Weapons for the Fallen Read online

  Weapons for the Fallen

  By J. T. Booher

  WEAPONS FOR THE FALLEN

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Booher

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book is a work of fiction.

  For information contact:

  https://jtbooher.wixsite.com/jtbooher

  First Edition

  Library of Congress Control Number: 8731055131

  ISBN-13: 9-798-6366-9252-2

  Cover illustration by JTB © 2020

  First Edition

  Contents

  Table of Contents

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  1

  …

  COLORS

  I FEEL THE WIND gently blowing off of the lake, rustling my hair and cooling the skin on my face where tears have made it wet. I force my eyes open and flood my consciousness with information that my senses are collecting about the conditions that lay around me. It is the only way to escape the ones that assault me from her mind, and from the minds of everyone. I am sitting on the roof of my parent’s old home, under the shade of the great oak that we used to climb back when life was simple. The tree has far outgrown the modest house, and it serves as a reminder of what used to be and will forever remain in a constant state of change. As I look out over the lake, I try to remember the days that she and I spent laughing at the water that we splashed at each other, back when we were children and war was a distant threat that barely crossed our guiltless minds. The peaceful, temperate breeze that touches me from that same, changed water, as the shimmering of light tickles its surface, floods my senses. But it does not touch the terror that grips the soul beneath my own surface or the images that batter me from hers. I close my eyes and focus instead on what I know to be real. I am a girl who has been taught that rules are not always right, but so is she. I am a girl who has suffered unjust circumstances, but so is she. I am a girl who cannot escape, but so is she. We cannot escape her red light. I glance down at my wrist to check the light on my implant, and it still glows green from under my skin. I feel guilty for the relief that washes over me every time that I look at this stupid light and see it glowing back at me—green.

  The implant mandate was something that began before I was born. Everybody has one. The Authority of the Requital Republic claims that the primary reasons for them are to provide identification, keep accurate census data, and discourage crime. But most of us see them for what they really are—control. When the light turns red, it means that the GPS location function of the implant has been activated, and the officials are looking for you. Most of us report to the Authority of the Requital Republic office and save them the trouble. There are others who decide to run, and running has become a more plausible option since the Authority’s satellites were blown out of orbit by enemy forces about ten years ago as a side effect of the war. I glare down at my glowing green shackle and want to dig my fingernails into my own flesh to rip it out. But I know that even inadvertent injuries that involve the implant have been known to kill. Tampering with it causes it to release the acid contained in the battery core directly into its host’s bloodstream. Translation: a dreadful, excruciating, and certain death. I have heard that some have chosen to escape their implant by removing their arm completely, in one brutal, bloody, axe swing of defiance. That is a recipe for disaster, even for those who do not subsequently bleed to death or die of infection. A one-armed life on the run is not what I would refer to as freedom or preferable circumstances. Anyone discovered without an implant by the Authority is put to death with a ‘privileges of the last breath’ execution. That means that they are the last to be killed after watching the brutal executions of their family and accomplices. Those kinds of repercussions are substantial motivation to leave the implants where they sit, glowing from under our skin like inexorable reminders of our powerlessness. The Authority have eerily effective ways of finding the people that they are looking for and making gruesome examples of them. It was discovered that once the satellites were gone, the Authority had resorted to tracking us through tall towers that had laid dormant for years. Just after the news of the satellite failure had spread, the towers had lit up across the territory with the same sickening red lights as the implants they tracked. The families and friends of red-lighters began destroying the towers in an attempt to hide the people that they loved. They were hunted and put to death publicly by fire—the slow, burning kind, not the mercifully fast metal kind. Momma says that the towers used to send signals between communication devices that everyone had. Those devices were used for entertainment and sending messages to each other. She says that they were called ‘cellular telephones.’ They were banned because they were being misused against the Authority before I was born. When I look at the tower in our town, it’s difficult to imagine a time when such efforts would have been put forth to erect something so massive just for convenience or pleasure for the people. I guess things were different then. Regardless of how we got here, a red light on your implant signifies a death sentence, and the Authority will find you whether you choose to run or not.

  The Authority initially popularized the implants by claiming that they were an effective means to catch criminals. After they were mandated for everyone, the implants progressed into a tool that they used to facilitate a witch hunt for anyone harboring anti-republic sentiments. When the war intensified, they began using them for the draft. The draft began just after mine and my sister’s sixteenth birthday. By our eighteenth birthday, all of the men and boys in our small town were gone. Only the old and broken remained. About a month ago, the Authority announced that they would begin drafting women. For twenty-two years, my light has glowed this clean, crisp, and sickening green. It has been the same for my sister until today.

  They say that it’s common for twins to be connected in ways that others are not. I guess that means that my sister, Georgie, and I are common. We have always been able to communicate with each other in ways that we couldn’t with anyone else. I’m not sure when it began, it has just always been that way. We used to call what we could do ‘color talk’ back when we were children. Even the names that we assigned to things were simple, and our innocence inclined us to accept things that were not explained. Our abilities have advanced with time, along with our cynicism about life and the purpose of ours.

  My youngest memories of our abilities have confirmed that it began with reading simple colors that the other held in her mind. As we got older, we began to use different shades and hues of the colors as a language, which, in all honesty, is a more effective way of communicating true meaning than words are. I don’t remember when I became blue, Georgie became purple, Momma became yellow, and Daddy became orange any more than I remember learning what to call any of us out loud. Other significant things took on their own colors as well. Darker shades had adverse connotations, and lighter shades were associated with positive things. Different shades of red meant danger, stop, and no. Different shades of green were affirmative, signifying verbal concepts such as safety, go, and yes. One sequence that I frequently used was dark yellowish-orange, dark
purple, red, for example, which translates verbally to ‘mom and dad are angry—you are in trouble—hide.’ Or, light purple, light blue, ‘your happiness is my happiness,’ which is how we say I love you. The sequences that we used so frequently that time has not dulled their colors paint a picture in my memory of how simple our lives truly were and how trivial our problems had been. It’s painful to re-visualize the colors now.

  Georgie and I are almost exactly the same, both inside and out. We have the same crazy, coiled, untamable, mass of spring-loaded, sunny golden hair that refuses to do anything but stick straight out in all directions. Momma used to say that our hair is ‘infused with karma.’ I didn’t realize that she was implying that being assigned to the genetic task of controlling the craziness on our heads for the rest of our lives was payment for the craziness that we were treating her with until someone explained what karma was to me. I have yet to meet a head of hair like mine. Except for Georgie’s, of course, because everything of ours is the same. I know that we are easy on the eyes, so I am not going to bore you with false modesty. I don’t walk around with a chip on my shoulder about it, but I have a walking-talking example of precisely what I look like. I love her, and I think she is pretty. Therefore, I guess that means I am too. We have the same temper—which can be pretty terrible. I know that she inwardly agrees that we are both hot-headed trouble makers, but she outwardly argues the point that it is always unintentional. Our similarities could be based upon the fact that we have spent the vast majority of our lives inside of each other’s heads, speaking our own language. It could be that I recognize the immense similarities in our mentalities because I can see what she is really thinking—past the mask that she wears for the world. No one is ever actually what they seem to be.

  We still use our color talk now and then to convey messages quickly, but it’s something that has faded with time. Thinking in color began hampering our ability to communicate with others as we got older. It became unnecessary as our abilities advanced, anyway. I don’t remember when the colors began, but I do remember the first image that I read right out of Georgie’s mind.

  We were seven years old. There was a tall magnolia tree in the field by our house—which we were strictly forbidden to climb on account of the fact that even the lowest branches were very high, and it was the tallest standing tree in our area. It was unsafe, but the absence of fear in the face of dangerous things that frequently accompanies youth had made the allure of the tallest tree in the neighborhood something that teased and taunted us endlessly. We didn’t resist the magnetism of such a thing for long. Georgie insisted that we had to climb to the top so we would know how big the lake was. Even as a child, I knew that her reasoning was shaky, but I never required much convincing when it came to her.

  I don’t remember what initiated her plummet past the thin branches. I don’t recall the noise that she made as she fell, or the sound of the branches as they snapped and bent away to allow her passage. I don’t remember what it looked like to see my sister falling toward a substantial promise of harm. But I do remember the cold black terror that gripped her and whispered through the tree limbs at me. I remember the deep red shade of the thud when her body made contact with the earth. The horror that filled her as she had fallen had blasted me like a screech of wind through the branches, filling me with the sensation of falling myself. I had climbed down quickly with branches scraping my arms and legs, but I could not feel my own pain. All I could feel was hers. I dragged her back to the house, where Momma’s screech had broken the leash that I had held on my own emotions. Georgie’s leg was shattered, and her pain and terror made me crumble. Momma scribbled a note for Daddy, who was away in town. She carried Georgie’s small, shaking body for seven miles to Dr. Reed, who was our town’s only doctor. When we arrived, I was hysterical and limping, but those who do not know a connection like Georgie’s and mine are prone to be impatient with things that they do not understand. They closed me in the small receiving room alone while my sister was taken away. She was held down while the bone was examined and set. The doctor’s wife had given me an old worn coloring book with a handful of crayons, and I threw them at the ground as I heard the lock on the receiving room door click behind her. I could hear Georgie’s screams from where they held her as her thoughts ravaged my mind—dark red, bright red, black, burgundy, burning, crimson red, ebony.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and gritted my teeth while cradling my head and grunting at the effort of shouldering her pain and terror, wanting to take it away from her, wanting to take her pain, straining to break into her mind. Then, it happened. I saw a bright, incandescent white, which was a color that signified happiness to us. I furrowed my brow in my hands. Happiness? No. It was the light above Georgie’s head. I was seeing a live image of what was being viewed with her eyes. I pushed deeper, and I could feel that she knew that I was there inside of her mind as the screaming stopped abruptly. I felt magenta confusion wafting subtly at my brain from hers as she focused on the tendril of my mind that slowly dissipated inside, vanishing like a cloud of smoke.

  I opened my eyes quickly and looked down at my bare feet. I willed the image from my eyes into the channel between our minds. I could feel her pulling the thought on the other end, willing it into her own consciousness. I felt it tear through as if something between us had been ripped open, and the force of it felt like a blow—like the bright, radiant impact of a life-altering decision that would change the course of everything forever. She responded immediately with white and blue—‘happy—that was you.’ I flashed green into her mind and replied with the same image of my feet, tinging the image with blue—‘yes, those are my feet.’

  Her second response was slower, and I could feel her struggling in the effort to push it into me. I opened my mind completely, straining to bring her massage into my consciousness. Then, it was simply there—as if I were looking at it with my own eyes. She had sent an image of her foot and toes wiggling, past her contorted leg. The doctor’s old face was bent over her leg and smooshed in concentration as his wife held Georgie’s pelvis down on the table with a cold expression of desensitized professionalism. Momma was standing beside her, holding Georgie’s chest down against the table, face grim with tears in her eyes. Georgie stained the corners of the image with dark purple. ‘This is my foot, and it’s bad,’ the color conveyed. I cringed at her mental image and replied—dark purple, dark blue—‘what’s bad for you is bad for me.’ She responded—light blue, light purple—‘What makes you happy makes me happy,’ or ‘I love you.’

  I bent and snatched the coloring book and a green crayon off of the floor and scribbled a message in the most precise, legible handwriting that I could manage right over an image of a kitten, and stared at it. I permeated the mental image of the page with my senses and then pushed it into her mind. I had written, ‘DO YOU WANT TO PLAY ISPY?’.

  She responded—white, primary green, (pause) blue—bright green—‘Good! Yes, you go first.’

  I couldn’t control the smile that spread across my face with the excitement of the prospects of our new-found ability and the possibilities that it meant, despite the situation. I stood in her mind with my back pressed firmly against her pain, blocking her senses completely. I sent her consciousness images of the room that I was locked in, as we traded colors of the objects that were to be found in our little game. She knew that I was blocking it—blocking her pain from her consciousness and blinding her to her senses, but she reacted trustingly and cooperatively. She was grateful, as was I. Her pain and terror were contained for both of us. When the worst was over, I released her senses but remained in her head, silently caging her pain with my consciousness and gripping its thrashing red form, holding it down like a beaten animal. Dr. Reed’s wife led Georgie from the room, teaching her to use an old, worn set of crutches. The doctor paused in the doorway, still talking to Momma.

  “I have to admit,” he said while eyeing Momma over the spectacles on his nose. “I was a little apprehensive
when you folks showed up with that gnarled leg, and I had no pain medicine left to give her, but she did just fine. I’ve never seen a bone line back up so smoothly,” he said, turning to face my sister. “You are one tough cookie, little lady,” he said, smiling at her with the burden of a man that had witnessed too much pain and suffering in his lifetime. She grinned at him and then turned her grin on me. My lips twitched, and I tucked them in to suppress the laughter that threatened to bubble to my face. The grown-ups were utterly oblivious, and we had a new secret that we would never tell.

  “That’s a temporary splint to allow the swelling to go down,” the doctor continued, professionally. “Give her something for the pain when you get home if you have it. Bring her back in a couple of days, and I will give her a more permeant cast”—he went on, continuing his instructions to our mother. I zoned them out to continue mine and Georgie’s little game with our minds. Daddy had gotten Momma’s note and arrived, red-faced, sweaty and panting just as we emerged. He carried Georgie home with the palpable burgundy-purple pain that he felt for her evident on his face, rolling off of every step in silence.

  She was in a cast all summer, so her physical activities were limited. We limped through the summer days with our minds connected, experiencing life with two pairs of eyes and two sets of senses. When I dove into the lake and propelled myself deep to the bottom where the water was coldest, goosebumps rose on her skin. She sat at the base of that magnolia tree while I climbed to the top and showed her the view of the lake that she had wanted to see. I closed my eyes, and she felt the wind and sun on my face. When I was punished with no dessert for being caught climbing on the roof of the house, I tasted every single mouthful of hers.

  Having an extra set of senses was a significant advantage. At the time, our family made weekly trips to town so that Momma and Daddy could go to the market and check in on the people who were selling our goods. We had a large plot of land with groves of peaches, and our fruit was sold at the market every weekend for a modest profit. Georgie and I would accompany them on their trips to town. To our mother’s dismay, we spent most of our time playing basketball with the boys on an old rusty hoop with no net. Momma said that it was unladylike, but Daddy was amused by it and would walk us out to the courts on his way to his weekly freemason lodge meetings, which were held in a building just adjacent to our makeshift court. Basketball was never about unladylike or boyish inclinations to either of us. We liked it because our connection somehow allowed our bodies to work in unison, and we both have an insatiable appetite for winning. Even at a very young age, I always knew where she was on the court, and she knew the ball was coming to her before it left my hands. With Georgie’s leg broken, however, she was sidelined, but we found new ways to use our connection to our advantage. She would sit on the sidelines with Miranda Melrose, the daughter of a good friend of Daddy’s who joined him in the lodge meetings. With our newly discovered ability to share mental images, she would broadcast what all of the players on the court that I could not see were doing directly into my mind. I didn’t even need to tie my wild hair back because I could see everything clearly with her eyes. She was artfully clever about predicting their movements, and every time the ball left my hands and passed through that rusty hoop, my exultant happiness was hers. Our connection became our inside joke. It was our secret.