“You will like it, eventually. I do miss those long curls, but at least you know the punishment for your betrayal. We all have to be punished.” He smiled.
Vicki resisted the urge to wince.
Will pushed his plate away and stood, rounding the corner to kiss Vicki on the cheek again. She struggled to remain frigid, frozen, against his touches. He pushed back her hair from her face, trailing a soft, manicured finger down her cheek. “I love you, my dear. I must be off to work, have a good day.” With that he turned and pushed through the doors leading to the kitchen.
As soon as he was gone, Vicki collapsed into the chair, hugging herself as she shook. ‘Work,’ he had said, as if he was going to an office, and not out to murder and imprison the American people with a powerful weapon he’d created.
He wasn’t the man she knew and loved anymore—he was an evil overlord, a monster.
She wished he were dead, or she were dead. Or both of them. She couldn’t live in this world anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
“Papers?”
The gruff guard at the entrance to the military base knew Ambrose Palamo from his day job of driving the concrete mixer onto base, yet he barked his orders as if Ambrose was an infiltrator or a spy.
Ambrose reached into the open space above the controls for the truck and grabbed the pink and yellow sheets—is work permit and his certificate of ethnic background. They were the two most important papers anyone in this new world could own.
The guard glanced at them with a bored sigh. “You’re lucky to get pure-blood,” he scoffed. “You’ve got yourself a fancy job.”
Ambrose just shrugged as he took the papers back and returned them to the dashboard. He wasn’t sure how ‘fancy’ construction work was, but it was a job, and it helped him keep his head down. He was basically invisible, as he needed to be.
The guard waved him on, pushing the red button on the desk in his shack to raise the black and white striped arm across the roadway.
Ambrose cranked the heavy truck into gear and slowly made his way to the base loaded with the materials for his section of the great wall, to protect the new World Without Americans military base.
An hour later, Ambrose Palamo lifted a heavy bag of concrete over his shoulder, wincing from the old gunshot wound. It had healed nicely in the last few months, the scar only a faint memory of his escape from Portland. Vicki had saved his life; the one girl that had changed his world. They only spent a few short weeks together, but during that time, he had fallen head over heels for her, and he knew she felt the same. Yet, she had still gone back to her fiancé, who’d orchestrated the invasion that had toppled the American government in just under a week. Ambrose only knew Will as the Supreme Leader because his face was plastered on the propaganda flyers the soldiers loved to hand out all over town.
In the end, why wouldn’t Vicki go with her fiancé? Of course, she must still love him. She was carrying his child, after all. She had no reason to stay with someone like Ambrose. He was a Khaki. Just a stupid Samoan, lumped in with the other people of color, something he despised during the four years he’d attended college here.
But all that college-boy nonsense was over now.
The invasion happened, and the world changed quickly, violently, almost overnight. Thousands of white people were herded to work camps, shuffled like cattle onto trains, never to be seen again, unless they could prove ethnic heritage. The only people left in this world were either Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American, or Islander, or some blend of those, and only those, ethnicities. The unfortunates without papers were whisked away to only God knows where. Rumors of old jails, campgrounds, and even islands in the ocean sparked everywhere. Ambrose despised it, but he tried desperately not to think about it. What could he do? He was powerless to stop it.
Of course, under the new WWA regime, it was never a better time to be a different skin color. Ambrose found work quickly, his boxing background and heavily muscled stature earning him a top position with a construction company. The last few months he’d been assigned a work crew at the airport, building a concrete barrier around the small military base where the WWA had set up camp.
The new government controlled everything now: phones, power, water, food rations. Ambrose lived in a commune, an apartment complex with a couple dozen other workers, usually two or three to one apartment. Their food was provided weekly, their rent and utilities paid for, if they worked for what they earned. When a member of the crew was sick or – God forbid – decided to leave the premises, they, and their roommate, would be punished to the fullest extent. Usually without due process or a trial.
“You’re in another world today, ese,” a voice spoke up to his left.
Ambrose shifted his thoughts to the present as he turned to his work partner and roommate, Julio Sandemas, hoisting another bag of concrete on his shoulder as well. “Yeah,” Ambrose said absently, “guess I was busy thinking.”
“Well, they don’t pay us to think, just work. Do you want to end up in one of those relocation camps?”
Refusal to work, or not showing up at all, meant being homeless or worse, execution, or if you were lucky, exile to a relocation camp, Ambrose knew. Just last week, Ambrose’s ‘neighbor’, a Hispanic man he only knew as Jose, was caught fleeing the complex. He was shot on sight. His brother and roommate, Miguel, was dragged out of his bed a few hours later and killed in the street as well. Even worse, Ambrose didn’t want to end up like Cole or Randy, who helped him get here, but their white skin got them shipped away.
“I heard about those camps.” He ripped his bag into the huge mixer on the back of the truck. “No place I’d want to be.”
“Si, Señor, the rumors go ‘round,” Julio muttered. “All I’ve heard is the white skinned gringos were sent with their families, and no one has ever heard from them again.”
“I’ve heard stories of ethnic mothers who had their light-skinned children ripped from their arms and taken away.”
“Sad,” was all Julio said.
The world was a dangerous place, now, Ambrose thought, but the guard had been right. He was lucky to be Samoan. He and Julio worked in silence for the rest of the morning, both equally afraid they’d be overheard by the wrong people.
Every morning sharply at six, Ambrose clocked in, just as he had for three months, kept his head down, and didn’t talk to anyone, save a few words he shared with Julio on the job. He listened, instead, to everyone and everything, trying to absorb as much information as he could. He was shocked to hear the government had deteriorated so fast, literally, as the reports came in everyone was just… gone. The white house had been breached months ago, the president, vice president, and members of congress gunned down and vaporized. Gone, like Lucy and Spencer, he thought. Around the country, vehicles and transportation devices were being restricted and only issued by the newly-placed government. When the people resisted, an EMP device made short work on the vehicles.
But other than these tidbits of rumors and unsubstantiated clues, Ambrose didn’t know who was running the government or where. No one really did. The workers only spoke of the leader that had taken over, the one they called Supreme Leader, a title Ambrose thought was like a strange name out of a Korean comic book. Radio and TV broadcasts were the only way they could communicate with the American people, now, since all Internet Access had been government restricted.
He knew more than everyone else but wouldn’t dare say it out loud: the Supreme Leader’s name was Will, and he was Vicki’s fiancé.
The love of his life was gone, just like that. Probably married to the son of a bitch by now.
Ambrose knew he shouldn't be stuck here in Southern Oregon. He should be sitting in class, finishing his last term of his senior year in the Aerodynamics department at Portland State. He was 500 miles from there and he had a plan.
He knew he was lucky to find work so fast, especially at the airport. If he was trapped in America, there was nowhere else he’d rather be
. His dark Samoan heritage was surely the reason for his employment, but second to that, his immaculate and well-built physique. A loner by nature, most of his time as a student was spent in the gym, so he was a rare physical specimen the foreman was pleased to hire. His plan was taking longer than usual, but he needed to be close to the airport. The wall around it was at 80% complete, and he knew he’d have to move fast if his plan would work.
Every night, he tried to dream of his mother’s open arms when he finally reached the little island he called home. Vicki was gone, he had to accept that. She had made her choice to be with her fiancé. It crushed him, it destroyed him, but life moved on. He didn’t stop to mourn.
But, one short phone message had changed everything.
Just four weeks after the invasion, nearly a month since Ambrose had settled into his new job and apartment, he woke to a knock on his apartment door shortly after three am.
A familiar man in a wide-brimmed Stetson, with a long flowing duster, wrapped around his bare chest and tight black jeans, shifted nervously on his brightly lit front porch. Ambrose almost didn’t recognize him, with his missing arsenal he usually kept wrapped around his chest and legs. His face was lean and gaunt, his eyes ringed with many sleepless nights. Ambrose realized his time here would be brief.
“Randy?” Ambrose pulled his robe around him. “What are you doing here?”
“You heard?”
“I did. I’m sorry.”
Randy gritted his teeth. “Cole and Mary, the kids, too. We’re all going.”
“I wish there was something I could do.”
“Actually, there is.” Randy said. “I worked for the WWA, did you know that?” he whispered.
“Shh,” Ambrose cautioned, but was fully awake now. “What are you talking about?”
“How do you think they found us? Danielle?” Randy laughed, high and pierced. “She was small fry to the Big Boss, whoever he is. I’m the one that called them, the day me an’ Cole picked you guys up.”
Ambrose felt his fists ball at his side. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m probably going to be dead tomorrow and I wanted to leave this world with a guilt-free conscience. I’m sorry, Ambrose.” He shoved a small yellow box at Ambrose.
“Randy, what the fuck is this?” Ambrose took the box, holding it at arm’s length. He was reeling from Randy’s blunt confession.
“Relax, it’s a phone, a satellite phone. I was supposed to destroy it. But I didn’t.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“There’s a message on there I never told you about. I’m sorry, Ambrose. Sorry for everything.” Randy turned and pulled his long black trench coat around him, hurrying down the stairs to the bottom floor of the apartments without another word.
Ambrose stared after him, but there was nothing he could say or do that wouldn’t draw the patrol guards to his attention. He shut the door softly and turned to the folding table in the center of their small room.
He turned the box over, examining every nick, dent, scratch. It was heavy, sealed tight, and bolted shut. It was water proof and probably bullet proof. Julio snored softly in the other room, but Ambrose was still careful not to make any noise what would give him away to such a precious gift. Ambrose put the box on the small kitchen counter and flipped open the bolts.
True to Randy’s word, inside there was a yellow and black satellite phone, like the kind Ambrose had only seen on TV. He pressed the red button, and it powered up, clicking three times and flashing in black text, “connected.” He wondered if the line was monitored, as he ran his fingers over the number pad. He could call his father; let him know he was alive and okay. Or he could call his mother, talk to his sisters, and let them know he was trying to come home.
Before he could do anything, the screen flashed a tiny pixelated envelope with the text under it: 1 unread message.
Randy had said he’d want to hear it. Who could it be from?
Ambrose nearly choked as he realized it could be from…her.
He pressed the button marked with an envelope and held the phone to his ear.
The message was garbled, with a harsh shirr of static, and then a small voice whispered:
“Ambrose? Are you there? It’s me.”
Ambrose nearly dropped the phone. Although cracked and frail, he would know that voice anywhere. He’d spent over a week listening to her and almost only her talk into his ear. An annoyance at first, which grew to a sweet sound he’d never forget.
“Ambrose, if you get this I don’t have much time. I’m sorry I left you, I’m sorry I went with him. I did it ….” The message cut out, much to Ambrose’s frustration, but then picked up again. “And I didn’t have a choice. He’s taking me to Nebraska. Please find me.”
The line went static for a moment, and Ambrose could hear voices shouting in the background.
The voice came back and broke into sobs then. “Please find me.”
The line went dead.
Ambrose laid the phone back in the foam cover, closing the lid as silently as he could. Anger, rage, and a twinge of sympathy rocked through him. But broiling under such a shell was elation at the very thought: she was alive.
Please find me.
Nebraska? Hell, that was thousands of miles away. Ambrose couldn’t even go to the bathroom anymore without them knowing, let alone obtain a vehicle to travel halfway across the former United States.
His first thought was to hide the evidence. He thought about destroying the phone but didn’t know how – he couldn’t exactly set it on fire in this apartment without alerting the inspection team. Yet, if they had one of the “routine” inspections and he was caught with this, he’d likely be on the next train out with Randy and Cole.
That, and he didn’t want to part with the sound of her voice.
For the first time in three months, it gave him hope; it gave him a reason to wake up in the morning. He tucked the phone behind his work clothes in his closet, throwing an old blanket over it, praying the inspections wouldn’t be as frequent as they had been of late.
She was alive.
He knew even then he’d do anything to find her, even if it meant risking his deportation and his life.
I’m sorry, Mama, he said to himself. I’ve got a girl to save before I can come home.
“Hey, Palamo, you awake down there?”
Jerked back into the present, Ambrose looked up at Julio, with the gray box of control to the cement mixer resting in one hand. “Yeah.”
“Toss that bag in, bro.”
Ambrose obliged, ripping the end of the bag on his shoulder with the box knife, and watching as the powder slid seamlessly into the mixer. His eyes spun around with it for a minute, and he tossed the bag into the dumpster to his left.
He climbed to the top of the mixer next to Julio, reading the settings for temperature and water pressure. Tapping the dials, he looked at him. “Crank it up to 45.”
Julio nodded. “You okay today, Palamo?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You seem distant, not as focused.”
Ambrose smiled. “A lot on my mind.”
“Ah.” Julio mumbled something in Spanish Ambrose didn’t understand. “It’s about a girl, huh, bro?”
“Hmm,” Ambrose said without looking.
“A man of few words, that’s what I like about ya,” Julio chuckled. “Say no more. It’s always about a girl. You still having those nightmares?”
Ambrose shook his head. “Not this week,” he lied.
“Well, look on the bright side, Boss Hernandez told me we get a day off soon.”
“What?”
“Yeah, everyone gets one, it’s to celebrate Supreme Leader’s marriage to that white girl,” Julio shook his head. “Please. He couldn’t find a girl like my Tressa, bronze skin and a booty out to…”
Ambrose ignored him, struggling to keep his composure. “Who is Supreme Leader marrying?”
“Victoria, or something
like that. I mean, what a white name, am I right? Victoria! Like some fuckin’ queen of England.”
Ambrose turned and looked out over the tarmac behind them, to hide his shock and disappointment from Julio. Her name was Vicki Morel. Like the mushroom. Over the last few months, he had formed a fast friendship with Julio, but there were many things Ambrose couldn’t share.
“That was the Queen of England, Julio.” Ambrose sighed, pushing all his emotions away the best he could. He forced a smile on this face and clapped his friend on the back. “Did you ever take history in school?”
“Sheet, ese, I never paid attention in class. It was some godawful boring sheet.”
Ambrose shook his head.
“We all ain’t like you, college boy. What did you study up there, anyway?”
“Math,” Ambrose lied. It wasn’t entirely an untruth, as aerodynamics was heavily based in mathematical concepts, especially theoretical physics. Besides Randy and Cole, who were long gone by now, Ambrose kept his secret well-guarded. He couldn’t have anyone ruining the plan.
“So next week we get a day off?” Ambrose asked, trying not to beg the answer from his roomie. If it was Vicki, he wanted to know how much time he had. A day off sounded like the opportunity he’d been waiting for, but could he really afford to wait so long? She’d be married by then, and he’d be too late. He had to get there before then.
He thought about his job, when he escaped. The work he did was labor intensive, but wasn’t that difficult, and kept him in prime shape. However, for room and board, they worked seven days a week. It was a decree by Supreme Leader six weeks ago. Idle hands did nothing for the empire, the decree said, and holidays were an American idiocy. Holidays and vacations would now be determined by the Supreme Leader.
“Oh yeah.” Julio pumped a fist in the air. “Hopefully it’s next week. We can’t wait. Me and Tressa are gonna…”
Lavender Dreams: Life After Us: Book Two Page 12