The Breeders Read online

  Also by Matthew J. Beier

  The Confessions of Jonathan Flite

  Stay tuned at the end of this e-book for a free 50-page preview of The Confessions of Jonathan Flite, Book 1 in Matthew J. Beier’s Jonathan Flite series.

  THE BREEDERS

  Copyright © 2011 Matthew J. Beier

  www.matthewbeier.com

  Illustrations © 2011 Matthew J. Beier

  Cover and interior design by Matthew J. Beier

  Cover photography by Eastcott Momatiuk / Digital Visions / Getty Images

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted by email to [email protected].

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9838594-0-6

  E-Book ISBN: 978-0-9838594-1-3

  FIRST E-BOOK EDITION

  Epicality Books, LLC, 2011

  www.epicalitybooks.com

  For my parents, Walter and Mariana Beier, the ones who created me, loved me, and encouraged me to follow my dreams.

  “A STORM IS COMING.”

  —The National Organization for Marriage, 2008

  CHAPTER 1 (HER)

  FOR GRACE JARVIS, the threat of banishment came at Garland’s Food Emporium on Monday, the twenty-ninth of October.

  She was reaching down for an empty grocery basket when a stabbing sensation twisted in her abdomen. Mr. Dietrich, a wrinkled old fag who had been running the nearby sample station for as long as Grace could remember, frowned as she stopped, put a hand on her stomach, and lurched forward. The pain came again—a violent cramp, like nothing she had ever felt before.

  This only happens to carriers, was the thought that crossed her mind as Mr. Dietrich took a step away from his pineapple chicken mini-skewers.

  “Everything all right, Miss Jarvis?”

  Grace stood up to full height, trying to cover her sudden panic with a polite smile, and approached his table. She grabbed one of the skewers and said, “Must have been something I ate at lunch.” Then, with a smile, “Maybe one of your samples will help. They usually do.”

  “Only $4.99, and they’re already skewered. I’m telling you, they’re fabulous.”

  “Well, we both know I have a weakness for good food.” Grace winked at Mr. Dietrich, slid a pineapple bite off the skewer with her teeth, then continued on to the produce section.

  The pain grew worse with each step, and the first trickles of concern sank into her chest. With defiant resolve, she grabbed a head of broccoli.

  Stop it. You’re being paranoid. They’re not going to send you to Antarctica just for having weird cramps.

  But the concern turned to terror as she picked out a bundle of cilantro. The herbs were wet, and just as Grace was shaking them off and enjoying the mixture of pleasant aromas around her, a peculiar warmth touched the inside of her underwear. She looked down.

  On the sparkling white floor was a red circle. There was no spatter around it; for a second, Grace hoped it was dried paint.

  Then another drop fell from under her skirt. And another. It was thick, almost viscous looking, and the fact it was her own blood registered with a final burst of wishful disbelief.

  This is impossible. Absolutely impossible. The engineers can’t have messed me up.

  She swiped one of the blood drops with the tip of her shoe, trying to wipe it away, but this only transformed it into a garish smear. She glanced left, where a lesbian couple (Regina and Bear, their names were—she knew them from last year’s Union Day Fest) had stopped in front of the dairy section, ten feet away. Bear was looking at the floor; Regina was staring straight at Grace. Neither wore a threatening expression, and both—bless them—seemed to be registering her panic.

  “Get out now,” Regina mouthed.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace whispered, now dripping tears as well. She set her half-full basket on the floor, gave Regina and Bear a pleading glance, then made for the market’s exit as fast as she could. Her gait became a conspicuous waddle in the effort to keep her legs pressed together, and Mr. Dietrich furrowed his eyebrows. “Left my com in the car,” Grace murmured to him as she stole a glimpse backward and saw Bear hurrying to wipe up the blood.

  A moment later, she was outside. The gusty October night sent her straight dark brown hair into a fitful dance, clashing with the sticky heat spreading inside her skirt and down her legs. It turned cold as she ran from the grocery store, past the Atom Clean fuel station, and into the train station lot where her car was parked. But here was a shred of luck: buried in her trunk were a backup running jacket and an unused beach towel from her last outing on Lake Minnetonka. Grace wiped herself clean, wrapped herself in the towel, then sat in the driver’s seat on the waterproof jacket.

  I’m as good as dead if anyone sees this, she thought. Her knuckles were white; her legs were numb. The pain in her abdomen throbbed as she forced herself to start the hydro engine and drive toward home.

  It began to rain.

  THE JARVIS MANSION was dark when Grace turned into the driveway—a second shred of luck. She rolled past the main courtyard and stopped in front of her fathers’ small brick guest house. It had been her home since moving out at age eighteen, but tonight, its small frame and aging brick walls left her feeling exposed and susceptible. By morning, it could all be a figment of her past, never to be seen again.

  Grace dashed through the rain and into the house, then hurried to the bathroom. Dropping the soiled beach towel to the floor, she fumbled out of her clothes and into the shower. All that mattered—and it could be life and death, really, if the Bio Police decided to forego the legal process of banishment in favor of simple execution—was getting the bleeding to stop.

  In accordance with Mandate 11, her fathers had engineered her to be sterile, just like all other females. She was not supposed to ovulate, not supposed to menstruate, and certainly not supposed to create life. Any of those three things were absolute grounds for banishment; all it would take for the Bio Police to make a decision was a simple medical test to see what was causing the bleeding. She had never heard of any woman passing it. Genetic mistakes and legal carriers were the only types of women who bled like this, and she sure as hell was not a legal carrier.

  The water swirling around her feet turned from red to pink to beige before finally stopping. Grace turned the shower off and stood there, bare, until the drops trickling down her body grew cold. But her heart was on fire, beating faster than it ever had in her life.

  The New Rainbow Order had come to an innovative balance of punishment for illegal fertility, even if it was accidental—no more forced abortions, no more forced hysterectomies. Expulsion to the Antarctic Sanctuary was the real and only deal now, in the interest of both humane treatment and foolproof control of humanity. The threat of being stuck at the bottom of the world, in an artificial bubble full of excommunicated breeders, was what kept society in line.

  And now I have to find a way out, Grace thought.

  Here in Minneapolis, she was landlocked. All inhabited spots on Earth were now controlled by the worldwide government, and the places that had disintegrated during the Bio Wars—the coasts here on the North American continent, much of South America, much of mainland Europe, and most of Asia—were impossible to survive in. If the terrorist plagues hadn’t wiped people out, the mil
itary bombs used to obstruct them had, and the ruins that remained were more treacherous than any natural jungle. They were called the Unrecoverable Territories for a reason.

  The smartest thing would be to kill myself. Do it easily, somehow. Painlessly.

  But no. It would be unfair to her fathers, her brother, and Linda Glass, her best friend. Grace was the luckiest heterosterile she knew of: rich parents, an education, a solid job. Ending her life would be a poor display of gratitude.

  Trembling, she wrapped herself in a towel, returned to her bedroom, and stood alone in the darkness.

  Tomorrow was her final meeting with the Minneapolis Neighborhood Development Council to make one last case for an overhaul of the Obesaland slum. It was the city’s only true cosmetic atrocity, and there was no way she could miss the meeting, not unless she wanted the poor fatties living there to rot in their misery. Fitness was a virtue, yes, but even those who didn’t subscribe to the homosexual-male-driven ideal of perfection deserved a shred of dignity. Grace wanted nothing more than to be an advocate for them, and tomorrow was her last chance. The meeting was at nine o’clock—just twelve hours away.

  But it no longer mattered. It couldn’t. She could find some sort of absorbent material to block further bleeding, but if it failed during her plea for funding, the Bio Police would be on her within minutes. That was the awful truth.

  Father might turn me in if I ask for help, but Dad won’t. He can’t. Not his little girl.

  Her dad, Stuart, was a doctor. He had no love for government-imposed standards, and he would be able to identify the problem. Even so, diseases were rare, and chronic irregularities would have been identified during her engineering. Judging from what she had heard about carriers, bleeding and pain of this sort seemed too sudden to be menstruation. This left one likely scenario, however absurd it might be:

  She was—or had been—pregnant.

  It could only have happened during the orgy with Todd Bender and his five friends: Hannah, Peter, Elena, Fletch, and the short but muscular man whose name had remained a mystery, the one she had gone all the way with. His salt-and-pepper-colored hair had given him an air of maturity she had melted under—the first time since the Dyke Patrol had attacked her outside Pommie’s Pub that she allowed herself to publicly embrace her sexual orientation. She had succumbed to the urges engineered into her—lost control, really—and now, life as she knew it was over.

  Standing in front of the mirror, Grace let the towel fall. She stood naked, aware for the first time of her body’s frightening power.

  The potential to create life was the very reason breeders didn’t stand a chance when natural conception happened by accident—which of course was the only way it could happen at all these days. The homosexuals had won the Bio Wars, plain and simple. Twenty generations later, they had perfect, worldwide control. Few questioned the sense in controlled homosexual reproduction—the medical breakthrough of same-sex chromosome combination had marked the end of spiraling populations, children born to unfit parents, and heterosexual recklessness.

  “Too many mistakes!” Secretary General Vincent Metzer had said during his last address to the world, when he had become so excited that his gaudy blonde wig had fallen off. “Too many chances for the world to fall back into its old ways!”

  He had already been in office three terms past his legal limit, blaming the unprecedented extension on a recent resurgence of God’s Army terrorists. Now, in just three weeks, his homosexual government assembly would be voting on Mandate 43, a new law rumored to be his final attempt to squelch human birthing from society completely. People called him the Queen, but the only sparkly things about him were his signature blue dress and matching eye shadow. The man was ruthless—the first true dictator since the Bio Wars, though nobody had the courage to say it.

  Grace stared out her bedroom window. The tree branches in her dad’s garden thrashed in the darkness, as if to remind her that life, as finished and nullified as it seemed right then, had not ended just yet. She returned to the bathroom, gathered her clothes, and dragged them down the shadowy hallway toward the living room fireplace. It would be the only sure way to dispose of her secret, at least until it happened again.

  Just as she passed the kitchen, another cramp circled her abdomen. The same warm feeling followed between her legs. More blood. She ran to the shower for a second time, and it came out with sobs of shock, pain, and confusion. Hot, red, sticky, horrible.

  As of that night, Grace Jarvis was, by the New Rainbow Order’s definition, a biological fugitive.

  CHAPTER 2 (HIM)

  EIGHT MILES PER HOUR. Nine. Ten. Eleven and a half.

  Intervals were Dex Wheelock’s favorite running exercise, as they had been since childhood: maximum cardiovascular benefits and fat loss, minimum time spent slaving away on a treadmill. Today, the gym’s roof was retracted, and the Indian summer sun beat down on him. Only another month before the roof would be up every day, keeping out the winter. From this treadmill, the skyscrapers of Minneapolis were visible. Most of them glinted in subdued but obvious rainbow colors, a century-old construction trend symbolic of society’s bright future.

  Bright future if you’re normal, Dex thought. And that will never be me.

  Heterosexuals made up exactly 8 percent of the New Rainbow Order’s population, and he was among the 2 percent who were fertile and male. The reality of this—of the sheer number of homosexuals pressing him into society’s corners, believing him to be inconsequential—made him feel like spit in a churning ocean. It didn’t help that the only heterosexuals working in those skyscrapers were the ones cleaning the toilets.

  Dex finished his warm-up, hopped off the treadmill, and approached the weight room. Here, he always looked as good as (and sometimes better than) the homosexuals in this gym’s crop, despite his short height. He had joined Flip Fitness because it allowed males and females to comingle, unlike the other gyms near his apartment that tolerated heterosexual clientele. The females at this particular location also tended to be interested in men. If it wasn’t obvious due to the general but often correct stereotype that lesbians avoided gyms, it was obvious because of the eye contact they would make with him: Yes, I’m hetero. And available.

  Diana Kring had been one of them—a sparkle of a woman who had worked at the front desk. She had not been shy in telling Dex the night they met that smaller men, graying hair, and bulging muscles turned her on, so he had escorted her right back to his apartment and done things to her his mothers would be ashamed of. Three months later, they were in love. It had taken thirty-seven years, but Dex had finally found in Diana a queller for his loneliness.

  And then she had disappeared. Apartment empty, coworkers shrugging, one aging father left scratching his head. Either Diana had duped everyone she knew, or some unexpected desperation had forced her to run. It was enough to show Dex for the first time ever how a broken heart could both define and unravel him, in one swift emotional gust.

  Despite being a constant reminder of what he had lost, Flip Fitness had since become his prime spot for grief evasion. In the weight room today were two shirtless fags pumping dumbbells with blank concentration, one on either end of the long weight rack. The closer of the two, a gym regular, had an erection under his tight shorts. Dex approached a bench facing the middle of the rack, maintaining a wide berth on either side of himself, hoping the fags would leave him alone. But the one with the erection nodded hello. His eyes flickered over Dex’s body as he set his dumbbells back in their allotted place.

  Dex had just begun a warm-up set of seated shoulder presses when the fag approached him from behind. A second later, he felt the erection press against his upper back.

  “Shorty, you don’t have a husband, do you? I don’t see a ring.”

  Typical.

  “Uh, no. Not quite interested in anything today though.”

  “Oh, come on!” The fag flicked his wrist forward, and it landed on Dex’s shoulder. “You know, I give really good h
ead. Just saying.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  The bulging erection circled Dex until it was pointing him in the face. Dex looked up at the fag, whose eyes were still vibrating back and forth over his muscles. Come to the gym when there weren’t many lesbians or heterosteriles present, and this was what any attractive failsafe got. It was normal for fags to assume every other male was homosexual and wanted to have sex, as if they had somehow forgotten about the government’s mandate that some males remain hetero. It was ingrained in social etiquette, which left failsafes like Dex with the awkward challenge of having to explain themselves while also avoiding potential threats. He had to be careful, always.

  “Hey, I’d rather just do my workout. Thanks, though.”

  “I’m Glen.”

  Dex sighed. “Hi, Glen.”

  “I’ve seen you around here before. Never seen you leave with anyone, though. What gives?”

  To their left, the other fag dropped his hundred-pound dumb-bells to the floor and looked at Glen. His muscles were rippling and dripping with sweat. “Honey, he’s a failsafe. I’ve seen him make eyes at women before. Trust me, you can do better.”

  Glen stepped back, his face contorting as if he had bit into a lemon. It was only a matter of seconds before the tent in his shorts started to recede. “Sorry. Not really going to put my mouth on a dick that wants to breed, even if it’s a hot one.”

  Dex felt his cheeks burning. “And I never asked you to.”

  “He left with that Diana chick once,” the other fag said. “She worked here for a while.”

  “Oh, I know her!” Glen’s arms flailed up at nothing. His wrist flowed in an arc, then settled with the rest of his hand into a pointing gesture aimed at the other fag.

  Dex almost dropped his dumbbells. Erection boy knew Diana.

  “Mark, wasn’t she the one who was, like, bleeding all over a couple months ago? I swear, it was disgusting. I saw it coming through her pants, like she was a carrier in pre-fertilization mode or something. I mean, you hear about that happening to carriers, but who really wants to see it?”