by James Hunt
He’d spent years on this work. The recreations brought back all the sleepless nights and the calculating and recalculating of every mathematical equation, along with the hours he had spent in the lab, ensuring that the water worked through his process was safe and drinkable. But most of all, he remembered those few weeks when his life’s work had been turned into a sideshow.
His face had been plastered on every major news channel, with taglines of “Eccentric” and “Dangerous Doctor” posted right next to his name. Death threats and hate mail arrived at his home daily. Every time he walked down the street, he could feel violent stares. Eventually, he couldn’t go anywhere in public without being harassed. And when the bill that would have allowed his filtration process to become legal and give the citizens of the country all the fresh water they could drink had been voted down, he shut himself off from the rest of the world.
Dr. Carlson looked around his “office.” The paint was peeling off the walls. No A/C blew through the vents. The air was dry and stale. He rubbed his foot along the floor, where it scraped against the dirt and debris that had made its way in from the broken windows.
“Almost like home,” he said to himself.
He pulled out the cell phone that Smith had given him and dialed his number.
“Hello?” Smith asked.
“I’m finished.”
“You’re sure everything’s correct? We’re not going to get a second chance with this.”
“It took me a little longer than usual, but it’ll work.”
Dr. Carlson hung up the phone and looked down at his sketches. He tossed the phone on top and leaned back.
“I’m pretty sure it’s right,” he said to himself.
***
Beth kept her eyes on Smith the entire time he was on the phone. Her body was rigid. She became aware that she wasn’t breathing. When Smith smiled, she exhaled.
“We’re ready,” Smith said.
“I’ll tell Jake to start gathering the materials,” Beth said.
“You didn’t think he could do it, did you?”
“Well, technically he still hasn’t, but with everything that’s riding on this, I’m willing to look at this with a glass-half-full perspective.”
“You’re not going soft on me, are you?”
“Don’t think you’re getting that lucky.”
Beth jolted as Daniel burst into Smith’s office. His tie was undone. His dress shirt was untucked. He wore his jacket awkwardly with half of the collar flipped up. Pieces of hair randomly jutted out from the rest of his carefully styled head.
“You told him?” Daniel asked, his voice cracking and his words breathless and raspy. He limped forward a few steps. He looked as if he had run to Smith’s office all the way from North Carolina.
“Beth, will you excuse us for a moment?” Smith asked.
Beth backed out of the room. The moment she closed the door behind her, she called security.
“Daniel, what happened? Are you all right?” Smith asked.
“You told Jones about what happened in Colombia when you were on the military appropriations committee with me. Why?”
“Daniel, please, sit down.”
“Are you working with him now like you did then? Are you hanging me out to dry? Is this some type of fucking joke?” Daniel yelled, spit flying from his mouth. His face reddened, and random angry spasms caused his arms and legs to jerk.
Smith held out his hands, trying to calm Daniel. “You need to let me explain,” Smith said.
“You know what will happen if Jones lets that information get out? It will ruin me. It will ruin my family.”
“He has no proof. I made sure of that. Everything I told him was purely word of mouth.”
Daniel took a step back. His right hand reached up to his chest. A searing, stabbing pain ripped through him. His body stiffened.
“So it’s true,” Daniel said.
“Yes, but Daniel, you have to let me explain.”
Smith didn’t get the chance. Daniel lunged after Smith, pinning him down against the desk. The monitor, phone, pens, and papers crashed to the floor. Daniel wrapped his hands around Smith’s throat. He squeezed tight.
“I trusted you!” Daniel yelled.
Beth rushed back into Smith’s office at the sound of the commotion. She ran over and tried to peel Daniel off Smith, but he was too strong. Finally, two security officers rushed inside and apprehended Daniel. It took both of them to break Daniel’s grip on Smith’s neck.
Daniel strained against the two guards, resisting as they pulled him away. Smith still lay over the top of the desk, gasping for breath.
“I trusted you! I trusted you!” Daniel’s screams could be heard all the way down the hallway. Even after he was out of the building, Smith could still hear Daniel’s words echoing in the back of his mind.
***
The six-by-eight-foot cell didn’t allow Daniel much space to walk. He could feel the walls closing in on him. He had taken off his tie, jacket, and dress shirt. Sweat drenched his undershirt. He walked around barefoot, trying to let the concrete cool his bare feet. Apparently inmates weren’t treated to the same air-conditioning standards as his peers on Capitol Hill.
Daniel sat down on the lumpy mattress. The springs squeaked from the surprise of his weight, and he leaned back till his head bumped into the wall behind him. Regardless of what happened with Jones, he knew how this would look. He could read the headlines now: “Congressman snaps under pressure from peers and public opinion. Is he fit for office?”
Am I fit for office? That was something he’d pondered for the two hours he’d been locked in that cell. In his mind he went through all the speeches, votes, and secret meetings. He justified everything he did as trying to help, but for what? Only so he could stay in office? He wasn’t sure if that was a question he wanted answered.
Daniel had joined the political scene roughly ten years ago. He had been working as a defense lawyer when he took on a client charged with kidnapping. The client was a father who had taken his daughter from the mother, who had sole custody, so that the daughter could live with him.
The mother had a lot of money, an inheritance from a grandfather. It was old money. Powerful money. The father, on the other hand, worked as a mechanic making thirty thousand dollars a year. He’d had a history of alcohol abuse way before his daughter was born, but he’d been sober for more than a decade.
Despite the father’s plea to have partial custody, the mother denied him. She didn’t want him to have anything to do with their daughter. The man was heartbroken, bleeding to death. When Daniel met with the father for the initial consultation, the father wept like Daniel had never seen a grown man cry. His eyes were desperate, pleading. Daniel took the case and asked for no compensation.
After three months at trial, Daniel lost the case. He couldn’t compete with the mother’s resources or influence. The father was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He would never forget the rap of the gavel or the wails of the father as the bailiff carried him away.
Daniel appealed the case but was denied. His firm told him that they weren’t going to sink any more of the company’s money into a lost cause. The only reason they’d agreed for him to take the case was because of the publicity, and now that they had lost the case, the only press they received was negative. Daniel quit the firm the following week.
He stayed in touch with the father for a while after the sentencing. He managed to arrange the delivery of letters to his daughter through her school. Daniel had gone to college with one of the teachers, and the teacher agreed to help out once Daniel told him what had happened.
The next couple of months after the trial were a turning point for him. He had gone to law school to make a difference, but the laws that were in place were so constricting, so binding, that he couldn’t do anything. So three months after he quit the law firm, he decided that if he couldn’t make a difference in the courtroom, he’d make it easier for justice to be served th
rough legislation.
Eight months after that, he became the youngest congressman to ever be elected to the twelfth district of North Carolina. He built his platform on telling everyone that he could make a difference. And for the past two tortuous hours, he had been trying to figure out if he had made a difference or if he was now like that father he had tried to help so long ago.
Daniel heard the jingle of keys as the sergeant who had locked him in the cell made his way down the hall, the rhythmic click of his boots becoming louder. Daniel watched as the chubby-faced officer stepped in front of the door.
“Here he is, Congressman,” the sergeant said.
Then the long, slender hand of Jones wrapped around the iron rods of the cell door.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Jones said.
Jones’s pearly-white smile stretched across the gaps in the coal-black gate that separated Daniel from freedom. Daniel could feel the swirl of emotions storming up inside of him. He had never wanted to hurt someone so badly yet beg for their mercy.
“You made quite a scene today, Daniel,” Jones said.
Daniel didn’t get up from the cot, but he leaned forward to rest his face in his hands. If Jones knew about it, then it wouldn’t be long before the news outlets caught wind of it as well. His career was over. His life was over, and all of it was made worse by the fact that his family would be caught in the crossfire.
“You still have time, Daniel,” Jones said.
“Time for what?”
“To save your career. To save your life.”
Daniel looked up from his hands. Jones’s smile had disappeared, but his grip on the bars remained.
“Smith betrayed you. He gave you up to save his own skin,” Jones said.
Daniel shut his eyes. He shook his head. He knew Jones was playing games with him. This was a power struggle, and right now the scales were tipped generously in his favor. The bed springs squeaked again as Daniel rose from the cot and walked to the back of the cell. He pressed his hands up against the wall, keeping his back to Jones.
“Think of your family, Daniel.”
Daniel’s hands slid down the rough concrete. Of all the cards to play, Daniel had known Jones would pull that one. He walked to the front of the cell to face Jones. When Daniel made it to the cell bars, Jones removed his hands.
“What do you want? You want to know what Smith is doing? You want to know what I’ve been doing?” Daniel asked.
“I already know about Dr. Carlson. I already know about your meetings. All I need is a location where Carlson is working. You give me that, and I can make everything disappear. I can ensure you’re reelected for the next fifteen terms. I can make sure you and your family never want for anything. I can be a powerful friend, Daniel. You know what I can do. Stop fighting me and work with me.”
“Work with you? Work with you to destroy what this country was founded on?”
Jones lunged at the bars. The forceful thud of Jones’s hands hitting the iron gate surprised Daniel. He hadn’t thought Jones’s frail body could produce that much force.
“What this country was founded on was the belief in survival. That’s what I’m doing, Daniel. Ensuring that we survive. Now, I’m sorry that my methods don’t represent the same Boy Scout code that you and Smith carry around, but I can tell you that everything I have ever done has been for this nation. Because, despite you detesting me, I live in this country as well, and my fate is attached to its outcome just as much as yours!” Jones said.
A dribble of spit flew from Jones’s mouth and landed on his chin. He wiped it away hastily with the back of his liver-spotted hands.
“You really believe that everything you’ve done has been for the good of the country?” Daniel asked. “You’re delusional.”
“Don’t go down this road, Daniel. It’s not a journey you’ll survive. You have until tomorrow to give me your answer.”
A few moments after Jones left, the sergeant came back and opened Daniel’s cell.
“You made bail,” the sergeant said.
“Posted by whom?”
“Congressman Jones.”
Chapter 14
Brooke had been idling in the cruiser for the past three minutes. Her eyes were fixated on the desert sand in front of her. It wasn’t until Eric waved his hand in front of her face that she snapped out of her trance.
“Hey, anybody home?” Eric asked.
“The tire tracks. Up ahead. What do you think they’re from?” Brooke asked.
“I’m going to go with some type of vehicle.”
John snorted, and Emily giggled.
“Hey, you two in the back. Don’t encourage him,” Brooke said.
“Brooke, I’m sure it’s fine,” Eric said.
“I haven’t had the best track record when it comes to crossing deserts this week.”
“Regardless of who it is, we still have to cross.”
Brooke looked back over to the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign on the left. The sun had worn most of the lettering off, but she could still see the state’s outline, which had once been proudly printed on the sign. Now the state of New Mexico was known mostly for death.
The races had started a few years back. They’d become wildly popular. Fire and blood drew in large crowds, and the large amounts of prize money kept contestants coming back every year. Brooke had watched a race on television once. She turned it off after the first ten minutes. The show was nothing more than perpetuated violence.
Now, with the region in exile, she was afraid what little law remained in the state had now vanished. The trek through New Mexico would be more than just a fight against the elements. Brooke shifted the cruiser into drive and rolled over the state line.
It was three hundred miles to Texas, and they had packed enough fuel to last them well into the Lone Star State. Eric suggested keeping to the north, stating that the security closer to Mexico would be stronger. Brooke planned it so that by the time they reached the Texas border, it would be nightfall. Crossing over during the daylight didn’t seem like a viable option.
Brooke kept the cruiser at a steady forty miles per hour. At the pace they were running, they’d make the crossing in roughly eight hours. That meant eight hours of watching the horizon for marauders, Mexican military, and the Mexican gangs that had worked their way slowly up to Albuquerque.
“You guys ever watch Bugs Bunny?” Eric asked.
“Who?” John replied.
Eric turned to look at Brooke, who had her eyebrow raised.
“I guess they wouldn’t get the Albuquerque joke,” he said.
“I think that was a little bit before their time,” Brooke answered.
“Such a shame.”
***
John’s head bobbled against his headrest. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when his mom slapped his leg.
“John, wake up,” Brooke said.
John rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked out the window. His jaw almost dropped. For miles, all he could see was white sand. For a moment, he thought he was at the beach.
“Where are we?” John asked.
“White Sands National Park, or at least it used to be,” Brooke said.
“Why is everything white, Mommy?” Emily asked.
“It’s because of the gypsum in the sand,” Brooke answered.
“It’s pretty,” Emily said.
John had never seen anything like it. If it wasn’t for the blazing heat, he could have thought they were driving through snow.
“Can we stop to look around?” John asked.
His mother didn’t say anything for a minute, then he felt the cruiser start to slow.
“Sure, it’s about dinner time anyway,” Brooke said.
John stepped his right foot out of the car and smiled when he hit the sand. He turned back around to Brooke and Eric, who were unbuckling their seatbelts.
“Cool,” he said.
He could hear Emily laughing, chasing after him as he ran up the side o
f one of the white dunes to get a better look at his surroundings. His jaw almost dropped from the view. Thousands of white, rolling dunes stretched further than he could imagine. He knelt down into the white powder and picked it up, letting it sift through his fingers. Emily finally made it to the top of the hill and fell to her knees next to him.
“It feels soft,” John said.