End of Women: Part Four

Aftermath

'I don't know why they said "feared dead". The man is fucking dead! There is no questioning that. Fifteen thousand nuclear warheads detonated at once! And to focus on just one man, so callous... virtually the entire population of Albuquerque has been killed. Anyone within a fifty-mile radius, instantly vaporised. And around that is a hundred-mile wall of radioactivity. We won't be counting survivors as percentages, we'll be mentioning them by name. God, what a fucking mess! Wilkes gone, Wiltercart gone, all the Joint Chiefs... if the Koreans or Ruskies have any sense they'll invade tomorrow, we're completely vulnerable!'

Nate swallowed a long, thin glass of apple juice. He waited for Degan to say something. Anything. All the man did was sit there in the spot where he had once spoken to Wilkes. Beneath them was the caging system, the elaborate matrix of female captivity that was the soul of Bluenorth. Degan didn't seem bothered at all, just maintaining that infuriating half-smile and satisfied glow he had brought back with him from San Francisco.

'Not to mention with half our armed men on active Compound duty.' Nate went on, resisting the urge to knock the look off Degan's face. 'Whoever has the bad luck to be in charge after all this-'

'That will be the Speaker... I forget his name.' Degan said casually.

'Whoever they are, they might seriously consider shutting us down. Wilkes left a legacy behind, Degan. We have to honour it as best we can.'

'Has Compound attendance slowed since the incident?' Degan asked.

Nate looked to the overhanging balcony. Beneath it was the Compound entrance, where once, not long ago, cars had been backed up and honking all the way to the treeline. Now it was empty, with a single car sliding in once every few hours. The caging halls, once so alive with the sound of footsteps and chatter, of girls being dragged, walked or whipped, of feeding and of fucking, were now almost silent. 

'How long before they shut us down, Degan?' Nate sighed as he folded his hands behind his back and looked out over the quiet valley. 'How long before men lose faith in what we've done here, and come to take their women back? How long?'

'Wilkes was not everything.' 

'You're wrong. You never took any of this seriously, so how would you know? Its all fallen on me... in the days since he died I've looked through all of it, everything he left behind. He ran it all, Degan. He made the propaganda work, he made the deals happen, he pulled each and every string himself. I'm lost, and its only been three days.' Nate hung his head and sighed. 'The troubles in Mexico... reports of men hiding unregistered females... its the beginning of the end of Bluenorth.'

'Come on.' Degan got to his feet and stood beside Nate at the window. 'It can't be that bad.'

The sun was setting over the horizon, light diffracting between mountain-peaks into brilliant shades of red and orange. 

'Its worse.' Nate heaved out each word with tremendous effort. 'The Albuquerque incident didn't just take Wilkes from us, it took our credibility. Our surveillance wing has picked up a lot of rumours that powerful people no longer trust our ability to keep the Compound system afloat.'

'So, what do they want us to do?' asked Degan. 'Just let all the women go?'

'No, that's not going to happen. But what you never understood is that we don't own these women. The government owns them. Bluenorth is a contractor hired to make this system work and if we don't... they'll look for someone else.'

Nate met Degan's eyes, and in an instant it was clear who he was talking about.

'No. They can't do that. They won't  do that!' Degan felt his voice growing louder, his hands clenching into fists. 'Not... the Arrowheads?'