A beat-up old Ford pickup, in exhausted, rust-patched gray, waited in the alley behind the neatly manicured back yard of the brick-red pre-fab stack whose ground floor housed Sharon’s Salon. The truck’s passenger-side door, facing Lorinda, said PATRIOT FARM FRESH VEGETABLES. The pickup bed was loaded with crates of potatoes, carrots, and what Lorinda thought looked like beets. The engine grumbled, the exhaust pipe spewed smoke, the whole thing shuddered and rattled. A big automatic weapon hung on a rack outside the back window of the cab. The dark-haired young man in the passenger seat waved out the window for Lorinda to hurry up. As she approached, he opened the door, jumped out, and gestured with both hands toward the seat.
No sooner had she slid in across the ripped brown vinyl than he piled in next to her and slammed the door. She looked at the driver: another young man, late twenties, early thirties, bigger than the other one, with longish dirty-blond hair and a full beard. Without looking at her, he threw the truck into gear, drove quickly down the alley, and said, “She’s onboard.”
“Hi,” she said, looking from one to the other. “I’m Lorinda Moon.”
The dark-haired one shushed her, then whispered, “He’s getting an update.” Tapping the side of his head: “Earpiece.”
“Right,” said the driver. “See you in ten or fifteen.” Then, not looking at Lorinda: “Do you have a phone on you?”
“Me? No. I got rid of it.”
“Good. You need a reset?” said the driver, turning out of the alley onto a small street, still not looking at her.
“Reset?”
“Abortion,” said the dark-haired one.
“Reset,” she said. “That’s good. Yeah, I need a reset. Where are we going?”
“Out of here,” said the dark-haired one.
“Out of Little Harlem?”
“Out of the CCSA,” the driver said.
Lorinda didn’t know whether or not he was kidding. “Um … really?”
“What did you expect?”
It was a good question. “That … I don’t know … That we’d find somebody else to do the … reset.”
“Look,” said the dark-haired one. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening. You’re looking for an abortion. And you attacked a Federal official. They’re coming after you. Even if we knew of another doctor —”
“Which we fucking don’t,” the driver huffed.
“Right. I mean, we couldn’t just cruise on over to his — or her — place. They’re going to be looking for this truck pretty soon. Our job is to get you out of the country.”
For a few moments Lorinda said nothing. She tried to grasp the enormity of the situation, but felt a sort of emotional force field keeping her from it. Hitting that woman back at the hospital — that had been self-defense! Hadn’t it? She had been about to be taken into custody and it wasn’t fair. It was a violent act, but the woman had been mean to her. Lorinda was maybe sorry she did it — or, okay, she wasn’t sorry. But it didn’t mean she was a criminal. And it sure didn’t mean she had to flee the entire country. How would she be able to come back? Or did they mean forever? And never see her parents or brother again? It was unimaginable. This whole thing had spun out of control.
“We have to go back,” she said.
“Forget it,” the driver said.
“I can’t just leave the country.”
“Listen,” the dark-haired one said patiently. “If you insist on going back, we’ll drop you off somewhere and we’ll disappear. They’ll pick you up off the street, or when you try to go home. You’ll be arrested and tried for assaulting a government agent. You’ll be found guilty. They’ll put you in a breeding center until your baby is born, and then they’ll put you in jail. Sound good?”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because,” the driver sneered, “this is what we do. We’ve seen that happen. We’re not going through what we’re about to go through if you’re not a hundred percent committed to it.”
“What do you mean, you’ve done this before. Who are you guys?”
“I’m Ren,” said the dark-haired one. “He’s Stimpy.”
“Those are your names?”
“Not our real names,” said Ren.
“Which are?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Stimpy, maneuvering the truck down one narrow Little Harlem street after another. The place was endless. Lorinda stewed, realizing that with every second, with every turn onto a new street, she was in fact committing to this overwhelming plan.
Finally, the truck left Little Harlem, exiting from a service accessway onto a desolate street somewhere in, or outside, Austin.
“But this is all wrong,” Lorinda said. It sounded lame even to her. “I’m a nice person! I work as a bartender at PumpJack’s Perfecton. In fact, I’m being promoted to Head of Bartending Operations.”
“Not anymore,” Stimpy said, as though lecturing a child. Then: “You’re not being promoted, you’re not going back to Perfecton. If you’re really lucky you’ll never have to come back to this shithole country.” His attention flickered away from her as he listened to his earpiece. “Yo, what? Gotcha,” he said, sounding almost friendly. “See you in a few.”
Lorinda felt somehow under attack. So she tried to raise a feeble defense. “If it’s so awful, why are you here?”
Neither man replied. Before she had time to pose a follow-up question, the truck turned into the nearly empty parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall. Stimpy slowed the truck to a crawl to avoid the larger cracks and potholes in the pavement. After a couple of minutes he parked about a dozen slots back from a defunct Skates ‘N Sneakers ‘N Beyond store. Three obese men rode their mobility scooters on the sidewalk in front of the corpse of the store. Stimpy got out and walked briskly toward the building. Ren opened his door, grabbed the red wig from Lorinda’s lap, jumped out, and gestured for Lorinda to follow.
“Why is he so mean to me?” she said softly as she caught up to him.
“He’s not really mean. He’s just … serious. And paranoid. And, okay, a little fucked up. You’ll like him when you get to know him.”
Lorinda didn’t buy it for a second.
She must have signaled that, because Ren added, “You’ll see.”
Next to the store, Stimpy ducked into a passageway marked by a barely legible RESTROOMS sign. Ren and Lorinda followed.
“No cameras in here?” Lorinda asked.
“Not anymore,” said Stimpy over his shoulder.
Well, at least that was civil, Lorinda thought.
Down at the end of the corridor were two men — wearing the same jeans and plaid shirts as Stimpy and Ren — and a woman about the same size as Lorinda but a bit older. “Hi, guys,” the woman said, as the men slapped hands with Stimpy and Ren. “Hi, Margaret,” said the woman to Lorinda.
“Sorry,” Lorinda said. “I’m Lorinda.”
“You’re Margaret until you reach the end of your journey,” said the woman, undoing the belt and popping the snap of the green smock before Lorinda could fend her off. “The wig, please.” Lorinda took off the blond wig and passed it to her. The woman slipped it over her own head and looked at her companions. “So?”
One of the men she was with — Lorinda realized that he was not only dressed the same but was roughly the same size as Stimpy, with similar hair and beard — reached out and adjusted it slightly. “Not too bad,” said Stimpy 2.
The other man, who looked a lot like Ren, tossed Ren 1 some bunched-up fabric that, unfolded, turned out to be three shirts with collars. Ren gave the smallest, a light blue one, to Lorinda, who put it on and buttoned it up. Ren and Stimpy did the same with theirs, which were both white.
“Wig?” said the woman. Ren handed her the red wig. Lorinda took off the oversized sunglasses as the woman eased the wig over her head and straightened it out. Lorinda started to put the glasses back on. “Uh-uh,” said the woman, holding out her hand, taking the glasses from Lorinda, and putting them on herself. She stepped out of the way as Stimpy 2 moved in and took a picture of Lorinda’s face with some kind of small computer she’d never seen before. Twenty seconds later the device spit out a plastic Citizen Card bearing the name Margaret Melrose under Lorinda’s picture. “There’s a scanner in the car,” the woman said to Stimpy. “Make sure she reads that right away so she knows who she is. And,” turning to Lorinda, “I’ll need your old card.”
“My real card?”
“That’s right,” said the woman. “It can only get you in trouble now.”
Lorinda opened her purse. “What’s that?” the woman asked. Lorinda showed her the little pink gun. The woman looked vexed and shook her head as though in disappointment. “That’s way too small.” She looked at Stimpy. “She needs a bigger gun.”
“Everyone says that,” Lorinda said as she took out her Citizen Card and held it out to the woman. “This really makes me nervous.”
“That’s the last thing you should be nervous about,” said Stimpy. “What you should be nervous about is —”
“Leave her alone,” Ren said softly. Ren 2 gave Lorinda another pair of sunglasses, small and round with mirrored lenses. Lorinda put them on. The world looked blue. She wondered if she’d ever get used to seeing the world in blue.
“Good luck, Margaret,” the woman said, handing Stimpy a car key. “It’s a brown four-door Zhiguli Buckshot. Two stores down, five parking spots out.”
“Not another piece of shit Zhiguli,” said Ren, good-naturedly.
“We’ll get you a Mercedes Q-Class next time,” the woman said.
“I’m counting on it,” Ren grinned.
“All right. You guys go first.”
Stimpy gave a raised fist salute and left. Ren said, “Thanks, guys. See you at the farm,” then took Lorinda’s arm and followed Stimpy. They walked past Skates ‘N Sneakers, past what was once a jewelry store, and stepped off the curb and into the parking lot as they passed the next broken-down store, which had a DIGITAL WORLD sign hanging at an angle behind the cracked plate-glass window. Lorinda couldn’t take her eyes off the dozen or so worn-out looking old men and women who were aimlessly riffling through two tables of old clothes and broken-down appliances in front of the ex-computer store. She couldn’t tell if they were buying or selling, or both, or if they were just there because they had no other place to be. The world is a weird place outside Perfecton, she thought.
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PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!
Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.
Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.
Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.
Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.
Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.
Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.
Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.
Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.
Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.
Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.
Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.
Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.
Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.
Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.
Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.
Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.
Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.
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