The Sludge

“Move another muscle and I’ll be popping your head off.”

The man who spoke held a gun in one hand and the treasure in the other. “Man” was a bit of an overstatement, however. Laura remembered hearing his name called at her younger brother’s graduation less than a year ago, and he didn’t look to have matured much in the months following the onset of adulthood.

“You’re cute, Malcolm,” she stated calmly with a coy smirk. “If I didn’t know you, I’d say that gun almost looks natural in your hand.”

It didn’t, though. His hand was trembling so much that the gun was rattling, and Laura was mostly afraid that he was going to pull the trigger by accident.

Malcolm’s wide eyes danced uneasily between Laura and her boys, guarded by the same, thick pair of glasses he had been wearing since his childhood. His acne hadn’t gone away with time either. The unsightly appearance of the gangly 19-year-old almost made Laura feel bad for what she was about to do, knowing that he would never mature past the pubescent years of Dio and D&D.

Almost.

“Give us the bottle, Malcom,” She stated firmly, reaching out an open hand.

“No,” he mumbled back. “I won this fair and square. It’s mine.”

Laura chuckled. Fair and square. He really is still a child.

“Listen, boy, I know that you know who I am. Have you heard what we do to people who don’t do as I say?”

She took a step forward. When she did so, Malcom’s eyes grew wider, and he shook the gun at her.

“I said don’t come any closer!”

“The last one ended with the girl in pieces,” she continued. “And, unfortunately for her, her head was the last to come off. It’s more painful that way, you know?”

She took another step.

“I’m serious!” Malcom screamed, his voice becoming more frantic. He hid the bottle behind his back as if his 100-pound body would be enough to shield it.

“Look at my guys behind me,” Laura ordered, watching his gaze scan the three men standing stoically in her shadow. “Combined, they weigh six of you, guaranteed. You need to make a very important decision right now, Malcolm. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but either way, I win.”

The three men she brought with her on this trip were named Joe, Kent, and Brad. She didn’t know why exactly, but it seemed that men with one-syllable names were always big and dumb. They would follow her lead unquestionably for rewards far too small to justify their actions, and their stature shook little boys like Malcom to the bone. In fact, as he looked at them now, Laura noticed his legs beginning to shake.

“So…?” She asked, wiggling the fingers of her outstretched hands.

“How many people have you killed for a bottle the size of this?” He asked, bringing the treasure back into their view.

Laura was caught off guard with the question. “Does it matter? Let’s just say it’s a really big pile, and you’re on route right now to be thrown on the top.”

“It’s just one bottle…” he murmured, confused and dazed. “I don’t get it.”

Laura took another step forward, thinking she could maybe snatch the bottle while he was lost in his head, but he snapped back and waved the gun at her.

“You’ve been drinking that sludge since this all started, right?” She asked. “Once the pipes were turned off, you never got to taste what life used to be like again, right?”

Malcolm paused. “All the more reason that I deserve this.”

Laura shook her head. “You’re used to that crap the scientists are pushing through your gut. You might not have left Cambridge since the start of all this, but I have, and let me tell you… It’s not pretty.”

In reality, she had not set foot out of Cambridge since the day the pipes turned off, but she figured that a horror story might get the boy to lower his gun long enough for Brad to jump him.

Of course she never left Cambridge. It was here that she was the most feared person, and in turn the most powerful. If she left… Well, what if she was nothing more than a maggot with an ego, and the real bad guys slugged a bullet into her brain before she could even see what had become of the rest of America? No. If she learned anything from history class it was that the moment a powerful entity steps out of their territory, they’re overthrown.

“I don’t know what they’re putting in that sludge,” she continued, “but I’ve seen things out there that don’t make much sense. People with a second face popping out of their neck. Children with a third arm poking out of their stomach… The world is gonna need people who have never touched the stuff once everyone else dies. And that’s us, Malcolm. Not you.”

“That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “I know people on the inside, and they say that the only side effects of the sludge are fatigue and lethargy. They say there are no long-term effects, and that as soon as we switch back to water, we’ll all be better.”

“And this is coming from the people that make it, right? Because the people that make it don’t drink it, you know, so of course they’re going to tell you that. Can you imagine a horde of angry people attacking the Arc building? Those weak little water-nerds wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Malcolm paused, and she knew she had got him thinking. Slowly, he raised up the bottle of water and looked at it.

The city of Cambridge held a lottery every other day. They would draw a name out of the registry, and that person was rewarded one cold and pristine bottle of fresh water. For many, they hadn’t tasted water since the pipes had been shut off, so the thought of winning even just a drop was enough to maintain compliance. Laura, however, had managed to turn the lottery into a horror story. It used to be that you win the lottery, you win some water. Now, you win the lottery, you win some water… If you can survive long enough to drink it.

“I liked Henry,” Malcom stated, his voice slow and calm as he stared at the water bottle. “He was good guy, even after the dry season started.”

Laura’s gut dropped, and her face grew hot. “Don’t talk about Henry,” she growled.

“Why?” He asked, turning his gaze back to her. “Don’t you miss your brother?”

“If you know what’s good for you, kid, you’ll shut up. Fast.”

“It’s a real shame we lost him. But… We didn’t just lose him, right? He was murdered. I wonder who in this town would be enough of a monster to kill a guy like Henry.”

Laura’s hands balled up into fists, her teeth began to grind, and she found herself fighting the urge to claw at the boy’s eyes by staring at the gun barrel pointed at her face.

“I was bullied my whole life,” Malcom hissed, his voice taking on a confident edge. “You want to know who taught me that it’s sometimes better to take a hit than to let the bullies win?”

She turned around and motioned for her guys to start encroaching on the boy.

“Your brother.”

With that, Malcom popped the top off the bottle, swung his head back, and poured the crystal, clear liquid down his throat. As he did so, he cocked his gun to the right of Laura and pulled the trigger.

The pop of the bullet was quieter than the sound of Kent’s massive body crashing to the ground. He groaned, grabbing at a hole in his chest as his body became stained with red.  

Brad and Joe jumped on Malcolm before Laura could even grasp what had happened. They ripped the gun out of his hand, tore the empty bottle from his mouth, and proceeded to slam his head into the concrete below them until he could no longer scream.

In the blink of an eye, five living, breathing bodies had turned into three, and the blood of the two corpses created an ominous circle around the ones that remained.  

“The bastard drank it all,” Joe murmured, looking desperately down the hole of the bottle before angrily tossing it to the side.

"That was our last hope for the day," Kent replied. “And I’ve never been so damned thirsty.”

Laura looked to the West and saw the hot, heavy sun beginning to fade over the horizon. Her mouth was dry, and with a rough, leathery tongue, she slowly licked her cracked lips.

A routine alarm came out over the tornado sirens. It was the same one that came out every evening around sunset.

Curfew was being called.

This was perhaps the most desperate Laura had been since she had been forced to kill her own brother. Of course, if worst came to worst, she and her goons could always submit to the sludge, but she supposed she would rather die than pour those chemicals down her throat. Malcom had been brainwashed the same way everyone else had.

The sludge did more than make the user tired. It turned people into zombies that couldn’t fight against the government even if they had enough brains to do so. If she submitted to even one drink, she would become what the others had. Her days would be spent wandering aimlessly around the streets, waiting for the two daily alarms signaling that the rounds of chemical waste were being served.

Desperately, she turned her gaze towards a large, distant building. It stood like an ugly, industrial castle over the town of Cambridge, making sure that everybody knew who was taking care of them during the devastating drought of 2027.

It was the Arc, and it housed the lab the American government had provided for the local entities to manufacture “synthetic water” for the public. It was also, however, the place holding the little water the ground below still provided them.

“We’re going in,” Laura growled, motioning for her goons to follow as she began making her way towards the castle.

“To the Arc?” Brad asked desperately. “But we’re not ready. That plan is still weeks out.”

As she walked past Malcolm’s mangled corpse, she leaned over and grabbed the gun. It was small, but it still held four bullets, and she figured that would be enough to get them inside.

“Well,” she stated, stuffing the pistol in her pants. “There’s no time like the present, boys.”