Breeder Read online

  “I’ll get it,” I say, and pick up the pack and light her a new cigarette. I hold it out to her and as she takes it, our fingers touch and I flinch. Our eyes meet again. She looks terrified. I wonder how long she’s been surviving outside the Incubator.

  “Light one for yourself,” she says, so I do. Then we lean against the Wall, side-by-side, smoking. And trying to calm down. I want to say something but there’s nothing to say. We just stand there with our backs against the Wall and smoke our lungs out.

  A few minutes later, a large black car with Corp plates and gold trim pulls up in front of us. The number plate says MR. GOLDBAGS. Ah, for fuck’s sake. “Well, here’s my ride,” Alex says and winks at me, then waves at the driver, whose face is like a pink smudge through the tinted glass. “Goodspeed to you, Will,” she says.

  “You too.”

  Alex’s eyes look sad. There’s something flint-strong there too, as if she’d at least try to break your ass if you crossed her, which cheers me up a bit—but as I watch her walking, smiling hard, toward the car, what I mainly see is how small and skinny she is, her stick legs lost in the corduroys. Then she opens the passenger door and climbs inside without looking back.

  •

  It’s 2:15 a.m. and I’m still waiting in the same spot, feeling desperate. There’s nothing about me that makes me stand out. I’m a tall beanpole—I don’t look particularly athletic, or like I’d be a good fighter. I don’t even have proper sass. I have one hand on my hip, staring out at middle space, my eyes narrowed like a hard-ass, and I feel really fucking stupid, but it’s honestly the best I can do. I’ve only ever done Breeder running in the Gray Zone—for that, they want kids who can dodge in and out of crowds, get into little spaces, and who can move fast, fast, fast—but I’ve grown about six inches in the last year so maybe I don’t look the part anymore. You never know what the Gray Corps is looking for down at the Wall, and I hate talking to Gray Corps affiliates, let alone marketing myself to them. Plus, what the Gray Corps is searching for out here changes all the time, and it’s hard for me to read what’s hot at the moment—I’m not at the Wall often enough. Gray Corps affiliates may want sex, drug couriers, Breeder running, and who knows what else. Since there are always so many more Wall Kids than Gray Corps affiliates, the market is theirs and they can be choosy. Gray Corps guys want that extra thing, that unnameable thing, that something that will enhance their personal brand. I just don’t have it, I reckon. They want cool kids, hot kids, kids who represent their rich, powerful image, because their corrupt Corp colleagues will be watching and judging them, and hell, personal image and branding always matter.

  Most cars don’t even slow down to give me a proper look. To prove my point, a silver convertible drives by me and then brakes in front of a clique, dressed in cutoffs and flip-flops, with shark tattoos on their cheeks. The smallest kid is backflipping in front of the group and when the passenger door of the convertible opens, he gets inside. I hear a car horn sound and turn to see a gold SUV pulled up in front of me.

  The dark glass of the driver’s window slides down just a little. I can’t see the driver’s face because the interior lights are off. The car’s plates are Corp, they’re painted gold: ROB #1. Excellent. The car’s a giant, revamped vintage, priceless probably, and while you get all sorts of rich at the Wall, this car is causing a stir, with the shark-tattoo kids throwing me filthy looks. I can tell they’re wondering why the fuck a Gray Corps affiliate with that car would go after me, and I’m wondering that myself.

  Rob #1 is waiting for me to speak. I don’t say anything—Ma rightly taught me that the person who speaks first loses. I make myself stare right back through the reflective window, not blinking, even though I can’t see his face and my damn knees are shaking.

  He clears his throat. “Money or drugs?” His voice sounds middle-aged, fat, and rich. Big surprise.

  Then the interior lights flick on and I see the top of his face. He raises his eyebrows. But I still don’t say anything. The driver’s window comes down all the way.

  He isn’t middle-aged and he isn’t fat—he’s only about thirty, and he’s lean and good-looking. In fact, he’s fucking hot. I can smell his expensive aftershave and the leather interior of his gorgeous car and part of me is thinking that he is excellent, and wishes I were him; I wish I were Rob #1—which makes me really hate myself.

  “Crystal 8,” I say, keeping my voice as steady as I can. I used to just about vomit every time I asked for Crystal 8 down here, certain that I’d be reported to the Corp, or bashed and dumped somewhere. Raped first. The secret truth is, most Gray Corps affiliates love hiring Crystal 8 boys: the rareness of me, the thrill in the risk. But there’s no hint of fear or anxiety in Rob’s eyes. He openly and slowly looks me over, from head to toe, and raises his eyebrow again. I’m clearly not what he thought I was. He doesn’t say anything, and I realize he’s waiting for me to make an offer. I just lift my chin and stare at him harder. I’m not fucking going to: it’s the first rule of negotiation to get the other person to make the first offer. Any five-year-old in Zone F will tell you that.

  He nods at me. “Crystal 8 is very difficult to get at the moment,” he says. “Is there anything else you’d trade for?” My stomach turns over. Ma and I have heard that Crystal 8’s no longer available. That CSOs are, finally, for real, cracking down on all the Gray markets—on drugs, on Breeder running, on everything—and that they’re sending people straight to the Rator if they’re caught. Not only Westies, even Gray Corps affiliates themselves. If that’s the truth, then I’m truly fucked. I feel a sharp wave of nausea.

  “I don’t need anything else,” I tell him.

  I turn to go, and he says, “Hang on. I said it’s difficult, not impossible.”

  Fucking asshole. I face him. “So can you get me some, or what?”

  “You’re not big on charm, are you?” he says.

  I shrug. Charm is for the Corp.

  “I can get it for you,” he says, smiling.

  Fucking sadistic Gray Corps fucker. Rob is probably highly ranked within his legit Corp life, with his lovely golden car and his easy access to Crystal 8—and what else? Electronic elephants, probably, if he wants them. Skiing holidays on imaginary mountains. Swimming at digital beaches where you can taste the salt. Or maybe—who knows?—the Corp has access to the real thing.

  Then he says, “I’ll give you a week of Crystal and fifty units for four hours. Breeder running.”

  I wish I could tell him to go fuck himself, but I need the Crystal so bad. He’s still holding my gaze, and I don’t see a bit of shame in his eyes. Those big eyes are telling me that even when what he wants to do is so wrong, he’s the one with the power. I’m the one who wants to die with fear and shame. “For that, you only get an hour of Breeder running,” I tell him.

  He snorts. The dark window of the car goes up and he starts the engine. I just stand there, holding my ground. He’s bluffing. He might be calm and confident as anything, while my face is burning and my hands are shaking, but I could see something in him: there’s a quality about me that he wants, that he thinks will be useful.

  And then he drives off, slowly moving away from me. Fuck. Fuck. It’s 2:27 a.m. I’m close to caving, close to pathetically running after his evil, beautiful car, when he hits the brakes.

  The window comes down again and his hand reaches out. A big hand, with curly hair on the knuckles. He points back at me. “Two hours,” he says. “Get in.”

  He’s pissed off, which makes me feel really pleased, and only goes to prove that I am a moron: it’s mental to piss off anyone who is about to have you locked inside his car. But I can’t stand the thought of not holding something back, some kind of keeping of myself.

  I run up to his car and get into the back seat, still stupidly elated. As the door slams shut, I hear the click of the central locking.

  He revs down the road a mile, the
car like a graceful animal, and then we hit the back of the line of expensive Corp cars. Rob brakes. We could be here for a long time—I can’t even see the front of the line. I’ve got a while to think about what might lie ahead.

  As we’re waiting, the phone rings and Rob answers it on speaker. “They say it’s going to take another hour to get the Grid down,” the voice says. “So we’re going to run a game. Do you want your Westie to fight?” In between Breeder runs, the Gray Corps often fight us for bets. I’ve only ever done fist fights, but I’ve heard they sometimes arm kids with knives, even guns.

  Rob sniffs. “Nope. I need my Westie to be in good form.”

  Awesome.

  He looks at me in the rearview mirror.

  I look back at him and nod.

  When we reach the parking lot at the Gate, we park beside a silver sedan and get out. The Gate is just a hundred-yard gap in the Wall with electrified fencing, facing the badlands, with flood lights and cameras. It’s so bright, I can’t see beyond the fence, but I can hear the roar of millions of Westie refugees, just feet away from me.

  I just stand there, looking out, as Rob talks to his cronies. They say the badlands are barren for as far as you can go—hot and bleak nothingness. I’ve heard there may be other cities, but it would take you more than a lifetime of walking to reach them, if you could somehow keep yourself alive through the windswept landscape and the chemical fires and the acid rain. The land is dead from the bushfires that tore through, and the lakes and rivers are poisoned. Ma says her people used to live near forests before the trees died, but that was hundreds of years ago.

  The job of Breeder runners is to smuggle healthy Breeders into the Incubator so that their Gray Corps affiliate can get a lot of money—like, a lot of money. Enough for Rob to buy another fancy car for every night of Breeder running he does. There are twenty or so adrenaline-filled Wall Kids jumping around me with their Gray Corps affiliate standing calmly by. We’re all waiting for the flood lights to switch off and the electrified gate to open. Closest to me are a shark tattoo kid and a red outfit kid. They glare at me and I glare back because we’re competing for the best Breeders. If we get to them first, we’ll get bonuses. I look around for Alex, wondering if she’s a runner too, but I can’t see her anywhere.

  Rob shoves two photos in front of me. “They need to look as close to these two as possible,” he says, pointing, and I almost laugh in his fucking face. One of the photos is of a Breeder aged fourteen or fifteen. The other one is even younger than that. Except they look like no Breeders I’ve ever seen. Only Corp or maybe Gray Corps look like that: their skin is clear; they’re slightly plump; and their eyes are unclouded. I don’t need to go outside the gate to tell Rob that there will be nobody out there who looks close to that. We Westies inside the Wall are thin and starved and sick-looking; the people outside will be doing much worse.

  “They must look as close to this as possible,” Rob says seriously. “And check their eyes.” He means for disease.

  “Okay.”

  “Make sure you fucking check!”

  “I will!”

  “You have twelve minutes, then they lock you out.”

  I nod.

  He shoves a baggie of small gold nuggets in my hand. There’s an arrangement where they shut down the Grid for twelve minutes at a time, but no longer, so that the Gray Zone doesn’t show up as anything strange on the mainframe Corp security system. Like the whole Gray economy, parts of the Corp know about Breeder running—they’re just paid to look the other way. Sure, hasn’t the whole world always run on dodgy deals? Ma always says. You can do or get whatever you like if you have the units.

  •

  We line up, jostling each other, along the perimeter of the Gate. I hear a whistle, which means the Gray Corps guards have been paid off and left their posts. Then the flood lights switch off. The electrified fence is still closed. The moon is up, and what I can see through the wire is miles and miles and miles of people. I can see orderly lines of tents and other shoddy structures. I can see small gas stoves burning. I wonder what they eat out here. The Westies can buy goods from the Gray Corps when they have gold or things to trade, but they say they grow their own scrubby vegetables and also hunt a type of small, hardy rodent that managed to outlast the End Times.

  In the moonlight, the faces of the people look particularly desperate. They’d prefer to trade with the Gray Corps than go with the official Breeder Selections. They say there are over fifty million people outside the Wall, and every year the Corporation lets in six thousand. The Corp used to sponsor the Breeder’s whole family, but they don’t want all that surplus life anymore, so the families just get to nominate one other person for entry besides the Breeder. The Corp throws the Breeder’s family a handful of units, but it’s nothing like the value of the gold they’ll get from the Gray Corps tonight.

  No matter how hard I find life under the Corp, I always know that there’s this—the badlands—and it’s much, much worse out there. At the end of the day, I’m lucky to be a Westie who lives within the Corporation rather than outside the Wall. I can barely look at the Westies’ faces.

  There’s another whistle and the Gate opens. Rob punches my back and shouts, “Go, go, go, go, go!” I run forward with the other Wall Kids, shoving Shark Tattoo out of my way.

  At the same time, thousands of Westies hurtle toward us. It’s terrifying, you can feel their despair and their fear, and I’m scared they’re going to crush us.

  I weave through the crowd. The idea is not to attract too much attention, but even though I’m not a sleek, pink-cheeked Corp, I look comparatively healthy and bright-eyed next to all these people who are bony and ashen from malnutrition. No matter how I try to blend in, they all know who I am, and why I’m here. A ripple goes through the crowd. People start holding up their children and pushing them at me. A man with the most tired eyes shoves a tiny Breeder in my face. “Here! Take her! Take her!”

  My body revolts as I take her in my arms. I’m holding a Breeder. She’s small and only around twelve years old. I fight more revulsion as I brush her hair back from her forehead and look at her eyes—cloudy, diseased. “No,” I say, handing her back and forcing him out of my way.

  Another Breeder is quickly thrust in front of me. I pull back her hoodie and check her eyes. Healthy. She’s skeletal.

  “I’ll take her,” I say.

  The man holding her is very old and very thin. His eyes are kind and full of tears. “Thank you,” he says. Maybe he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to his daughter or granddaughter when she goes beyond the Wall to the Incubator. But he probably does. Another child huddles behind him; maybe that child is lucky—maybe that child is a boy.

  “Papa!” the Breeder cries, as Papa pushes her at me, and I pick her up; she’s trembling. She wails and buries her face into my chest—I’m torn between disgust and pity. I open the baggie and shove some gold—not much—into Papa’s scrawny hand.

  Next, I choose a taller Breeder, sullen but beautiful. I grab her wrist and she kicks me. Her mother comes up to her, boxes the side of her head, and tells her to be polite. I give her mother some gold and she nods, neither happy nor sad.

  The Breeder looks away as she offers me her hand. I take it.

  Then, with one Breeder in my arms, and dragging the other tightly by the hand, I sprint back to the Wall.

  •

  I run five times that night, and smuggle twelve Breeders into the Corp. Some of them are clearly under twelve years old. Toward the end of the agreed two hours, I help Rob process them. He opens the back door of his SUV and we line them up alongside it. As I give them green pills—sedatives that will keep them quiet for the long drive into the heart of the Corporation—they’re all sobbing except for the tall, sullen one. She spits the pill onto the ground and Rob steps forward, gets her in a headlock, and pinches her nose. I pick the pill off the ground, hes
itate. Rob shouts, “Hurry the fuck up!” My hands shaking, avoiding eye contact, I push the pill into her mouth.

  I tell the Breeders to get into the back of the SUV, one by one. The smallest Breeder drops something—a dirty, stuffed rabbit. I pick it up and give it back to her and she says, “Thank you.” She starts crying and I say, “Shhh,” looking behind me, scared that Rob will hit her. The tall Breeder glares at me, then turns to the little one and talks to her quietly. I tell them all to lie down, faceup, with their arms by their sides. When they don’t understand, I act it out. Then I carefully wrap them in blankets. The tall, sullen one pushes my hands away and, as she tucks herself in, I see she has a massive purple bruise around her eye. Then I stack lighter blankets on top of them, even on top of their faces, followed by light packing boxes on top of the blankets. I position the boxes carefully, avoiding their heads, but the blankets have to cover their faces. I know that, sometimes, Breeders suffocate like this. I can hear the tall Breeder singing to the little ones in Westie: a low, sad lullaby that Ma used to sing to me. Finally, I slam the back door closed and lock it, and give Rob the keys. I get into the back seat and we drive in silence. There’s no longer any traffic so it only takes five minutes. The Breeders in the back of the car are whispering to each other.

  When we reach the point at the Wall where Rob picked me up, he parks the car. He turns and raises his hand and transfers units onto my chip. “There’s your tip.” I look at the tiny screen in my wrist: two hundred units.

  Then he gives me a vial of pills. “That’s a week’s supply of Crystal 10,” he says. “It’s much better than your usual Crystal 8 shit.”

  He holds up a bottle of booze. “You want this too?”

  “Nah,” I say. I hate drinking—the alcohol messes with my condition and makes me vom my guts out. Then he holds up another, much smaller bottle, and I see the logo of a white cloud. Memo. This time I nod and hold out my hand, and he tips three light-blue pills into my palm. Memo is for peace and forgetting. Finally, he hands me a little bag of gold pieces. Ma will be happy to have ready cash.