Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  “No. In the Apple Core,” Emmett replied. “And northern Jersey, here around the harbor. Maybe Suffolk. Wouldn’t that be a good PR stunt, darlin’?”

  I blinked. “How do you...?” The mind boggled.

  “Donations,” Emmett suggested. “People could donate food at railroad stations, and we can cart it in from there. People could put a note on it. ‘Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes, from Little Bunnykill, New York.’”

  Emmett perceived that I was aghast. “If all else fails, I can hand out apples, Dee. We’ve got a hell of a lot of apples. Grapes, too.”

  “The Navy has volunteered to transport all this into the Apple Core?” I asked.

  “Merchant marine, actually,” Emmett mused. “And Army at the rail heads. So...what do you think? Would that be a good PR stunt?”

  “I – yes,” I admitted. It was only two weeks to Thanksgiving, and I thought both of us had far better things to do, with Project Reunion just getting started. But, yes, it would be a remarkable PR stunt. Because it would be a remarkable stunt.

  “It’s – doable, on our end,” admitted Mel, with a similar lack of enthusiasm.

  “I think you ought to collect up refugees and move them out to the quarantine camps,” opined Mora. “Your proposed mission creep is extreme, MacLaren. On two counts.”

  I couldn’t blame Mora for being more honest than Mel and I were. Emmett didn’t seem to take it amiss.

  “The two counts,” Emmett reviewed, “being a Thanksgiving food giveaway, and working with local communities to select evacuees. That spreads me too thin, is what you’re saying?”

  “Yeah. You’re still trying to be a Resco, instead of commanding an evacuation,” Mora critiqued. “You know better than that. Though your new mission goals aren’t incompatible, I suppose. Provided you could delegate the Resco jobs, to Rescos.”

  Emmett smiled crookedly. “Uh-huh. Are you volunteering, Carlos?”

  “No. You need me right here,” said Mora. “Hoffman would be ideal. But he’s up to his ass in alligators setting up Camp Jersey. Cameron could wish he had alligators, so he could eat them. All around, you’re spreading the Rescos pretty thin. They need to receive all these refugees.”

  Emmett nodded thoughtfully. “Part of my job I’m not doing well enough, is helping Cam.”

  Mora sighed. “I can try.”

  “I can try, too,” I suggested. They both frowned at me. I shrugged back. “I’m not a Resco, but I’ve been involved all along. Seems to me he needs to do less, and inventory more. Find answers less, and frame the right questions more.”

  “No offense, darlin’, but Cam doesn’t need unsolicited advice,” Emmett replied. “Although... That inventory thing was interesting. You’re damned good with satellite images. You did some useful things with that for New Haven County. Do you have satellite images from July and August?”

  Leland broke in, “If you don’t, Dee, I do. I’ll send you access details.”

  “Aerial inventory,” I said, nodding. “I could do that. Tell him where to look for food production, give him a map. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Emmett said, with a warm smile.

  Mel sighed. “Back to PR, people. What’s the plan?”

  Emmett sat up decisively. “Plan for the Thanksgiving party. How to ask for donations and organize. But don’t advertise it yet. I’ll find a point person – not me – or we won’t go through with it. That would be a bonus webisode or whatever, day after Thanksgiving. We’ll do the first release of evacuees that weekend. And you can show the footage from investing Staten Island that Sunday.”

  “Not the weekend before?” I asked in surprise. “Why are we waiting so long on Staten Island?”

  “Because, darlin’, so far everyone thinks Project Reunion starts at Thanksgiving, not four weeks before. That leaves Pennsylvania behind schedule and following the wrong game plan, if they want to screw with us.”

  “But you invested Staten Island before Halloween,” I said.

  “Yes, but do they know that?” asked Emmett. “We may not have fooled Pennsylvania. But hopefully we’ve confused them.”

  We settled the schedule then, for the PR episodes through Christmas. It was one hell of a plan.

  -o-

  “Emmett?” I called myself hoarse, dodging through the throng on the railroad platform in Greenwich.

  Finding him wasn’t easy, nor running – the platform was mobbed with volunteers bound for Camp Yankee. A few snow flurries danced in the dark. Around 9 p.m., it had been dark for hours. The platform was mostly lit by the dim lights inside the waiting commuter trains. The train on the right was huge, overflowing the platform by several cars on either end. More heavily-laden winter-swaddled volunteers continued to swarm across the platform, still transferring from the shorter local train from New Haven. I’d arrived on the monster express from New Haven, standing room only for an hour, bearing volunteers from points east and north.

  Finally I spotted Emmett, and ran into his arms.

  “Had to see you,” he murmured into my hair, clutching me tight.

  “I see you all the time,” I countered. “Hear from you, too. It’s touching you that I miss.”

  “Yeah, that.” He brushed my hair out of my face, drinking in my eyes, and kissed me again deeply. I held his waist to me as tightly as I could.

  As he broke off the kiss, I asked brightly, “So where are we headed?” I made a grab for his duffel. He caught my bare hand, his leather-gloved fingers interleaving with mine.

  “I’m not staying, darlin’. I have to turn around and go back,” he said. “I just... I was inspecting Camp Yankee, and... It’s so close. I couldn’t bear not to see you.” He swallowed. “But stuff happened back in the Apple Core. I can’t stay the night, after all. I’m so sorry.”

  I swallowed, and blew out sharp disappointment. “I brought you sandwiches,” I murmured. I’d dropped those with my overnight bag on top of his duffel. “I guess there isn’t anywhere we could...” I suggested doubtfully.

  We contemplated nearby opportunities to sneak in sex, from a mobbed railway platform, in the snow, in a town neither of us knew.

  “Not really,” he concluded wryly. “Maybe when I was younger.”

  I laughed against his chest. He folded me back into his arms and lay his head on mine. I settled into the embrace and breathed deep of the here and now. “This is enough, then.”

  “God, I love you,” he said. “Sorry to drag you all the way here for nothing.”

  “I would have come, just for this,” I assured him. It was even true. Except for the part about it being enough. He was stressed out and morose and guilt-ridden, and hugging me like a teddy bear wasn’t going to fix that. “I know! Let’s dance!”

  He laughed in surprise. I pulled my phone out, selected a song, and set it playing on speaker. Emmett had taught me country swing dancing to that song at a memorial service over the summer. Yes, it sounds odd, but the departed had explicitly requested we dance in his memory. Totoket is quirky like that.

  The loudspeakers blared, “All aboard!” The throng started thinning more rapidly.

  “Ignore them,” I said, grinning. Most people pushed into the train, but a handful of couples tarried to dance with us. I twirled and stepped. He danced half-heartedly, and kept glancing at the volunteers staring at us from the train.

  I stopped, and directed, “Bow to the onlookers.” And turned and did so, to the train windows.

  He laughed and tried to break away. “Christ, Dee, I’m in uniform!”

  “And your stuffiest one at that,” I agreed. I tucked his insignia-bearing coat collar inside-out to hide it. “Your overnight leave turned into 10 minutes. They can wait, Emmett. You’re too serious. Need to lighten up.” Relentless, I restarted the song. “Dance with me. Just one song, but you have to mean it.”

  He laughed and shook his head, but gave in and really danced this time. Just for one song, with a deluxe twirl and dip and kiss at the end, and th
en grabbed me back into a clutch. The next song played for anyone else who wanted to dance while I delayed their commander.

  “Are you OK?” I asked, taking a moment to caress and search his face. He’d lost more weight and had dark circles under his eyes. I wasn’t surprised.

  “Harder than I thought. Hardest job I’ve ever done. And the most rewarding.”

  I smiled and nodded. “Good.” I rummaged in my pocket and dragged out some chapstick and smeared his lips. He laughed. I tucked the chapstick into his coat pocket. “You keep that, and use it. New York is windy in winter. And that stupid beret is not a winter hat. Wear a real one.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He grinned crookedly. “Are you OK?”

  “We’re fine. Busy. Proud of you.”

  The platform was getting decidedly thin. A trio of M.P.’s reluctantly headed towards us.

  “Uh-huh.” He sighed. “You don’t tell me what’s going on with you anymore. Tell me, Dee. Don’t just be brave for me, OK? I’d rather feel like you shared your burdens with me. Like I’m still part of your life. I can’t tell you everything on my end. But that’s security.”

  I contemplated that. I contemplated the deep misgivings on the faces of the M.P.’s, currently hovering 10 yards away, dithering before approaching us. “Does your phone work, on your boat back to the Core?”

  “If not, there’s a comms room.”

  “Call me then, as soon as you reach the boat. Let’s talk. About the little stuff.”

  The loudspeaker blared, “Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren, please board the train.” We were alone on the platform with the M.P.’s.

  “I’ll do that,” promised Emmett. “In an hour, maybe two.” We shared a last long deep kiss. He boarded the train, to hoots and jeers from his fellow passengers. That shushed pretty fast, as word spread of exactly who they were teasing. He turned his collar insignia back out properly, and put on the little beret, back on duty again. He leaned against on a divider by the train doors, on an old advertisement for Forbes, Capitalist Tool. He watched me, hand up in farewell to match mine, as the train rolled away.

  The head M.P. cleared his throat. I wiped a tear away, and turned to him with a smile. “Yes?”

  “We’re to wait with you, ma’am. The train should be back in an hour and a half. This platform, express to New Haven. Should be nearly empty.” The wholly empty local train on the other side of the platform had already left.

  The M.P.’s gave me plenty of space and privacy later, as I chattered away to Emmett on the phone, telling him all the details I’d been holding back. I unloaded about Long Island, Cam and Dwayne, Tom Aoyama and Dr. Clarke Whitfield. I let off steam about Carlos Mora and the Amenoids. I shared about a girl Alex had a crush on, and Shelley and Trey’s latest argument, and Shanti and Mangal talking about another baby. We laughed a lot. Not as good as pillow talk, no. But it was the best intimate talk we’d had since he left weeks before. He seemed to feel the same way. We were together, even though it was such a little time physically touching.

  One of the M.P.’s accompanied me all the way back to New Haven. He even saw me to my car in the deserted night streets. The attention was embarrassing. “Thank you, Nguyen. Are you sure I can’t find you a bed here in New Haven?”

  “I have a bedroll on the train, ma’am,” he assured me.

  “I’m sorry to put you to all this trouble.”

  “With respect, ma’am. I worked 11 months straight on the Westchester border. I was ordered to fire on desperate Americans. I’ve just come off my first 2 week leave at Niantic. I would do anything for Colonel MacLaren. Tonight was just a pleasant evening’s duty. Have a good night, ma’am.”

  Niantic. They must have followed through with Emmett’s idea for rotating the most disturbed troops into the empty women’s prison there for remediation and retraining. I’d just spent the last hour in a train car alone with one of those. And mostly I felt grateful that he appreciated Emmett.

  Of course I knew Emmett was important. Hell, I did PR for the man, choreographing his introduction to the masses. But that really made it strike home. Emmett was a hero for the masses, yes, and me. But even more so to the Northeast armed forces. That was a bit daunting.

  Chapter 17

  Interesting fact: Following Major Cameron’s interview, the Project Reunion website received demands that The Resource Coordinator’s Guide be published. The Rescos vetoed that. But a few copies were surreptitiously distributed to community leaders in areas that lacked a Resco, such as Houston.

  “Hey, Cam!” I greeted Major Cameron. “Got computer, got Internet, got Gigabytes today?”

  “Ready and eager!” he agreed.

  This was the third in a series of phone calls. On the first one, I’d outlined what I offered to do for him with an aerial inventory. He was enthusiastic and grateful – especially once he understood that I offered to do it for him, not teach him how. He didn’t have time for that, which was my point in offering in the first place. Because I thought he desperately needed a current Long Island resource inventory, but with the limited tools at his disposal, it would be too labor-intensive.

  I was amazed to find Cam even sharper at tech than Emmett. Within minutes of me introducing the concept to him, he was requesting refinements. For instance, it was pretty easy to automatically detect and map inventories of solar panels, wind generators, cell phone towers, power transformer stations, and pumping stations, using pattern recognition on the winter satellite photos instead of summer. Focused on food production, I hadn’t thought of that.

  Then it took a couple weeks to get the inventory mapping done. Leland provided me the data, and I figured out the processes. I found a GIS savvy – graphical information systems – environmental grad student from Yale, Reza, to help me with that, and then carry out the scut work to crank through those processes on the summer and winter satellite data sets. That was one hell of a lot of data. Cam had requested, while we were at it, to go all the way west to Hauppauge on this pass, at about the midpoint of the 100-mile Long Island. But Reza was enthusiastic and a wizard at the automation.

  Once she was done, I called Cam to tell him his data was ready. But he only had a cell phone with him at the time, wholly inadequate for monster data. So today he was at the quarantine garrison with a broadband connection, and a computer with the power and space to receive his present.

  Once the detail map transfers were chugging away – he’d be stuck there for hours – I reviewed the much-smaller summary data with him, to make sure he knew how to navigate the maps. “So now you should have the solar panel layer up, Cam?”

  “Dee, I love you!” he cried. I took that as a ‘yes’. “Hamptons!”

  “Right – the Hamptons are your solar panel salvage superstore. But there are plenty within 10 miles of you, too. And some windmills to complement the intermittent sun. You get the gist of how to do this, right? Just flip layers on and off at the right?”

  “Hm? Yes, sorry, I was just glancing at all of them.” I took that as a ‘yes’, too. Quick study, Cam. “God, Dee, do you know how long this would have taken us, without you?”

  “I do indeed. That’s why I offered,” I assured him. “You also miss a lot from street level. Here around New Haven, there’s all kinds of odd habitat and farms tucked around the edge of the marshes. You’d never know it was there, from the road. I think you’ve got even more of that on Long Island.”

  “Could be. This is huge. Thank you isn’t enough,” Cam said. “Now, explain to me – ‘grain land’?”

  We went through all the layers on the summary map, one by one, as I explained what parameters led to the conclusions. He really was phenomenal at this analysis. He easily caught the strengths and limitations of my methods, and suggested improvements for next time I tried this.

  “Awesome, Dee,” Cam concluded. “I think I got it! Hey, can I ask – how did you come to volunteer for this? You already have a job or three.”

  “Oh, it called to me, I guess,” I said. “You�
�ve got such aching need on Long Island. Just like New York. It bugs me. I need to help. Lots of people do, you know? I mean, it’s one thing to volunteer to move your soft warm body to Long Island and starve. But Cam, lots of people could help you remotely. And they want to. Reza was so psyched to help! Then Emmett complained that one of the things he ought to be doing, but couldn’t find time for, was you. So I suggested I could help you. And Emmett told me unsolicited advice was the last thing you needed.” That part still smarted a little. Because Emmett was right, of course.

  I continued, “I mean, Cam, it’s not that I underestimate you. Totally the opposite. Every step of the way, I thought I respected you. And then you blew me away. I’m already impressed as hell. And then you impress me more.”

  “Wow. Thank you, Dee,” he murmured. “That means a lot, coming from you. I am, also, by the way, impressed as hell. So. Consider yourself solicited.”

  “Hm?”

  “Well, let’s say you’re offering suggestions. Not advice. That I will take or leave,” he quibbled. “Did you have any other suggestions?”

  “Oh, well, this was the most important thing, the inventory,” I said, feeling bashful. “Although. You need a woman on your team, you know. I mean, I don’t disrespect Dwayne – or you! You’re really, um, sensitive to women’s issues. But...”

  “We’re not women. I think we know that, Dee.” The grin came through loud and clear in Cam’s voice.

  “Sorry.” I’m sure my grin was audible, too. “If you can’t find anybody else, maybe Mary, that washerwoman. She had spirit.”

  “Already hired her to do our laundry. She lives in Camp Cameron now.”

  “Well, Cam, maybe half your workforce shouldn’t be stuck hand-washing laundry. You know? Maybe when you’re thinking how to use your wind generators and stuff – spare a thought for how much better your clothes would feel if you hooked up a dryer. Maybe you can’t afford three square meals a day. But your quality of life goes way up when your underwear doesn’t chafe.”