Don't Belong to No City

By Olivia Orndorff

My caretaker used to tell me stories, as caretakers do, of when the world was new. When the world was made up of continents and not islands; of nations, not cities; when people traveled in the air, outracing sound, over water; when healers worked not with their hands, but with machines.
She told me of the sun shining, of the snow burying the world in white, of animals kept as family—of families, not clans, tribes or corporations. Of a world without magic. Without gene modification. Without pollution covering the sky. Without people like me.
When the world was new.
But that, as she always ended every story, every phrase, every glance, was a very, very long time ago.

Secrets dominate Rue’s life in post-apocalyptic Chicago. When her past comes and swings around old favors for Rue’s help, Rue can no longer hide in the shadow pretending she is a powerless, normal human—a dud. Instead, she will have to lose carefully earned control and cause some damage in order to save her new lover and old family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olivia Orndorff
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463737767

Olivia Orndorff

After traveling over the US, Europe and Asia, Olivia currently lives in Chicago.One of these winters she'll pack it up, but until then you can find her at rummagingthrough a bookstore, at a bar, or out for a run.

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Don’t belong to No City

Olivia Orndorff

Don’t Belong to No City

Copyright 2019 Olivia Orndorff

Cover Image 1869 Rufus Blanchard. Public Domain.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

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[Primer]

This story begins, aptly enough, at the beginning. Rather, this story begins where all the predictions that drive our world—genetic warfare, pollution, nationalism, advanced technology, and limited resources—have already come to pass.

In the nineteenth century, researchers developed the theory of eugenics—selective breeding—and codified a hundred years of conquest and racial hatred. It would be the guiding principle of the decade and confirm American cultural elitism and give Hitler the answer to the Jewish question. But selective breeding and mass genocide was not a clean way to introduce, and speed up, the evolutionary process to award humanity with extra gifts that littered folklore.

Magic. Miracle. Mirage.

Scientists continued to turn to this question with their experiments of nuclear energy and the building blocks of the universe. With the advent of LSD, the spread of HIV and AIDS in the population, mathematicians tracked genetic predilections and human clusters. They began growing petri dishes with stem cell research. Crunched numbers with super computers. Hours of mind-numbing work to come up with a way to short cut the evolutionary track and give humans a cocktail of abilities.

A Chinese scientist, with a supportive government and ability to conscript human subjects, cracked it first. Humans could now see in the dark.

The Saudis were next with an increased immune system. Billionaires who would never catch another cold.

For the next two hundred years, another country announced another ability, another modification. Some only available to fetuses, some to adults—all for a price.

What no one bothered to track, or tried to control, was the offspring of Generation Zero.

Soon humans had mutating children with unexpected and out-of-control abilities.

Governments and businesses scrambled to track down those with new talents. In some cases, to replicate and in others, to clean up the mess.

As politicians and the wealthy fought for control, the world continued to burn resources as research stagnated and suddenly there wasn’t any oil. Or polar bears. Or plastic. And the world was being continually shifted by new-found powers for whoever held their strings.

Then the conglomerate of European corporations released what became known as the flu. An airborne virus infecting people and forcing change that was widespread and absolute. What became known as the Reckoning left the world in flux. Some cultures referred to it as the culling. Most think normal humans are dead—you’ve either changed or your stagnant but the virus is waiting for the right moment. Suddenly being a dud meant not being a weapon—being weak.

Factions fight for power, suddenly electricity, food, water are all luxuries as the world reels from the mistakes of the past.

It’s a bit of a curse, the curiosity humans are born with—and the drive for power. Messing with things that don’t concern them, ignoring the ripples that beget mistakes that changed the very fabric of the known world—including our DNA.

Much of the world—art, books, civility—is under water. Those left have changed and embraced the landscape, a landscape of nutrients in jars, radios, and magic.

This story begins after the Reckoning, after a girl and a cat grow up in New Orleans only to see the dregs of the city disappear. This story begins after the Revolution in Nashville, after she danced with dream-weavers and the cat left. This story begins after the Riots of Chicago, after she fell in love.

This story begins when the cat comes back.

Chapter One

[Stasis]

The fog was up this morning. Chicago has two seasons: wet and dry. Also known to the locals as humid and less humid. Currently, I was in Uptown making my way south and west to Juan’s bar in Pilsen.

Ilfy had kicked me out.

We’d argued again this morning. She’d wanted me to quit the bar. Quit Pilsen. Uptown had a lot of active magic users with their own ways of solving problems, and they didn’t want one of their own consorting with the bartender, who worked for a fixer known for leveraging secrets as currency.

I didn’t care. Apparently, my silence was enough to get me thrown out. I’d been silent for weeks now, but hey, her prerogative. You’d think she’d let me shower. Or eat breakfast. I was in the same clothes as my shift the night before and I smelled ripe.

The city of Chicago worked in two shifts: ten-hours on, two-hours off–including patrols. The streets were deserted right now. Everyone waiting for patrols to resume. A lot of shit went down right before dawn. I picked up my pace once I felt the border wards of Uptown. Sticky, like cotton candy, wafting over my arms. I kept moving up to the Brown line. The train didn’t run often; too much gas, the solar batteries never charged like they should, and the city’s electrical was never steady after the Riots. It started to rain and I flipped up the collar of my jacket. Outside of Uptown’s wards, the streets held water from the night before. My feet squished as the rain still found its way between the collar of my coat and the edge of my chin length hair.

Ilfy and I had been good together. We had meandered along, good enough like the streets until the rains came and flooded the sewers to fling back out their waste in disgust to the heavens. We were the couple brought together by convenience and now that convenience was done. The shit in the metaphor, in case you were wondering, was my past. My secrets.

Keeping my mouth shut in Chicago, a city run by duds while tiny tribes of magic users fought to control their boundaries and keep out any real talent, I had done first out of grief, then prudence and now habit.

Ilfy lived in one such tribe of magic users. Uptown. I lived and worked in another—Pilsen. When I first got to Chicago, those differences hadn’t meant much to me. Much easier to bypass than a user and a dud hooking up for any length of time. Everyone knows that’s a problem.

Two weeks ago, we’d just finished dinner. Ilfy was itching to give me a new tattoo and I was game with getting her hands on my skin. She’d been telling me the day’s gossip from the market where a good story is something you can trade with–like caffeine pills–something to mull over the rest of the day.

A dud, who worked as a piercer at Ilfy’s place, had been living with a shifter for a few months now. The shifter couldn’t do much besides grow gills when she needed. The two had a row, because, apparently, when you’re in love you need all those endorphins to keep pumping you up, and so the two were arguing like always. The shifter transformed into a creature with claws, swiped at the dud and vanished into the ruins. She resurfaced two days later with no memory and a lover who lost the sight in one eye and will have bumpy, twisted scar tissues on his face for the rest of his life.

An interesting tale, and far too common in this city and this age, I’d pulled Ilfy down to kiss her. She’d murmured, This is why users and duds have to stay on opposite sides of the line.

She was right, but I didn’t want to agree. So, I said nothing.

Two weeks later, I’m out during the guards’ off hours, begging for a fight. I walked a few more blocks, hopping over dead trees, tripping over broken pavement, and heard a faint whistle. The train was close. I hustled up to the stop.

Jumping over the broken turnstile, I pulled the wire to light up the stop letting the conductor know I was there. It also let anyone else know that someone was here too. No one ever mentioned people picking fights on the platform. Probably because the structures were flimsy. It was an isolated spot though. Just far enough away from any one border and up away from the very solid ground.

Lighting flashed across the sky of humidity and pollution. The rumble of the train shook the platform, as the Brown line swung around the corner and screeched to a stop. I got on the second car. After the Riots, no one was allowed in the front car and the operator usually had a few wards on the doors. A ward wouldn’t stop the stubborn, but the regulation shotgun all conductors carried tended to work just fine. It was a funny thing, even with the virus running amok giving people abilities they shouldn’t have, a bullet through the eyes or the heart tended to kill you dead. Of course, you first had to own a gun and I’d been a few places that lacked the infrastructure to make either bullets or guns. The one thousand plus years of competitive weaponry was more or less defunct. In the safe beneath my mattress, I had a Smith and Wesson. Most days I got by with a knife, for most duds that’s all they got.

The train jerked around another corner, and my head clunked against the rusty train car. I had the train for quite a few stops before finally getting off when the train turned toward the loop. Few people left their neighborhoods, mainly for safety, but also because Chicago was really fucking big. The city might have been better off consolidating like Detroit or splitting further like the LA Consortium.

No one asked me though.

I was opening today, and probably had time to head to my apartment first. But I was too tired. Especially when I swung through the neighborhood and saw Lulu’s was open. No one knew what she put in her coffee. We all still drank it and got jittery in a few minutes flat. The bell on the door jingled when I shoved it open. The two watchers saw and dismissed me in the same glance. Most knew the purple haired bartender at Juan’s. Even if they didn’t, the canvas coat didn’t cover the tattoos.

Rue, Lulu said in greeting. She was behind the counter. She pulled down a mug and filled it with the pitcher from the back. I grabbed a brightly red wrapped parcel labeled in English as APPLE PIE. My stomach wasn’t taking no from my taste buds. It was hard to eat though with the choices encased in obnoxious packaging.

Good choice, only a few months old. Lulu shared, before ringing me up.

I nodded back and gave her the cost of the food. The radio crackled to life in the background. We froze in tableau, Lulu reaching out with the change, me with one hand outstretched. The radio sputtered back to silence. I took my change. She exhaled.

See you later, I said.

Lulu nodded, one eye on the radio, looking troubled. I made my way out the door and headed down the street.

Chicago had three official radio channels. No paper, no ink, no computers for most of the world. Lulu, in addition to damn good coffee, had a reliable radio and kept a spare hand cranked and ready to go at all times. She was this area’s point for news. If she left Lulu’s, she’d bring her radio to Juan’s and leave her radio in the kitchen for Rafe to fuss over.

A cynic would say not everyone could get news relayed to them from an emergency broadcast via radio, or the neighborhood watch, in a city this size.

Lulu still kept her channel fixed on the official broadcast, and we all jumped when the static dropped. The last official message had come through in January. A seeker hopped up on drugs had run out of a building screaming about a giant raven and had actually managed to summon something that had ravaged parts of Hyde Park. I spat to the ground in remembrance. Twenty dead when the dust settled. Official dead. I sipped my coffee and moved on.

Juan’s was two blocks down from Lulu’s on the east side of the street. Destroyed ruins meant you could see the burning man mural on the side of the building from a solid 50 meters away. It was a Pre-Reckoning marker, one grandmothers told stories to their children about. Stories their own mothers had told them while locking them in closets and cellars. Every year someone from the neighborhood touched up the paint.

Juan’s was the kind of place that opened when the door was propped wide with a brick and closed when we locked the door. People said the burning man protected the building—that and a shit ton of wards. We had our share of fights, but no one stole from us, no one broke in and, most importantly, the ever-present swarm of mosquitoes stayed out of the bar.

All that meant when I shoved the door open, I felt a lot more than the cotton candy that shifted against me when I left Uptown. This was more like the fine lace webbing Lulu’s girls sold for fancy events and could cut skin, if pushed too hard. I gritted my teeth and stepped in. I never asked Juan if he had keyed the ward to me. After all, everyone knew, I was a dud.

The bar was one room; booths to the left with a hand crank phonograph and vinyl in the far corner. Beer was stacked along the far-right side. Above the bottles, behind the bar, was once a mirror. Now it was just a spot to collect anything that caught the bartenders’ fancy. My own personal contribution was the warning sign I’d snagged from the train that stated, NO SEX MAGIC ON MOVING TRAINS.

I still didn’t think sex magic was real, or why the sign needed to stipulate a train in motion.

Rafe’s kitchen was down a narrow hallway and took up the rest of the space to the left and a storage room to the right. Out back were our dumpsters, good for months. A fire escape on the back of the building went to Juan’s office on the second floor. With flimsy electricity and no oil for lamps, few people used internal staircases if they could help it. I checked the dumpsters and saw our trash was still there–could mean an issue with the unions, but probably meant the collectors were behind. One of the dumpsters had the imprint of a fist making the lid not close properly. I cracked the lid to make sure no one was hiding out, and then trekked back inside.

Chicago had it better than most, no doubt, with electricity, running water, and sewage all maintained by unions. Most were duds with little to no usable magic. Duds had closed their doors during the Riots and rode out the fighting. The distinct neighborhoods had fared better, but a few communities had too much power to contain. So, I’d heard anyway. The unions kept the city attractive to corporations and users that left in a hurry were now sulking back to the suburbs that hadn’t made it. They were getting the hell taxed out of them. If a wild user showed up, the duds expected the lone wolf to settle in or they’d make a call.

Those calls went to people like Juan. Juan was a fixer. Need your lover back because he stole your grandmother’s diamonds? You called Juan.

Needed to know why your competitors were buying up all that cannabis? Call Juan.

Need a magic user put down, or found, or both? You called Juan.

Juan was the main fixer in this city, but there were others. Sinatra, a truth-seeker, out of Uptown. Maya Chang, down in Chinatown.

But Juan had a lot of secrets, a lot of favors owed to him. Most people in Chicago went to him first.

I hadn’t known any of that when I’d come looking for a job. I pulled the chairs off a few tables that sat underneath the main window and didn’t bother with any of the lights. I did flick on the travel radio we kept behind the counter. I flipped past the emergency channel, still static, past the weather–rainy and humid, surprise! –and landed on the third.

The third sanctioned channel came out of the academics down in Hyde Park. They’d hunkered down in their Soviet bunkers and nuclear protection suits and only came out when the dust settled. They had a radio channel that broadcast readings out of the remnants of their paper libraries. Every day along with the ten hour shifts. It meant the whole city eagerly debated what the book of revelation meant along with porter’s five forces of industry article.

Last night, Ilfy had the mahabharata on in the background. I’d already missed