ellie. “I don’t see any mention of family within the containment area. Are our records accurate?”

“They are.” Ellie sat very still, promising herself that if Lavange tilted her head so much as a centimeter, she would kick her. Lavange did not move. “I’m not from Iowa.”

“May I ask how you came to be in this area?”

“You mean in the spill zone? You can call it that, Doctor. We all do. We all know why we’re here.” This time, the older woman did not take the bait. Ellie wished she could eat that other Little Debbie in her purse so she wouldn’t have to keep talking. “I’m from Pennsylvania, near Hershey.”

“Is your family still there?”

“Yes. My parents rented a place in Iowa City for a while, in the early days. They and my sisters took turns living there, visiting me, back when they had the suits and all. Well, my mom never did. Visit, I mean. She couldn’t handle the suit and the rest of it.”

Lavange nodded, still clutching the file. “And do they still come visit? The clean rooms have gotten much better in the last two years.” When Ellie was quiet, Lavange asked, “Do you keep in touch?”

Ellie could feel her throat closing as that gray hairy panic descended once more. “Yeah, you know, they’ve all got kids and stuff. We e-mail when it’s working.” She tapped her foot against the table leg, rhythmically soothing herself. Lavange said nothing, just let her tap-tap-tap until Ellie found herself speaking without thinking.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here. I quit my job. Advertising. I had a big job in Chicago and I hated it, so my boyfriend, Josh, and I decided to save up our money and take a summer off and go to Spain. My parents were furious. They said I was wasting my education and destroying my career, but when I looked ahead, I just couldn’t see myself spending the next forty years churning out demographic reports and test-marketing jingles.” The words spilled out so fast, Ellie had to gasp to catch her breath but could not stop her thoughts.

“I was packed. I was packed.” Her foot pounded against the table. “I had all my stuff packed in my trunk and we were staying with Josh’s parents for a month before we left, out on Blair’s Branch Road on the edge of the county. They had the nicest little farm. And you know what’s funny? I remember thinking, ‘God, it’s so beautiful here, why don’t we just stay here and skip Spain?’ Isn’t that funny?” Ellie dragged in a ragged breath and then crossed her feet at the ankles to stop her nervous pounding. She had to tuck her hands under her thighs to keep her fingers from fluttering. Another deep breath, this one smoother, and her tone returned to normal. “So long story short, no, I have no family here.”

“And your boyfriend, Josh, and his family?”

Ellie found her sneer once more. “You must not be familiar with the area. Blair’s Branch Road is right off Furman Creek. What your people like to call the epicenter of the incident.”

The tech Lavange had turned her over to jabbed Ellie’s finger like it was personal, but Ellie didn’t flinch. All they needed was a drop of blood and her finger complied. Bing had told her once that the maintenance meds contained a blood thinner to make the constant blood samples easier to obtain. She hadn’t cared then; she cared less now. Everyone in Flowertown bore the constant bruises and prick marks of needles on their arms and hands and feet. The tech signed off on the blue form and handed it back to Ellie, waving her off to the dispensary window. Lavange had checked off several boxes on the preprinted form for the first tier of quality of life meds.

Ellie leaned against the wall outside the dispensary, waiting behind an older couple leaning on each other. The woman steadied herself by placing her blue-veined hand against a framed sign. The sign was behind thick plastic, protected, and Ellie thought it must be some sort of collector’s item by now, at least within the confines of Flowertown. It was a large, soft-focus photograph of a young man swinging his daughter over his head, the sun making both of them glow on the edge of a field of sunflowers. Behind them, laughing and smiling, stood a small crowd, family presumably, with a picnic laid out behind them, complete with a healthy jumping dog. Beneath the photo, in understated type, was the caption “Bringing families together.” And beneath that, nearly hidden in the green, green grass, was the Barlay Pharma logo.

Someone with stunningly bad judgment had decided years ago to place those ads around Flowertown, and the graffiti that covered them was both instantaneous and obscene. A couple of times, Ellie had even had to look up what some of the words meant, and she and Bing never tired of seeing the new vulgarities. After a while, Barlay and/or Feno decided to save the PR for the outside world. Now the only place to see the Barlay logo was behind Plexiglas in the heavily guarded dispensary. She couldn’t tell if it was an accident or intentional, but when the old woman pulled her hand away from the sign, she left a greasy smear over the center of the photo.

As soon as she made it to the corner, Ellie fished out the roach she had snubbed before going into the med center. Not caring who was watching, she pinched the brown bunch between her fingernails and noisily sucked the lighter’s flame to the tip. A few deep hits and nothing remained but a scorched twist of rolling paper that Ellie flicked into the shrubs. Her slow exhale was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass, followed by sirens and the sound of a voice on a bullhorn. Ellie followed the sounds down the block and joined a growing crowd at the corner where a string of military trucks formed a barrier around an apartment building.

“Stand down!”

Ellie couldn’t find the owner of the bullhorn. She figured he was probably hiding in one of the trucks, letting the security forces do the actual enforcing. The soldiers were certainly ready. They had riot shields and batons and helmets with thick eye guards. They seemed more than a match for the dozen or so elderly women who were throwing rocks and pieces of broken pavement both up at the building and across the yard toward the trucks. None of them seemed to have the strength to hurl the missiles far enough to be any real danger to the soldiers, but they found a good bit of success smashing out the windows on the lower floors. Around her, people were laughing and cheering the women on.

“Come on over here and arrest us, you little chicken shit!” A short woman in her early seventies brandished half a brick like a hand grenade, threatening a trio of heavily armed soldiers nearest the building. “Come on! Arrest us! Your country club jail is better than this rattrap shit hole you’ve got us stuck in! What’s the matter, boy? You scared of an old lady?”

The men looked back to whomever was in command and, either by order or by instinct, stepped away from the woman as a group. The crowd cheered and the woman held her brick up in triumph. “These are the living conditions we’re supposed to accept!” The woman’s voice was strong, despite her age and small size. “They put us in this building, this ‘senior center,’ because they claim it’s the safest place for women of our age to live on our own. I had a house!” The crowd yelled back, encouraging her. “A lot of us had houses, and we had to give them up, and for what? For safety? For convenience? How convenient do you think it is to have sixteen old women living in a building where the toilets don’t flush half the time?”

Beside her, a larger, older woman hefting a heavy chunk of asphalt chimed in. “Hell, we’re lucky to make it to the toilet half the time, so it’s not like we’re overtaxing the system!” The crowd roared out a laugh, and the smaller woman continued.

“We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re just asking for safe and hygienic conditions and some goddamn air-conditioning before the catchall trenches start to stink!” All around the building, people yelled and clapped, everyone dreading the days coming up soon when the spring rain runoff that was caught in containment trenches around the city would begin to stink with the cleansing agents. Somebody, somewhere behind Ellie, started the chant, “All you want! All you want!” and soon the sidewalk was rocking with the words. A young man beside her put his arm around Ellie, trying to get her to sway with him, but she pushed her way back through the throng. Orchestrated demonstrations were never her thing.

As she cleared the thickest part of the crowd, the chorus broke down into boos and catcalls. Looking over her shoulder she saw a soldier in riot gear step up to the ringleader of the rock-throwing. He didn’t flinch when she held her brick high in her hands. Instead he flipped up his visor and came even closer. Everything about his posture was relaxed. With all the gear he looked like a catcher for a strange baseball team heading out to the mound for a conference with the pitcher. The woman lowered her brick and her friend put the hunk of asphalt down on the ground. The three huddled together, other women on the lawn coming in closer to listen in. The crowd quieted down and even the military radios stopped squawking. Nobody could hear anything of the conversation until the soldier pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to a fat and sweating soldier perched on top of a jeep and the smaller woman threw back her head and cackled.

All of the women were laughing and the lead soldier shrugged. He turned to face the crowd, and the women put down their bricks and rocks and headed back toward the building. Ellie watched, as curious as the rest of the crowd, as he unstrapped his helmet and tucked it under his arm. It was Guy. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed the swagger. Guy headed back toward the convoy, speaking loud enough for the crowd to hear his Boston accent.

     “Crisis averted, sir. I promised them we’d have services come out immediately and fix their plumbing. Of course, they wouldn’t take my word for it, so I had to up the ante.” His eyes slid to the side to see if he still had his audience. “I told them the good news was if it didn’t get done, one of our guys would give them a lap dance. The bad news was I told them it would be from Fletcher.” He gestured to the fat soldier he had pointed to during the powwow, and even the soldiers laughed. Fletcher flipped him off and the convoy began to disband. Guy, along with a few others still in riot gear, moved through the crowd, shooing people away from the scene.

“C’mon, c’mon, let’s go.” Guy waved his arms as he walked along the sidewalk. Ellie stayed where she was, watching the crowd obey him as they stepped back into the streets. He started to turn back and then noticed her standing there. He grinned and tucked the helmet farther up under his arm. “Don’t you have anything better to do than watch a bunch of old women throw rocks?”

“Not really.”

Guy moved in closer, his heavy gear not impeding his grace at all. “I guess we can’t all have those cushy office jobs, huh?”

“Guess not.”

She stood still as he stepped in close enough for her to feel the heat coming off the black vest and gear. His face shone with sweat, and she could smell a fresh version of the aroma that lingered on her body from last night. He tossed his helmet into the open back of a covered truck and stripped off his flak vest.

“That’s a lot of gear for a bunch of old women.”

“Yeah, well, you know when we get the call, dispatch doesn’t specify.”

“Just sends in the big guns.”

Ellie let her eyes drift over the damp T-shirt that clung to his chest, sweaty from the riot gear. He stepped in closer–too close, as he always did–and her hand drifted up to rest on his chest. On the edges of her vision she could see a wicked smile on his lips, but her focus remained on the blossom of dampness beneath his collarbone and the two-tone of the drab shirt, wet against dry. Her cottonmouth was back in force, and she licked her lips pointlessly. At the sight of her tongue, Guy pulled her by the hips into him, his mouth stopping less than a whisper away from her own. His lips just grazed hers and his tongue darted out in the lightest touch. She knew he knew what that did to her, and even his arrogant chuckle at her response didn’t put her off.

     He pushed forward, between her legs, walking her backward until he pressed her against the rough canvas of the truck. Less than an inch taller than she, Guy seemed to Ellie to be a wall, a hot, breathing wall that she wanted to throw herself against again and again. Around them, soldiers reloaded the trucks and cleared away bystanders. Pressed deep into the canvas and using the flak vest that hung from his wrist to shield them from sight, Guy took her hand and slid it down to his groin.

     “I thought you didn’t like my riot gear.” He ground himself against her hand, whispering into her ear.

“I don’t.” Ellie felt him harden in her hand. “I like it when you take it off.”

Guy laughed and took a quick look around for his superiors. “Don’t you have to work?”

“Don’t you?”

He reached around and grabbed her ass and squeezed. “I think you’re probably worth a good disciplinary hearing.”

“You could talk your way out of anything.” Ellie let her head fall back against the truck, the canvas pulling at her ponytail, as Guy kissed her neck. “You talked those women down.”

“What can I say?” He spoke into her skin. “I have a way with the ladies.”

“What if you didn’t?”

He bit down on her earlobe. “Then I guess I’d be getting a hand job from Fletcher.”

Ellie pulled her head to the side. “I mean what if you weren’t able to talk those women into surrendering today?” Guy cocked his eyebrow and laughed at the question. “I’m serious. What if they hadn’t put down their bricks? Would you have shot them?”

He sighed, putting his hand over hers on his crotch to resume her massage. “It never would have come to that.”

“What if it did?”

“It wouldn’t.” He pulled away and Ellie resisted, pulling him back to her. “What do you want me to say, Ellie? That we’d mow down a bunch of old women for being upset that they have no water? That we’d take our batons to them to shut them up? Is that what you think?”

“No.”

“No. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re the ones keeping those women safe. We’re the ones making sure nobody tampers with the water or the food or the power stations. We’re the good guys, Ellie. Or don’t you believe that?”

She sighed and nodded, and he leaned back into her again.

“Good girl.” His hands tugged at the belt loops of her jeans, banging her softly against his pelvis. His mouth went back to her ear and his breath was hot on her skin. “Now why don’t you tell me exactly where, when, and how you’re gonna thank me for my services? And use all the dirty words.”

Ellie had to laugh as his hands slid inside the waistband of her jeans and his fingers played softly on the small of her back. “It’s an awfully big debt to repay. We may actually have to break with protocol and find a bed.”

“Ooh, kinky. Go on. Remember, I’m the good guy. A really good guy.”

She felt him getting harder against her, and her hands grabbed at the thick plane of muscles in his back. She let her eyes drift up from his neck and saw the broken windows.

“What if they told you to withdraw?”

“Hmm, baby?” Guy purred into her neck.

Ellie hooked her hands around his back, clinging to him, unable to look away from the shattered glass and the damaged building. “What if they told you to withdraw from Flowertown?”

“Why would they do that?”

“What if they did?”

She felt him tense beneath her hands.

“Why would they tell us to withdraw, Ellie? We’re the good guys, remember?”

“I know.” She felt a draft as his damp skin pulled back from hers. “You’re the good guys. If they told you to withdraw, who would protect us?”

Guy stepped back from her, holding her out at arm’s length. “What’s with you today?”

Before she could answer, a rash of obscenities broke out on the other side of the jeep.

“Roman! Goddamit, Roman! Fletcher!”

Guy swore and stepped toward the rear of the truck, letting her fingers slide free of his. “Roman here, sir. What’s the problem?”

Ellie couldn’t see the man shouting, but he sounded very pissed off. “The problem is, Roman, that while you’re giving lap dances to the old broads here, someone vandalized the goddamn trucks!”

“Aw shit.” Guy ran off, leaving her resting against the unmarked side of the truck. “I’m on it, sir.” She heard orders being barked and bystanders being warned to keep back and decided it would be a good time to head back to work. Pushing herself off the rough canvas, she traced her fingers along the rope webbing holding the canopy in place and tipped her head around the corner of the truck to see the damage. Three trucks were lined up along the sidewalk, each one spray painted in bright orange, one word per truck:

ALL YOU WANT.

Continued….

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FLOWERTOWN >>>>