Swampland, Ch 6

By Kim

When Cristina de Luca went to visit Allison Barnwell, the wife of the mayor, she took Selina Hu with her. The two of them spoke little while the men rowed the flat-bottomed boat south and east through the shallow water. The sun was still out and it had been raining all day. Cristina felt as if her shirt had seeped into her flesh and the mosquitos up into her nose. They slid past a gas station. Inside were a man and a woman with two children, two little boys. All four of them were watching with keen eyes the boat with its leader, her tenente, and her guards. Cristina ordered the boat to veer toward the building and as they went by she threw them one of their water bottles. The man said his thanks in a voice too low to hear and Cristina nodded her head in response. As she squat down alone in the front of the boat, down low between her knees, she reflected on the rats and the roaches crawling over the city, higher and higher each year. This was the wreckage she meant to rule.

At the end of the water north of the City, they left the boat and took the horses waiting for them. They road through along the curling ramp onto a short highway and then down into what had once been Disney World. The welcome sign was still there over the top of the road, and an ancient tour bus was turned over across the road as a blockade. Two of the sheriff’s men were on top of the bus, rifles in hand, and they waved Cristina and her men through. The roads here with more dirt than concrete, and their horses clomped through the mud as they rode up to the two massive hotels that had once served the resort. Cristina knew that her men hardly understood what a resort was. To most of the people who worked for her vacations and escape were ghosts from some forgotten land. Selina was riding next to her, and Cristina watched the Chinese beauty, miserable in the rain and heat. She wondered if her new tenente understood their relationship with these holdovers from the previous era, and then she wondered if her new tenente understood their relationship with each other. She wondered if she understood it herself, two women who intended to grab everything for themselves and with no intention of sharing.

Allison Barnwell had made her residence in the ground floor of one of the hotels. The enormous rooms were where she ran what was left of the city. Taxes were counted and records were filed at desks arranged in rows by the dozens. One room they passed was labeled “Training,” and inside a group of would-be clerks were learning to read and write. The Lady Mayor herself met them at the end of the cavernous hallway. Two men were following her, pressing more papers into her hands, and she yelled at them and said that she was not going to look at any more communiques from Mexico City until they had something different to say. When she saw Cristina and Selina, she told them to wait. Then she told the two men that they were to write back to Mexico City and explain that they were to increase their importing of alligator skins, as they had agreed, or she would have to revisit the rest of their agreement. With another yell she sent the two men running and then ordered the two women to follow her to her office.

“Welcome to the heart of the city, such as it is,” Allison said. She lit the lamps and poured wine for the three of them. The room stunk from the mildewing paper, the same as the rest of the rooms. “This is where we gather all that we can from what’s left and track the long, slow decline of the same.”

“It looks like hard work,” Selina said.

“Can you read?” Allison asked her.

“Of course I can. Math, literature, history, economics.”

“Then you’re several steps ahead of this lot. If you can read and make the numbers come out right, you’ve got half the work done.”

“And still the other half to master,” Cristina said. She finished her cup of wine and brought it down hard on the desk.

“And what is the other half?”

“Force. Power. Getting other people to do as you will,” Allison said. She poured herself a second glass of wine and leaned back in her chair. “What was it you wanted?”

“Only what is rightfully mine,” Cristina said. “The business in the swamp.”

“Is old business,” Allison finished for her. “It’s Brandy’s. Brawling with her in the street doesn’t exactly convince me that you’re a better choice to run the swamps for me than she is.”

“On the other hand, her brawling with me doesn’t speak in her favor,” Cristina replied.

“No, it doesn’t. But since you two are equally unspoken, and as far as I can tell you’re equally matched in other areas with the rather large exception of Brandy’s greater resources, I’m not hearing anything new or interesting here. Which means I’m bored. And that’s bad for you,” she added in a condescending tone.

“And would your life be interesting with your Mexican problem taken care of?”

“It might be. How do you feel about traveling?”

*******************************

Three weeks after her meeting with Allison Barnwell, Cristina was landing on the east coast of Mexico. Puttering across the Gulf in their old seventy-five foot fishing boat was smoother than the last time Cristina had been on the ocean, with her father. With her were fifteen of the Barnwells’ men and Selina. Cristina was to make a new arrangement with the Zedillo family, who ruled in Mexico City over the central and southern parts of what had been Mexico. Northern Mexico was now a separate country, the people who had once been called Zapatistas having won their freedom and united the north of Mexico with parts of the desert southwest of America. The Zedillos had made a business partner where past rulers of Mexico had made enemies, and they sent drugs and whores from Northern Mexico to America, the Caribbean, South America. The Barnwells wanted Cristina to gain them more preferential treatment from one of the richest and most heavily armed families in the hemisphere.

They landed at the port rebuilt miles inland from what had been Heroica Veracruz, where they were met by what seemed a small army of men carrying assault rifles. Cristina counted forty of them, all dressed and armed and—judging by the way they stood covering the port as Cristina stepped off their pathetic boat that had been battered about by the storms of the Gulf—trained better than her own men. Hers had spent most of the trip drinking and playing poker. The Zedillo men looked like they had never had a drink of whiskey or touched a hand of cards in their lives. The men had done those things and more, she was certain, but she took clear notice of their discipline, the discipline that made it possible for them to seem as if they had been born trained and ready. Stepping forward was a woman wearing the same grey fatigues as the men. She was quite pretty, with a pleasantly curvy figure evident under the uniform, and she had sandy blonde hair.

“We’re from Orlando. Mayor Barnwell and his wife send their regards,” Cristina said.

“And the Zedillos receive them,” the woman answered in English with only a slight accent. “Have your men load whatever you’re bringing into our trucks. We leave in twenty minutes.”

A colder reception than she had expected. Cristina wiped the sweat from her forehead and said, “I’m Cristina de Luca. I’m here to speak for the Barnwells.”

“I know who you are,” the woman replied. “Twenty minutes.”

Selina stood beside her. “She seems nice.”

“I’m starting to think that the Barnwell name doesn’t hold much sway outside of Orlando.”

The Zedillos had come to the coast to pick up other cargo as well, and they had an entire convoy of trucks. Cristina directed her men to load the crates into the trucks and they all set off for the drive to the capitol city, high up in the mountains. Cristina sat in the back of one with Selina and the Barnwell men, riding in the dust and heat. She could feel the men stealing looks at her as she bounced with the jostling of the truck. For all the wealth of the Zedillo family, three of the trucks broke down before the day was over. Each time as they stood waiting for the two mechanics to bring the ancient machines back to life Cristina could feel the look of the blonde woman on her. Her name was Regina Zedillo, Cristina had learned from their driver. She was the niece of Jorge Zedillo Martinez, the patriarch of the Zedillo family and Mexico.

When the third truck broke down at dusk, they made camp for the night. Regina’s men built fires and distributed rations to everyone and posted guards. Cristina and Selina were sitting on rocks eating canned fish with some of the Zedillo men, who had turned out to be better conversationalists. She used what Spanish she knew and the men used what English they had. They knew quite a bit of what life was like in what had once been the United States, and they bragged that Mexico City still had cars running on its streets and nightly electricity when many American cities were little more than war zones or fortresses for those who still had wealth, as Minneapolis was, where the rich families of the Midwest had put up walls and used a private army to drive out the less desirable people. When Cristina asked about the poor people she had seen gathered near the dock and along the side of the road, the men said that Mexico had poor people, as every other country had, but that here people were not butchered and left rotting or draped from highway signs, as they had heard of up north.

“You don’t like our country?” Regina asked. She moved one of the men aside and sat across the fire from Cristina and Selina. “You don’t approve of our supply of gasoline and our security forces? Our laws?”

“Well, it does seem problematic to be burning all of this oil.”

“Problematic? Thought you’d confuse the poor Mexican girl with your fancy words?” Regina replied, tilting her voice in the manner of a peasant song. In a serious tone, she said, “It’s our oil. We dig it out of our ground and run our own refinery. And we aren’t the fuckwhats who ruined the entire world. That was you.”

“You expect us to fall down and kiss your ass over some guns and a few trucks that are always breaking down?” Selina asked, rising. “It seems to me that sleeping by the side of the road in Shithole, Mexico isn’t much different from sleeping next to the side of the road in Shithole, Florida.”

Regina glared at her and then smirked. “Care to put some force behind your words? I’d love the chance to work on that pretty face of yours.” As she spoke she took off the top of her uniform and then the shirt under it. Her breasts were large for her frame, her skin dark relative to her dirty blonde hair. She flexed and stretched her arms, and Cristina could see the woman’s strength and admire the way her breasts swayed with her movements.

In answer Selina took off her own shirt and moved with Regina away from the campfires and into the open dirt field that lined the road for miles in either direction. Regina was a bit taller and thicker in the arms and legs. Selina moved more easily, but Cristina took note of the way Regina tracked her as the Chinese woman circled around her, far out of range. She also noted the determined look on her face and the way she held her arms in front of her, her hands half-closed and ready in front of her face. She was not a beauty as Selina was, but she had an impressive and capable body. Her breasts were larger than Selina’s with larger nipples, and Cristina saw her tenente’s eyes darting down at the other woman’s chest more often than they should of. Some deep part of her also thought of Selina’s noticing of the slight differences between herself and the other woman.

The two women circled in the dirt, their dancing and tripping feet throwing up dust that hung in the air around them and behind them the mountains of Central Mexico framing their bodies. The Zedillo men were cheering for their woman, the Barnwell men for theirs, and soon the dim white circles of antique flashlights were on the two women. Selina jumped forward and threw a looping punch that Regina easily sidestepped. She tagged Selina across the face as she did so, and then as Selina was turned away Regina hit her in the back and then yanked her head back by the hair and turning threw her into the dirt. Selina rose carefully, eyes on Regina as she did, but the Mexican did not press her. Selina rushed her again and the two women exchanged quick jabs to the face and stomach. The flat thuds of their fists and their grunting in the hot night air. The dust swirling around them.

They came together, grappling, arms wrapped around each other’s torso, and then Selina put her leg across Regina’s and jutted her hips into the other woman’s and threw her over. As the blonde woman landed Selina was on her, throwing slaps at her head, then she was put over and the two of them were rolling over each other. The dust coated their bodies as they fought. They punched each other’s bodies, pulled hair, squeezed breasts, slapped faces, bit. Selina got on top and straddled her at one point, but as she drew back her fist the other woman threw her off with a burst. Then Regina got on top of her, her round, firm ass planted on Selina’s face, and she pounded her breasts and stomach for too long before Selina was able to get out from her under her. They fell to fighting on the ground again, bound together lengthwise with their legs intertwined and their hands running over each other’s strong, graceful bodies. They groaned and grunted with the pain and the exertion of their fight and the men watching yelled and cheered for both of them. Cristina said nothing and she did not move.

Selina took the worse of it. Regina got on her again and slapped her face and then pounded her head in against the ground. Selina tried to push the hands away and then she grabbed the breasts swaying in front of her. Regina howled and pried the hands off her chest. Then she got off Selina and before the beauty could respond Regina hauled her up by the hair. Still holding her by the hair Regina punched her in the stomach, twisting her hips as she threw the blow so that Selina lost all her strength. She pivoted and fell against Regina’s strong body and they stood together for an instant, two women covered in dirt and sweat so that it was smeared in dark brown streaks across their bodies, their arms and backs and busts. Then Regina threw another vicious punch into her chest and as Selina yelped in pain she punched her across the face and Selina fell flat on her back.

Regina stood panting, her breasts rising and falling, over the woman she had knocked into the dust, and she pushed her sandy blonde hair from her face. She was waiting for Selina to rise but the fight had gone out of her. “Looks like your friend has had enough,” she said between deep breaths. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a dance.”

Cristina stood and walked toward the two of them. She could feel every pair of male eyes on her own body, on her ass and her breasts encased in her shirt and jeans and her hair and her face as with her body more beautiful than either of the other women. “If you like, we could dance a few turns.”

“Would you like that?”

“I would,” Cristina answered her. She had reached Selina and now helped her off the ground.

“Sadly, I doubt that my uncle would like for me to have maimed his guest’s beauty before he has had a chance to gaze on it. He does love his beauties, my uncle.” She signaled to her men to help clean and dress Selina. “No hard feelings. You fought well, and I’m sure my men enjoyed the show. We hit the road again at dawn.”

*******************************

Mexico City was now called Zedillo City, and the Zedillos had made changes. Mexico City had been one of the most populous in the world by the end of the twenty-first Century, when the global economy had begun its toppling. At that time, much of its population had lived in shanties that had spread out across the valley. Now, the Zedillos had shrunk the city down; they emptied the shanties and built a wall around the new city, beyond which its population could not grow. More men with rifles stood above the gate the convoy passed through. Selina was riding next to her in the back of the truck. Her face was bruised, her eye swollen, and every bounce of the truck showed on her face. Perhaps despite herself Cristina put her arm around the woman and drew her against herself as the city’s gate closed after the last truck was through.

Inside the gates were rows of small white houses arranged around shared gardens and walking paths marked with white paint. Everything she saw inside the city was painted white. The Zedillos had torn down the wreckage that had once filled the streets and replaced it with clean, simple housing for the small farmers who worked the family’s fields and the mechanics and workers who kept the power plant and oil wells running. The security men who rode with them that day had told Cristina that the family positions were all inherited, locked into place by decree the year that Jorge Zedillo Martinez’s great-grandfather had built the city wall. Their own fathers had carried guns for Jorge’s father. The parents had employment and stable civil governance and in return their children and grandchildren would be just as they had. Cristina recalled her grandmother’s lessons about feudalism before she had been taken from Italy by her father, but she had not imagined it would be so quiet.

The trucks rolled into a warehouse, where the men immediately began unloading the supplies. Cristina told Selina to stay and oversea the safety of their crates and their men, and she got into a jeep with Regina and two of her men. The women both sat in the back. The jeep crawled along the city streets, honking at laborers wearing white clothes and pushing aside carts pulled by mules. Cristina had never seen so many people moving with purpose outside of the videos she had watched from old datapads as a young girl. And all of them wearing white, the same as the buildings and everything else they could paint. They were thin, and in the corners of buildings or under shade out of the midday sun Cristina saw children huddled, watching the city go by with wide eyes. She had no water to toss to them now. She saw few of the Zedillo security men among the people or in the street. Most seemed stationed on the wall or in the Zedillo family buildings. Those buildings that were not part of the city itself that the family owned, Cristina thought.

“Have you ever seen a real functioning city before?” Regina asked her.

“When I was a girl, our hometown in Italy was getting along well enough. We were in the Alps. Things weren’t too bad, really.”

“And Florida?”

“It’s more interesting than this.”

“Too bad for the people of Florida.”

“How are you feeling today?” Cristina asked her. “I hope your body fared better than your face did last night.”

Regina turned and smiled at her. She was bruised and swollen around her mouth and her cheeks. “Would you like to inspect my body? Is that what you’re into?”

“I wouldn’t mind the chance to give your body a thorough going-over. I doubt you would enjoy it as much as the inspection. I would enjoy it a great deal more.”

Regina laughed and the jeep went on. Soon enough they were at the Zedillo mansion. It was white as well, behind a white wall nearly as tall as that around the city. The mansion seemed to Cristina a collection of rectangles and plain walls that rose up out of a rock garden to four stories above them. They parked the jeep with a collection of work vehicles and went inside. The first room was a guard room, where three men were smoking and playing poker. The men greeted Regina warmly and scrutinized Cristina and her body and then Regina led her into what seemed like a separate, interior house. The cold wave of air conditioning hit Cristina and after her lungs had adjusted the air seemed hollow to her. They passed through another set of rooms and then they were in Jorge Zedillo Martinez’s office and it was as if Cristina’s lungs had been filled again.

The man was sitting behind an enormous black desk. He was old, with thin white hair and a heavily wrinkled face. He was fat. Cristina had not seen many fat people in her life. Zedillo Martinez had a double shin and a stomach that pushed against the dark blue suit he wore. He had a red tie knotted snug against his throat, and he touched his index finger to the tie as he stared at his niece and her companion. Then he lit a cigarette and tossed the case to the young woman standing next to him. She was the most beautiful and the most well-formed woman Cristina had ever seen. She was perhaps as tall as five foot ten, and she had straight black hair that hung well below her shoulders, splayed across her massive bosom. Her face was a form of chiseled beauty, as if she were a statue made real, but her body projected heat. She was wearing a white blouse and red skirt and her curves were straining against the fabric of both. Cristina thought the other woman’s chest several inches farther across than her own, and her broad hips were offset well by her slender waist and obviously strong thighs. The woman grabbed the cigarette out of the air without taking her eyes off of Cristina and took one out and lit still while staring at Cristina.

“My name is Jorge Zedillo Martinez. Let me welcome you to my home, young lady. And a very pretty young lady, too, I see. So refreshing to see a fresh face. We don’t get enough visitors here, and we don’t travel as much as we might. Not enough travel in the world today,” the old man added with a snort. “I hope that your voyage across the Gulf was without incident? Our ships run into storms so often.”

“It was a pleasant trip,” Cristina said. “And your niece here has given us a warm welcome so far.”

The old man laughed. “I understand that it was quite a warm welcome last night. I hope that you and your friend are finding yourselves at home here. Please don’t hold our little diversions against us.”

“Oh, we are finding ourselves quite at home,” Cristina assured him.

“Stop being nice to her,” the beautiful woman said. “She’s here to steal from us. Just throw her back in the ocean and be done with it.” She had still not taken her eyes from Cristina’s.

“Please forgive my wife. She can be rather direct. Alejandra, shake hands with the American beauty and let her know that we are all friends here.”

Alejandra came around the desk in such a way that Cristina readied herself to be attacked. The two women shared a tense handshake, each appraising the other’s appearance and physique as she shook and then removed her hand from the other’s grip. Cristina was intensely aware of Alejandra’s looking down at her and the other woman’s firm breasts pressing against her hand as she yanked it away and she was aware of her state of dress in sweat-stained jeans and shirt in relation to the other woman’s spotless attention.

“See, now we can begin again as friends,” the old man said. Alejandra had not moved and the two women were standing close enough that Cristina could feel her breath moving in and out. “Alejandra, darling, the Barnwells sent this young lady all the way from Florida to make their case. Do you not think that we owe it to them and our long relationship to treat her with respect?”

“I think she’s a stupid, ill-mannered bitch,” Alejandra hissed, and Cristina edged closer so that the tips of their breasts were pressed together and their noses were nearly touching. “Did you want to say something, bitch?” Alejandra asked her.

“Stop antagonizing her,” Regina said. She was still standing on Cristina’s other side. “Trust me, she’s not smart enough to answer Uncle and trade dirty looks with you.”

“Looks like your little friend is giving you a way out,” Cristina said in a low voice. Nearly a growl.

Alejandra smirked but she returned to her husband’s side. “So tell us this business proposition that you have brought us from the Barnwells,” she said. “We will give it its due consideration before rejecting it.”

“How can I be expected to present our offer when one of your own is so obviously intent on spiting me personally?”

“If your offer benefits us more than our present arrangement, rest assured that we will give it serious consideration,” the man in the suit said.

“It wouldn’t have to be much to improve on what we have with them now,” Regina said.

“Right now we sell you gator skins, and you send us gold, with some gas and assorted necessities. The Barnwells would like to expand that trade, considerably. They have sent me here because I am their most trusted smuggler and you are the most accomplished businessman in these areas.”

“And which area are we talking about?” Alejandra asked. “We don’t trade in gator shit or molded oranges.”

“I have brought with me samples of what we’re calling fuse. It’s proprietary, but we are making it ourselves and we can make enough to supply whoever you are able to sell it to.”

“A drug? We already have plenty of those.”

“The Barnwells think that you will find that their design will allow you to sell more to those who can afford to pay, for a longer period, than what you currently offer.”

Jorge Zedillo Martinez watched Cristina for some time and then shrugged and nodded his head. They talked about prices and shipment sizes and as they did Zedillo gave her wine to drink. Cristina drank with them as the patriarch gazed over her body and the two women stood on either side of her and she thought of Brandy Connor back in Orlando. Cristina was making a new connection that would take her far beyond running individual tanks of gas and sacks of pills while Brandy sat in her swamp thinking that she had gotten the better of Cristina. Zedillo said that they would have to test the merchandise to determine its safety, quality, and potency and that Cristina and her companions should stay with them until that was done. He said they would throw a banquet to honor the new relationship. “We will find a room and suitable clothes for a woman of your station as well,” he added.