Sky High
by Christy J. Breedlove
In a post apocalypse world, a group of teenage orphans are determined to escape the tortures of a mile-high city government—a literal platform-city in the sky. They seek the refuge of a utopian society that they believe is rumored to exist.
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GENREDystopian |
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| Teen | ||
Chapter One
I won’t forget that you made me kneel on popcorn hulls as punishment when I was kid. I’ll always remember being called a dung beetle being and switched with a steel rod. Damn you for never letting me meet my real birth parents, and I hope this whole sky-high city rots and tumbles to the ground, killing every last one of you corporate pigs. Then he hesitated about that last thought. But let the real people live and escape. They don’t know they’re really prisoners. As he passed the Quonset hut dormitories, he flipped them the two-finger go-to-hell gesture.
The foot tram was broken on the north side of the pier. Seventeen-year-old Toby Johansson picked up his pace across the dirty grid path—it wasn’t too strenuous for a physical enhancement instructor, even with a permanent limp. As he walked, he looked at the solar panels attached to the tall support frames and building facades. The panels were glazed over with oxidation and separating at the seams, posing the danger of breakage and electrical shorts. Zzzpht! Eight hundred years of exposure to the elements had taken its toll, even with careful maintenance. Good riddance. He flipped off the panels, too.
From his vantage point, he could see the giant Phillips drag pump installation that took up the southwest corner. The pump machinery sat over the hollow piling extending below it. The pump station looked like an oil refinery that’d had coitus with a cement plant—a dirty, eroded collaboration of tanks, pipes, valves and furnaces. It stank like burnt oil.
This was the most isolated spot he’d found on pier zero-zero-one-C, officially named Cloud’s Rest. He called his hiding place the “cubby hole.”
It was eleven o’clock at night when Toby scurried to the southwest corner of the pier that was occupied by the giant station pumps. He glanced around before he ducked under a bundle of conduit pipes, stepped around a back-up generator and squeezed between two holding tanks. He crossed over the red warning line and walked to the railing at the end of the pier. Surprisingly, Maria and Justice were there, sitting in the extreme corner of the railing joint, making themselves as small as possible. He could see their faces in the refracted light set off by the fireworks above—the anniversary celebration of Cloud’s Rest was in full swing.
Eighteen-year-old Justice looked thin and frail with her knees drawn up against her chest, head at a slight downward tilt, causing her long black hair to cascade over the front of her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes were lost in the shadow, looking like two black sockets. Eighteen-year-old Marie’s frothy red hair set off sparks of light as the cannon stars burst overhead. Her green eyes looked almost translucent.
Four parachute packs sat on the deck, harness straps splayed out like fat strands of linguini. Toby noticed the packs were encased in heavy paper sacks. Four additional survival packs were stacked against a railing post. The girls had placed the packs and gear there earlier.
“Where in the hell is Remy?” asked Justice.
“He better not be doing what I think he’s doing,” said Toby. This was a race against time, and they already had a slacker. Not good. Failure in the making.
Lockdown for twelve months was not uncommon for an attempted escape. Another option was a shorter sentence at hard labor in the fertilizer depository. The hard labor was durable. The fact that dead human bodies were ground up with mulch and served as nutrient feed to the garden grounds gave the job a sickening morbidity. He closed his eyes and imagined the bones cracking and flesh squishing under the grinding wheels.
In a kidding but sarcastic gesture, Toby had nicknamed Remy a “slobaholic,” since the man had a penchant for stealing liquor, picking fights and trashing his quad cubical.
Toby looked at Maria crunch up her face and rock back and forth on her butt, knowing she had the same thoughts. “I’m going to kill him,” she declared. “He’s getting his fill somewhere when he knows we’re on the clock. Soaring Eagle will come apart at the seams if he doesn’t get his ass here—right damn it to hell now.”
Toby gave Maria the finger over the lips gesture. Her voice was a tad loud, considering they were under stealth mode. The thought of a blunt happening upon them sawed on his nerves. They didn’t need the law finding them in this restricted area. There would be no question about the group’s intentions. I’m about to lose you, you ugly bitch, he swore at the pier. Over five thousand eight-hundred feet separates me from freedom. I’m too close to let this go.
They waited fifteen minutes before they heard a body shuffling and clanging through the pump gear. The unknown person warbled a few stanzas to an old song and then hit something that sounded like a bell. Remy. The thick-bodied seventeen-year-old appeared from between the tanks, stood for a moment and then leaned ponderously forward. He rubbed a bump on his forehead.
Toby hooked an arm around him, shoved him to the rail and hissed, “Shut the damn hell up, Remy. You stink. You’ve been swizzling liquor.”
Remy blew out a flammable breath. “I ain’t doing this crap sober. You know me—when it ain’t right, I get tight. Besides that, and for your information, I had a mission to accomplish.”
Justice leapt up, squaring off in Remy’s face. “You damn fool; you can’t do this drunk. We’ll have to call the whole thing off on account of you.”
Remy rocked on his heels. “Naw, we’ll never get this chance again. I’m goin’.”
Maria abruptly rose. “The hell you say.”
Toby swished his arms. “Everybody wear your calm.” He turned Remy’s face around to glare steadily into his eyes. “You sure about this? You know what we have to do. We can’t have any foul-ups, and that means terminal ones. Under special circumstances, we could get executed for this.”
“I’m tellin’ ya I’m going to be all right. Let’s make this happen.”
Toby looked at Remy’s belly. “What do you have in that waist pouch? You know our weight limit is critical.”
“Just a few essentials.” He blew out a nauseous burp. “No more than a few extra pounds.”
“Whenever, and if we ever get married, I’m going to kick your ass to a rain gutter,” said Justice.
Maria took the chute packs out of the sacks. She positioned everyone’s feet over the two leg strap openings. Then she told them to pull up the harness straps, cross them over their shoulders and bring the belly strap around to the front. Toby knew about the belt buckles and adjusted his harness for a tight fit. He and Maria helped the others lace up and position their pull cords over their right shoulders. Toby knew that with one stark yank, the pull cord would deploy the pilot chute then pull out the main canopy. They’d performed the movements in rehearsal a dozen times, three times in the dark.
Toby tossed the surplus packs over the rail near the base of the corner pier piling. He wouldn’t hear them hit or see where they landed after a mile of freefall. He ordered everyone to spread out a distance of ten feet from each other. Instead of taking his position, he walked over to Remy and put the pull cord firmly in the man’s right hand. “Give it five seconds,” he reminded Remy. “Don’t let go of this cord for any reason, even after you pull it. Wait for the rockin’ big tug.” Toby wet his finger in the air and held it up. “Okay, no breeze. No steering. Don’t pull to either side.”
“I know the drill,” said Remy and slung his leg over the top rail. “Holy Master, I’m outta here!” He leapt, emitting a whoop.
Maria grazed against Toby before she sidled up next to the rail. She looked at him with steely green eyes and pursed her lips. He was convinced that her body language was deliberately animated. She never stood in front of anybody with a relaxed stance. She always struck a pose. She gave him a wet kiss and a crushing embrace before she sat on the rail, facing him. She winked and fell backward over the rail with an “eeehaaa!” He had to admit that he had something for Maria, and their bond was starting to escalate. He wondered how far it would go once they changed their environment.
Justice counted down the seconds and gave Toby a snappy salute. She gathered her hair in a bun, clipped it and bellied over the rail and disappeared.
Toby waited his turn and straddled the rail. Please don’t let me find dead bodies at the bottom. He stared downward into the dark void.
Anything alive and moving down below was indistinguishable, except for the big electric scout and track vehicles which ran over a levy road and disappeared in the distant tree line. The edge of the forest sat upon upraised land created by the giant tidal surges nearly five hundred feet above the flat washed-out basin. Behind the surviving trees, hills rolled away in a blaze of grays and dark greens. The trees seemed cleaved away from the basin as clearly as though cut by an axe stroke. The saltwater run-up had done its damage. Toby knew that the birds that flew over Cloud’s Rest had come from the arboreal dells within the forest. How many times had he wished that he could fly above the trashy flotsam and soar in the sweet fragrant air, to land in the comfort of a nest? Freedom.
He flung himself over the rail.
Weightless overcame him in the pitch-black void, but then he had the feeling he’d begun a spiraling tumble. He cursed against the wind rush and pulled his cord at the five-second mark. Nothing happened. He cursed again and yanked harder. He heard the snap of fabric and then had the sensation of being punched in the guts by a giant fist.