End Game (Calm Act Book 1)

by Ginger Booth

  He squeezed his eyes shut, and nodded. “Yes. That’s true.”

  “That’s hard enough. And that’s all it needs to be. I think this sassafras is about to boil away. I’ll get it.”

  I rose and turned off the burner under the tea, but then turned to Zack’s back and put an arm across his chest. I hugged him to me from behind. He accepted the hug wordlessly for a minute or so, then squeezed my hand to request release. I poured out half-empty mugs of sassafras tea, and sat down again with them.

  “Do you want to tell me more about Grace? What was wonderful about her? She made good cheese.”

  He smiled softly. “She did that. Good gardener. Loved nature. Her cooking was a bit on the organically correct side.”

  I chuckled. I like food that tastes good.

  “Grace loved to dance. She was so solemn most of the time. But she came alive when we danced.” He smiled, just a little. “Career. She was working on a doctorate at Yale, in public health. She started it hoping to work for an NGO in the Middle East, to promote family planning.” He sighed. There was no career like that in this year’s world.

  “Smart lady,” I murmured. “Her skills were valuable for this new world, too. I hope she saw that.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He was so reserved. I wasn’t sure what thread to tug on next. I settled on, “Can I help you, Zack?”

  “You already have. I have work to do, but I kept… getting distracted. Wait – you came over here. What did you need?”

  “Ah… that can wait.”

  He gave me a stern look.

  I shrugged. “What are you working on at home?”

  He blew out through his mouth. “There’s an army procurement detail heading our way. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about that.”

  “Oh, there was that, that I wanted to show you.” I pulled out my phone and brought up the Amenac site. This was clearly not the reaction Zack expected. I pressed on. “Amenac. This is a new farmer-news website. I’m a beta tester. There’s a snorricane coming. Here.”

  “…What?” Zack managed.

  “When is this… ‘procurement’ detail… likely to arrive?”

  “Tomorrow night. The Army. To steal our food.”

  “Yes, I caught that part. That’ll work. The snorricane should start around 3 a.m. About 11 hours from now?” I stepped around behind him so I could poke at the screen and show him what I was talking about. “Yeah. This blizzard should dump 3 to 5 feet of snow on us. Were you around for the blizzard of 2013?”

  He shook his head. “I was in the Baltics, I think. Really? That’s a lot of snow.”

  I nodded. “Too deep to budge with a snowplow. You need front-loaders. So, maybe you could get together with Totoket public works and request where not to clear snow?”

  Zack was still having trouble catching up. “That… yes. Hell, yes. You’re… Deebe?” He was scrolling through a chat section. He paused at a Bible quote. It was from one of my favorite oddball stories in the Bible, where Jesus wins friends and influences people in the Galilee by driving a flock of pigs off a cliff to their deaths in the sea.

  “Dee, what the hell is this?”

  “You don’t know that story? He drove demons into the pigs. I’m not sure how you’d tell the difference from normal pigs. Vicious creatures. Jews aren’t supposed to keep pigs, anyway.”

  Zack’s clawed hand reached toward my neck in an, ‘I’m going to throttle you now’ sort of exasperated gesture. He gave it up and dropped face to arms on the table, shoulders heaving, in sobs or laughter. I slipped back into my chair across from him. I think he was laughing, mostly. When he sat back up, he wiped a tear from his eye. He drummed a finger on the table next to the phone. “What is this website, Dee? What is your involvement, in this website?”

  “I said. I’m just a beta user. I think it’s great. News you can use, for farmers and other outdoor folk. Weather forecasts, safe markets, stuff like that. You should refer to it, for weather forecasts. They’re very good.”

  “Like your hurricane forecast a couple weeks ago? The hurricane that no one else knew about?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  He continued to stare at me, eyes narrowing in suspicion. I smiled back.

  “Be careful, Dee,” he warned.

  I shrugged unrepentance. “Just a beta user. But if you have any suggestions for improvement, I’d be happy to relay them to the developers.” They worked for me, after all. “I’ll email you a link to the Totoket area news.”

  “It’s a public website.”

  “Hidden in plain sight,” I agreed. “Behind Bible quotes and everything. Good recipes for green tomatoes and over-sized zucchini, snails. Anyway, the snowstorm should help, shouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” He sat back and blew out a long breath. Then the cogs seemed to start turning on where he’d most like his strategic snowbanks.

  “Well, maybe I should go,” I offered.

  “That was what you wanted to come see me about? And then said ‘later’?”

  Drat. The man was exceptionally hard to distract. “It can wait, Zack.”

  “If it could wait, why did you come over to tell me in person? Just tell me, Dee.”

  If a blizzard, Amenac, and demon pigs in the Galilee couldn’t derail him, it was a lost cause. “I’m, um, going away for a few days. Starting Sunday. To see Adam’s ark. I’ll be back.”

  His breath stopped, while he stared at me. I could tell when it started again, with a deep heaving in-breath, that he blew out slowly through his mouth. Yeah, this was a bad time to bring it up.

  “Dee, that’s a betrayal of everything we’re trying so damned hard to do here.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m visiting a friend, who built an ark. I’ll be back in a few days.”

  He nodded jerkily. “Get out of my house. Leave.”

  I rose and stomped to the front door. I laid my hand resolutely on the doorknob, and… stood there. It’s not just that I wanted Zack’s good opinion, although I surely did. But we’d accomplished a lot together. West Totoket was better off, for us working together. In a world descending into savagery, we lived in a nice place. Good people stopped to mourn a fallen neighbor. We shot looters here, yeah. We also gave a man like Trey Cowan a second chance. I liked us. I was proud of us. And Zack and I were better together than apart, for West Totoket. And I liked him. If Adam hadn’t come up with that crazy idea of visiting Montreal, Zack and I would be lovers now. Maybe even ex-lovers by now.

  I lay my forehead briefly on the door, then wheeled to face him. But he was standing across the living room, on the phone, and raised his hand in a ‘wait’ signal.

  “Yes, Zack Harkonnen. Right, I have two pieces of news and a request. First, we expect a blizzard overnight… You follow the Amenac website, too?… Yeah, there’s an Army battalion headed our way, to procure food from the citizens… Saturday… Yeah, I request you do not, repeat not, clear snow in West Totoket… Especially not Route 1… Sure, let them clear the railroad and I-95…”

  While he spoke with Totoket public works, Zack walked slowly toward me. He needed to call them before they closed for the night, after all. He stopped about 6 inches from me, scowling down into my eyes, while arranging for another consultation after the snow stopped, for selected roads to be cleared. He hung up.

  And he crushed me to the door with a violent, hard kiss. After half a minute of me pushing harder and harder against his chest, he let go and stepped back, glaring at me.

  I glared right back. “You would go, too.”

  “Like hell I would!”

  “Not to join the ark. I believe you. But Zack, I’m only visiting the ark. For years, UNC’s been jerking me around, promising if I was a good and obedient employee, I’d be safe on an ark while the world went to hell all around me. Now I want to see an ark. My friend built this ark. I want to see it. That’s all.”

  “Who’s stopping you? I told you to leave.”

  “You don’t get to
do that. You’re my friend –”

  “You’re not mine!”

  “I am your friend. I was your goddamned friend right here, today! And I still am. You’ve done phenomenal things for Totoket, Zack. Nobody knows that better than I do. And I helped. You’re not allowed to stop being friends with me. We’re too good together for Totoket.” Tears were standing in my eyes.

  “Dee, you chose Adam. I get it, but –”

  I grabbed his hair and kissed him, hard.

  “I choose me, damn you,” I hissed. “I choose Earth. Totoket. My friends. I’m right here, doing my damnedest for all of them. Including you! Don’t you dare try to tell me that I’ve betrayed you, any of you!”

  “What the hell do you want from me? If I say ‘pretty please’? Dee, pretty please, could you please get out of my house, before I put my first through a wall? Because I don’t have time to fix the wall.”

  I glowered at him. “And you’ll check in on Alex while I’m gone? I may not be able to get through by phone.”

  Zack’s face went through several more angry contortions. He settled for spitting out, “Sure.”

  “Right, then. I’ll see you in a few days, maybe a week. When you’ll still be my friend. Enjoy the blizzard.” The tears were overflowing down my cheeks by then.

  I let myself out. I jumped a little when I heard Zack put his fist through the wall anyway.

  Yeah, that went well.

  -o-

  I walked home and veered into Alex’s house, to play with his baby guinea pigs. He had an entire rodent room on the playroom floor of his split level house, presently hosting about a dozen guinea pigs and a half dozen rabbits, all running free except for the new mom and babies. This was supposed to keep the mama pig from getting stressed out protecting her young. But guinea pigs are born pretty advanced, for mammals, like giving birth to a three year old human child. The babies nurse a little, but they also eat adult food the day they’re born. If anything, mama pig was happy for the break from the little ones pestering her for milk.

  I cried myself out over a succession of piglets. Alex came in to hand me a box of tissues and play with the rabbits across the room.

  When I quieted down, and blew my nose clear, he asked, “Everything alright?”

  “Yeah. I had a fight with Zack, that’s all. Listen, Alex, I’m going to go away for a few days starting Sunday. I will come back. I’m just going to see Adam’s ark.”

  “That pissed off Zack?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not that complicated,” Alex disagreed. “I think Zack likes you.”

  “I like him, too. I still promised Adam I’d go see his ark.”

  Alex nodded morosely and hugged a bunny. “When my mom broke up with a guy, I’d never see him again. He’d say we’d see each other again, but we wouldn’t.”

  “Zack’s not like that.” I was pretty sure of that. “You can call him if you need him, while I’m away. He’s pretty busy, though.”

  I told Alex about the snowstorm to cheer him up. He liked that.

  By morning, we were in full white-out blizzard. Well, almost white. Dust Bowl dirt fell with some snow squalls, building snowdrifts swirled like chocolate and vanilla soft-serve ice cream.

  The snow ended late Saturday afternoon. It averaged 38 inches in Totoket, deeper inland away from the Sound, and much deeper in the drifts. Which was deep enough. The legions of snowplows were helpless to clear the roads, which had to wait for the few available front-loaders.

  Chapter 18

  Interesting fact: Estimates range from 50,000 to several million, as to how many people Homeland Security ‘disappeared’ under the Calm Act. In other words, no one knows. It’s fairly certain that most of these people were killed, as there were few reappearances.

  “Why, bless you, young man, I would love a wheelchair,” I assured the ice cream suited sailor at the head of the pier in Groton. I don’t know military ranks, though I was confident the captain wasn’t playing bell-hop. We couldn’t see the pier or ship yet. We were in a reception building, which blocked the way.

  “And I’ll take that, sir.” A second white-clad sailor took my overnight bag from Adam. “We appreciate your cooperation for the rehearsal. You’ll be playing Dr. Anelise Møller and her grandson Hans Jensen today. We’ll have several passengers who require wheelchairs, and they slow down the boarding process.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re all doing your very best,” I assured him, and patted his arm.

  “How old is Hans Jensen?” Adam asked mischievously.

  The sailor grinned. “I believe he’s 10, sir.”

  Adam took a piece of paper from the check-in desk and wrote a sign, ‘10 year old boy’, to pin on his shirt. “Wish I had a propeller beanie. And a giant water gun.”

  I was grateful to be off my feet. The trip to Groton was exhausting. The original plan was for Adam to drive to Totoket to pick me up. The interstate highway was passable, being the top priority to clear of snow. But he wouldn’t have gotten past the exit ramp on my end. The railroad was running, though. That was only 3 miles from my house, trudging through waist-deep snow. As an invasion deterrent, the thick white blanket with grubby brown stripes was first rate. The train was an hour late, and standing room only. The Navy or Coast Guard arranged a shuttle and clear streets from the train station to the harbor. That was another standing-room-only hour wait. Then someone paged Adam for me, and it took him a half hour to meet me.

  Sitting was good.

  Our guides – Ehrlich and Ames, said the nametags – navigated us through the line of ‘passengers’, and then to emerge onto the sunset-lit pier. Our fellow play-actors looked anything but Navy. There were families, plenty of middle-aged and older people, all in civilian clothes. Most dragged along ark-type footlockers on rolling caddies. The facility’s industrial grey, concrete, pipe-protuberant décor was echoed throughout. Outdoors, the golden light failed to make it look much prettier, but I whole-heartedly approved of the staff’s thoroughness in removing every last shred of snow from the pier.

  “It’s an aircraft carrier,” I said dumbly.

  “It was,” Adam agreed. “There are other ships in the group, but the ark core is the aircraft carrier and a hospital ship.” Adam made a playful dodge toward a pipe complex that would be called an ‘attractive nuisance’ with respect to 10-year-olds – great fun for climbing. Ames cordially reeled him back in.

  “Is it easy to fit an aircraft carrier into New London harbor?” I asked. Groton was this side of the harbor, with New London across the water. Militarily, the harbor hosted a sub base for the Navy, and the Coast Guard Academy and regional operations.

  “No,” the three men chorused emphatically.

  “But there is enough depth,” Adam added. “Barely.”

  The other passengers headed for the normal type of ship gangway, steep and replete with traction treads. Ehrlich steered us to a wide and flatter ramp instead, without the pesky speed bumps. We rolled into a vast cargo hold, and to a cargo elevator. Several elevators and a bewildering number of corridors and turns later, Ehrlich jacked me into Analise Møller’s berth – the hatch had a high lip – and bid us farewell. Thankfully, he took the wheelchair with him.

  I took a seat on the lowest of a stack of three narrow bunks, banging my head on the edge of the middle bunk. There were three other bunks across the 18-inch aisle, a bank of lockers at the far end from the hatch, and a fluorescent light strip above us. Definitely not an ocean-view stateroom.

  I think my mouth was hanging open while I took all this in, back and neck hunched under the bunk above.

  Adam grinned ever broader at me, then laughed out loud. “I knew you’d hate it!”

  “Well…” I attempted.

  “Oh, come on, Dee, please. Compliment the mattress or something. I’m just dying to hear what you come up with.”

  “It’s kinda cool that you have these little privacy curtains on the bunks.” The lack of width, or headroom, was a
bit inhibiting as to what you could do with two people behind that little scrap of fabric, but still. There was a privacy curtain.

  “That’s to keep out the light, so you can sleep during watch change,” Adam clarified. “Or keep the light in when you’re reading and your berth mates are trying to sleep.”

  “Ah. Is your room…?”

  “Cabin.”

  “Your cabin. Is it any…?”

  “I’m in a nine-man cabin. The bunks are about the same. A bit more floor space.”

  The hatch opened for another sailor-led group, this time a family of four. The sailor came in first and snapped the family’s ark-lockers into the locker area at the end of the room. He had to pop off the locker doors first. He exited with the retired hardware before the family could come in.

  They hesitated in the doorway – hatch – for a moment, looking aghast. A boy and girl stepped in first.

  “Can I have the top bunk?” asked the boy.

  “I want the top bunk!” squealed the girl.

  “There’s two top bunks, stupid,” said the boy.

  “Don’t call your sister stupid,” the dad growled on automatic.

  Adam, who’d ducked into the other bottom bunk to get out of the way, emerged to hold out a hand to shake with the man. “I’m Adam Lacey, and this is my friend Dee Baker. We’re pretending to be Dr. Anelise Møller and her grandson, Hans. Hans is 10,” he offered as an aside to the older boy, who looked to be not much younger. “Dr. Møller is wheelchair-bound, so she might need a lower bunk. Are you part of the rehearsal, or really joining us today?”

  “Tom Aoyama of MIT. Good to meet you, Adam, Dee. My wife, Beth Agrawal of Harvard. Our kids, Dennis and Charity. We’re… really embarking today. It’s been a long wait. We’ve been in temporary housing in Norwich since the borders closed. The Boston borders, that is.” Norwich was a couple towns north of Groton, maybe 15 miles away.

  “Welcome aboard. I’m actually crew, sort of. Civilian contract engineer. We’re only in your berth for the rehearsal. Speaking of which,” Adam checked his watch, “I need to go join a staged riot on the pier now.”