At an average walking speed of 5 km/h, it would take him 30 hours (with no sleep or rest) to get back to the city wall. Not to mention the time it would take to sneak into the city, get to his apartment to change into something that wasn’t covered in grass and mud, and take the bus to Delivery HQ. His shift started in less than 3 hours. And what would he say when he got there? There were spare bikes he could borrow to complete his daily rounds, but his bike had been company property. They would want the bike accounted for. Where’s your hover-bike Bays? Well Mr. McCobb, you’ll never believe this, but a gang of junkies attacked me with throwing-stars and whips and drove off with my bike.
If he still had his hover-bike, he could reach the city in about one- half-hour.
He checked his comm-band for the time. 30 more hours of walking to go. He jumped on the hood of a rusted white van and crawled across the ancient remains of a pile-up. Bushes had sprouted from the seat-cushions inside the cars, and branches exploded out the windows. He held these branches while keeping balance and leaping over the wrecks. Tall grass collected in cracks and sink-holes on the highway’s surface. The jungle canopy stretched across the wide highway, trying to swallow the blue sky.
The pollen was so thick it made the air hazy. Bays’ could barely keep his itchy eyes open. His nose was leaking, and he started having bouts of sneezing and coughing. He tried to walk faster, despite his lungs working in short and weezy gulps. He felt dizzy, and was beginning to be scared. How could anything live in the middle of all of this plant pollution? He would never make it back to the city in time. He looked over his back frequently, afraid that the giant black beast would be following him, coming back to kill him and eat him. Or a different mutant would pick up his scent. He was sweating profusely, and had dropped his jacket some time ago. If he was still in the jungle when night fell, the cold would be paralyzing. But his only thoughts at the moment were of getting back to the city. And outrunning the black beast–surely it was behind him! He never should have taken a job working for the jungle people. Their black market fruit, no matter how tasty or valuable to trade at the China-town bazaar, was not payment enough for the risk of being exiled. He couldn’t live on his own in the jungle. Was that a bug bite? Oh how it itched! It could be loaded with Malaria or any number of horrifying diseases that would spell his certain demise. This was why normal people didn’t disobey the government and venture into this horrible world. What was there to eat? There weren’t any Protein Shacks or Milk Bars out here. Maybe the Jungle Dwellers could eat bugs and sleep in the mud, but Bays liked eating protein-meal-bars and sleeping in his auto-adjusting anti-gravity bed. He smacked a bug on his neck, and shivered when he saw the insect’s remains on his hand. He wanted to clean off with an antibacterial laser shower more than anything. He supposed these savages got used to being unhygienic and smelly. The bugs in the city were controlled by the street-lights, which all had built-in bug-zappers. If ever the bug problem got too far out of control, the government came in and sprayed bug-poison across the block. As meddling as the government was, they protected their citizens, and provided them with civilized technology. Like the Eden Lounge. And now he was going to lose his privilege to ever visit the Eden Lounge ever again, all because he wanted to make some extra cash with some black market fruit. How many factory jobs he had lost to get to this point? Why couldn’t he have just been happy in an assembly line. Check the food for quality, check the guns for defects, and check the hover pads for holes. Drill the comm-dishes in the center and side to prepare them for the antenna arms. Simple enough, so why was it so hard for him? He had been fired from his inspection jobs for eating and stealing the food, playing with the guns (which had resulted in 3 broken windows and luckily only minor injuries to a pedestrian), and riding the hover pads down a 14-floor fire escape. How was he supposed to know that every factory had hidden security cameras? The comm-dish drilling job had ended when he was discovered sitting in a utility closet reading the newspaper while on duty. At the time, it seemed like a good idea to hide out and get paid to do nothing. That was when his grandfather had kicked him out of the house. The only apartment he could afford was in the South Hayes Port area. A low-class neighborhood, but it was the independence that made him feel whole again. And as a result, he had done his damnedest to be a good hover-bike messenger. After all the slacking on his previous jobs, it would be working overtime that got him expelled from the city. Working overtime for the wrong people. He hadn’t listened to the government’s warnings about the Jungle. He had been drawn in by the curiosity of it all. He had only been playing spy, and it was a short-lived dream. And now he was walking home defeated and betrayed by the Dwellers, and soon to be rejected by his society. But he pressed on. Because he loved the city. He would lose his job for being late, but maybe if he begged enough, they might excuse his insolence and let him stay in the city. He would take any other job. He would work jobs usually reserved for robots like picking the fruits on the hydroponic farms, big-rig mechanic maintenance, or even cleaning the Lennard-Jones’ Atlantic Port bathrooms. Anything but the Jungle.
He climbed over boulders that had rolled onto the highway, and leapt over deep chasms that cut across the yellow road. Another pile-up, this one bad. He climbed into the bed of a pick-up truck, his boots lost in the mud. When he moved to jump onto the roof of the next car, his foot was caught in a vine, hidden by the mud, and he came crashing down onto the car’s roof, twisting his ankle and smashing through the decayed metal, sending a gaping slash up his right arm, and knocking his head.
He lay on his back, his one leg still propped out the roof of the car and tangled in vines. The sky was still. He struggled to breathe with the firey pollen in his lungs. A coughing fit took him. His ankle throbbed. He held his cut arm tight to his chest, and watched the blood pool up on his shirt. Now what?
He raised his Comm-band to his lips and pressed the combination of buttons that would reach the emergency services department. “Yes Emergency? This is Jillan Bays. I’m on Yesterdays’ Highway. I’ve been kidnapped by the Jungle Dwellers. Please send help into the restricted area.”
If he could convince the authorities that he was a victim, and had not crossed into the Jungle willingly, this whole mess might be resolved. If it was discovered he was lying, the punishment for treason or misleading the government was death by public drowning. He listened to the operator’s response.
“No,” Bays said. “This is not a prank.”
05-06-08 xwestx TO BE CONTINUED
