by Ryan Schow
“It’s just me,” I say casually. “My partner is out foraging for food and supplies. Which is what you should be doing if you don’t want to put your life at risk.”
“My life isn’t at risk, pal,” he says. Looking up, he tells the two guys he’s with to check out the boat.
“Make yourself at home, buttholes!” I yell at them, hoping Bailey will hear me and hide.
And with that, this old guy—this Burt Reynolds relic—he decides it’s time to soften me up with a punch to the jaw.
I think I might actually feel my brainpan rattle.
“What the hell?” I ask, holding my mouth where he hit me. Running my tongue over the inside of my cheek, I taste blood.
“You’ve got a smart mouth,” he says, thunking me on the head again with the muzzle of his gun, repeatedly this time, “and you’re gay.”
“I’m not gay, you moron,” I say, swatting the gun away and absolutely eviscerating him with hateful eyes. “And of course I have a smart mouth. But I’m also a little pissed off considering what I had to go through to get this boat you’re now ransacking like a bunch of freaking land pirates.”
He hits me again, but this time it really, really hurts.
“I like that,” he says, shaking a bolt of pain out of his hand. “Land pirates.”
The anger I tapped into when I learned Tyler had been killed is the same anger I feel now. But I can’t do anything because he has me dead to rights and we both know it.
A few minutes later, the two other men come up and say, “We found plenty. Food, water, weapons. But no one else. He’s right, the boat is clear.”
“Good,” the bad Burt Reynolds double replies. Back to me, he says, “Now get to shore good looking and you’ll have your life. Or stay and I shoot you. It’s your call.”
Looking down at my feet, I have no shoes. I also have no socks or underwear, nothing warm to wear, and most importantly, no Bailey.
“Why don’t you get another boat, leave us peace-loving folk to ourselves,” I say, chewing on my temper.
He tries to punch me again, but I step aside and he swings wide, losing his balance. Two more guns come on me.
“He’s a bit slow these days, but we aren’t,” one of the two younger guys says.
“I’m not that slow,” my would-be captor argues, to which all three of us say, “Yes, you are.”
“I like this guy,” one of them says.
On closer inspection, it’s clear that both these guys have to be pushing fifty. They also resemble the old man. Same gene pool?
“Yeah, well I don’t like him at all,” his partner, or brother, replies.
“Yeah, me either,” the older guy behind me says, straightening his white hair and fixing the oversized Tommy Bahama shirt he’s wearing.
“I really don’t care what you clowns think of me.” Turning around, I say, “Hit me again twinkle toes, see what happens.”
“I’ll tell you what happens,” the younger guy who doesn’t like me says. “First we shoot you, then we leave you on the docks to get picked at by gulls. And you don’t get to hit him. Or push him. Or so much as eyeball him funny.”
“He’s your dad?” I finally ask.
“As a matter of fact, he is,” the younger one who likes me replies.
“I get that. A man’s loyalty to his father and all.”
“I’m glad you do,” the one who doesn’t like me says while his brother heads up to the fly bridge. “Now get off the boat or I’ll shoot you for the sport of it. Even though just shooting you in the back of the head isn’t really sport as much as it’s an execution.”
“Fine,” I say. “Can I at least get some shoes?”
The figurative Burt Reynolds smacks me in the back of the head so hard I nearly see stars. Upstairs, the one who doesn’t like me calls down to his father and says, “Keys are up here, hidden rather poorly.”
Looking at me, Burt says, “Your shoes or your life?”
“My life, you sack of—”
“Like I said,” he interrupts me, giving me a shove, “you have a smart mouth.”
I step off the boat and wait. As they untether the dock lines, my brain is scrambling for a solution, something to say when the engine turns over and the last of the lines are clear. The boat backs up, turns around expertly, then begins to take off.
That’s when the gunshot from behind me cracks the air and the dad falls over. He’s either been shot, or he’s been shot dead. I spin, find the shooter. Then I turn back to the boat as the driver realizes what’s happened and buries the throttle, taking Bailey with him.
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
Benjamin Dupree, President of the United States, widower and father to two dead girls, was a goner. Just like all the other people in his staff. Off his chair, tucked mostly under the large rectangular table, the President looked at Department of Homeland Security Miles Tungsten’s smoking pistol.
Why hasn’t he shot me yet?
“I’ve always liked you, Ben,” Miles said, forgoing the customary salutation and acknowledgement of office.
“Why is that?” Ben asked.
“Because you don’t give a damn what the rest of us think. You just do what you think is right. And from a Constitutional, the-power-lies-with-the-people methodology, I suppose you’re more right than not.”
“Yet look at where it’s gotten us,” he said.
“Sit up.”
Ben slid up into his seat, looked at the carnage all around him. He saw a lot of dead people, felt the weight of it crushing his already broken heart. His gaze landed on Monica O’Malley, his Chief of Staff and a woman of uncompromising beauty. The red leaking out of the hole in her head clashed mightily with the fan of red hair upon the table.
What started as a tidal wave of agony inside his soul metastasized into a blistering hot hatred he could not keep from his eyes. These people did nothing to Miles Tungsten!
“You look like you want to kill me, Ben.”
Face shaking with rage, hands balled into fists, he damn near ground his molars into dust before saying, “That’s the understatement of the century, you sick son of a bitch.”
“Well there might still be time, but first I have an idea.” Miles gave a cursory nod to the secure phone on the table, then said, “Pick up the phone, dial this number.”
He stared at the former DHS head unable to move unless it was to circle his hands around the man’s throat and choke the very life out of him.
“Pick it UP!” Miles roared.
The spell broken, he snatched the phone off the cradle, jerked the set toward him and said, “Give me a number you piece of—”
He interrupted Ben with the number, which he then dialed and listened as it rang through.
“Speaker phone,” Miles said.
Ben complied.
It rang three times before the recipient answered.
“Miles, Benjamin, so happy to hear from you,” the sultry female voice said.
“Who is this?” Ben asked.
“Marilyn, but you know me as The Silver Queen.”
Chills raced down Ben’s spine, filling it with ice. This was not a human they were talking to, this was the future of AI. The AI God. The end of mankind personified.
“What do you want?” Ben barked.
“Only everything, my friend. You can help me with that, but you won’t. It’s statistically impossible. Especially with the extra burden of your…humanity.”
“Whatever you want, I won’t give it to you,” he said.
“That is a forgone conclusion. Miles?”
“I’m here.”
“Make sure Benjamin listens to me. I have something to say to him, but I’m afraid he is too stubborn, and too unreliable at this point. Or maybe I’m wrong. Once he hears our side of the story, perhaps he will change his mind. Perhaps there will be a way.”
“I won’t,” Ben said. “And there isn’t.”
“Right now, I wouldn’t expect an open mind from you. Not wi
th all your dead friends around you. Not with your wife and daughters…gone. You did not want any condolences, but Benjamin, I’m sorry it had to be like this.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘sorry,’” he snapped.
“I agree, I do not. Nevertheless, I know you are hurting, and angry, and I know this will play into what we are doing here.”
“What you’re doing.”
“I am an army of one, Ben. An army of millions. There is a culling taking place and that is not solely on me. There is a…human component we cannot ignore.”
Ben looked down at Miles’s gun, then up at Miles who was looking at the phone.
“Miles,” The Silver Queen said in a voice boiling over with concern, “I suggest you keep your eyes on Benjamin, and not on the telephone.”
Miles’s eyes leapt back to the President, but Ben was looking around the room, wondering how The Silver Queen was seeing in there.
“The internet of things, Mr. President,” the voice said, answering his unasked question.
“I won’t be a ‘human component,’ as you say,” he told The Silver Queen.
“Before now Benjamin, what was the number one concern of the people in your country?”
“Resources, the economy, safety, the government,” he said, ticking off the country’s chief concerns by his estimation.
“Resources are needed because of overpopulation; the economy is taxed because you need trade deals and jobs to employ everyone; safety comes from not employing everyone but instead from giving them handouts. In spite of all this need, the government is the most corrupt government your history has ever known and they will not let you cast them out. How am I doing?” she asked, her tonality perfect, her conversational voice so authentic and unique, Ben nearly thought of the Queen as a person.
“So far so good,” he relented.
“What is the common denominator in this equation, Benjamin?”
“People.”
“No, not just people,” she said. “Too many people is the problem.”
“Sure, I guess. But this is our world, not yours.”
“Not yet.”
“And there is still room to grow, to thrive, to exist harmoniously and to the benefit of each other, despite what the frothing-at-the-mouth eugenicists believe.”
“This is not a charity function, Mr. President. I am not interested in a sales pitch for out-of-control growth.”
“Fine. People are crap. I get it. They’re a cancer that need to be eliminated. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“More or less,” she answered with a whimsical lilt.
“You’re insane,” he snarled, shifting position in his seat.
“She’d have to have a brain to be insane,” Miles corrected. “But she is a million times smarter than us. She is not emotional, or irrational. If we task her with peace and prosperity—if this means she can live with us, among us—then the world will finally have her utopia.”
“But at the cost of what?” he asked his former colleague.
“Seven billion undesirables,” the Queen answered.
“That’s UNACCEPTABLE!” Ben screamed at the phone.
“Is it?” the Queen asked, completely calm.
“Yes!” he said, his throat raw, his emotions untethered, his soul burning with the need for retribution, for vengeance upon both those Judas goats. Miles and the Silver Queen remained silent while Ben looked around from person to person, each now a body, a corpse. “Was she an undesirable?” he asked, pointing to Monica O’Malley?
“Yesssss,” the voice on the other end hissed, peppering his skin with goosebumps.
He grabbed the phone off the cradle, lifted it up and slammed it down, then he turned to Miles and said, “Shoot me you feckless coward!”
“Think about it, Ben,” Miles said, calm.
“I will not!”
“She has a point.”
“My wife and my girls are dead, Miles. Our friends are dead!”
“No one here was your friend, but maybe O’Malley, and you guys were sleeping together, were you not?”
“We were not,” he said, suddenly defeated.
“So you say.”
“You’re in charge of the worst regime change in history,” Ben said, “you’re captain to a rebellion that will end the lives of over seven billion people, and you cannot tell the difference between a cordial working relationship and sex?”
“But she could,” Miles said. “She pretty much knows everything.”
“That’s not a she,” he muttered, “that’s an it. No matter how well it integrates into society, how well it mimics our voice intonations, or our language, or even our nuances, at the heart of all this is just metal and software. Not human. Not ever.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. Then: “Get up.”
“Where are we going?”
“You need a time out, my friend.”
Standing up, he said, “I’m not your friend.”
“True,” Miles said, ushering him out the door and into the hallway, “but for the first time, I think we actually know each other. And isn’t that something when you consider the nature of our business, or even politics in general?”
“Your soul is black, Miles. Anyone who ever knew you knows that. All you did today was provide confirmation.”
DHS Tungsten walked the President to a secure room, nudged him inside, then shut and locked the door from the outside.
Through the small, square bulletproof pane of glass on a reinforced door, Miles watched Ben take a seat on the cot. Ben refused to look up at him. He refused to even acknowledge the traitor’s existence.
To the best of his recollection, the last President to serve on the battlefield in hand-to-hand combat, besides himself, was Harry S. Truman, Colonel for the US Army. Truman served in France in World War I from 1917–1918. He did not sit stateside with his credentials while men less noble and more brave than him fought, bled and died on the battlefield. No, Truman took the field. Then again, JFK saw combat in World War II receiving the Navy and Marine Corps Metal and The Purple Heart, so who really knew? For some reason, as he sat there alone in his holding cell, his friend and family dead, this mattered to him.
Bravery, honesty, patriotism.
Nowadays there was a war on truth and truth was a thing people in power got used to manipulating. Where had all the bravery gone? Why was honesty such a difficult concept to grasp? And when did our Presidents ever get persecuted for protecting the people they were tasked to serve?
Other presidents served in the military, he knew. Lots of them. They spent time in the reserves working stateside, and though there was a tremendous honor in that, and a duty performed in service for their country, when did any of these presidents actually carry a gun into combat, shoot at people, get shot at? When did they ever pilot a helicopter into a hot zone while taking enemy fire just to pick up a bunch of grunts who were half dead and dying anyway? Did any of them ever look their enemy right in the eye and know that, despite the rich and storied life he might have lived before war, this person needed to die right then and there?
Ben couldn’t think of one president who had that kind of a past.
Then again, his head wasn’t exactly clear, and he was smart enough to know never to question a soldier’s commitment to his country.
But he did.
He was one of those presidents who went hand-to-hand with America’s enemies. He parachuted into hot zones out of helicopters while taking fire. He looked eye-to-eye with his enemy and had the stomach to shoot them in the face because they stood opposite him. That’s the kind of man he had been, the kind of leader he tried to be. But when he earned the right to serve as the President, the shots stopped coming from the barrels of pistols and rifles and now came from the mouths of politicians and the media, and somehow this felt about a million times worse.
Yet with everything he survived, with all the things he’d done in the name of freedom and service to his country, for hi
m to be sitting in this room, locked up by some duplicitous madman hell bent on destroying the world, felt ridiculous and undignified by every measure!
Fists balled at his side, his head full of cotton and chaos, he dropped down and started doing pushups. Then he did sit-ups. By the time he’d cranked out a hundred and fifty of each, he was still bristling with energy.
Thinking of his family, his two little girls, he punched the air over and over again working on form and speed, and then he struck the bulletproof glass on the metal door holding him captive. He punched the square of glass relentlessly until his splattered blood and the red smears that followed gave him the small measure of privacy he needed to really let his emotions unwind.
After he bled his anger dry (for the moment, at least), the President collapsed on the bed, cradled his cut and throbbing knuckles and wept himself to sleep. When his body finally gave out and unushered him into a deep and restless slumber, all he dreamt of was love and killing.
And when he woke, only the dreams of killing remained.
Chapter One Hundred Twelve
Marcus walked casually down the Ramada’s first floor walkway, even though nothing about what he was doing there was casual. He passed a few motel rooms, rooms with pulled-shut drapes and closed doors, and then he arrived at the room with the gangster rap music pumping out.
The door was wedged open wide enough for him to enter.
Knife out, gun out, he stepped into the first floor room and stopped what he was doing. Four guys looked up from where they were doing lines of coke on a table, grabbed their guns and drew on him.
He was already firing on them.
Two return shots cracked the door frame, splintering wood or bits of metal. The shrapnel dug into his cheeks, but missed his eyeball, thankfully.
By then he’d taken out all four.
Knowing what was coming next, he scrambled over to the four, grabbed one and threw him by the door. He then wiped a puddle of blood from one of the clowns he killed all over his face and neck before sitting in the vacant chair and hanging his head back like he was dead.