Luca by Jacob Whaler Page B

he wanted to, and meted out severe punishments on a whim. In exchange for their lives, he required strict loyalty and dictated every detail of the Family. He rarely missed a shot with his long rifle. Jedd witnessed Moses dispatch anyone who questioned his authority with the tap of a finger on a trigger. Under his dictatorship, the Family lived by raiding other tribes in the Zone, stripping them of food and water, always leaving a few survivors so that the fear of Moses would spread.
    Eventually, Jedd got his fill of hate and fear. He got his fill of Moses.
    On the clear night of a full moon with shadows sharp as crystal, while the Family camped close to the edge of the Zone, Jedd glimpsed the buried road that led in a straight line through the Divide, a pock-marked minefield ten kilometers across, laden with boulder-sized craters separating the Zone from the outside world.
    Moses told stories about how the Divide was laid down by the people of the cities to keep out the people of the interior. Planes had dropped millions of black spheres that burrowed into the dirt and came to life when an erring foot pressed down on them. Like a face marred by acne, the Divide bore the pockmarks and pits of explosions that kept everyone but the suicidal from attempting to cross.
    After a day without food, in a moment of despair, Jedd made a decision. He would risk it all to escape. After everyone had gone to bed, he grabbed Ricky and eight other kids.
    All ten of them spread out and ran.
    Moses was drunk and missed most of his shots, but the Divide claimed what Moses couldn’t hit.
    Except for Jedd and Ricky.
    With Moses’ big voice and gun booming behind them, they fled. For three days, they chased the morning sun with no food or water. And then they caught a glimpse of the City on the far horizon, surrounded by a slum. When they finally stumbled onto the filthy streets of the Fringe, it was like walking into a candy store.
    Jedd and Ricky both began working at the only jobs available, building illegal structures in the endless slum. It bought them a leaky roof over their heads in Ms. Murphy’s boarding house and enough recycled food to fill a teenager’s belly, almost. There was plenty of work. The Fringe was growing like a fungus, swelled by rejects from the City and, rarely, stragglers from the Zone. Decades before, the slum had spread to massive proportions, sprawling for miles, covering all the empty space and absorbing any structures already in place, fed by an endless supply of cheap building materials from the fab plants that ringed the City.
    Squeezing his eyes shut, Jedd brings himself back to the present. He glances behind.
    Ricky is fading into the darkness, unable to keep up. It’s been the same story since the day Ricky walked into the Fringe and discovered the Mesh and his natural aptitude for all things connected to it. Too little time working out, too much time exploring the nether regions of the network that unifies all information and objects on the planet.
    Not that Jedd’s complaining.
    Ricky has a knack for finding his way past all but the most highly encrypted security walls, an intuitive understanding of the lay of the land inside cyberspace.
    A handy friend to have when you’re dealing with tech.
    A gentle rain begins to fall.
    Jedd stops to check his jax, only a hundred meters from Joey’s last position, but there’s still no sign of the kid. Raising his eyes to the sky, Jedd lets a cascade of tiny drops wash his face. When his eyes sting, he wipes his forehead and brings his hand away. An oily film clings to his fingers.
    Just as he’s about to wipe it away, he hears a faint roar, like a far-off crowd cheering a back alley rollerball game.
    Following the sound, he slips down a narrow street of broken pavement, running his fingers along both walls. A web of wires and cables snake inches above his head. He dodges rats the size of small dogs and races past the back door of a Chinese noodle shop reeking of