Gemini [WIP]

Chapter IV

"William thinks you're stealing ammunition," I said over my shoulder to Jo as we rode away from town. She clung to my back, arms around my waist. I tried not to think about the soft feeling of her chest pressed against my back as we bobbed in the saddle, horse trotting down the shaded lane. The trunk line, a multiplexed fiberoptic cable that was our only connection to the digitized world, was laid in conduit running through the undergrowth for the first mile or so out of town until the road rose out of the valley our little hamlet was hidden in. From there, we'd hidden it in a riverbed which it followed for several miles until it passed under a bridge, where we were able to splice into an old Google fiber mainline that was exposed underneath. This little infrastructure project had been my cost of entry into the Flock.

"Shit, he's smarter than I thought." I was a little surprised to hear her curse - it wasn't exactly against the rules here, but it was rare and exclusively done by men when they weren't in the presence of women. I was also a little surprised to hear her admit to the theft so brazenly - we were friends, sure, but not particularly close.

"Wait, you have been? When you were doing the counts, you said..."

"Plausible deniability, Paul, come on."

"What are you even doing with it?" I knew this was a stupid question even as it was coming out of my mouth. Jo was quiet for a beat before answering.

"I'll pretend you didn't ask that." The mood cooled a little and we rode on in silence for a while. I thought of a thousand different things to say to try and rekindle the moment, but it was gone. I was finally rescued from my spiraling cycle of self-doubt when she spoke again.

"Look, I just feel safer when I have the essentials stashed somewhere. I didn't have time to take a lot of my kit with me when I came here. I'm trying to rebuild."

I could sympathize. "Where did you come here, from, anyway? You've got kind of an east coast accent, I'm guessing NYC?"

She laughed. "Does it matter anymore? Whole f***ing map's been erased." She pushed back her bonnet and shook her head, letting her long hair down, and the breeze at our backs tickled my neck and cheeks with a few stray strands. I tried to suppress a shiver. "Anyway, enough about me, how about you, townie? You stick out like a sore thumb here. You still instinctively check your pocket for your phone before you leave a room. You're as much an outsider here as I am." The wind was blowing the scent of her hair into my nose and I tried to savor it without being obvious.

"Look, I ran into some trouble with Central. You get banned off their platforms and there's nothing left for you. I couldn't pay for anything, couldn't rent an apartment, couldn't access public transit, I didn't have a lot of options. And I like the quiet life, anyway."

"So you came to the most backwards-ass cult you could find, and hooked them up to the internet? Because you like the quiet life?" Jo hopped off the horse more nimbly than I thought a woman in a long dress could. "Come on, let's get off the trail a bit, the line's not going anywhere."

Unsure of what she had in mind, I led my horse over to the side of the trail where it widened out into a little grassy patch and tied the reins to a low branch. I hopped off, patted his neck and he snorted at me, giving me the kind of reproachful look that only a horse can. "Don't go telling on me, now." He grumbled, dropped his head, and started cropping the grass lazily.

I followed the sound of crunching undergrowth into the woods until I found Jo seated in a clearing next to a small brook. She was reclining against a tree in a patch of sunlight, eyes squeezed closed and smiling as she stretched, catlike. I sat down next to her and noticed she'd taken off the white athletic trainers that all the women wore. Her pale legs stuck out from under the dress, exposing her calves, and I was surprised to see how athletic they were. She reached into an unnoticed pocket of her dress and pulled out a small silver case, opening it to reveal a row of neatly rolled cigarettes. At this point I had given up being surprised and was just rolling with the punches.

"Smoke?" she asked, removing one of the cigarettes.

"No, not for me, thanks. I've never liked tobacco much."

"Hmmph", she said, mouth occupied with moving the cigarette towards the zippo that had appeared in her hand. I laid back on the grass and looked up at the morning sunlight, still watery, filtering through the shifting greens of the alder canopies overhead. A bluish cloud of smoke passed through the scene, accompanied by her sigh of relief.

"It's bullshit they won't let women smoke. If anyone in this f***ing commune needs a stress valve it's the women, doing all the cooking, cleaning the houses, and don't forget all of the child-rearing. But that doesn't fit into the whole tradwife image they're going for, does it?"

"Hmm, I guess not." I had an image come to mind of one of the plain faced, gingham-draped, bonnet-wearing, white-sneakered women of the community with a corncob pipe in her mouth and chuckled at it. "I've never seen one of the sisters smoking, do they use corncob pipes like the men?"

"Nah," she said through another cloud. "Most who smoke, smoke cigs, easier to hide. But more than you'd think dip, too. Especially snus - you wouldn't believe what you can get for a tin of that stuff at the laundry."

I knew there was a black market in the community, but the men's and women's worlds were tightly circumscribed, and only overlapped in sanctioned areas - meals, dances, and some work areas like the supply house. The weekly church meetings kept unmarried men and women seated separately during the main sermon, and then broke off into men's and women's Sunday school classes afterwards. I was never much of a ladies' man back before the world broke apart, and despite everything else changing, that hadn't. The women here gave me about as much attention as a piece of furniture. I hadn't had much of an opening to engage with any until Jo came along.

The black market I was aware of was thus the men's black market. It traded in men's goods - alcohol, porn, Viagra, all the classics. I hadn't really considered these quiet Sisters who avoided eye-contact and who rarely spoke above a murmur capable of such intrigue. They didn't indulge in fashion or make-up, which was considered "whorish" by the Flock's Elders, and they all wore the same gingham dresses, bonnets, and white sneakers. What would such woman want that they couldn't already get?

"Like what?" I asked, sitting up to recline on my elbows, puzzled expression on my face.

"What do you think? Plan B, birth control, anything that'll keep the men here from pumping another baby into you. Oh, and good bras. You wouldn't believe how awful the home-made ones are. I had nipple chafing like a sonofabitch for the first few months here until I was trusted enough to break the ice."

Laughing, I laid back down with my hands behind my head wondering how I could've gone this long without even considering this entire parallel society I'd been living next to but never noticed.

"Apart from that stuff though, I dunno. Romance novels are a big one, but they're treated more like a community library, they get swapped back and forth a lot. The ones that drink like brandy or schnapps, anything that goes down easy at room temperature and doesn't smell like booze. You'd think makeup, maybe, since it's taboo, but it's pretty obvious if you're wearing it so few do. About the most you can get away with is mascara. I think some of the men make their wives doll up for date night, but not enough of them to make it a real commodity." She took a drag. "Ugh. This is bumming me out. You ready?"

Jo's cigarette butt flew over me and I heard it land in the creek with a sizzle. I stood and stretched, back popping, and yawned. Jo was brushing the grass off her long skirt, craning her neck to try and see the back.

"Do I have anything on my butt?" She did indeed have some grass and dirt on her lower back, and without thinking I reached out and brushed it off. I could feel the curve of her ass under the multiple fabric layers and suddenly remembered myself, blushing furiously.

"I-I'm, uh, shit. Sorry, I shouldn't've-"

Jo looked at me stammering and rolled her eyes, smiling.

"I asked you to. Come on, let's get going before it gets too hot."

...

The trunk line repair went surprisingly well. We found the chewed through area fairly easily. It seems the rats must have not wanted to go hiking either, because the section they chewed was still close to the trail. With four hands the splice operation was a cakewalk. Jo clearly had done this type of work before, but I resisted prying any further than I already had today.

We rode back in companionable silence. I've found, over the years, that being able to share silence with someone without it becoming awkward is a good bellwether for friendship. For the first time since my brother died I didn't feel alone. I wrapped that glowing coal up deep in my heart and savored its warmth.

Jo spoke again as we left the forest and the gates at the entrance to town came into view.

"You know, I'm off-duty for the first time in weeks tonight. You want to sneak out and get drunk?"

"I would, I really would, but I-" Wait, why was I making an excuse? I didn't have anything to do.

...

Later that night, after a dinner in the gender-segregated cafeteria, I went back to my bunk in the unmarried men's dormitory building and dug out a bottle of whiskey I'd been saving from my footlocker. The label was long gone, but the seal on the neck was intact and the amber liquid inside didn't have anything floating in it. I threw it and some bottled water into my backpack and slunk out towards the lavatory building. Checking over my shoulder that I was alone, I slipped behind the building into the shadows and made for a gap in the tree line, headed back to where we'd sat earlier. I made my way through the forest in the dark, feeling lucky that there was a nearly-full moon providing some illumination. Despite that, I still tripped over a root and went down hard.

Cursing, I got my knees under me and was getting to my feet when I felt a hand under my elbow.

"Easy there, champ. You all right?"

Momentary panic subsided as I realized it was a woman's voice.

"Jo?" I turned to her, brushing myself off, hoping the moonlight was dim enough to hide the deep shade of crimson my face had turned. "I'll live, just bruised my ego." I reached back to feel my backpack, which fortunately felt dry. "Precious cargo seems ok too."

"Thank god the important stuff's ok. Come on, over here."

I followed her off the path through increasingly dense brush until she crouched and ducked under a tree limb.

"Through here, watch your head." I lifted the branch and squatted, trying not to groan audibly. A low game trail was revealed through the brush, beyond which I could see a small clearing. Waddling through the underbrush, I emerged and saw a small firepit, surrounded by a couple of logs arranged for seating. There was a pile of twigs and smaller logs stacked against a nearby tree.

"Your hideout?" I asked, setting the bag down next to a log. Jo was already clearing away old blackened wood and setting up a pile of tinder.

"Yep, you're not going to tell on me, are you?"

"I think I'm complicit now, aren't I? Anyway, I brought a housewarming gift." I unzipped the backpack and pulled out the whiskey. Jo glanced up from the firepit and grinned.

"Excellent. Hey, pour a little on this, wood's a bit wet." I cracked the lid and gently splashed some onto the pyramid of twigs she'd put together. She reached into her dress, pulled a zippo from somewhere and lit the fire.

"We should keep this low. Don't need a patrol catching sight of it."

I nodded and took a sip of the bottle, wincing at the taste. I hadn't expected scotch.

"You like scotch?" I asked, passing her the bottle.

"I do if it'll get me drunk." She took a swig and made a similar grimace. "This is bad, though."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, passing the bottle back and forth, staring into the fire and listening to the sounds of the nocturnal forest. Jo eventually broke the silence.

"The Bishopric is trying to get me married off, you know. Say it's my duty to provide more children for the flock." She punctuated this by taking a long pull from the bottle. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and passed it to me. "Go forth and multiply, or whatever."

I didn't really know what to say, so I stalled by taking a slow sip from the bottle. I knew the Flock practiced polygamy and really pushed having children to replenish their numbers lost to the past few years of the exodus, but only high-status men were generally allowed to marry. I was, decidedly, not high status.

"Shit, that's awful. who's the lucky guy?"

"They've been talking about adding me to Samuel's little harem."

"Lucky you, what's the problem? Don't like beards?" I grinned and tried to catch her eye, but the glare I got back told me I'd misjudged the tone.

"I think that's just so his hens can peck me into submission, you know, keep an eye on me. Once you're married off, you live in the household, do all the housekeeping while pumping out kids. Not a lot of space for independent thought."

I quieted the "barefoot and pregnant" jokes bubbling up in my mind and watched her take another long pull before continuing.

"The women are nice enough to me, you know, superficially. It's not like they're icing me out every day, but there's a distance. Like because I haven't pumped out some brats I'm not on their level, like I don't know what the real world is." Another pull. I noticed she was swaying a little on her log and I reached out and took the bottle.

"Let's pace ourselves here, we have all night and only the one bottle." I set it down in the dirt next to me. "So is that your only choice? Samuel? Or do you have options?"

Jo looked at me strangely. "I mean, yeah, its not like they're forcing me to marry Samuel. But they will force me to marry someone and make kids, if I stay here."

"If? Where would you go?"

"I dunno. I haven't seen home since everything went to shit. There can't be much left, but I'd like to see it again, even if it's just glowing green glass."

"Let me guess, New York?"

"Yeah, upstate though. The city's f***ing melted, but I grew up on a few acres outside Poughkeepsie. Guaranteed the place is looted if it's still standing, but It'd be nice to see it again."

"Isn't that whole area contaminated? Could probably set time by your Geiger counter out there."

"Yeah, probably, but anymore, who wants to live forever?"