by Addison Gunn
“It’s in the incident reports.” Miller clasped his hands behind his back uncomfortably. “The short version? You remember that crowd of Infected the helicopter had to shoot to pieces?”
Lewis looked up, lips pushed grimly together. He nodded.
“Well, they mob up like that about a quarter of the time after we take out a Charismatic.” Miller spread his hands in an awkward shrug. “Five of us with our asses in the fire doesn’t rate air support anymore, what with the engine trouble the choppers are having, so we get ourselves out. That’s where the ammo goes.”
Lewis bowed his head, looking at the requisition forms. After a pause, he fished through the stack until he found one of the handwritten incident reports.
“So what was the deal with that other guy?” Miller asked.
“Nigerian pirate.” Lewis turned a page over with a loud flick. “They’re negotiating the sale of a hijacked oil tanker.”
“Seriously?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How about that. So that’s where we’re getting the tankers the welders are tearing up on the docks? Pirates?”
“Some of them. The company doesn’t have enough big boats to spare for this floating farm thing.”
Rumour was that with the compound jammed full of people, the plan was to string together boats and barges into the East River to find the space to start some kind of indoor farming effort. Couldn’t start soon enough, in Miller’s opinion.
“You kids okay?” Lewis asked, after putting down another incident report.
It wasn’t easy to answer. The obvious answer, ‘we’re fine,’ stuck in Miller’s throat. At last he said, “Working the night shift isn’t all bad. Not as hot.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He pushed one of the reports across the desk and under Miller’s nose. “If we were in the Marines,” Lewis said, “you’d be due a psychiatric evaluation.”
“Don’t see why.”
“Killing fucks people up, son.” Lewis slapped down another. “In the world wars, the machine gunners went crazy. In mine, the drone operators. Basically, anybody who sits there with a trigger or a button and focuses on nothing but killing other human beings for days on end—they all come out mincemeat on the other side.”
“Don’t feel like mincemeat.” Miller ducked his head.
Putting the rest of the paperwork down, Lewis kicked his chair back, lacing his fingers over his belly and staring. “Son,” he said, “what I’m saying here is that I need you on your feet. Able to do your duty.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“If you and the kids start cracking up, we’re screwed. You understand? Switchblade’s gone, and Shank isn’t any kind of replacement. They’re good enough to keep terror-jaws from nosing around the breaches in the walls, but that’s about it. The other security teams are barely in any kind of shape to get shit done. Cobalt’s the only thing that resembles a flexible fighting force, and we’re down to five of you. You have to take care of yourselves.”
“Six, if you get out from behind that desk.”
Lewis’s face hardened. “The longer I can keep you shielded from handling this bullshit and dealing with the board, the better.”
“What do you want me to say?” Miller leaned forward. “We’re tired. We’re struggling. We’re doing our job.”
“You’re getting put on crowd control until further notice.”
Miller blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“What happened to speaking for the CEO? Your word is Gray’s word?”
“Where do you think these orders came from? I speak with the voice of God because God tells me what to say. Gray and Harris are giving you until eighteen-hundred to acclimatize, and then Cobalt’s on a regular guard rotation with security team Bayonet.”
“We’re on down time, waiting on ammo and supplies, we can’t go back out until we rest and resupply.”
“They want you on guard duty babysitting the refugees we’ve got canned up in fences like fucking prisoners of war,” Lewis snapped. “And I agree with them. There’s talk about evacuating to Boston. It’s made people scared. Some of the refugees are even trying to escape into the city. I need you on this.”
“So let them leave. Fucking let them.”
“And then in a couple days we’ve got well-fed Infected outside the walls who know every nook and cranny of the compound—and who know exactly how many men and how much firepower we have left? Can’t happen.”
Miller clenched his fists. “We need rest, we need to put down the guns. We need to be human for awhile. Eighteen hours? That’s a fucking joke.”
“We’re fighting a war against extinction here,” Lewis kept on, his face reddening, “and you need to do your duty, which is to execute the orders I give you. I’ll figure out how to straighten this out, but until it happens I need you to play along.”
Miller stared at him, blinking. “My duty?”
“Your duty,” Lewis said, evenly.
“I’m a fucking private employee. The terms of my employment contract don’t say shit about guard duty, or mass murder, or assassination, or the fucking end of the world.” Miller got to his feet. “If you can’t straighten this shit out I’ll go to someone who can.”
“Miller!”
He looked back, once, before leaving. “You speak for God ’cuz God talks to you. I drive God’s kids to school every day.”
“Gray won’t like this.”
“Are you kidding?” Miller snorted. “Being compared to God’ll make his damned day.”
2
HOLLY MOULIN DIDN’T look up from behind her desk.
“Not even going to try and stop me?” Miller asked, reaching for the office door.
“It never works, Mr. Miller.”
He smiled, a thin veneer of levity over his foul mood, and let himself into Gray’s office.
L. Gray Matheson’s den had grown even more opulent, by the compound’s standards. A functioning air conditioning unit hummed beneath one of the windows, banishing any idea of heat. It seemed somehow unfair, but that was how capitalism worked, even now. Big glossy desk, fresh bagels baked out of flour from God-knew-where, real coffee...
As Miller neared the desk, and Gray behind it, he realized that the dainty plate wasn’t covered with the crumbs of a fresh-baked breakfast snack. He looked at Gray quizzically, and pointed towards the stubby, flat triangles on the plate.
Rolling his eyes, Gray eased back in his seat, clasping an antique corded telephone to the side of his face. He nodded, waved for Miller to take one. “Yes. I know none of the shareholders are happy. Nobody’s happy, Ben.”
Taking care not to smear the plate with the rapidly cooling sweat covering his fingers, Miller picked up the daintily cut quarter of a DG-12. Cautiously, he tasted it. The bread, purportedly identifying the DG-12 as a sandwich against all other evidence, swelled as it drank the saliva off his tongue. Chewing transformed his mouth into a wonderland of filthy, clinging gobbets. Somewhere in the midst of it all, rubbery strips of something that had been soy, up until a team of industrial chemists had taken a crack at making their mark on history, slithered between his teeth and eventually down his throat.
The DG-12 was not a sandwich. It was a way to preserve food for decades, most likely by the time-honoured tradition of rendering it inedible by both macroscopic and microscopic life.
“I understand that,” Gray told the other end of the line, “but if they leave the cove, we can’t provide them with support. Any kind of support. The security teams are too busy holding the compound.”
Miller took another bite, because, fuck it, you didn’t turn down a meal. Not anymore.
“Ben, do me a favour. Before you try and threaten me with a suggestion like that, actually try and hire private security. It doesn’t exist anymore.” Gray laughed. “That’s why you need to stay with us. I’m not hardballing you. There really isn’t a
ny other option. Thank you. Yes, that’s fine. We’ll pick this up later. Goodbye.”
Miller sank into one of the two visitor’s chairs opposite the desk, and gestured with the remains of the DG-12. “Ran out of caviar?”
“Getting a preview,” Gray said, fumbling with the old phone, trying to fit its pieces together the way it was done in old movies.
“We aren’t even feeding the refugees this old stuff yet.” Miller turned it over. The last time he’d had one was as a hazing exercise in the Army. The DG series rations were long-term storage, last-ditch meal items. The kind of thing they started stuffing into bunkers after the Russian Federation started stockpiling nukes again. “There’s no way in hell you don’t have a source on the fresh stuff.”
“That’s the problem, Alex.” Gray smiled thinly. “I felt I needed a dose of the reality we’ll be living through if I screw this up for us.”
“What’s Ben’s problem? You torturing the rest of the board with this stuff?”
“Something along those lines. What can I do for you, Alex?”
One last bite, but only one, and Miller balanced the remnants of the DG-12 on the plate’s edge. “Cobalt’s being put on guard duty.”
“Yes?”
“We just got in from the city this morning. You can’t put us on guard duty.”
“I was told that you had the time. That you weren’t doing anything for the next two days or so?”
“We need down time,” Miller said through gritted teeth.
Gray hesitated. “How much?”
“Honestly? A lot more than eighteen hours.”
“Alex, come on. We’re short-handed. This is crunch time. We need you twenty-four hours a day, here. I know what it’s like, I’ve been in the office overnight too. But you can’t shirk responsibility...” He trailed off, staring at Miller’s expression. “I’m sorry. I know how that must have sounded.”
“Do you?” Miller asked, his face feeling hot. “What kind of late shifts have you pulled at the office lately? Did you hit your quota and kill a couple dozen people before you got home?”
“Alex…”
“Because that’s what I had to do to get back to the compound. I haven’t slept yet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”
“You know I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t think,” Miller said. He leaned back until the chair squeaked. “We’re not software developers. You can’t push front line combat troops like that.”
Silence stretched out until Gray pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Bob assured me it’d be fine.”
“Robert Harris never held a gun in his life. You don’t put armed soldiers fresh from battle in front of civvies. We’re too hopped up and on edge. It’ll be a disaster,” Miller all but pleaded.
“I think you under-estimate yourself and your team.”
“Look, I’m not saying we have PTSD yet, although I’m not saying we don’t. But after doing what we just did out there, our judgement is shot. I mean, killing seems normal right now. Everything feels like a threat, everything.” Miller got to his feet. “You really want a group of armed, hyper-sensitive, shell-shocked troops to babysit a panicky crowd? How is that a good idea? You can’t mix in the wolves with the sheep. It’s a slaughter waiting to happen.”
“Okay,” Gray said, gently. “Okay. Your team needs down time. I get it. Harris didn’t know what he was talking about. Any suggestions for how we get the job done?”
“Which job you talking about? Keeping the refugees pinned behind their fences?”
“That’s the objective,” Gray nodded.
Miller could barely believe his ears. “What happened to keeping the Infected out? Or stopping them from infecting people unchecked? What about making this city safe?” Miller gazed out Gray’s window at Manhattan across the river. “Wasn’t that the objective last time I looked? Isn’t that what Cobalt’s been doing?”
“It’s getting out of hand. We need to keep the refugees in check.”
“Do we?”
Gray bowed his head and steepled his fingers. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
“What do you think me and my people are out there for? Killing the Charismatics?” Miller turned to face Gray and gestured out at the window. “We’re buying you time, and time for what? What the hell have you been doing? Dicking around with turning boats into floating islands?”
“The farms—” Gray began.
“Cutting up a few oil tankers and turning them into hydroponic farms is pissing on a forest fire, and you know it. You won’t be able to grow anything fast enough to make a difference. There isn’t any food now.”
Gray got to his feet. He looked older than he should’ve—older than anyone Miller had ever seen—as he took slow, heavy steps to stand at the window.
“The population of the United States must have been cut to a quarter over the past six months,” Miller continued, “but nobody knows because there aren’t enough of us left to count. What happened to saving humanity? Giving your kids a future?”
Gray only sighed.
“We fought back the Infected,” Miller kept on, “we pushed Stockman off us, we bought some time. Great. But now the Infected are unopposed in Jersey and Queens and the Bronx, going after everyone left. And you want to put your best squad on guard duty? Here, sit tight and starve while we build a farm—from scratch. Why?” He slapped the glass. “What the hell is it all for, Gray?”
“Harris said—”
“Fuck Harris.” Miller glared at his boss. “Stop listening to Harris and start telling him what to do.”
The air in Gray’s lungs escaped in a long, helpless breath. “I can’t.”
“You’re the most powerful man in the world. You’re used to dealing with money, with whole industries, with people’s livelihoods. The stakes haven’t changed. You pick up a phone, you give the wrong orders, people die. Same was true before. If you screwed up that government contract for BioGen, famine would have hit us six months earlier. If you screwed up the merger five years ago, two hundred thousand people would’ve lost their jobs, their health coverage, their homes, everything. You’ve got to step up, Gray. I mean, you have an annoying nickname for the President and you use it to his face, for God’s sake. Surely you can stand up to Harris.”
“Huck’s not an annoying nickname.”
Miller raised an eyebrow. “It annoys the shit out of me.”
Laughing despite himself, Gray stepped in against the window, gazing at the compound below. “I don’t know shit about this situation, Alex. If I let the refugees leave when they want, they’re going to get eaten by some monster, or get infected. If I don’t, we risk riots. And more of them are coming in every day. You know that? People think it’s safe here.”
“I’ve been out there. You don’t appreciate how safe it really is.”
“Maybe not.” He shook his head tiredly. “The board’s leaving.”
“Directors or shareholders?”
“Shareholders,” Gray said. “All this belongs to them as much as it does to me, and they’re not happy. Too crowded, too many strictures on what they can and can’t do. They want me to give them aircraft and security teams to ferry them to private boltholes. Holiday homes, ranches out in the middle of nowhere, that sort of thing.”
Miller made a face. “Being out on a ranch won’t do them much good.”
“Probably not,” Gray said. “I’m losing their trust. They like what Harris has to say. For my part, I agree with you. He wants the refugees bottled up and the compound expanded. He doesn’t seem to know what he wants to do beyond making himself a very comfortable little fortress. But that’s what the board wants, and they think he’s responsible for stopping Stockman.”
Miller raised an eyebrow. “How’d he do that while he was hiding in his fortress?”
“He’s head of internal security, Cobalt’s in his wheelhouse...”
“I killed Stockman,” Miller said, a dangerous rumble at the edge of his vo
ice. “Killing the Charismatics was my plan. Harris didn’t put a bullet in anyone.”
“All the same,” Gray said, “they think the victory’s his responsibility. Not mine.”
Miller pushed out his breath in a frustrated sigh, and leaned on the window, joining Gray to look at the compound below.
Even in full daylight, the flashes of arc-welders were obvious from ground level. Patching the barrier wall, cutting into the ships tangled together around the docks. The sprawling refugee sectors were neat, fenced-off squares covered in checkered brown and grey patterns of prefab housing and tents wedged into spaces too small for either to be effectively used. Even the white tiles of the Cove’s luxury plazas were now overflowing with refugee encampments.
A small kingdom, cut off from the mainland by a perilously thin fortress wall, but a kingdom all the same. Miller was glad he wasn’t in charge.
“What the hell do I do now?” Gray whispered.
“Put the board on the boat,” Miller said, pointing at a white wedge amongst the oil tankers. A cruise ship, bigger than the tankers, higher over the water. “That’s what it’s for, isn’t it? A floating bolthole?”
“Harris had me bring the Tevatnoa in as an emergency power supply.” Gray sighed, tiredly. “Now he tells me it can’t leave, it’s essential infrastructure.”
“Tevatnoa. What is that, something in Hawaiian? Samoan? I preferred it when it was the Sea-Star.”
“Neither of those. And Sea-Star’s a name for trying to sell fusion reactors. It had been an attempt to convince the Navy to switch to fusion from nuclear—a demonstrator for all the essential technologies. Desalinating and cracking sea-water into hydrogen, long mission endurance technologies, the works. Tevatnoa,” Gray finished, “is a better name for an ark of hope.”
“So we pack it all up. Load everyone on that thing, set sail for somewhere better. Europe, maybe.”
“It’s an option,” Gray said, pressing his lips together tightly. “One of several I’m holding in reserve. But it’s infrastructure now—can’t tear it out anymore. And besides, there are too many refugees to fit aboard.”