by David Achord
“Say, Zach, you look like an athletic guy. Are you any good at volleyball?”
“I haven’t played in a while. Why?”
“Our league is about to start up a new season. The Marines are undefeated; we’d like to change that.”
“You have sports competitions?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said enthusiastically. “We have various recreational leagues. Volleyball, badminton, ping-pong, chess, of which I’m the reigning champion, by the way. No contact sports though.”
We talked some more and he was about to leave when Kate and Kyra joined us. The idiot brothers, Cutter and Shooter, were close behind. When the sisters failed to respond to Senator Conrad’s subtle flirtations, he stood.
“It’s been a wonderful meeting all of you,” he said with the same smile. “I hope we all can become good friends.” He gave Kelly a wink before walking off.
“Oh, be still, my quivering heart,” Kelly said and rolled her eyes.
Everyone was in a good mood, even sourpuss Janet, and we were enjoying meeting and talking to the Mount Weather people. They were an interesting, diverse group. Most of them seemed to have been government employees in their past lives, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen.
Breakfast was rather uninspiring but filling, and the multiple ongoing conversations were a challenge to keep up with. Here is where my excitement started to wane.
I hadn’t gotten more than a couple of bites of food in me when I felt a presence behind me. Turning, I saw Seth, formally known as Captain Seth Kitchens of the United States Army. Standing beside him was Raymond Easting, one of the civilian members of the delegation, and a woman I had not yet met.
“Good morning everyone,” Seth said.
“Back at you,” I replied with a grin. “Do y’all want to join us?”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” Seth said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“That’s too bad,” Kyra said, and gave Seth a lingering look.
Kyra and her sister were attractive women in their late twenties. Both of them had a sultry look, enhanced by their Native American features. Kate was the dumb one. She had to be, because she’d hooked up with Shooter.
Kyra recently lost her boyfriend out on the road somewhere in Oklahoma, and since then, she’d been rather aloof toward men, but even I saw the chemistry developing between her and Seth.
Seth was momentarily distracted as the two of them stared at each other for a couple of seconds, realized everyone was looking at him, and cleared his throat.
“Unfortunately, you guys are part of the work.” He looked over at the far end of the table. “All military personnel are to come with me, after you’ve eaten, of course.”
“Aye, sir,” Justin answered.
“Do you have any idea what will be on the agenda?” Sarah asked.
“The standard meet and greet, a debriefing, and job assignments.” He paused and gave Justin a grin. “Oh, that thing we talked about, all I can say is be careful what you wish for.”
“He’s going to be put in charge of the Marines?” I asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” Seth said, but continued grinning and then gestured at Raymond.
“There will be a separate debriefing for the civilians.”
Raymond smiled tentatively. “I have convinced them only one person needs to be present for the debriefing, so guess who’s been nominated,” he said while eyeing me.
“Wonderful,” I said.
Kelly nudged me in the ribs, tacitly telling me to behave myself. The woman standing beside Raymond had remained quiet, but now she cleared her throat and looked pointedly at Raymond. She was a rather plain-looking woman in her early forties, wearing wire-framed glasses and a nondescript pants outfit.
“Oh, where are my manners. This is Lydia Creamer. She will be taking down information from the rest of you and assigning work duties.”
“Work duties?” Shooter asked.
Lydia nodded curtly. “Correct, work duties. Nobody slides by for free.” She spoke with a tight, toneless voice. I had an instant disliking of her but didn’t show it. She spotted an open seat beside Kelly.
“May I?” she asked.
Kelly smiled warmly. “Of course.”
Lydia had already seated herself before Kelly’s mouth had closed and opened a computer tablet. “We’ll need to start with your names, and then I’ll need you to tell me about yourselves, tell me your specific skills, otherwise, I’ll put you where I see fit.”
Shooter made a derisive snort. Lydia frowned at him. “Is there a problem, mister…?”
“They call me Shooter. You got any work involving shooting, I’m your man. If you expect me to be on a work detail cleaning toilets and mopping floors, you can take your fancy computer and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
Lydia’s face tightened and she gave him a withering stare.
Cutter spoke up. “That’s my brother.”
“I’m terribly sorry for you,” Lydia said.
“Yeah, tact isn’t his strong point, but let me ask you something.” Cutter briefly pointed toward the far end of the cafeteria. “Those look like a bunch of politicians, am I right?”
Lydia glanced over to where Cutter was pointing. “What’s your point?” she asked.
“My point is this. When I got my coffee just now, I asked for sugar. The gentleman told me there was no sugar.” He wagged a finger back at the table full of politicians. “And yet, I’m looking over at that table full of people, and I’m seeing people putting sugar in their coffee. Why is it they have sugar and we don’t, Lydia?”
Lydia did not answer and continued giving him a cold stare through her glasses. Everyone else at the table was now staring questioningly at her.
Cutter continued and gestured at the Garcias. “Let me guess, you’re going to make Maria a maid and have Jorge and Josue cut grass.”
“Everyone shares in the work assignments,” Lydia proclaimed.
Cutter suddenly reached across the table and grabbed Lydia’s hand. He rubbed her palm before she snatched it away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked angrily.
Cutter sat back in his chair. “I was checking your hands for callouses, but it’s as smooth as a baby’s butt.” He pointed at Lydia and the table full of politicians. “You people don’t do manual labor, go ahead and admit it.”
Lydia, who was now absently rubbing her hand, began stammering. “I, I most certainly do.”
Shooter scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
Lydia slowly gathered her items and stood. “I’m sure the trip here must have been hard on you. I’ll come back when you’ve gotten settled in.”
Shooter cackled as she walked away. “You sure set her straight, little brother.”
Josue shrugged. “I like cutting grass.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. I handed Macie back to Kelly and gave them both a kiss. Kelly pulled me close and whispered in my ear.
“Be nice in the debriefing, and watch your temper.”
“I’ll try my best,” I whispered back, gave her another kiss, and gave everyone a small wave.
“Y’all have fun,” I said and followed Raymond out of the cafeteria.
Raymond and I were sitting in a conference room promptly at eight. There was nobody else present. Raymond had his laptop in front of him and had a formatted word document opened with the title of today’s briefing. He saw me looking.
“Paper is limited, but everyone has a computer of some sort and we have power, so, we document everything on the computer. Oh, we have a local internet as well. I’ll get you set up with a username and password.”
“Wow, impressive,” I said and meant it. I glanced at the report again. “The date is wrong,” I said.
He looked at it with a frown, and there was a brief moment of deep pain in his expression.
“Thank you,” he muttered as he backspaced and corrected the date.
“No offense,” I
said, wondering what the heck I did.
He shook his head quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just thinking about something.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. Raymond Easting and I first met when the delegation, which he was a part of, came to Nolensville. He was a slender, foppish man in his early thirties, a product of a wealthy family and the accompanying highbrow upbringing. Back before, he was a career bureaucrat working for the State Department. He had the gift of gab and persuasion, the kind of guy who could probably sell a sandwich to a zombie. Overall, I liked him, but even so, we both knew that back before we would have never run in the same social circles.
Something was nagging him. I had no idea what, so I kept quiet.
He cleared his throat. “August 5th is my son’s birthday, or it was. He would have been four today.” He smiled now, but it wasn’t a happy smile. More like one of those rueful smiles when you’re thinking of a painful memory.
“He was something else. He was always smiling, and he was very loud,” he said with a chuckle. “My wife was three months pregnant with our second child when the plague roared through Maryland. That’s where we were living.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He emitted something between a laugh and a sob. “It’s okay. My only hope is, with your help, a cure will be found so nobody else will wake up one day and find their family had turned into monsters.”
“I hope so too,” I said. We sat there in silence for several minutes while Raymond busied himself with typing. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Why are we doing this? Haven’t you guys already told them everything about us?” I asked.
“We’ve submitted reports, yes,” he answered. “But, you know how people are who think they’re important, they want to conduct their own inquiry.”
He paused a moment, I could tell by the expression on his face he was searching for the right words. “You’re going to be peppered with a lot of questions that you may find…”
“Inane, idiotic, condescending, naïve?”
Raymond laughed. “Yeah, something like that. You remember what Seth and I said about these people before, right?”
I remembered. These people were out of touch. They only had a peripheral understanding of how difficult post-apocalyptic America actually was.
Raymond laughed again. “Inane, idiotic, condescending, naïve. You certainly have a large vocabulary. Remind me never to play against you in the Scrabble tournament.”
Our conversation ceased when people finally started trickling into the conference room. Raymond smiled and greeted each of them by name, or title, depending on who it was. One of them walked up to me with a politician’s smile and an outstretched hand.
“Hello, Mister Gunderson, I’m Senator Bob Duckworth, from the great state of Utah.”
He was a fit, polished man in his forties. Clean-shaven with a haircut similar to Senator Nelson’s. He had on a pressed white button-down shirt and gray slacks. I remembered from reading his bio, Senator Duckworth was a successful dot-com entrepreneur before the allure of politics beckoned him. And, as Cutter had observed with Lydia earlier, the senator’s hand was as smooth as a baby’s butt. Not a single callous.
“Is there anything left of Utah?” I asked.
His smile faltered. “Truth be told, nobody is sure. As you’re aware, we’re diligently trying to reestablish our once great society.”
“A noble effort,” I responded, wondering if I meant it.
His smile returned. “We’ve heard an awful lot about your group. I must say, most impressive.”
“That’s great,” I said. “So, there’s no need for this meeting.”
He looked blankly for a moment, and then realized I was being sarcastic. He laughed casually.
“A necessary evil, I’m afraid. Please bear with us.” He turned and walked over to a group of people I recognized as various politicians.
And so, three hours later, I was still sitting at the same conference table while being peppered with questions by no less than forty different people. It started pleasantly enough. There was a formal opening of the meeting followed by an invocation, confirming my belief that politicians loved their ceremonies and rituals as much as any other radical group. When the preamble was finally dispensed with, we got down to business.
“Mister Gunderson,” Senator Duckworth said. “Would you please start by telling us of how you and your people have survived this pandemic for,” he paused a moment as he looked heavenward. “Oh, my, it’s been almost four years now.” There were some murmurs of agreement, followed by someone making a stupid quip of how time flies.
He repeated his question. “Could you tell us how you’ve survived the past four years?”
I expected the question and had a prepared response. I started by telling them about my friend and mentor, Rick Sanders, and how the crazy old man had it pegged from the beginning, and then I spent the next forty-five minutes or so describing the events in our lives up to the point when the delegation arrived.
I didn’t go over every minute detail. There were a lot of things these people didn’t need to know about. They certainly didn’t need to know about who all I’d killed. Would they understand if I tried to explain the circumstances of how I killed my first person? Doubt it.
How would they react if I told them of the time I ran over a woman who was trying to set me up for an ambush? Would they call it an act of survival or would they accuse me of murder?
Like I said, there were a lot of things they didn’t need to know about.
When I was finished, there was a five-minute break, and when everyone got seated, ten minutes later, the barrage of questions resumed. I thought I’d been thorough enough to satisfy them, but I was mistaken.
“Have you ever killed anyone, Mister Gunderson?” a woman asked. I would’ve known her even without reading her bio. She was Senator Esther Polacek and, back before, she was an outspoken far-left liberal; a feminist and gun-control advocate. She’d been a senator since before I was born, and it showed. Her political beliefs were of no concern to me, but I’m sure they influenced what she thought of me. After all, I was a white, southern, gun totin’ redneck, the antithesis of what she believed in.
“I have,” I replied.
I knew the question was going to be asked. It was simply a matter of when and by whom. As Fred would’ve said, always get to know the lay of the land. Well, I’d read all of these people’s bios before coming up here, and I had a pretty good idea of who would be friends and who wouldn’t.
“More than once?” another asked. I didn’t answer.
“Why?” Senator Polacek pressed. “Why did you feel the need to kill?”
“Survival,” I answered. “We didn’t have an underground bunker to hide in, nor did we have any police or military to protect us, so we had to do what it took in order to survive.” I leaned forward in my chair. “You see, Senator, when society collapsed, morality seemed to go out of the window with it. People would kill you simply for the sake of stealing the can of pinto beans in your backpack, and I won’t even go into all of the other atrocities I’ve personally witnessed.”
Her demeanor was stoic, yet she was staring at me pointedly. “How many have you killed?” she asked.
I stared back at her. She remained expressionless, but I knew she was trying to get a read on me.
“I’m not going to answer you,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your business. It’s nobody’s business.”
“I must disagree, Mister Gunderson,” she continued. “Part of this debriefing is an attempt to determine if we have inadvertently allowed undesirables, or even murderers into our fold.”
“And what assurances can you give me there aren’t murderers already present?” I countered.
She looked back at me with a mildly surprised expression.
“You see, m
a’am, it’s a two-way street. My friends and I have been fighting for our lives every day since the world went to hell, while you people have been holed up here, protected by a thick steel door and a bunch of soldiers. Now, don’t get me wrong, if it were offered to me back in the day, I would’ve been right here with you, but that’s neither here nor there. What I am saying is some people believe successful politicians are nothing more than high-functioning sociopaths. How do I know there aren’t any sociopaths among you?”
There was a long moment of silence before a small smile formed on her lips.
“Touché,” she said and nodded at a man sitting beside her, who began tapping away on his computer tablet.
“Could you perhaps give us the scenario in which you were forced to take a person’s life so that we could better understand?” Senator Duckworth asked. “Perhaps you can explain what led you to kill a Marine. Let’s see,” he paused and looked at his own computer tablet. “On the night of September 16th, you killed a Marine and escaped custody.”
“Yes, I was illegally being held prisoner. Do those notes you have tell you my children were also illegally abducted and several of my loved ones were murdered?”
He looked at me plainly. “Not in those exact words.”
“No, not in those exact words,” I said. “Let me fill in some of the blanks.” I then recounted the details of my abduction and subsequent escape.
When I had finished, a solid three minutes passed while people took notes or whispered among themselves. I wondered what they were discussing. Perhaps they thought I should be arrested for murder or something. Finally, Senator Duckworth spoke up.
“If you would, give us your recounting of the brutal murder of Colonel Almose Coltrane.”
“Colonel Coltrane had committed various atrocities, including murder, kidnapping, and authorizing the illegal experimentation to two small children. When the two children were rescued and brought back to me, Colonel Coltrane pursued them and announced his intention of retaking them and conducting further harm upon them. It was evident the man had gone insane. He was killed by the children’s grandmother in order to protect them.”