A Face and a Name

Charlotte Humphrey

She had woken to find that she had a face and a name, which surprised her – it was more than she could say for the little girls and boys playing something like hopscotch on the street outside.

When the pink oil streaks of dawn slipped up into another day, she watched as they abandoned their jumping game and found new laughter in chasing each other through the dust. All the while they were singing a song she’d never heard before – though it was hardly a challenge to sing a song she’d never heard.

One little boy dragged himself away from the group and found a place to sit, in the shade. His straw hair set him apart from the other children, who, through soot and sun, seemed to be made of darkness. His pale features, however, were secondary to the cloth bound round his head that had come loose during the course of their new game. The other children were unfazed by the hole that had been lingering just above his smile. He looked on with one clean eye, whilst he rewrapped the side of his face that fell away into a deep bloom of red and black.

It hadn’t been the first time that Karina had seen it. Nor had the moment when one of the little girls had removed her metal leg, to rub the stump underneath, been the first time she’d seen that either. What she had never seen or heard though, was a sign that these children had names. They would call to each other like ghosts - they would click or whistle and always found the attention they sought. As if they were communicating on a frequency with which Karina was not in tune.

A face and name. Karina could have sworn, she’d never felt so lost or so lucky.

Spring was dying – she knew that much as there was a voice in the back of her head that told her that the sun, which stretched over the dust, and the smell of the desert river meant that the middle of the year was coming, and she had fallen for the scent that drifted up off the green water and palms.

She had been standing beyond the one building she had managed to call hers – it stood away from the rest - one nameless day, breathing in the palms and the sun and the distant burning, when she felt her stomach drain like a sink. She blinked, before looking ahead to the store shed. It sat just inside a chain-linked fence and appeared to have gained favour with a low-standing windmill, as the structure had toppled to get closer.

It was dark inside and smelt as if something damp had dried and gone rancid, but it had held her food store since the day she woke up and she couldn’t hate it. She lifted the lid of the storage box. Several screws had rolled around and come to a stop – clinking against one another. They lay still now. Empty granola packets, an ice-lolly stick, the decapitated lid of a can and a dried-up piece of gum that didn’t belong to her.

She let out a deliberate breath through her nose, milling over the prospect of getting by without stocking up. For a second her eyes were drawn to the door of the shed. The ground outside was dry – a dusty, fiery colour that stretched beyond the buildings and rivers and palms. She had the fleeting thought of cutting a shovel into the dust and praying for rain – for small beads of green. But she didn’t have a shovel and she didn’t have rain. She thought of Strip 313 – the market Strip.

It was true that her memory didn’t surpass the day she had woken up, several weeks back, but it hadn’t taken long for her to figure out life there. They lived in Strips – long stretches of dying buildings. Dying people. Each Strip sat several miles from the next – labelled, through pride or order, Karina wasn’t sure.

Welcome to Strip 309. 309 Oil Stores. I was here – 309. Citizens of 309 – Your cooperation will not go unnoticed.

It was plastered, stapled, spray painted on most things. The only person, Karina thought, who may not have known that they lived in Strip 309 was the little boy with straw hair, as she wondered just how much he could really see with one eye.

Thirty minutes later, and she was treading along on the dirt path leading towards Strip 310.

She reached its edge when the sun had climbed the length of itself up into the sky. A sad building greeted her. The paint had faded, and three of the four windows were boarded up.

A woman opened the door - she looked at Karina with a dark uncertainty.

Karina glanced towards the large shed beside the house and the woman followed her gaze, before sticking out five sharp-nailed fingers. Karina passed her a small leather pouch. She opened it and leered inside – twenty-seven 9mm Luger shells. Currency. When the woman was satisfied, she called out to someone in the house. A moment later, two boys joined them. 154

They said nothing but gestured for Karina to follow. She was lead to a vehicle, like the one she’d seen patrol in Strip 313 once before. The boys climbed in the front, and she jumped in the back.

As they set off, she rolled the window down - the air was cooler now that it was streaming in. She ignored the sand that was being thrown up in large plumes and rested her head against the window frame when the radio crackled to life. A faint voice could be heard through the static – it rose and became clearer.

“So, what you’re saying is that… we’re to trust the government completely and that these people, because they are people -”

“Yes, of course – that’s not what I’m…” “These people are to be demonised…”

“No, John. I’m not saying that they are to be demonised. What we have been told is that they pose a possible threat to our society-”

“But don’t most things now pose a threat-”

“Yes, well.” “The oil shortages, the increased level of crime in the Strips…”

“Yes, but these people-” These people. The words stopped dead in Karina’s mind as one of the boys, the one driving, became aggravated and thumped the radio system. Silence reigned.

Strip 313 got along better than most others. It was the only Strip that still vaguely resembled a western high street from ’17. But it was still a corpse and the people were still flies. On one side, the market which was really an expanse of tents designed to keep the sun away from the cupboard items and a few large cooling units and the back – for the rich.

And on the other side – more buildings, dying like most.

Karina ducked under the first tent –the rows of expendables stretched back until they reached the men and the AK47’s, by the cooling units but she drifted through the aisles as if they weren’t there.

One bag of rice and one of buckwheat – or something that resembled buckwheat – eight cans of beans, half a bag of dried apricots, popcorn kernels (God knows how she’d cook them), two tubs of milk powder and a scoop of rolled oats; a canister of cheap vodka, not for drinking, and, because she had one more Luger shell to spare, two squares of bitter chocolate.

She unloaded it all from her folded arms, onto the counter, which still had printed, in faded lettering:

MILITARY

FROM TRANS: OFF MONTERREY SU4 APO 884 US ISP – 9 BARBAR_ST WN – 0946753 RT. MAG O_Ln LA KENTUCKY

The man’s name, the one hunched over the counter, was Ship Magdon – He was a leather-skinned man, with greasy hair.

Karina watched as he wrapped her items in a large rag. Something piled up against the side of the wooden block caught her attention - a large stack of newspapers. Half of the headline was peering out from under the wrapping – as search efforts for the missing are dropped.

“Came in yesterday,” Ship said. “First time in eight God-damn months, they decide to tell us something about anything,” he spoke as he tightened the knots on her make-shift bag.

“They?” Karina said. Ship looked up at her.

“They is they, I don’t know who is running this country, do I?” She turned back to the headline, unperturbed by Ship’s mouth.

“Can I swap the chocolate for one of these?” She pulled the first paper free. Ship shrugged, shoving his hand into a small gap in the bundle, before retrieving a small rectangle of foil. She gave him her shells, gathered her bundle under one arm, the newspaper under the other and made her way back to where the boys were waiting with the car.

Karina didn’t believe in ghosts.

That was the thought that crossed her mind when this new boy came into view. If she thought the kids in her Strip were made of darkness - this boy was death himself. He looked at her with ice for eyes and she couldn’t suppress the sense of unease… or curiosity. His arms were barely visible under the tattoos and he had a ring slid through one eyebrow. 156

The boy from before, the one who had driven her there slapped the side of his truck, his heavy rings banging against the metal, and her face clicked towards him. He was sitting up and out of the window and Karina sped up, closing the distance between them and trying to ignore the phantom boy’s gaze as he watched her leave.

Once she was in, the vehicle coughed and sped away from Strip 313 in a cloud of dust. It wasn’t until they were passing 311, that Karina noticed the scraps and wires that sat between the two boys. It would seem that they had removed the stereo from its place. Maybe the static had got to their heads, but whatever the reason, Karina was filled with a sudden incitement. When they reached their starting point, she jumped down and stopped the driver before he could disappear.

“Is that for trade?” she said, pointing to the stereo. The boy shook his head curiously.

“Issa piece of shit,” he said, turning back towards the house. She stopped him again.

“I’ll give you something for it.” He almost laughed.

“You’re crazy, lady,” but he didn’t turn her away – he approached the truck and recovered the pile of metal. “What you got?” he said. She laid her bundle out on the floor and untied it.

She watched as he scanned the assortment. He reached down, picked up a tub of powdered milk and straightened himself. “For ma mum,” he said, tossing it into the air - catching it in the same hand.

The sun was sitting halfway between the midpoint and sunset when she made it back to 309. She wasn’t heading for her house. Not just yet. She looked up at the sign creaking in the breeze above her. 309 Oil Stores.

A man ambled out into the afternoon, wiping his fat hands on his apron. He eyed her cautiously - oil was a defendable thing, but it didn’t matter – she wasn’t there for oil.

She was there for the speaker that had been lying on the mound of wood planks, outside, for the last week and a half. Of course, the large man wanted something for it. She laid out her pack once more.

He picked up the second tub of powdered milk and she sighed but didn’t dare let him see. No milk for her, but still she had the speaker, the stereo, and an ambitious idea.

The afternoon was ticking over into early evening – the dust drifted up off the paths the way it always did when the warm haze of night approached. The smell of water and the palms was stronger in the evenings and of course, something was always burning.

It was a strange thing – for the world to be dying so quietly.

Karina reached the house. Inside she dumped her bundle on the table and slumped onto the garden chair, which she had dragged into the living room several weeks earlier, with the newspaper in hand.

Tensions rise as search efforts for the missing are dropped. The State cities are in dispute over the search for the branded citizens who allegedly escaped the South Communal State Correctional Facility almost two months ago in a manner that was both violent and alarmingly skilled, says South Communal State editor, Sally Brogan. The search in almost all North Communal State Strips has been dropped due to lack of support from the North’s leader Charles Colfax.

Karina read into the evening… she didn’t know what the North or South Communal States were, nor did any of the names she came across create a face in her mind, but she was drawn in by stories of the branded citizens of the South Communal State Correctional Facility.

She thought back to the man on the radio.

The thought stretched out and grew – roots twisting deep into her mind - She looked over to where she had abandoned the stereo on the table. She saw the food lying next to it and decided she would put it away before she did anything else.

The air was an angry red – the reddest it got before the blues started creeping in. She was drawn by the smell of the green pools and the palms. She could just see them from the store shed.

She stopped.

A figure of darkness was crouched low to the water, but she was close enough to make out the markings on their arms. She hadn’t been sure, but the figure turned, and something glinted in the sun… just above their eye.

Curiosity or the recklessness that came with having only half a mind, she wasn’t sure what it was that had compelled her to close the distance between them. It had surprised her, but what surprised her more was that this figure didn’t seem cautious of her. He stood and faced her.

“Hey,” he said in a voice like gravel.

“Hi,” she said, and he pointed towards the house with a deft movement.

“What you plannin’ on doin’ with that stereo?” he said. She looked between him and the house.

“You were following me?” He shook his head - he wasn’t looking at her. He was concentrating intently on picking the dirt from underneath his nail.

“No. I saw you by the oil stores.” He looked up at her then – ice eyes in the dusk.

“And what were you doing by the oil stores?” she said, trying to sound confident.

“What do you think I was doing?” he said, kicking the small container by his feet, which she hadn’t seen until then. “You know how to hook that thing up?” he said, and it took Karina a moment to realise that he was talking about the stereo. She flushed. “I thought so.” He took a step forward and she retracted.

“If I set it up for you, will you do something for me?”

“What do you want me to do?” she said.

“I need somewhere to stay tonight.”

The nights were darker than they used to be and often lay under a thick drift of smoke coming from further south, but the cold was a thing of the past. The windows and doors were thrown open. The phantom curtains around the back door were rippling in the draught that had come up from the pools and several shards of old glass skittered across the bare floor. Karina looked over, having been attracted by the noise, before facing the tattooed boy, who had introduced himself as Vincent.

He was fiddling with a few of the wires that connected the stereo and speaker. He must have done something right, as it sparked to life – crackling like a rogue fire.

“Now,” a man’s voice came through, before cutting out again. Vincent tapped the machine… “spokesperson from the South Communal State Correctional Facility. Mr. Davis, good evening.”

“Good evening, John.”

“Now what can you tell us about the decision to abandon the search for these people in the North and how is that going to affect those in the Southern Strips?”

“Well John, as you know Charles Colfax has decided to drop the search in the North. He released yesterday, in a statement, that he could not jeopardise the North’s limited resources on concerns that belonged entirely to the South…” “And what do you say to that?”

“Well John, the citizens of the Southern Strips are not to worry, because the search for the missing will continue in the South – the military are pulling out all the stops to find these individuals…”

“Okay… sorry, we’re running out of time; do you wish to add anything before we go?”

”Yes, thank you John, Commander Henderson released a statement several weeks ago, which I’d like to reiterate. The fugitives in question are identifiable by sequential numbers that have been tattooed onto their backs. If you encounter any person who fits this description you must contact the Communal State Office on the standardised call sign.”

“Thank you, Mr. Davis…” The static crept back in. They sat in silence for a moment.

“Who are the people they’re searching for?” Vincent looked at her and she felt as if she’d done something wrong.

“You really don’t know?” he said. “What? Were you born a month ago?” She could have laughed.

“Something like that,” she said. He looked at the floor before he turned sharply away from Karina and pulled his shirt over his head. It was as tattooed as his arms, but there, in an ink darker than the rest: 615187 and Karina found herself running her fingers against it.

“One of the other runaways tried to cover it up,” he said. She pulled her hand away.

“You’re a…”

He turned around, not bothering to put his shirt back on.

“An escaped citizen… a fugitive… a dangerous member of our society,” he said with a tired sarcasm. Karina must have looked scared. “Don’t tell me you buy into all that crap?” He pointed to the stereo. “You have no idea… what they did.”

Karina was pulled into a deeper sleep that usual that night, which was strange considering she was harbouring a fugitive in her living room – who could have been as dangerous as the reports, for all she knew.

When she woke, she could not drag herself fully into the day.

Vincent was gone. He said that he would be. She would have missed him had she not been so content to drift through the days alone. Besides, she didn’t want the South Communal State Correctional Facility to come knocking at her door.

Hunger found her later that morning and she couldn’t prolong the walk out to the store shed - she pushed open the storage box.

She sighed.

“That bastard.”

He had left her with nothing. He had taken the stereo and several things that had been there before. Karina wasn’t prone to anger, but before another thought crossed her mind she was out in the morning light, kicking up the dust as she walked. She had no shells left, so she was going to have to walk to Strip 313. She knew he would be there - it was the only Strip that you could trade in for a vehicle.

The sun was at midpoint when she reached 313.

She had been walking for a few minutes when a familiar figure came into view. The straw-haired boy from her Strip. She had a strange urge to run to him as if he was her friend. She did not run, as a moment later the boy was surrounded by several she did not recognise. A minute later and the tallest of the group had kicked him to the ground.

He reached down, aiming for the bandage over the boy’s absent eye, but Karina ran then. She waved them away and, having sized her up, they left without protest. She put out a hand for the little boy, pulling him up. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you here?” she said.

He said nothing but took Karina’s hand. She was unsure of what she was supposed to do, but then…

There he was.

With the little boy’s hand in hers, she began marching towards Vincent, who had not seen her yet.

They were a hundred feet away, when a hummer cut through the dust, wheels spinning. It came to a sudden stop – as did Karina, alarm bells screaming in her skull. Vincent started backing up, arms out as if he was ready to fall.

He did – he crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Karina’s grip on the little boy’s hand tightened and she tracked back.

There was a small section of buildings almost opposite the market. She was quick to guide them to the closest entrance. They were hit with a strange darkness and an even stranger coldness.

“Stay here,” she said, pushing him into a black space under the stairs. She ascended the steps over his head two at a time, paced passed the intricacies of the landing and into the ghost of a bedroom. The windows were bright white squares on the far wall – she crossed the room and looked down to where a pack of black-clad men with SIG550 Assault rifles were approaching Vincent. One shoved his gun roughly towards his companion, before leaning down to pick him up. He was not small by any means but looked like a child in the soldier’s arms. Something else had caught Karina’s eye.

Someone was strolling through the dust, hands clasped loosely behind his back. He seemed to be watching the scene unravel with a collected ease. She could have sworn she’d seen him before.

One of the soldiers approached him and he craned his neck to listen. He began to turn on his heels until he was looking up. Right up. Right up at Karina.

His eyes were shielded by tinted sunglasses, but all feeling left her. She was cold. She had to break his stare – she felt that if she didn’t, it would destroy her and so she moved away from the window. She made it to the top of the stairs, but her thoughts were shattered by the sound of heavy footfall on the floorboards beneath her. Like a doe that was being hunted, she found herself shaking and backing up. She was prey – pressed deep into the safe space where the two far walls joined. She waited for the footsteps. Dust plumed from almost everything.

A figure appeared in the doorway, in the half-light of the room. He pulled his glasses down. His fair hair was cropped close to his skull around the sides, but long enough on top to be swept over. His dark coat almost reached the floor and thick gold rings sat on most of his leathery fingers.

“Hey baby,” he drawled. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” Karina didn’t understand. She said nothing. “You know,” he said, strolling forwards. “It ain’t right, seeing you like this,” he kept going. “I remember when I couldn’t get you to shut up. Now… not even a word.”

He was right next to her now. Close enough to take a fistful of her hair. “Karina,” he said into her ear. Her eyes closed, cheeks now glazed. “Come on now. Whatchu cryin’ for?” he wiped the silver lines away. He was crouched in front of her now, holding her arms as if she was a child. “You gone come with me and I’m gone make it all better.” He squeezed her arm slightly, forcing her to open her eyes. “You just wanna make sense of it all. The news reports, the missin’ people, why you can’t remember, you wanna know that, don’t you? You’re gone come with me. It will all make sense…”

She shook her head.

But this man smiled. “Oh baby…” he said and tightened his grip on her. “I wasn’t really givin’ you an option. But I’ll tell you what, you can come down with me and get in the truck like a good girl or…” He laughed at the look on her face. “No, I’m not gone kill you, but I am gonna kill the little cyclops downstairs.”

Karina shook her head – more violently this time. “Yes,” he said, grinning. “You gone come with me?”

She wanted to throw up. But she didn’t – she just nodded.

“Attagirl.”

She went with him down the stairs in silence – only making a sound when he grabbed the back of the little boy’s shirt, dragging him out into the afternoon. When he reached the porch, he let go of him and he toddled forwards. The man lifted a heavy boot, kicked him into the arms of two awaiting soldiers.

Karina couldn’t bear the thought of them hurting him. She screamed like an injured animal, thrashing in the man’s arms. He smiled. “That’s more like it,” he said, bundling her into the back of the hummer.

She hit her head when she fell and there was no time to stop the handcuffs that were clamped down over her wrists. She listened to them click against the metal railing. The door slammed shut. The back of the vehicle had been stripped out. It resembled the back of an ambulance more than anything else, but the driver was sitting on the right side of a grid cage. She listened to Vincent’s subdued breathing – he was lying limp on the gurney that was close enough to touch with her foot and nothing else - and her own breathing.

The doors opened once more.

She did not turn. She braced. Though she hadn’t expected rough hands to take the collar of her dress and yank down, tearing it to the base of her back.

A sharp chill hit her skin.

Her assailant left soon enough.

Left her with the sounds of Vincent’s sleep. The sound of the engine beneath them.

She looked up at their new prison – chrome metal lined almost everything. The wall at her back was chrome, she could see now.

Her breath hitched.

She was looking at her eyes. At the large tear in her dress. She saw her skin and the numbers 922413 tattooed across her spine.

The engine came thudding through the floor. She felt the hummer move.

A face and a name. Karina could have sworn; she’d never felt so important or so unlucky.