by K. M. Fawkes
“I’m starving,” he heard a voice say. Brad was surprised to realize that he knew the voice. Mason.
“Yeah, me too,” a second voice replied. “But the Major would shoot us if we took anything and you know it.”
The other man had a gruffer voice and Brad didn’t recognize it. He risked a glance out between the shelves. He recognized the soldier, but he didn’t know his name. He stood guard at the major’s office door pretty frequently and he wasn’t exactly pleasant to deal with. Not that any of the soldiers were.
“Let’s just get what we came for and get out of here,” the second man continued.
“Good idea,” Mason said. “The less temptation, the better. What did he say to bring?”
“What else?” the second man asked with a snort. “He wants some more whiskey.”
“I keep hoping that he’ll share it one day,” Mason admitted as they walked over to the shelf with the liquor bottles. Brad hadn’t noticed it before. It was just as well stocked as the rest of the place and just seeing it had ticked him off. Who the hell did the Major think he was? Just sitting in his office all day drinking whiskey and pretending to work? How much of this food was he eating day by day while he forced them to have stringy meat for dinner?
“He usually gives me a sip or two when I guard the door at night,” the second soldier said, sounding a little satisfied.
“Well fuck you too, then,” Mason snapped as he grabbed a bottle. “Let’s get this back to him before he comes looking for us.”
The memory of all of that food was part of the reason that Brad was angry, but it wasn’t the whole thing. If anything, he was currently using the discovery as part of his escape plan, which made him feel better at the moment.
No, what really made him angry was the fact that this was the eighth day in a row that he’d gone to the Major’s HQ to try to talk to him about his promised rescue mission. And this would be the third damn day he’d done it in knee-deep snow.
He could play the lines out in his head as they happened by now. Sometimes he did, just for amusement. There was only one variation.
“Can I see the Major today?” he asked the guard at the door.
It was the same man who had brought the Major his whiskey and it was all Brad could do not to ask him how it had tasted. Instead, he simply crossed his arms and waited. Which lie would it be today?
“He’s not in.”
Ah, the first answer again. It was always a toss-up between, “he’s not in” and “he’s busy,” but it was more often the first.
“It’s important,” Brad went on, just like he did every day. It never had any effect, but at this point, he considered it a little game they played.
“He’ll get back to you when he has a chance,” the man said with a shrug. “The Major is very busy right now.”
Hey, look at that. A two-for-one deal.
Brad cleared his throat and said, “Will you tell him that I was here? My name’s Brad.”
“I know,” the soldier assured him.
Well that was something. Two soldiers now knew his name. For all the damn good it did him.
Brad turned and walked back to his apartment. There was simply nothing else to do at the moment. The cow was healing nicely. He obviously couldn’t raid anything at the moment. And it looked like it was going to snow again. He really didn’t want to be out in it. Even though he felt like there was something tugging at his memory.
Once he was back to his place, he noticed that Jack and Charlie and Remington were outside their apartment, bundled in blankets. Even Remington had a blanket thrown over him.
There were a few other men there, too, and Brad squinted, trying to see who it was. He couldn’t help but be paranoid these days. That was what pissing off the establishment tended to do to a person.
He sighed in relief when he recognized Vance and Harrison, but stiffened up just a little when he saw Neal. Neal was the Major’s gopher; he was at the office every day. He didn’t know how close they were, but he was wary around the man, anyway.
“Hey,” Jack said, waving Brad over. “Do you want to join us for some beer and conspiracy theories?”
Brad took the bottle and leaned back against the pillar of the porch. “Conspiracy theories?” he asked.
Charlie smiled and nodded. “Yep. You heard right. Tonight's topic is the nanobot outbreak.”
“But we know how that happened,” Brad said, shaking his head. “The bots thought that aging was a virus and decided to shut down the hosts.”
“Sure. That’s what they say,” Jack said. “But what if it started before that?”
Brad sipped his beer, raising his eyebrows. This should be a pretty safe conversation to have with Neal around. It also sounded like it was going to be one hell of a ride.
“What does that mean?” he asked once he’d swallowed his sip.
“I think someone manipulated it,” Jack said with relish.
“What do you mean? You think someone created the virus on purpose?” Brad asked. “Why?”
“Hell, why does anybody do anything?” Vance chimed in, leaning back as well. “Maybe they really wanted to take out some people.”
“Everyone who got the tech first was rich,” Charlie pointed out, diving into the conversation feet first.
“That’s exactly who I would’a started with,” Vance said, shaking his head. “What you do is, you take out the one percent. Then, you got a better chance to spread the wealth.”
“But poor people got the bots, too,” Charlie pointed out. “They would have kept them around if that was their plan, right?”
“Maybe the hacker thought that his plan hadn’t worked,” Jack said. “Maybe he didn’t know that it took time, so he flooded the whole system.”
“Is that likely?” Charlie asked, running her hand over her dog’s head. “If they were smart enough to hack the system for the bots—”
“Things don’t always go the way you want them to,” Jack protested.
“Maybe it wasn’t a hacker that did the job,” another man volunteered. Brad recognized him as part of the hunting crew, but they were never on the same shift. He thought the man’s name was Harrison. “Maybe it was the government.”
There was a moment of silence as everyone took that thought in and rolled it around in their minds. Harrison looked pleased to have caused such a stir. He held out his hand and Charlie put another beer into it. He drank victoriously.
“Nah,” Brad said. “There’s no way. Some of them got the bots, too. They wouldn’t have started anything knowing that they’d be killing their own people.”
“Wouldn’t they? You remember that not all of them got the bots, right?” the man replied, clearly ready to defend his thesis well past the point of reason. “Maybe they were thinning the herd there, too. You know how they were always talking about our overpopulation problem.”
“Sure, but—” Brad said.
“So they decided to do something about it,” Harrison continued. “And then it just got away from them. It turned into way more than they’d bargained for when the virus mutated and spread.”
“What about the way they dealt with it?” Vance asked. “In the aftermath, I mean. Once ninety percent of us were gone?”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“The EMP,” Vance said impatiently. “In what world is turning off the power to everything a good solution? It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Especially since they found the cure and the cure needed some fuckin’ electricity.”
“There weren’t enough MRI machines, remember?” Charlie pointed out, her voice strained. “That much became clear when the president died.”
Brad looked at her quickly. “What did you say? When the president died?”
Brad had watched the news right up until he hadn’t had that option anymore and he hadn’t heard anything about losing the commander of the entire nation. Did Charlie have some information that he didn’t? The news networks had been so disorganized toward th
e end that it was certainly possible for some areas to have gotten news that he hadn’t.
Remington came over and leaned against Brad’s leg, sensing his sudden spike in worry. Brad bent down and fixed the dog’s blanket before patting him on the head.
Charlie shrugged and reached for her beer. “I don’t know for sure if he’s dead, but that’s what I heard. And what would have made them hit that big red button and change everything, if not for something catastrophic like that?”
“The thing is,” Neal said, speaking for the first time. “You’re not entirely wrong.”
“Got a theory of your own, Neal?” Brad asked with a laugh, trying to make it seem like they’d just been bullshitting. They had been when they’d started, but somehow, the tone had become much more serious as the conversation went on. Suddenly, he was very uneasy about Neal’s presence.
Neal nodded. “I guess you could say that I do,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed. “See, I worked for the government, back when it existed. I was there all the way to the last days.”
Now that was a surprise. At the same time, though, Brad felt like he should have known. Neal’s efficiency, his tendency to follow orders without questioning them…it all screamed government worker. If Lee had been here, he would have walked away rather than continue a conversation with the man. Brad stayed right where he was, waiting for more information.
“Doing what?” Jack asked, clearly just as shocked as Brad.
“Nothing important, really,” Neal admitted. “I mostly did what I do now. Fetch and carry for the bigwigs.” He gave a small laugh and then his face grew serious again. “But when people started dying off, I sort of got on the fast track. Ended up working with the FBI.”
“No way,” Vance said with a laugh.
Brad could see the other man’s disbelief. Neal was a pretty small guy. He might have been an obvious choice for government work, but he was certainly no one’s first choice for FBI.
“There was a lot of panic,” Neal went on. “No one in the department or any other branch of the government knew what to do. The possibility of an EMP was mooted pretty early on—I mean, when you have a piece of rogue technology infecting millions, it was bound to be brought up—but the idea kept getting shot down because people thought it would do more harm than good.”
He paused and pushed his hand through his hair. “Then, things got even more complicated. The military was splitting, along with the government. They were dividing into two factions that wanted very different things.”
“Why haven’t you said any of this before?” Charlie asked.
Neal shrugged. “What would be the point? I can’t do anything about how any of it happened. And I don’t know much,” he went on. “I just know that the side that didn’t want the EMP eventually died off. And now, here we are. With nothing.”
The bitterness in the man’s voice made it clear what side Neal had been on.
In the tense silence that followed that statement, Brad’s thoughts turned to Sammy and Martha again. Wherever they were, even if they weren’t starving, they had to be freezing cold and miserable.
His mind was made up. He was going to talk to the Major tomorrow. And he’d be heard, come hell or high water. It was time to end the farce. Either the man was going to help him or he wasn’t and Brad needed to know what to plan for.
Chapter 15
By the next morning, a warm front had come through, bringing a heavy rain with it. The plus side was that it had washed most of the snow away. The downside was that there would inevitably be ice once the temperature dropped again.
Deciding to enjoy the nearly forty-degree weather while he could, Brad took a leisurely walk over to the cow pen. The injured cow was doing better; the redness and swelling was completely gone. He rubbed her nose one more time and then headed for the breakfast hall. He’d need all the fortification he could get if he was going to face the soldiers again today.
Finding the hall to be oddly quiet, Brad wondered if everyone was out enjoying the semi-warm weather and ignoring breakfast. To his surprise, when he pulled the door open, everyone in the facility was there, they were all just dead quiet. It seemed like the entire room was holding its breath. Brad stopped just inside the door.
Major Walker walked to the center of the room and Brad’s muscles tensed. What the hell was going on here? The Major held up his hands and smiled.
The silence deepened, somehow. It became almost reverent, but Brad could feel the undercurrent. He’d felt it before. It was fear. Fear that the residents of the facility were trying fairly successfully to hide. Brad might not have recognized it if he hadn’t seen the Family in action.
“I have an announcement for you all,” the Major said, his voice loud and extremely cheerful. “Today is Thanksgiving! What do you people say to a little celebration? I say it’s been too damn long!”
Cheers erupted in the room. The residents clapped and families hugged one another.
Brad stood by the door, wondering just why the hell the holiday mattered. Then, he sighed as Sammy’s birthday party flashed through his mind. It mattered. It mattered to these people. And, his intuition whispered, it was a benevolent distraction. With the food stores he had piled up, it wouldn’t hurt Walker one bit to have a dinner party and it would help make him look really good.
Walker raised his hands again and the noise died immediately. “We’ll have our celebration tonight,” he went on. “The list of assigned duties is posted by the door. Please finish your meal and get started as quickly as possible so that we can all have a good holiday!”
Brad stepped forward, determined to take his chance while he could, but a few families hurried up and began thanking the Major. He shook a few hands, smiling and chatting amicably. Brad continued to edge forward, trying to work his way to the front of the group. Major Walker turned suddenly and met Brad’s eyes. Then, he turned away and walked out the door.
“Damn it,” Brad muttered under his breath. “What the hell, Walker?”
Luckily, the other residents were milling around and talking so excitedly that they hadn’t heard him talking to himself. Another plus side occurred to Brad at that thought: it would be the perfect time to talk without being heard. If Major Walker wouldn’t help him find Anna, he’d get people on his own. Jack had promised some help and he’d become pretty good friends with Vance. Surely they could work out some time when they were all free.
He walked over and checked the list, hoping that he’d be paired up with Vance. He ran his finger down until he reached his name. He was on the hunting crew again, which didn’t surprise him. The added instructions to look for a turkey didn’t surprise him either. What else was he supposed to look for on Thanksgiving? A water buffalo? Skimming down the list, he was annoyed to see that Vance had been assigned on-site duties. He’d have to try and talk to him at dinner.
After he’d eaten his bowl of oatmeal—which was hard to gag down without any brown sugar or flavor whatsoever—Brad joined the group heading out to hunt. He would be the only civilian on this particular trip, it seemed. Brad didn’t know whether that meant that the Major had decided that he needed closer supervision or if he’d simply picked the men most likely to bring back some game. The other soldiers were good shots; he’d been out with each of them before. All he could do was keep his guard up, which was exactly what he planned to do.
He got into the back of the truck and settled in.
“If you’ll get me a kit, I’ll clean the guns while you drive,” he offered, and one of the soldiers handed him the kit.
The guy didn’t offer any thanks, but Brad decided to let it go. Even if he was holding a gun, it probably wasn’t the best time for a lecture on manners. The three soldiers all crowded into the front seat, leaving Brad in the back by himself, which suited him perfectly.
He listened idly to the soldiers’ conversation. From what he could tell, they were making bets about extra rations for the person who got managed to get a turkey. Brad assumed that
the offer didn’t extend to him.
Once they came to a stop just outside a densely-wooded area, Brad took his rifle, handed the newly cleaned guns back to the other men, and headed off. He’d known from his calendar that today was Thanksgiving, of course. He just hadn’t given a shit.
Holidays had never been a big deal in Brad’s home. Lee hadn’t seen the point of them. Other than the birthday present he always got for Brad, he preferred to spend his money on prepping for the end of the world. At Christmas, Brad might get a cheap toy or a new jacket.
His mother might have wanted to do more, but she didn’t have the funds and she wasn’t one to sit around and mope about what she couldn’t do. Brad usually got given a quilt at Christmas and his mom usually managed to scrape together enough money for a big dinner at Easter, his birthday, and Thanksgiving.
Of course, big was a relative term. They’d usually just had a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey since it was just the two of them, and his mother shopped the sales for weeks leading up to the holiday, piecing the dinner together over time.
He wondered absently if there was any canned cranberry sauce in that pantry. Thanksgiving—whether it was now a pointless celebration or not—wouldn’t be the same without canned cranberry sauce. One of the women he’d briefly dated right before his mother had gotten sick had brought homemade cranberry sauce as her contribution to Thanksgiving dinner one year. Brad hadn’t been able to eat it, even though he’d tried really hard, and the relationship had fizzled out not long after. It probably wasn’t entirely the fault of the cranberry sauce, but it was much easier to let the blame rest there.
As he walked deeper into the woods, Brad couldn’t help but wonder what Anna would have prepared for their Thanksgiving dinner. There was no way that she would have let the holiday pass her by. She probably would have started planning sometime around the end of October.