Welcome to D-Block

Officer Huxtable shoved me through the door so hard I spilled onto the floor, rolling.

She stepped along beside me and put her boot to me a few times.

“Get the fuck up…”

Lording her cruelty over me as she punted me into the wall.

My suit took the brunt of it. Probably why she was so rough with me. That tough latex material that kept most of the prisoners in The Irish alive was the only thing keeping her from breaking my ribs.

I coughed and sputtered as she dragged me to my feet by my hair and shoved me onward.

What was in front of me at the end of the hall was a small window with someone standing behind it. To the left, a small waist high counter, to the right… the rolling wasteland of my future.

Miles and miles of rural road and farm land. It looked pristine from here, but I knew better. This was the part that had already been sanitized by the prisoners who had come and died here before me.

The other unfortunate souls.

The only proof they ever existed in front of me in the form of miles of clean road.

I absently wondered what would be the last stretch of highway or township I cleaned before the end…

Nobody understands how many times you regret every decision you've ever made when it all goes bad.

You can’t call yourself a loser enough. You can’t call yourself a fuck up enough. You secretly hope if you punish yourself enough that maybe God will smile on you. Rewind time…

Get you out of here.

But you know the reality.

God didn’t answer prayers on my side of the bell curve.

Life was the only blessing people like me ever get.

And we usually screw it up.

“This is Cabriella,” Officer Huxtable said, reaching down to take up the tablet there.

She tapped in some things I didn’t understand into software I’d never seen.

Meanwhile, my Warden system was talking me through what was going to happen.

“This isn’t like some cyber punk future. Warden is monitoring software. I can talk to you through the network fibers installed in your neck. You’re hearing sound vibrating inside of your skull. I’d advise you not talk back right now. No one else can hear me but you.”

I nodded at no one as Officer Huxtable ordered my gear.

I still couldn’t help but feel it. The pressure. The suit… moving with my body in unison. I was already wanting to peel it off.

Under the window the woman at it slid a collar.

Huxtable took it, turned to face me and shoved me up against the wall.

“Gghn! Come on! … Why do you have to-…”

She snatched my hair, tugging my head back.

“You want round two?” She asked in my ear.

“No… no…” I shook my head as best I could with her fingers in my hair.

I knew what she meant. I could hear it in her voice. She’d worked here so long she liked it.

Beating up girls like me.

“You ever get smacked in your mouth like that before?”

I shook my head again.

“No…”

“Yeah. Remember that. You’re in The Irish now. Real world’s gone now, Cutie Pie. You watch how you run those pretty lips of yours, understand? You’ll get ‘em fucked around here.”

“You keep saying that. You have a dick or something?”

Why did I invite trouble?

I gave three hard grunting yells of pain each time she buried her fist into my kidney.

Once. Twice. A third time.

I dropped, wallowing in pain, gripping my lower back like a geriatric as I arched.

She stood over me.

I watched her savoring it.

“Get up little girl. This is grown woman’s prison. Not a backwoods jailhouse at some shelter.”

I got my sore ass up slowly. She helped me. Almost like she cared.

Then she buried her fist in my stomach again and buckled my shit.

I dropped like a stone.

Note to self.

Shut. The fuck. UP.

She left me down there this time to wallow in it. My own misery. My own pain. All I could do was clutch my stomach and groan.

She just watched.

After I got myself together, started to clamber back up… she helped. With my hair again. My entire body was muted in the inky black material that had become my new skin.

I couldn’t feel the world anymore. I just felt a weak translation of it through the material encasing my body. Squeezing me all over. Never letting me forget my prison wasn’t just walls.

She tugged my strap harness over my shoulders like a defiant child getting ready for school in the morning. Bullying me. Pushing me around. Manipulating my body.

“Nngh— ggh.. stop it— stop!” I protested but she didn’t care.

I was a toy to this Amazonian witch.

“Shut up little girl.”

“I’m an adult!” SMACK.

FUCK.

I screamed as she blasted my little ass against the wall with a slap.

My face was crackling with pain as I closed my mouth letting her lock and buckle my straps into place. The thing I wore my rebreather with I reasoned.

Then I got just that.

Small. Canister sized. About the size of a tiny bathroom trash can, but cylindrical with a little status light on it. A smooth, clip on pack that clicked Into place on my back.

I looked up and read the words above the window in front of me after she finished dressing me.

Resupply.

“There’s Resupply station’s all over the quarantine zone as long as you can get to the wall. Every five or so miles there’s a gate that connects to the inner walls. Be careful though. You step outside of Black Zone without permission and those nano wires will arrest your entire body. You’ll be dog food for the wild packs to find.”

My eyes went wide at that thought as I felt those strange plugs on either side of my neck.

“Jesus. Do these come out?”

“Nope. You ever get out, everybody’s gonna know what kind of scum you are. You end up in The Irish, you’re the worst filth in society and everybody knows it you little deviant.”

I saw the hatred in her eyes. The disgust…

That was the look I was gonna get for the rest of my life. No matter how big or small my crime was.

I was in The Irish.

The place they put everybody they were ashamed of in a world trying to recover.

My eyes fell away from her, looking at the ground as she shoved my helmet into my chest.

I lifted my hands to take it. A sleek bubble with a wide, clear front visor that went back beyond my peripheral vision.

I lifted it, took a deep breath of natural air, then pulled it down over my head.

I felt it sink into the ports on my neck. I felt it extend down a latex apron, sealing me in.

Then I felt Officer Huxtable roughly turn me around. She shoved me up against the wall again, pushing my back hard, forcing me to exhale all the air out of my lungs as she leaned against me.

I heard my first canned breath inside of the thing I’d have to get used to.

Seeing the world through protective ballistic plastic.

The entire thing seemed so surreal.

I could only think back to my own choices.

Why was I so stupid?

She crushed me to talk to me again, making my helmet press against the wall’s surface and strain my neck.

I heard her slightly muffled voice through the chamber around my face.

Heard the hollow huff of my own air inside of it.

The claustrophobic space I was going to spend the rest of my life.

The realness of it setting in.

“You’ve got a rockin’ little body… Damn shame nobody’s ever gonna see you outta that suit again.” She wickedly chuckled, then did a wall push-up off my back to right herself.

The last vestiges of air in my lungs came out in a long grunt.

I pushed myself up to stand just as she snapped that collar around my neck under my helmet.

She pulled it tight. Forced me upright.

And then she started strangling me.

I felt my slick feet stick to the harsh metal grating beneath me. Squirming about as she arched my back.

I reached up to grab her wrists. Realizing I couldn’t do anything about it. My flailing, clinging, gripping and struggling didn’t last long.

I hated the fact that I wanted her to end me right there. I just let it happen.

She treated me like a rag doll. Choking the living fuck out of me before she set me down to gasp and cough.

I bent forward, hands on my knees. Panting… My collar dangling around my neck loose. She didn’t even do me the pleasure of tightening it. She just wanted to put the screws to me.

I coughed and crumpled down onto my butt on the floor at her ankles.

“Get up.” Huxtable ordered.

And I did. I stood. Without a word.

“Where’s that mouth now, huh, Red?”

And she sealed that collar around my neck, locking my helmet apron on permanently.

“D-Barracks. Follow the yellow brick road.” Officer Huxtable said, smacking my ass.

Hard.

I felt the flesh of my bouncy, tight young cheek give a responding jiggle. All I could do was let out a little squeak at the muted sting and start walking.

“I’ll come see you later, Red.”

She said as I followed the yellow line.

God I hope she was just kidding.

Through that latex suit it hurt like a bastard. She actually hit me hard enough to sting. It sizzled against my skin, prickling, itching mercilessly. A sensation I’d have to learn to live with.

It ate at me I couldn’t scratch it. I rubbed my ass cheek while I followed the yellow light that came on beneath my feet, listening to the squeak-squawk of my every step.

Feeling the air brush between my sporty thighs. The light led me over the metal flooring, further down the hall to turn right, doing everything I could to stay on the metal grating and not wander off to the right. Out into the world.

As if that two feet of metal was going to save me from what was coming out there.

I started walking just as a bell sounded. Loud and annoying.

As I walked down the hall of wide separated doors, I saw military dressed members of staff coming out of their various quarters.

No one seemed to mind me or care.

They walked past me, each of the women, headed… somewhere. I noticed none of them had helmets on.

The further I walked the more I got worried. Had I gone the wrong way?

But the little yellow path lead me right around another corner and to…

“There you are.”

A woman stood waiting by a military crawler. A Mini bus-thing on big wheels.

“Hi.” I said, my voice chambered inside of my helmet.

“I’m here to take you to D-Barracks. It’s outside of staff territory. This is your home gate. And your resupply station.”

I nodded and she gestured for me to get onboard.

I walked around the big vehicle to the passenger seat and climbed up, pulling its big door open.

Sliding in, I shut it, its locks sealed and she started away right away.

“D-Block has it’s own barracks, like all the zones. There’s multiple… sometimes you’ll be out on mission cleaning too far from your home base. You can room at temporary encampments. Someone will usually be along to move you… Rarely we have you march it out.”

The Mini bus gave a deep grumbling rattle. Sounded fucking broken, but then I remembered all big diesels sounded that way.

“March it out?” I asked, looking over at her.

“Yeah. Whole facility is behind walls with lookout towers… You’re not going anywhere we don’t know.”

“What if we get hurt?”

“Don’t.” She said back, glancing over at me as we trundled and bumped along the uneven terrain, navigating out onto the cleared street.

“Right…” I nodded, feeling my rebreather tank annoying me while I sat on the seat.

“I gotta wear this all the time?” I asked.

“No. Just when the air is hot. Sometimes those creators leave a stink so powerful even your suits filtration can’t do a thing about it. You’ll wish you had the rebreather… plus it holds your chems for your Sud Monkey.”

“Sud Monkey?” I asked.

“Yeah.” No explanation.

We just drove on, trundling along in our seats. I saw miles of craws pushed out of the way, likely by a tractor or something.

Evidence of previous cleaning crews remained. Hoses. Big canisters of empty cleaner. But most everything else had been removed. It almost looked like it used to years ago before the disaster.

Not that I’d know. All I remembered was hell.

Saw pictures though…

She rolled us onto another of Niles Michigan’s many, now unused roads. We made it out onto 933. I didn’t recognize how though. I’d been gone from this place since before I had to learn how to drive.

We went on a ways before making it to the downtown area. Right up to…

“Hey. That’s the old Ready…”

“Yeah…” She said, stopping the vehicle. “Get out. This is you. This area’s already been cleaned for the most part. Yo guys work further out. Mishawaka-way. It’s totaled now. Absolutely covered in the shit.”

“Fuck…” I nodded. “How come you guys don’t wear helmets?”

“We don’t go near the filth anymore. It’s cleaned pretty far out. Those zombie pets have been mostly burned out this far… Out there though? No man’s land. That stuff’s not that harmful on your skin. Just don’t get it in your mouth. It’s inert but it can make you sick as a dog.”

I nodded and pulled the door handle.

I felt my smooth coated ass slip out of the seat, dropping down onto the ground.

“Oh, hey.” She called and I walked around to her side.

She let the window down.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I asked.

“Make sure you have your squad leader order you a Sud Monkey.”

“What’s a Sud Monkey?”

But she just drove away, leaving me with the feeling of suit pressure. The squeeze. The hollow sound of my breath inside of my helmet.

I stared. Watching the vehicle go. Feeling like my last hope of something saving me from this was leaving.

I stood there daydreaming about a future I knew wasn’t coming. There was no lawyer coming with explosive new evidence like the movies. There was no billionaire rich guy coming to pay all my fines and demand the courts let me go.

There was no daddy coming to save me.

This was the first day of hard time.

Hard time that was probably gonna kill me.

“Hey!” I heard a chambered voice call and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Turning around to face the old brick building of The Ready I saw her. Standing there waving a latex slick hand.

And I saw the old Ready behind her. It like all the buildings downtown were squashed up against each other pretending to be one of those cool upstairs downstairs style brick spaces from the 50s.

Only it was all of 6 blocks big.

When small towns try to be big towns… y’know?

But the person standing in the door was like me. A shiny, inky black stain in a bubble helmet. She was taller than me but not by much, a little paunchy around the middle but reasonably fit. Like she’d recently lost a ton of weight.

I wandered towards her, feeling out of place.

“You Cabbie?”

“Yeah…” I nodded.

“Good. I know you just got here, but we’re about to lock it down for the night. Lucy’s gotta get another rebreather. Her pack got damaged while we were cleaning the mall. Plus… word on the radio is Scavenger’s are in the zone tonight.”

“Scavengers?”

“Yeah… I’ll explain inside. C’mon. Helmets on at all times for us outside, but once you’re inside of the barracks you’re good.”

I nodded and followed her in. I actually felt kinda good about that. I worried I’d have to get used to having my helmet on everywhere except bed or something.

“I’m Forest.”

“Hey. Cabbie Spencer.” I said, introducing myself in return.

“Do yourself a favor, Cabbie…”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t trust anybody outside of your barracks. And forget about your last name… we’re dead in here to the rest of the world.”

I considered that. It hurt to think about.

“Okay…” I nodded.

“There’s other black squads. Let’s just say you got fortunate getting into this one.”

I had no idea what that meant but something about it made me feel in some way better about my situation.

I didn’t know what I was about to face in there, but apparently there was a worse.

And I’m glad I wasn’t in it.

We walked into the doors at the front of The Ready just as a mean itch started attacking my lower back.

God damnit…

How was I supposed to survive this?