May 25, 2440 – 7:00:00 AM
The truck rolled out of the yard just shy of 7:00, its tires biting into dry gravel that hadn’t seen rain in weeks. The said it wanted to rain, but the breeze said it wouldn’t today.
“Ask anything you want to know,” Ryya said throwing a heads-up onto the windshield only he could see.
“What is your title and what organizations do you belong to for starters so my readers can get a feel for who you are.”
“Not sure I have a job title,” Ryya said pulling onto the blacktop. “Matt said here I need you to do this about 15 years ago and I been doing it ever since. I am sure my wife, Kitty, knows if not her then maybe Journey. They are the household bookkeepers.”
“So you do this out of love or devotion or is it financial?”
“All of the above. I work for Matt and when he says go do, I get up and go do. There are a lot of us with that sort of job. Truthfully most of my orders get filtered through the CRM. I wake up, do household and farm chores, and then start working my way through the overnight tickets.
“You said three sites are active this morning, do you usually get advance warning, or is it always wait-and-see?”
“I always have forewarning. In order to check into one of our safehouses you need to register biometrically. We aren’t in the surveillance industry, or at least think so Matt has a lot of businesses, registration is putting your hand on the palm reader and stating the name you want to use. That unlocks the front door. We have a more comprehensive check-ins inside and when people arrive.”
“Can I ask… why do you bring your daughters on these runs?”
“We aren’t in school, so we work and contribute like anyone else,” Claudia told the woman in what for her was far more talking that she regularly did to strangers.
“Unlike him, the three of us were up long before 5:30 am,” Buella said right along with her sister who had no problem speaking or talking back. “We share a room with Jimnah, wo you might meet later. We got up a little before 4:00. Jimnah got the laundry started again and woke up Nabi, Christian and Peter, Claudia and I went out and collected eggs with Claudia. The boys were sent out to check on the goats and bring in milk, butter, and cheese from the dairy. Jimnah made breakfast and we got cleaned up. This was all before our sleep-in, shut-in dad ever got out of bed.”
“Guilty,” Rayya said with some pride in that one.
“So you prepared everything for your family before he got up, you three girls and your bothers?”
“Hardly everything,” Claudia said, pulling the lid off a container and handed it to the front of the cab. “Try that with the chutney, mind the little bones.”
“That is fabulous,” Leila said wide eyed as the soft delicate deep fried something with the tangy green chutney. “What is it.”
“The rattlesnake she killed this morning,” Buella laughed opening up a second container, but not before watching the woman go sort of pale, even for a white woman. “Ever had it before? These aren’t as exotic,” she said passing up some samosa. “The darker one is lamb with lentils and carrots, the lighter one is paneer with blackberry preserves.”
“Is this what you are serving the safehouse guests?”
“Oh no, not the rattlesnake, there are too few of those around to just go handing out to strangers.” Buella chuckled eating another bit, pleased to Leila was still eating hers.
“Enough of them we still go armed when we collect eggs.”
“Is going armed everywhere a thing here, even for you girls?”
“Not, everywhere, first thing in the morning and places where we are likely to run into critters that bite then sure. Personally, I would rather take a hoe to them than shoot them, you are a little more likely to get a good clean kill, but that is not always practical,” Buella offered handing her dad a samosa.
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”
“Life is dangerous. If it isn’t you probably aren’t living, just barely surviving.”
“This is stop one,” Rayya said pulling off the blacktop onto the gravel, pulling to a stop before the gate which was Nabi’s cue to hop out and take care of it.
Rayya pulled through and left Nabi and Jack to walk the rest of the way. “Hello, the house,” he called before getting out of the truck. He watched Nabi circle around the back from the opposite side, pistol still neatly tucked with is shirt covering everything. He picked up the tablet and opened the camera view and listened for a minute.
“Привет в доме. Ты голоден?”
Three little faces peeked from the curtains, and Rayya waved.
“Are you the Marmaduke?” Timofei asked cautiously coming outside.
“No, I am warden of this district and am here in his name. You, a woman, a teenage girl and three boys came here last night, and I am here to check on you and explain the rules. My name is Rayya Chakrobarty, what is yours?”
“Timofei Larionovich Tarnovetsky,” The man said still a little weary of giving it out.
“Timofei Larionovich, is this your family that you travel with?” Rayya said calmly.
“They are, we were told only the Marmaduke could give us sanctuary.” He said passing over a crudely drawn map with directions in Cyrillic.
“I am his cousin and I speak for him. If you and yours bring no harm to this community and will work to support it, he most certainly will examine your case,” Rayya said and took a picture of it, before handing it back, he waved the girls out, which set Timofei enough at ease to call on his own family.
“Annika, Nastya, Christov, Anton, Timur,” he said introducing them oldest to youngest, ruffling the smallest boy’s hair.
Buella put down an insulated bag of food while Claudia checked the labels on bags of clothes.
“Is anyone sick or injured?” Rayya asked, and when they were about to say no. “She is having trouble standing on that leg,” he said pointing to Nastya’s leg and a discolored spot on her jeans. “Sit girl,” he said having had enough with courtesy. “Claudia, the bag” he said touching the girls forehead which was burning up. He pulled out his phone. “Oxana, where are you right now? Great. Bring the rig. No, just take them to the clinic,” he said after explaining the situation. “Angelina, my fair rose,” Rayya laughed and switched to English. “The family that arrived last night. Oxana is bringing them to the house clinic. They were carrying a hand copied map and directions similar to the ones we distributed along the US51 corridor the fall of thirty-seven. They missed the part with most of the safehouses, that is why we didn’t pick up on them until they were this side of Columbia. OK, sounds good. Tell Floyd, Claudia got him another snake head. The girls fed our reporter friend. See you tonight.”
Rayya watched Claudia, politely, but firmly shoved the girl back onto her butt, as Buella cut the pants and as Rayya thought the smell had been worse than him being skunked, but the girls handled it like a champ. He checked the phone locator, five minutes out.
“We will take care of your daughter, Timofei Larionovich,” he said looking the man in the face. “You will go with her and meet the Marmaduke. He doesn’t speak Russian, but someone there will be able to translate.” He switched to the mother. “Your husband and daughter are going to clinic to have her leg seen too. There is hot food for this morning and maybe enough for some lunch. There are supplies for a few days and extra clothes here and in those bags for everyone. Stay close to the house today. What clothes you can’t use please put them away with the others that have been left behind. Do you have questions?”
Rayya followed the ambulance back down the drive, and onto the blacktop.
“I listened to the translation,” Lelia said. “Was that normal?”
“Not common so far. We circulated most of that information among some labor camps run by Memphis a few years ago. That was hand copied and badly translated. I suspect they finally had the will to leave because some overseer decided the girl was what he wanted. That happens often enough in places Memphis controls.”
“Can’t the CCA do something about it?”
“Memphis, like Chicago where you are from and Seaboard Alliance where you live are not part of the CCA. Going to war with them could get us cut off from the port. That would be total disaster for the region. It isn’t like we would get any help from others if we tried either. There isn’t a government on the continent that is unaware of the problem yet no one save for us on the interior do anything about it and what you just saw is what we can do right now.
“What will happen to them?”
“We will take care of the girl, get the kids in school and find work for the parents. Normally they could stay here for three days only, but since we are now short on ready houses, I suspect we will extend that.”
“You said you’re the warden of this district, how many districts are there across Matt’s territory, and do they all operate like this?”
“Someone used that title for what I do once and it just sort of stuck. Every cluster of safe houses has someone like me who makes the rounds and another group that keeps the lawns and property tended to.”
“Who funds all of this? I mean the safehouses, the food, the transport, the clinics. Is it out of Matt’s personal account, the Freehold, the Trust?”
“All three in my ‘district’,” Rayya chuckled. “That was a Trust owned safehouse, this new one is on Matt’s personal property and there are three that belong to the Freehold in between that are quiet and visited yesterday for the regular inspection. All three groups as they are all headed by Matt at the moment work pretty closely.”
“You seemed to know exactly what was wrong with that girl from a glance. How much medical training do you have, or is that just experience?”
“I could smell the leg festering and when someone is that sick it doesn’t take much to see something is wrong, it is not uncommon to see people that have pushed themselves hard to get here suffering from illness and injury. As far as my background goes I am a paramedic with the fire department, both my girls there are EMT’s in training.”
“You mentioned Matt as ‘The Marmaduke,’ and everyone seems to know what that means. What does it mean to you, personally?”
“That is more of a joke for us, but it is something that comes from the workcamps and brothels down south. They speak of him like he is a legend, because he helps.”
“Why do you think no one else—Chicago, Seaboard, Evergreen—steps in to stop this kind of trafficking?”
“They have their own problems.”
“You said this kind of escape happens more often than people think. How many families like this do you think you’ve helped in the past five years?”
“Me personally? Somewhere between 120 and 150,” he said, cracking open a Dr pepper passed forward.
“You spoke to both the mother and father directly and respectfully. Is that your approach in all refugee cases, or just ones with children?”
“Every case is different. It was just lucky that I speak Russian. This next pair we have been shepherding this way since early April.”
“And when you said that ‘shepherding’ them had already begun, does that mean this is coordinated over time, not just a matter of people stumbling into a safehouse?”
“These kids came out of the Ten Tribes area, ran away in late March. Not an atypical situation. What do you know about the laws there?”
“Nothing really,” Leila said grateful for the cool sweetness of the Dr Pepper.
“Adulthood begins when you marry for at least four of the tribes. She got pregnant in the usual way, teenagers being teenagers. Then his family most likely refused to let him marry, which is something you need to be twenty-five to do on your own. They probably also had a judgement of custody against the baby and her until it is born, at which time they may or may not have cut her loose with no custody rights. Happens all the time when there is enough economic disparity between the families.”
“That’s awful.”
“I think so, but then again the fact I have five wives and nineteen kids would be seen as an abomination there too,” he shrugged. “These kids were smart instead of heading for Coffeeville, which is north of Tulsa, they headed northeast over rough country and through piney forests to Neosho. It took them seven days before they hit the first of Matt’s safe houses.
They went north after three days towards Joplin and gave a different name to Joplin who circumvented keeping them or letting them rest there by insisting that they leave but offered them a new option by driving them to the edge of Pittsburgh where we have another safe house. They stayed Three more days at each of several safe houses both in and out of our territory. It wasn’t until late afternoon that they finally accepted a ride. Someone in a Marmaduke service truck with the logo on the side stopped to check on them and they agreed to go to one of his safe houses.”
“You said Neosho is technically not Joplin’s territory. What happens if one CCA member tries to assert control over another’s safehouse or people?”
“There is no technically about it. It simply isn’t. Joplin on a map looks like an amoeba having”
“Autoerotic-mitosis?” Buella offered helpfully.
“Copulation with it’s clone?” Claudia chimed in.
“In would speak to their mothers about that, but all I would get would be more helpful examples along those same lines. Anyways, Joplin has around 6500 people in their plasmonic boundaries, and it is entirely encapsulated by Matt aligned territories. They don’t mess with our territories and we don’t mess with their it is that simple, trying to do so would invite CCA arbitration.”
“How do the internal rules of the Freehold interact with CCA law? Is there ever tension?”
“That is what you are missing,” Beulla said taking a turn at explaining. “The CCA doesn’t have laws, save for the do not start crap with your neighbors.”
“How often do families from the Ten Tribes area try to seek sanctuary here? Has it increased in recent years?”
“Families, as in adults? Almost never, thought we do get some immigration. Young kids like that? That happens often enough I don’t have to read the knows to know the basic story line.”
“What made you take this job seriously when Matt asked you to step in? Was there a particular case that stuck with you?”
“When Uncle Matt asks you to do something, it is because he is putting his trust in you to do it as well if not better than he can,” Claudia said, finally feeling the need to contribute.
“With five wives and nineteen kids, how do you teach them the value of compassion without letting them become jaded by what they see out here?”
“They all remind me that life is worth living every day. We are all involved in this in various ways. Two of my wives will be back to check in on everyone this evening and bring them a hot meal. A lot of their time goes into making sure these safe houses have what is needed, the kids all help too.”
“We do important work and it helps Matt and the entire community,” Beulla offered.
“If a refugee provides false information but isn’t a threat, how often do you let it slide?”
“Unless there is a warrant out for them, which we would know about long before they arrived, we really don’t care what they did anywhere else. We use the name they gave us and let them write their own story going forward. The CCA is the second chance most people never get in life. Matt’s reputation is such that people do not want to mess up in his territory.”
“You said ‘we’re the only ones doing anything about it.’ How does that sit with you long-term? Doesn’t it feel isolating?”
“That is sort of the thing, we don’t care what other people do or don’t do. This is a problem you city folk spend your lives worrying about, ‘what will other people think or do’ instead of just living your own as best as you can. You complain about problems that you are powerless to fix and it makes the lot of you miserable,” Claudia said trying to remember this for herself and the blessings of humility.
“Well said daughter,’ Rayya said pulling into the second driveway of the day.
This group had been informed to be ready to leave, and it spoke well that the girls was mopping the floor behind her as
