Amped Up

by Merrell Michael

  I check my pockets. "I don’t have any cash." I say. "And I don’t know if I could go over like this."

  "Well." Dent says. "I just thought it was one of the rules to kidnapping, feed the victim. Just so you know."

  "Is that a metal railing?" I ask.

  "What?"

  "What your handcuffed to."

  He rattled the restraint on his wrist. "Yeah, I think so." He says. "It’s uncomfortable as hell."

  "What kind of hotel has metal bedposts?" I ask.

  "Maybe this is a mom and pop kind of deal." Dent says. "Full of goodwill furniture."

  "It’s a neat accent."

  "As long as you’re not handcuffed to it. Speaking of which, can you help me out with that?"

  "Don’t have any keys." I tell him.

  Dent grins. "And probably wouldn’t do it if you did huh?"

  My own stomach is starting to grumble. I notice the little appliance in the corner. "I'm making some coffee." I say. "Do you want some?"

  "Yes please. Dent says. "Cream and sugar."

  The coffee smoothes things over, breaking the ice. "This is good." Dent says. "Next time I'm kidnapped by a group of domestic terrorists, I hope that one of them brings along his girlfriend."

  "I'm no one’s girlfriend." I say.

  "Could have fooled me. I mean.." Dent knocks on the wall behind him. "These things are paper thin."

  I start to blush a little. "That was just a thing."

  "That’s cool." Dent says. "Totally not judging. I mean yeah, being in my position, I am judging a little bit. But from a totally neutral stance, I don’t as a rule judge sexual proclivities, as long as their totally safe and consensual."

  "Why did you say that about kidnapping?" I ask. "We busted you out."

  "Is that what you think happened?" He says.

  The door swings open, and Galilee is standing there.

  "Hey you two." He says.

  "Your girl made me coffee." Dent tells him.

  "Is it good?" Galilee asks. "I might stand a cup."

  "It was a two cup machine." I say.

  "That’s shit." Galilee says. "But don’t we have a coffee pot in our own unit?"

  "That’s not why I came over here." I say.

  "Well then."

  "I came to piss."

  "Got a toilet over there too. Works and everything."

  "There's a dead man in our bathroom."

  "And you can’t go in front of someone."

  "Performance anxiety." Dent says. "Happens to the best of us."

  "I'm starting to work out the whole thing." Galilee says. "It seems clear enough."

  "Do you have anything to eat?" I ask.

  "Not as much." Galilee admits.

  "There's a burger king down the street." I say.

  "Do they have those French toast sticks?" Galilee asks. "I could do with some of them. That and those hash browns."

  "You have to hurry." Dent says.

  "Why is that?" Galilee replies coldly.

  "It’s almost ten." Dent says. "Fast food joints stop serving breakfast at ten. Then it turns into lunch."

  "I thought burger king was one of those breakfast all day places."

  "That's Jack in the Box. Or Waffle House."

  "Huh." Galilee scratches the back of his head, where the stubble meets his crew cut. "Well, if your both in agreement then. Nothing I can do but rustle up some chow." He turns to leave. "If you’re in the mood to make another pot of that stuff, I won’t turn it down."

  Dent stays quiet. When the footsteps die down, he says, "Why are you working for the Congresswoman?"

  "What do you mean?" I tell him. "I’m not."

  "So Galilee hasn’t told you? Your EAP."

  "I was put on a truck." I say. "And when I got off I was told we were busting some guy, some rich HVT guy, out of prison. After that, and some other stuff, mostly shooting, I got here and woke up this morning with a dead guy in the bathroom. Beyond that, nothing."

  "Who was the dead guy." Dent says. "Another prisoner? Like me?"

  "No, he was one of us." I say. "I think his name was Teddy."

  "Damn." Dent said. "I liked Teddy a little better than the rest of them. He had a sense of humor, at least."

  "What’s going on?"

  "What’s going on is your being used like a puppet by some pretty bad fuckers." Dent says. "It would behoove you and me, right now, to run out of here as fast as possible, and head in whatever direction is the farthest from here. Preferably some place warm and tropical."

  "I think." I tell him. "An explanation needs to be better than that."

  "There's no time." Dent says. "There is quite literally no time. All we have for time is what it takes that lunatic to walk across the street and order two value meals and one order of French toast sticks."

  "Give me something anyway." I say. My pulse is pounding in my ears.

  "Fine. I was working for Congresswoman Bachmann. My job was to hire on a certain team, for very specific reasons, given the best interest of the Congresswoman and the, ah, interests that she serves."

  "What interests are those?"

  Dent licks his lips. "People with a lot of money and power." He says. "Who believe that they are entitled to a say in things. In the directions things take."

  Who have it out for people like me?" I say "Amps?"

  "This isn’t about Amps." Dent says. "This is about Activor, and money. That’s what you need to know."

  "I’m listening." I say.

  "The best way to sum it up." Dent says. "Is that, in business, if someone corners the market with a product, and you’re a competitor, first you try to buy them out. Then you try to blow them up. How Bill Gates always worked, with Microsoft."

  "And they’re trying to blow us up?" I ask.

  Dent shakes his head. "No." He says. "There trying out scorched earth. They’re going to kill the entire market, any demand for the product. They’re going to make the product anathema."

  The door opens again. Galilee is frowning. "They didn’t have any." He says. "I had to settle for these little sticky buns instead."

  No one talks. We eat out food, and watch TV. When I turn it to CNN Galilee flips away, to a movie, HBO showing some summer blockbuster from long ago. Something about a pilot in a balloon, with a Mohawk. After eating Galilee tells me. "There's a change of clothes waiting for you in the room. I’ve got someone with a car out front, ready to drive you home."

  "Virginia?"

  Galilee wags his finger back and forth. "Haven." He says. "Haven is, and will be, home to all God’s children, in their time of need."

  ****

  The clothes are cheap Wal- mart brand, but not wholly terrible. Simply anonymous. The drive back is much nicer than the one out in the con-ex container. An American car, a rental, new and anonymous. The driver wears a ball cap low to disguise his maintenance port. He doesn’t bother to offer conversation.

  When we finally reach Haven. Glen Miller is there with a hug and a glass of sweet iced tea. I accept both. It’s funny to me, now, how fond I am of Glen, his folksy mannerism seem a relief from the tension of the mission. From the tension of Galilee, specifically.

  "Without going into details." He says. "Is everything alright?"

  "Without going into details." I tell him. "I guess you could say that. Everything went through points of being very not alright, but it’s alright now, that I'm back here."

  Glen nods, and lacing his hands together, pops his knuckles with a crack. "Old bones." He says. "Otherwise, I'd be right there next to you."

  "Yeah." I say. "Kind of wish I had those old bones right now."

  "You’re doing the right thing." He says.

  "It doesn’t feel like it."

  Glen leans back in his chair, and his eyes mist over. "I was involved with something really nasty, a while back." He says. "Right before I got on with the Actuator project. Government research, in bioweapons."

  "Like anthrax?"

  "Worse than that. Really,
really, nasty stuff."

  "Anthrax isn’t nasty enough."

  "Imagine a virus that works on organic and inorganic material. Sort of eating away and breaking down whatever it comes in contact with. People get sick and die, cars and computers break down. Guns fall apart."

  "Jesus."

  "They called it the Rot. Very nasty stuff. Hard to contain. It was unleashed on an island in the South Pacific, and the whole thing turned into one big dead zone. All the vegetation ended up dying, even. Like a slow motion nuclear blast."

  "What would be the purpose of that?"

  Glen took another sip of tea. "For certain people in the government, terrible things are their own purpose. The idea being, I suppose, that you can’t stop other people from having it, so you might as well have it too."

  "Yeah."

  "Why I'm telling you that, the work I did on the Actuator, even the military grade work, it wasn’t like that. The Actuator is something that helps people."

  "I don’t know." I said. "I don’t know how much I can buy into that."

  Glen clasped my hand. "I know about that poor boy at the school." He said. "That is terrible. But what you have to understand is, the Actuator didn’t kill him. The way other people reacted, ignorant, ugly people, that killed Owen Meany. That and nothing else."

  "Still." I said. "If that’s what people feel- I mean, the Actuator is something you can change about yourself. You don’t have to be an Amp."

  "You certainly don’t." Glen said. "You can be a cripple, or a dunce, or in a coma. You can live a paltry shadow of a life, while people all around you go on to achieve things you want for yourself. Is that the right way to do things? Is that even what you want for yourself? Remember what you would be, without the hardware inside your head. Think about what it’s like!"

  "It’s scary when I turn it on." I tell him. "I don’t always- think about it."

  "You don’t have to! You don’t have to think. You react, a thing of beauty. You call it scary but I've seen what it is, what your capable of. I call it wonderful. Scary that its tasked to such a purpose, but to think of the human mind, finally fully capable of what it can achieve!"

  We sat there for a minute, not talking.

  "You need a break." Glen said. "You need some downtime. I've talked with Galilee about it, and he agrees with me. Things have been going along pell mell for you, it’s time to pull back."

  "It might be nice." I said. And a flood of relief through my bones agreed with me. It would be wonderful.

  "Get to know the people here." Glen said. "The ones you do, like Brian Bendis, and the others. Especially the young people. Get a stake in things here. When you have to fight for it, it'll make things a damn bit easier."

  I spent the rest of the day on Glen's couch, taking a nap, and watching trashy reality television shows. We ate outside on a picnic table that evening, part of a group meal. It was perfect despite the mosquitos. That night I woke bolt upright three times, my heart pounding in my chest. Each time my Actuator was on, and the white letters said ACQUIRING TARGET before slowly fading away into nothing.

  Eight

  The first person I saw the next day was Brian. I told him everything Dent had said to me.

  "I didn’t know much about the mission." Brian said. "Just that they were retrieving a target."

  "Do you think he was telling the truth?" I asked. "Is Galilee working with Congresswoman Bachmann?"

  "On one level, that makes some kind of sense." Brian said. "But the problem with big conspiracies like that, is someone spills the beans, almost every time. If EAP was recruited by Bachmann just to discredit Activor, someone would tell the press. Unless its only half the truth."

  "I’m not following."

  "Here's a theory. Galilee is recruited by Bachmann at some point, but takes her money and decided to go above and beyond. Decides to go ahead and create a real insurgent group for Amps. Bachmann and her people can’t say anything, and Galilee and his people damn well can’t say anything. So, the origins of the thing get lost to history."

  "A little far-fetched."

  "Does it matter? What’s real is the hate. What’s real is the fact that I'm here, my wife and kids are not. Your mother is not. What's real is all the people on the outside, with their fears, and what they allow to happen. They’re going to bulldoze Haven."

  "When?"

  "I don’t know when. No one’s said anything, except all the people on the message boards, spewing their hate about us. They managed to kick all the Jews to the ghetto, next come the camps. Except Americans call their camps detention facilities. It sounds better, in their ears. Orwellian. I'll tell you what, if I was in one of Orwell's little worlds, I'd like to be in your shoes, and do what you do. I'd like to be able to bring things down on big brother's head."

  "You sound like Glen." I told him.

  Brian frowned. "How much have you told Glen?"

  "None of it."

  "It might be a good idea to keep it that way. I don’t know what he'd do, if he heard this kind of talk."

  "Would he do something..against Galilee?"

  Brian leaned forward. "The thing you have to understand." He said. "Is that Glen is much more EAP than Galilee. Galilee is operations, Glen is logistics. Glen freights money and people around."

  I slump down on the couch, scattering action figures and comic books. "Look at this crap." I say. "Why can’t I get my own trailer?"

  "You probably can, now. I know a guy that knows a guy. We can get something worked out."

  ****

  It was simpler and creepier than that. Glen simply handed me a set of keys, and I walked around until I found the trailer for the number on the tag. Inside it wasn’t terrible. Minimal furniture, some of it clearly on the very inexpensive side of things. Wood grain walls on the interior, some sort of baby blue wall paper with prints of flowers. Looking at the interior got to me in a way that the dead people to this point really hadn’t, and I had to work to hold my shit together. Push the tears back in.

  After that I went to get drunk.

  The Amps were holding a rowdy kegger, in near the center of the park, with a banner reading SOFTWARE DAMAGE PARTY. It was a clever bit of script, excessive drinking was in fact supposed to short out the Amp, or at least render it less serviceable.

  There was a veritable smorgasbord of liquor bottles on the picnic table, along with a variety of 2 liter containers of soda for mixing, in red plastic cups that would have been ubiquitous on any college campus. Spread liberally between and around were silver beer cans, brown beer bottles and an old IPod connected to a pair of speakers. I reached in a cooler between melted ice, not trusting the cleanliness of the red cups, and took a drink.

  Minutes later I was in a group I halfway recognized from the mission last night, are more accurately, who claimed to have recognized me. Several of them were in black fatigues. The tallest one was called Blake, and he would have been handsome if not for a smattering of acne scars on both cheeks that belied his youth.

  "This is her, dude." He was telling his friends, an arm around one shoulder. "This is the chick I was telling you about."

  "Are you sure?" His friend said, doubtfully. "She really did all that."

  "Twelve." Blake said. "Fucking twelve normies, man. One right after another. It was the craziest thing I ever saw."

  "Except for Galilee." Someone else said.

  "Well, yeah." Blake said. "Except when, Galilee's all Amped Up and doing his shit, you can’t even see anything. This was different. This was something you could totally, whammo, up close and personal."

  "You sound like you got a boner." A woman in a black fatigue shirt said, in a somewhat jealous tone.

  With one hand, Blake mimed his groin exploding. "Right here!" He said. "Ba-boom! A totally platonic, totally raging war boner! Because, the way I see it, if she can do that, and we can do what we do, the Normies are fucked, man! No way out of it."

  I drank more, half listening to his rant. Not believing a word of it
. I drank until my vision blurred, until I could tell I was slurring my words, and beyond that, until I couldn’t. At some point someone leaned up to me, breathing in my face, "The normies are here. We’re all going to show up."

  This turned out to be a stand-off, at the fence. On the opposite sight a heavyset man was standing, lightly holding a shotgun. A rebel flag ball cap was perched atop his head, hiding hair that had once been red but was now flecking salt and pepper grey. Three more were with him, one of them carrying another Remington, the other hefting an aluminum baseball bat. On the opposite side, our side, inside Haven, Glen was leaning on a cane. Beside him was Galilee.

  Galilee had activated. I could tell by the blank look in his eyes, the tension in his bare chest. He was deep inside now, waiting for whatever was going to happen. In the back waistband of his jeans was a small pistol. Glen was talking calmly, evenly.

  "Tell me again." Glen said. "What was the name of the boy?"

  "Duane Johnson." Rebel flag said. "Him and two others."

  "And what were their names?" Glen replied.

  Rebel flag murmured something to his posse and received a reply. "Eddie Creek was one of them. The other was from away."

  "Duane Johnson and Eddie Creek." Glen said thoughtfully. "And another from away. I've heard the one name before, from somewhere, haven’t I?"

  "Duane was in a little mix up down here a while back." Rebel flag said. "Trouble with a girl."

  "She was lying on him!" One of the posse blurted out.

  "That’s right now." Glen said. "It’s coming back to me. She was hurt pretty bad."

  "He got cleared of charges." Rebel flag said. "You can’t just take things into your own hands."

  Galilee smirked. "Then why do you have those scatterguns?"

  "It’s our second amendment raht to bare ahrms!" The talkative member said. "Yah'll aint got rahts!"

  "Quiet Dennis." Rebel flag told him. "It’s just a precaution."

  "Can’t blame anyone for being prepared." Glen said. "It’s a hard world out there."

  "Look." Rebel flag said. "Just let us have a look around. We'll look for our boys, and clear out. That's all were saying."