1
SERF GIRL
May 2177, The Mall
***
CHAPTER 1
The metal collar presses against her throat. Bulky, suffocating, and as cold as the floor she kneels on, it restricts the airflow into Sam’s lungs.
Do not come up the stairs.
Do not pick us.
Anyone else, just not us.
A soft touch on her shoulder. Startled, Sam looks to her left and stares at a set of permanent fake lashes and the friendliest eyes in this mall.
In the whole EliteVillage region.
Even beyond the stone wall, where Slumland and death begins.
“Calm your tits, killer.” Macy reaches for Sam’s collar. Their screaming-red fingernail taps the metal surface where a single red light flickers on and off. “Ain’t nobody here for your paranoid ass.”
Sam closes her eyes for a calming breath. Macy’s right. She’s Tier One. Nobody’s here for her. The Pickers will not pick Sam. She’s not eligible, nowhere near Tier Three.
She glances at Macy’s collar. Two red lights shine bright above their navy-blue, velvet-lined pajama top. As long as the third light doesn’t blink into life due to some cosmic, tragic anomaly, Sam’s roommate won’t be exiting the mall either.
She forces her racing mind to slow down.
Her nose to focus on the hint of pine in Macy’s aftershave.
Her knees, calves, and toes to ground her on the cold, slippery floor.
Maybe they won’t come up.
Maybe it’ll all be oka—
Heavy combat boots start climbing the escalator stairs. Opaque helmets pop into sight. Broad shoulders. Dark uniforms with wide metal belts. In all their murky glory, the robotic frames of the Picker bots step onto the mall’s second floor and park in front of the department store Sam and Macy call home.
As she glares at the enemy, an intruding static sound starts reverberating inside Sam’s head. Down her neck and into her chest, the unnerving sensation jolts her body, flowing into her arms and down the length of her legs. It fills her with an electric current. One that leaves her swarming with inhuman, primal aggression. It pushes her back to a dark place she tried to leave behind by walking into this questionable safe haven five years ago.
It tempts her to snarl.
To lunge.
To rip, gash, smash, and bite.
Like an outsider in her own body, she watches her shaking hand grab hold of Macy’s wheelchair. She shifts her electrified body to kneel between her roommate and the enemy. Her knees sting and burn, but she hardly notices.
“Sam…”
“No.”
“Honey, don’t let your paranoia—”
“Not on my fucking watch.”
She means it. From the bottom of her rotten, no-good heart. Because of this monster that hibernates in her veins, she’s already lost the one she loved the most. The one who made the end of the world worth living in. But she’ll be damned to lose the last friendly smile left in this nauseating, mind-fuck of an apocalypse.
Not Macy.
Not tonight.
Just keep your head down.
Your mouth shut.
Your chin tucked, if only for the two inches your collar allows.
Unless the Pickers go for Macy. If they do, Sam will let the beast roam free. She’ll let it do what it does best.
Tear these fucking tyrants apart, limb from limb.
CHAPTER 2
Someone should harvest his balls. That’s the only thing Sam can think of as she watches the old man wobble across the food court and sink down on a red, plastic chair. Cut them out clean, let it all gush out. The man known as Old Fart Johnson waves at two women wearing matching pajama sets, sitting two tables away. Side-eyeing him, they shift plastic seats to turn slightly away from their drunken harasser. After three involuntary blinks, Sam turns her back on the scene, as she’s done a hundred times before.
With blank eyes, she stares at the canned cheese and fake marinara sauce that smear the front of the vending machine, PizzaPiez. It’s been five nights since the ValuePickins. The scrape on her knees is long gone. As the uneventful days roll by, Sam has slowly returned to her untriggered state of mind, her focus back on hating the mall and the dumbshits living in it. Those who believe that the Pickers truly are here to escort a handful of lucky winners to some make-believe, utopia-filled paradise. A paradise where things like freedom, human rights, and real food haven’t gone extinct. A place where no experimental metal collars mount people’s necks, limiting the airflow to their lungs.
Sam feeds the machine a food token and watches the touchscreen flicker and blink. She taps on the black olive and mushroom pizza icon. Two beeps follow. Surprised to see the vending machine doing its job this time, Sam turns to lean on the humming device while it prepares her nutritionally questionable dinner.
“Better than a tube of cookie dough,” she mumbles to herself, grimacing at the thought of tubed meal replacements. Adjusting the ValueCollar around her neck, Sam tells her brain to ignore the mental image of gooey paste on a stale salt cracker. She gags in disgust. Germs and goo and sticky surfaces. Shouldn’t she be used to it all by now? After five years of living at the mall?
When Old Fart Johnson’s chair screeches closer to the pajama-wearing women, Sam does her best to ignore the slurring waste of sperm. Crossing her arms, she looks up. Her gaze wanders to the small, round camera mounted to the ceiling. Just like the rest of the cameras that cover the mall’s every corner and opening, this one has no blinking or flickering lights on it. It makes no beeps, clicks, or buzzing sounds. As far as Sam knows, the damn things have never been activated in the first place.
A ripple of laughter echoes from the nearby table. Sam can’t wait to get back to her nook, away from her fellow MallFam participants. The food court is busy tonight. The air vibrates with better than average mood and playful commentary. If days of the week were still a thing, Sam would say it was Friday. Tipsy, happy bursts of laughter and ripples of conversation fill the seating area, a space made of red plastic, enormous fake plants, and neon commercials playing on the electric floor panels.
From this distance, the place looks almost…decent. The sticky layer of spilled drinks and sloppily eaten tube meals isn’t as obvious in the early evening light, piercing through the mall’s cracked glass ceiling.
A speaker right above Sam’s head buzzes to life. Her light mood vanishes, but her heart rate remains the same. This announcement she knows to expect—everyone at the mall does. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. “Good evening, mall tenants. Your weekly tokens are now available for pick up at the west side locker wall.”
She reaches for the soda can shoved in her back pocket. The can hisses open as Sam remembers Fridays, the universal basic income checks, and music blasting in the house where nobody else was ever home. Sipping on her root beer, Sam keeps her hand steady, careful not to spill it. Beer, hard cider, cocktails, and sugar-free cannabis drinks may be free for those who live at the mall, but sodas cost a fortune.
The speakers buzz again. This time, the chatter at the food court fades away as people quiet down to listen. Shit. Fuuuck. A second announcement is bad. Unusual. Sam presses the can against her chest, feeling her heart beat faster.
“We are pleased to announce a surprise Tier X lottery! Along with anyone who’s reached Tier Three, we will pick a random person from the lower tiers. Rest assured, each MallFam participant’s I.D. number has been added to the draw. So, pack your suitcase and get ready for a surprise ValuePickins event—coming soon.”
The chatter continues. Someone yelps happily. Three women hug each other, then jump up and down like a bunch of sugar-high school girls.
Shit, shit, shit, Sam thinks, forcing a calming breath. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
With a slightly trembling hand, she brings the drink to her lips. Maybe her wildly beating heart will collapse from exhaustion, granting her a quick end. Maybe then the ever-present sense of approaching catastrophe will finally leave her be. Not that Sam wants to die. But a quick and dirty heart attack is better than ending up in a Picker’s hands.
No real, tube-free food awaits the lottery winner. No collar-free throats, no collective goals of making humanity civil again. Anyone with three green lights ends up worm food, right after the Pickers are done using them as some perverse entertainment pieces in whatever sick games they play.
“How would you know?” Macy tends to ask whenever Sam goes on another rant about the ugly truth behind the MallFam project. “Who died and made you the mighty, all-knowing oracle?”
But Sam just knows. Far from an oracle, she’s still certain the operators behind the mall project and its collared Serfs are genuinely evil. She’s been like this for a while. Ever since the horror she bathed in that nightmarish night, her guts became inhumanly intuitive about bad shit about to happen. Soaking in that much blood will do wonders to a girl’s psyche—no matter how many monsters hibernate in her veins.
Sam takes another sip of what the mall people like to call “liquid candy-crack.” With a less trembling hand, she scratches the slightly irritated skin under the edge of her ValueCollar. She turns to check her reflection on the PizzaPiez machine. One red light. Not two red lights, not three green lights.
See? she thinks at her slumbering vein-beast. We’re not going anywhere. Unless…
Unless she wins the surprise lottery. But the odds of that are unlikely: two hundred people live in this hellhole, give or take.
The vending machine makes a long hissing sound, bringing Sam back to here and now. How the fuck long does it take to make a crummy slice of pizza? she thinks. Her half-hearted kick lands on the side of the machine. It rattles lightly, then continues its dull humming sound as if nothing happened.
Sam turns her head, trying to reach the itching patch of skin under her collar. These days, it’s easier to ignore the unpleasant sensations around her metal neckpiece, covering her from collarbone to chin. That’s one rare change for better, since the day she stepped onto the mall bus, choosing the unknown between a rock and a hard place. The MallFam project sounded questionable and eerie to everyone, not just Sam. But the alternative was to stay in Slumland and wait for a violent and quite possibly painful death. After witnessing one too many rotting bodies staining the roadside, only a few hesitated stepping onto that bus.
Sam sure didn’t.
After following the leaflet’s three steps, (1. Write down your name, age, and health status 2. Send it to the number below 3. Wait for a response), Sam waited for less than twenty-four hours before receiving a “Congratulations—You are eligible & valuable!” text message. She was instructed to head over and wait at a derelict bus station at the edge of Slumland. Along with a few dozen others, Sam was hauled over to the mall and told (by an awkward but peppy woman with bad bangs) that she was valued and here were her food tokens and would she kindly hurry inside because the mall doors would lock in just a few minutes. Any and all questions concerning the mysterious, red flag of a project fell on deaf ears.
And here she is. Collared and none the wiser.
Her next gulp empties the soda can. Sam places it on top of the trash can and glances at the food court. A wobbly beer cup tower rises in front of Old Fart Johnson on the table. Four or five cups more, and he’ll start grabbing tit and butt and won’t stop until one of the more community-minded MallFam tenants escorts him back to his living corner in the AppleOrange&Oxygen store.
A stomach-turning blob sound snaps Sam back from her thoughts. Pizza’s ready. One more godawful slice and she’s ready to head back to MACY’S.
“Red onion and like-chicken with soy-pepperoni…” she reminds herself. It’s easier to remember things once she’s muttered them aloud.
She goes for a bite. Johnson wobbles across the food court. He stops to sway from heels to toes and back again, staring at the beer taps. Fumbling for a fresh plastic cup, he slaps the back of his head, killing a fly, maybe a mosquito. Sam winces. She looks up toward the food court’s glass ceiling but sees no sizable holes or cracks. But it doesn’t matter. The insects and small critters don’t need much space to enter. And if it’s not the iffy ceiling, they can always get in through the jammed sliding doors by the gym or the bathroom and shower area ventilation. Thinking about the dozens of ground beetles, lacewings, bees, and stinkbugs she’s captured inside a beer cup and then hauled up to Salad-Suzan’s roof garden, Sam takes another bite. She chews the stringy slice with little appetite.
A loud crash echoes across the food court. People bounce up from their seats. Angry yelling fills the grease and cigarette smoke-filled air. A busty woman wearing a pink jumper suit has flipped Old Fart Johnson’s table. A loud slap sounds; the yelling continues.
Her mouth full of pizza, Sam looks away. She focuses on rubbing at a tic that vibrates in the corner of her eye. The muscle spasms are nothing new. Just like the random words she twitches, especially when nervous, she’s learned to live with them, ever since she turned fourteen.
They’ve never bothered Sam too much, her tics and twitches. If needed, she can repress them, but sooner or later, the pressure becomes too much, like an itch that can be ignored for a while but eventually needs to be scratched. Most people don’t know how to react to her twitching. Her mother had ignored it completely. Her father tried to find an affordable doctor to diagnose Sam with Tourette’s Syndrome or a tic disorder, no matter how many times Sam waved him off and told him to let it be. Sam winces at the memory of his friendly face, the way he nudged his bottle-bottom glasses as habitually as other people blink.
To get rid of the painful memory—before the bitterness and anger engulf her—she shakes her head and goes for the last bites of her pizza. Sam turns, switching which shoulder she leans against the vending machine. She stares at the toy store window across the hall to avoid looking at Johnson or the hoop earrings dangling around the woman’s screaming face. A teddy bear with black eyes stares back. In an instant, its fuzzy face and dead stare bring back the memory of her no-good, absentee father, the parent she actually once loved but doesn’t let herself think of anymore. Not that her mother was much better, may she rest in peace. Her betrayal was expected. But her dad’s… Sam twitches, doing her best to muffle the sound escaping her lips. “Fi…fi.”
“No, you creepy piece of shit!” the woman’s scream echoes around the food court. Sam shifts her weight, presses her back against the pizza maker, and lifts her foot to rest against the base of the vending machine. She turns the crust in her hands, wishing the mall offered a dipping sauce with a slightly lower risk of food poisoning.
“Grab my ass one more time!”
“It wash a fff…” Johnson slurs at the woman. His brain has been marinating in alcohol for one too many hours. He scratches his ValueCollar—one red light, flickering on and off—and lets out a brief, drunken laugh. “A fly up your butt!”
Not bothering to force the grease-soaked paper plate into the overflowing hoover trash, Sam leaves it under the empty root beer on top of the garbage can. Sooner rather than later, the hoover’s timer would empty it, sucking the trash into the cellar where it will be burned and used to heat the mall. She shakes her head, but it’s too late. She can smell the smoke. Hear the flames. Feel the warmth of the mass graves burning back in Slumland. Sam squeezes her eyes shut. She tries to block the thought from entering her mind and fails.
Is that where he ended up too?
“Guuda,” she twitches, coughing quickly to muffle the involuntary sound forcing its way out.
“Good evening to you too, Sam.”
Of course, it has to be Teddy. The annoyingly charming, ever-so-friendly Teddy. Why is he always around? A quick, fake smile is all Sam has for him. If she’s being honest, in another life, she’d love to give him much more than that. In a reality where her veins were free from uninvited monsters, she would’ve had her way with Teddy a long time ago. But no matter how annoying, how dingy and sleazy, Sam doesn’t want to see Teddy hurt.
Oblivious to Sam’s thoughts, the man brushes his knuckles against the vending machine next to PizzaPiez. “Excited about the lottery?”
Sam runs her fingers through her short hair. Discreetly, she rubs the tic just above her left eyebrow. The last thing she needs is Teddy getting a whiff of his undeniable effect on Sam’s backstabbing body. She grabs ahold of the PizzaPiez and rattles it with one hand. Come on. Hurry the fuck up.
“Still holding onto your conspiracy theory then.” Teddy nods a few times, tapping the vending machine in front of him. “That’s cool. You do you.”
A warm sensation awakes in Sam’s lower belly. She turns her face away, shifts her weight. Stop. It.
“Honestly,” Teddy says, “I wish more people would practice critical thinking around here. Especially in times like these.”
Sam blows air through her lips.
“No really.” Teddy’s smile is evident in his voice. “Yeah, sex is great and all, but have you ever listened to someone talk about something they’re super passionate about and see that special sparkle light up in their eye?”
Sam glares at him. “There’s nothing sparkling about kidnapped Serfs and early, painful deaths, you moron. And quoting centuries old internet memes is an equally poor passion to have, Todd.”
“It’s Teddy.”
“Yeah whatever.”
And there it is—his amused, disarming grin. The warmth in Sam’s stomach turns into a pleasantly burning flame, no matter how much she curses her double crossing, hormone-ravaged body.
Why does her stomach have to find him so charming? Really, it makes zero sense. The man looks like an antique Ken Doll and a fifty-token Pop-Up Quickie Avatar had a careless one-night stand. The fact that Teddy likes to wear pink, oversized sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off and shit like teddy bears printed on the front only makes him more irritating. Tanned, muscly, ridiculous Teddy…
Stop it, she scolds her horny subconscious. Stop before—
It all flashes through her mind like a sickening and soul-gutting mental slide show.
Red arms, elbows, hands, fingers.
Gushing blood.
Torn open flesh.
Slivers of muscle bursting out of—
“Pizza burn your tongue off?”
“What? No.” As discreetly as she can manage, Sam gasps for air and keeps her eyes locked on the humming PizzaPiez. “Just don’t have anything half-nice to say.”
Teddy chuckles, not taken aback by Sam’s rudeness. He taps the vending machine, Sushilicious, a few more times, then punches it with his fist. Sighing in frustration, he takes a step back. “Mind giving me a hand with this piece of junk?”
“Sorry. Off duty.”
“Come on. It’ll take you a minute, two minutes tops.”
Sam’s eyebrow tics vividly. She can feel the next twitch itching in her throat like a sneeze. She suppresses the twitch before it rolls off her lips. Teddy notices, she can tell from the corner of her eye. But unlike most, he doesn’t let on.
At least he’s not a complete and utter asshat.
The PizzaPiez machine spits Sam’s second slice out. She grabs the wobbly, grease-soaked plate and turns to leave.
“Fine, fine. I can see you’re in a hurry,” Teddy says. “Give Macy my best.”
Sam keeps walking, but the sound of Teddy punching the food machine eventually stops her. “Stupid…piece of…” While she listens to Teddy curse under his breath, Sam thinks back, trying to remember a time when Teddy made fun of Sam’s twitching or what he and everyone else calls conspiracy theories. Surely, he’s given her a smirk? A snarky comment? But he hasn’t. Teddy hasn’t mocked her, not once. He just stands there, listening, with genuine interest in his eyes.
Sighing in frustration, Sam turns, walks over, and elbows Teddy gently, gesturing for him to move away from the jammed sushi machine. “Hold this,” she says and shoves the pizza plate in his hands.
“Is this for Macy?”
Sam grunts in reply. She kicks the machine twice, then pushes her hand up to the slot. No blockage. It’s not going to be a quick and easy fix after all.
“I should come to visit,” Teddy says. “It’s been way too long.”
“Debatable,” Sam mumbles. She circles the machine, reaches for the pocketknife in the back pocket of her pants.
“Whoa!” Teddy says, pretending to be shocked. Sam ignores him, the pocketknife’s tip opening the screws on the control panel’s lid. “Who the hell gave you a knife?”
Sam doesn’t answer. She pops the lid open, wiggles the control board’s power cord, then checks the circuits, capacitors, and resistors. When she can’t find anything wrong, she pops open the smaller lid inside the control board. She places the knife between her teeth so she can use both hands to enter the error code on the tiny keyboard. Teddy sidesteps, hands theatrically raised.
Fifteen seconds later, Sushilicious hums to life. Sam places the lids back on and closes it tight with the pocketknife. She bumps her fist on the machine twice. “My hero,” Teddy says, a wide smile stretching his face. He circles to stare at the touchscreen. “What would I ever do without you?”
Sam grunts again, shoving the pocketknife back in her pocket. She nods at Macy’s pizza and wiggles her fingers.
“You know,” Teddy says, looking at the greasy plate in his hands, “in some cultures, people actually respond with words when they’re asked a question.”
A wave of irritation washes over her. “And in some cultures, dudes don’t sleep with every piece of ass that happens to wander by.”
Teddy’s brows shoot up in surprise. Hesitating, he reaches for a toy cigarette behind his ear and places it between his lips while staring past Sam’s shoulder. He rolls the toy side to side between his teeth. “Not… Not every ass.”
“Whatever, Toby.” Sam feels a new twitch gaining momentum at the back of her throat. “Fixing your shit was my one good deed of the day, so if you could kindly hand over my pizza and fuck off, I would appreciate it.”
Face serious, but his eyes still smiling, Teddy hands Sam the pizza. He enters his selections on the sushi machine and nods at Sam. “Well, thank you again for saving me from starvation.” The machine rattles lightly. Large vegan sushi rolls spit out onto a plastic container in the machine’s slot. “Who said chivalry was dead?”
But Sam’s already fast walking away, determined not to have Teddy witness her face cramping and her mouth blurting out gibberish twice in one day. She hears him yelling something after her about a payment, but Sam’s more interested in getting out of Dodge than scoring tokens.
The mall’s corridors are empty. Everyone’s either tucked away in their stores or drinking and eating at the food court. Sam adjusts the paper plate in her hand, wipes off the layer of grease on her fingertips on the back of her pants. She passes the Pop-Up Quickie boxes. One of the small, two-seat cubicles vibrates slightly, its closed-in tinted walls steamed over. Why anyone would use their tokens—or their time—on these dirty sex machines, Sam doesn’t know. Or maybe her tickling, Teddy-craving stomach does. But still, it’s not for her. Just the thought of putting on a haptic suit and the bulky VR glasses triggers her claustrophobia. A muscle tic squints her eyes. “No-no,” she twitches, then turns her gaze away, hurrying past the intensifying scent of make-believe sex.
Trying to refocus her mind on something other than naked body parts and the smell of sweat and deodorant, Sam finds herself thinking of…Teddy’s forearms. Wow, still? she scolds her horny brain silently. Are we really this desperate? She escalates her steps, scoffing at her body and the intensifying, restless feeling in her stomach. Since when has she let her hormones get the best of her? But scoffing and scolding her randy, pent-up brain doesn’t banish the mental images of Teddy from her mind.
The way his nose is slightly too big for his otherwise flawless face.
His bluish-green eyes.
Thick, overgrown hair.
The three-day beard.
Well-toned biceps.
Even his absurd, salmon-pink sweatshirt with a teddy bear hugging a heart fails to stop the restless wave from washing over Sam’s body. She picks up her pace, turning slightly right at the SniffSniff Hub. She steps over a SqueakyCleanerBot. Before leaping up the escalator steps by Wireless World, she breaks off a piece of pizza crust and drops it in a metal bowl by Fluffs ’n Scales. The turtle is nowhere to be seen, but it’ll find the treat eventually—unless the cats do first.
Upstairs, the second floor is quiet. Sam stops where the Pickers did five nights ago. It’s peaceful now, almost serene. She turns her face up to see a cardboard sign swinging lightly as air from the ventilation system blows on it. It has come off on one corner, threatening a fall. MACY’S it reads in thick glitter-marker letters, written in Macy’s fancy handwriting. The store Sam and Macy live in takes up a whole end of the mall’s second floor. More inhabited stores are located on the opposite side of the corridor, but none can be seen from here.
Sam considers getting the ladder and reattaching the rogue sign before the whole thing comes tumbling down. Screw it. I’ll do it tomorrow. But instead of marching in, she keeps staring at the unhinged sign, her scattered mind filled with sushi rolls, circuits, plugs, tanned and sweaty skin…
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…”
The sign continues to flap against the wall with more force. Sam hears Macy’s wheelchair squeaking inside the former department store. She tells her mind to keep going like every other day: drop off the pizza, dive under the covers on her cozy box mattress, and fall asleep with clothes, shoes, and nightlight on. But her body refuses to move. Standing perfectly still, Sam stares at her home with inviting, yellow Christmas lights hanging from product stands, tables, and Mega-Sale signs.
Could she just…do it? Try it one more time. Let somebody close. Let them touch, taste, smell, press, brush. Soft skin on rough skin. Heavy breathing, muffled moans…
“No-no.”
She shakes her head. Rubs her face.
Are you fucking insane? What if it happens again?
Another corner of the MACY’S sign comes loose. The cardboard flaps against the concrete wall—until it plunges toward Sam’s head. Without thought, she takes a quick step to the side. The paper plate is still in her hands, but the pizza slice now lies flat on the floor, next to the fallen sign.
What if every guy I have sex with ends up dead?
