Rebels vs. Metro (Part 3)

Ariel was happy that the power was working. The Rebels had announced a ration of eight hours of electricity for the week, and she was soaking up the light and heat of the occasion.

The tent that her family lived in was small, but had a high ceiling, and there was enough room to house her father, her mother, her baby brother and herself in relative comfort. The floor was made from wooden pallets, keeping the rats and the water at a safe distance under the family’s feet. An extension cord dangled from the tarp ceiling. Having your own outlet was a luxury in the Outskirts; her father had had to work for an entire month as a mechanic for the Rebels to get one.

Ariel had been born in the City just weeks before the collapse. When her father lost his job as a clerk for the City, their family had been sent to live in the very first Outskirts camps, where hunger and misery had been a way of life. Over time the City had abandoned responsibility for the squalid camps, leaving a patchwork of families, communities and gangs to divide up the Outskirts among themselves.

As Ariel was growing up in a shantytown called the Monsoon, the Rebels were emerging as the most powerful group operating in the Outskirts. They grew their power in the camps first by selling drugs, then food and water to the desperate, suffering residents, and it wasn’t long before the gang expanded into basic services and infrastructure. The Rebels kidnapped doctors and cooks, engineers and chemists and kept them as prisoner-labourers in brick-and-mortar shelters they built among the tents and shacks of the Outskirts.

The Rebels replicated this strategy in nearly all of the encampments surrounding the City, and combined with their many successes in the City the gang made it clear to both Metro and the feds that in the power vacuum left in the wake of the collapse, the Rebels had become a governing force to be reckoned with.

Hundreds of shacks and shanties spread out for a mile on each side of a wide, fetid dirt street, the Monsoon’s main thoroughfare. The best of the shacks were built with metal, scrap lumber and brick, reinforced with sandbags and tied off with tarps to protect from the rain and floods, while the weaker ones were nailed together with plywood and sheet metal and had rusted and sagging roofs. The only real building in the Monsoon had been built by to the Rebels: a two-story concrete bunker with a shingled roof and a poured foundation. This was the Rebel administration office, where every resident of the Monsoon was required to register and get a residency tattoo.

The Rebels didn’t collect taxes; without currency it was too complicated. Instead, they had taken control of the economy of the Monsoon by erecting their own shops and slaughtering off competitors, usually in public to benefit from the intimidation factor.

All Rebel stores accepted paycards from the few residents who had them, but mostly the Rebels negotiated in barter of all kinds. In this way, nearly all of the Monsoon’s residents ended up working for the gang in one way or another.

On the day that the Rebels had executed dozens of their rival gang members, taking control of the Monsoon, Ariel’s mother and father had told her that it wouldn’t be long before Metro or the feds sent in troops to drive the gang out. But in the weeks that followed, it became clear to the people of the Monsoon that the government would not be returning.

When the electricity in the tent flicked off abruptly, Ariel stepped out of the damp shelter and onto the narrow dirt pathway that ran through her family’s corner of the Monsoon. Her parents, carrying her baby brother in a bundle, had warned her not to leave their area while they were away in the City. Now it had been three days since they had left, and Ariel was restless.

She began walking and followed the path through the dark toward the limit of the Monsoon, where the tents and shanties were fewer and the woods grew thicker. Eventually the ground began to rise, and she hiked to the top of a wide hill that led to a rock outcropping. There the sky was open ahead of her, and Ariel could see the lighted towers of the City in the distance.

Ariel sat down on a ledge and dug into her pants pocket, and pulled out a thin silver paycard that she had found on the muddy ground outside of the Rebel compound in the Monsoon. She turned the softly-gleaming card over in her hands, feeling its weight, and the possibilities that it held.

After a few minutes, Ariel got up and began to carefully descend down the rocky hillside, glancing up now and then to look across the treetops towards the light of the City.

***

Cole led five men out of the Rebel house and across the lawn to a black SUV parked at the curb. The suburban streets around them were dark and deserted. Cole’s cell phone rang, and he turned and walked away from the vehicle to answer as the other Rebels climbed into the truck.

“Yeah.”

“Hello, Cole,” said the voice of the man in black.

“What’s the story?” Cole said evenly.

“Metro soldiers took out one of your men tonight. And they are hunting for more.”

“Yeah?” said Cole, looking at the SUV.

“Yes.”

“Understood.” Said Cole, and he hung up his phone.

Cole took a few steps towards the SUV, where five of his men waited, then stopped short and stood on the grass of the lawn.

“Let me know when you find him,” he half-shouted to the other Rebels in the truck. “I need to stay here.”

The Rebels seated in the SUV looked at their leader for a moment as predators might, then turned to face forward, the barrels of M-16's and shotguns pointing up from the floor. The Rebel in the driver’s seat cranked the ignition and the truck roared to life as Cole watched, and then the tires squealed as the SUV jerked away from the curb and accelerated down the street, it’s black paint shining intermittently under the street lights.

Earlier in the afternoon, two Metro soldiers had stood near their patrol truck at a rural intersection close to the border with the Outskirts.

Sam Christo, a Major, paced calmly over the dirt, and his eyes were on the tree line thirty meters away. He held his M4 rifle with both hands, and his body language was relaxed and alert.

Another soldier, Private Alec Marlon, leaned against the side of the patrol truck, looking tired and lethal in the midday heat. “It’s too fuckin’ hot to be out here,” whined Marlon, the butt of his weapon clattering against the door. “When’s chow time, sir?”

Major Christo turned to Marlon, who was squinting in the sun. “Whenever I say it is, Private,” Christo replied calmly, and turned back to scanning the trees.

When the sun sank below the horizon, a twilight descended on the landscape and the two soldiers sat next to a small gas stove. Major Christo stirred at their dinner as it warmed in a metal pot.

“Why we out here, sir?” Marlon asked the Major.

“Metro Command wants to make sure the rural areas are secure,” replied Christo, stirring slowly.

“Too many broke-ass refugees from the ‘Skirts showing up in the City, I guess,” Marlon speculated. The red on the horizon had faded into a deep blue, with an edge of purple at the top of the sky. A few stars twinkled serenely. “It seems to me, sir,” Marlon continued, his voice getting louder, “that sending me n’ you out here to do nothing tonight is a big fuckin’ waste of Metro’s money, when we could be back in the City fightin’ Rebels!” The young soldier leaned forward to light a cigarette, cupping it from a quiet wind. Major Christo agreed with him, but said nothing.

Marlon looked questioningly at the Major. “You ever killed one, sir?”

Before the Major could answer, Marlon went on. “I wounded one, last year, at the Battle of the Holiday Inn,” he said, looking to the horizon, remembering. Major Christo remembered, too.

The previous summer, a rookie Metro soldier had tried to arrest a Rebel leader while he was shopping in the commercial district of the City. The Rebel called for backup and soon there were two dozen Rebels at the scene; they opened fire on Metro officers, and a full-scale gun battle broke out in the downtown core of the City.

Once a Metro tank arrived, the Rebels fell back to storm a nearby Holiday Inn, where they holed up and fought off the tank squad outside and a helicopter in the air for 40 hours before they were finally defeated. Twelve Metro officers had died in the fighting. That was the day that Major Christo knew that the Rebels had become more than just a gang.

Major Christo kept stirring the pot, while Private Marlon dragged from his cigarette, his eyes on the horizon.