23 A Strong Hand

We were given a room in the guest wing. It had two double beds, with sheets cleaner than anything we had slept on in weeks, and windows you could actually open (not that we would in winter). The toilet flushed if you manually filled the tank. If we wanted a bath we had to use the communal facilities. The same went for eating: we were expected to take meals with the other guests, eating what they ate, when they ate.

Without much to do on that first evening, we headed down to the guest dining room early and discovered it was half full, mostly with women who looked down at the tables in front of them, or watched the men who came and went with nervous glances. The men went to a matron in a blue nurse's smock who called out random words.

"Aromatic Shark Route," called the matron, "Breezy Foreign Nacho. Orange Disaster Chin." Each phrase indicated a woman who would stand, walk to the matron, and show her a bracelet. The matron would send the woman off with whatever man was next in line. Some went trembling or crying, others went stoically, and others went with smiles of dubious authenticity, but they all went. They returned, alone, passed a red ticket to the matron then resumed their seats to wait for the meal.

Sandy and I stood as wallflowers, witnessing the sad parade. I couldn't help but notice that most of the men were in soldier's fatigues, unarmed on account they were in the palace. After they had their turns at the women they must have gone somewhere else for their meal because they didn't return.

We spied White Hawk, the leader of Green River, sitting at a table farthest from the matron, with a man who had his head in his arms on the table. He was, I realized, sobbing and didn't want to be seen.

"I'm glad you're alive, Hawk," I greeted her, "but sorry to see you in this place." She and Sandy hugged before we shook hands. "How is everyone?"

The man with her looked up with a face red from rage and tears. "Everyone is not all right," he said, too loudly, "they're raping my wife, every day, and we're supposed to just sit and take it!"

"You shouldn't have come down if you can't behave," Hawk shot at him, at lower volume. "As soon as Beverly's pregnant they'll let her go, same as the others."

"And I'm supposed to raise some stranger's child," he whispered through clenched teeth, "a rapist in the womb? Let the little bastard eat from my table? I have to look at him, every day, and remember what they did! I can't take it!"

White Hawk's voice was unyielding as gunmetal. "Then leave, Carl! Go back to your room and wait for her. Don't do anything stupid." I noticed then the belongings scattered around, sweaters and jackets left over chair backs, purses on the table. The conquerers had demanded women from Green River, all of them childless, to force them to become mothers. White Hawk didn't want Carl's grief to increase their troubles.

Carl kicked over his chair and left, his fists clenched tight, arms impotently waving. He yelled at soldiers in the doorway as he passed by, "Get out of my way!" and they parted for him. Some snickered at him, but the majority let him be.

That should have been the end of it. He had gone, and I was about to ask after Green River in more detail, when two shots rang out from the hallway.

Hawk sprang out of her chair. "Stay here," she commanded, and Sandy and I stayed put. There was nothing we could do about the commotion, whatever it was about, so there was no reason to get involved as long as the shooting stopped.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

As I would hear it later, Carl was a victim of bad timing: he encountered his wife coming out of one of the "conjugal rooms" with a helmeted greenie, the one called Dragon Ball, and he simply couldn't contain himself. Carl spat on Dragonball's visor, and the greenie put two bullets in his chest.

Other than systemized rape, women were ironically inviolable, the sacred bearers of the kingdom's future. But greenies aren't bound by the rules, at least not so firmly as everyone else, and Dragon Ball wasn't satisfied by the man's death. He took out the remainder of his fury on Beverly's face, pistol whipped her until her eye socket and nose were broken, then left the both of them in a pool of their mingled blood. Beverly's keening was a warning to anyone who would defy the kingdom or its faceless enforcers.

White Hawk took Beverly to the floors designated for women only, where they had a dedicated clinic. Cleaning ladies dressed in blue rushed Carl's corpse outside on a cart, practiced and efficient, and dumped it into the zombie pen before he could fully turn. The other women from Green River trickled in, bringing news of what had happened. I expected more tears over dinner, but nobody shed a tear for Carl. He and Beverly were newcomers in Green River, and his poor impulse control hadn't won him any friends during his short time there. Their sympathy was all reserved for Beverly. She might have to live with a deformed face if she didn't heal right, and she had to suffer because her dead husband had been a fool. Fool that he was, he had loved her, and he had been deleted from her life in an instant.

Sandy and I learned about the takeover of Green River from the women in Estes Park. Two hundred New Kingdom Army fighters had shown up, all armed to the teeth, and the colony took all of twenty minutes to decide to negotiate instead of fight. Fortunately, White Hawk was able to impress on the invaders' leader how important the fertile ground was, and that prevented the kingdom from deporting everyone to some other settlement. Some of the residents would be relocated to Grand Junction in the spring, but the vast majority would be allowed to stay at Green River, which would continue to run itself as it had, mostly. The main differences were to be a hefty tax on whatever food they grew, and complying with the "national growth" program that pressed women into motherhood.

Forcing White Hawk to bring eight women with her for required impregnation was the kingdom's show of power. Look at what we can make people do, it said, you had better behave.

Dinner that night was simple fare: beef and barley soup, not well seasoned but warm enough to chase out the chill of the room and served in large portions. Or perhaps the meat was something else, but nobody cared. I had to force myself to eat. After dinner they piped Sundown Review into the dining hall as it was being broadcast, but after the grotesque lottery and what happened to Carl and Beverly, even the good parts of the program felt ominous.

Sandy and I had one other encounter with the bureaucracy that night in the form of a clerk, a steel-haired woman who visited us in our assigned room. She was a "fertility coach", one of the functionaries responsible for registering women, tracking their cycles, and ensuring they all "did their duty for the realm". She took samples of my blood, then evicted me while she met with Sandy privately. It was at least a half hour before I was invited back in.

"Foster Maze Episode," she told us, and handed over a pair of metal bands. They looked like emergency medical bracelets, cheaply engraved with those three words. "Wearing the same words is proof she's yours. If you take another woman she'll need to wear the same words. Best to do your duty by her soon, young man. If you don't, someone else can claim her," she warned me, "or she'll go to the lottery."

Sandy held out her arm so I could put the bracelet on her, flushed with a mix of emotions. "Now we're official," she said with a grin. It was kind of her to make light of the situation.

"I'll do my best," I told the clerk, as I snapped the bracelet closed. But, I couldn't look Sandy in the eye. I could only remember the starved little girl I had taken in, pitiful and scarred, barely more than the lump of dirty cloth that covered her. I told myself, for about the fiftieth time since we had been caught, that we had to get out of New Kingdom. And I damned Hector, for the hundredth time, to the embrace of Hungry Jesus for bringing us there.

That night, I was falling asleep before my head even hit the pillow. I barely felt Sandy climb in after me, to chase away the encroaching freeze, and go slack in my arms.