Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

dig under it, there were all the other fences outside Charlie. She would never get the chance, anyway; there were always Essos around, the cameras, lights at night.

But the shift vans took labour out of Transit to the complex facilities. The women who worked shift said you could see the highway from the complex, and that trucks and water tankers came and went regularly through Serkel’s own gate in the perimeter fence.

Li believed the stories about jumpers getting inside the XB under trucks. Some kind of harness would help, but if she couldn’t get rope then she needed a truck with tandem axles. She could use the crutches to brace herself across them. Her leg was the problem. In the black fug of the sleepbox she closed her eyes and traced undercarriages, counting non-moving parts, looking for handholds, places she could hook her leg over.

She worked a week in the complex before she had a chance. The van dropped the women off and picked them up in the loading bay but she was never outside long enough to time the coming and going of the transports. And after her first shift she gave up the idea of hiding a piece of rope in her clothes – the bodychecks were too thorough. All she could do was count wheels, notice where the drivers stood and the Essos stood.

Then, at the end of her eighth shift, while the women were walking in single file to the van, two guard dogs got into a fight. In the brief interval before the Essos had them back under control, she stepped out of the line and lowered herself awkwardly under the nearest truck.

They sent a dog after her. It lunged at her in the confined space, snarling and spraying spit, teeth taking lumps out of the air in front of her face. Hitting out at it with her crutch only increased its fury.

You got ten seconds, an Esso yelled, then I’m dropping the leash.

The drivers stood around while she crawled out, dragging her crutches. Some of them were laughing.

The Essos cable-tied her and sent her back in the van with the others. Management had a procedure for non-compliance.

Onebox was cut down much smaller than the sleepboxes, with a hatch in the door. It had a mattress and a blanket. A bottle of water. A bucket. When they put her in there, Li shouted, screamed, beat the walls and the floor till her skin split and her knuckles swelled. Three weeks since they’d brought her into Transit, the days moving away in a straight line and Matti receding.

Once a day she got food and water through the hatch. The ceiling had the same grid as the sleepbox but it was only light enough to see it for a couple of hours. She huddled in the blanket trying to think her way out of here, and then through every gate between here and maingate, think of a way to get the maingate code, get past the dogs, get back to the highway.

An Esso banged on the hatch, passed in food and refilled her bottle. Stayed there on the other side of the door for a moment.

Can you hear me? You gotta give this up. Hey. Say something if you can hear me.

Li thought she recognised the voice. It was Megan, one of the ones who’d carried her back to the sleepbox the first day. She tried to speak but she had no voice left.

Megan said, You only get boxed one time, that’s procedure. They’re short on labour now but once we do another intake you won’t be worth it for them, even with skills. You been in there three days already, you need to give this up. Show em you’ve learned your lesson. Hey. Whatever you think is out there, it’s not. Not for you. It’s just Transit now.

They let her out after six days. She went back on shift, showered when they told her to, slept when they told her, went to Medical, waited at the link gates, waited in the food queue. She kept count of the days and waited for something to change, for some disruption or breakdown that would give her a way out, but everything was the same, over and over.

And then finally she understood. Matti was lost to her. Not dead, not yet. She could still feel her in the world, still waiting for Li to come and find her. But Li would never come. That was what Megan had tried to tell her. There was no leaving here.

Serkel’s logo was everywhere in the complex and on the trucks. A green arrow circling round on itself. Sometimes the words Renewing excellence stencilled undeneath. Li saw it in the camp, too, rebranded over the old airbase signs or printed on discarded packaging. Serkel was Company, like Quench and Homegrown and XB Force were Company. Serkel bought waste by the shipping container from the global tech companies and military, and salvaged the gold and silver, copper, aluminium, plastic, glass and steel. Government waived the import charges and Company wore the cost of the ships that didn’t make it. It sold back the metals and minerals or used them on its own production lines. Dumped the rest up in North, or at least north of the XB. It was a good set-up, she thought. The transport overheads would be high but labour costs were minimal: everyone in Transit was on the points system, even the Essos. Making target covered your food and accommodation, basic medical, transport. Beating target earned you bonus points for readybars, soap, pads, koffee, sweetener, gum. Li had spent points before she had any, gone deep into debt for her medical, and she couldn’t see herself breaking even.

Some of the metals and plastics from salvage went to the other facilities in the complex where Serkel manufactured medical supplies and ammunition. Megan said they were helping the Wars effort. In the salvage facility, Li mostly worked with hand tools,