Carbon Run (Tales From A Warming Planet Book 2)

by J. G. Follansbee

  The suppression unit pulled up to the rear near the equipment shed, its electric motor straining as it climbed the steep driveway. It drove to the blackened edge of the trees that bordered the refuge. Hydraulic levers lowered a squad of four-legged robots to the ground. Each robot had two huge tanks on its back. They moved like enormous, headless bulldogs. The machines climbed straight into the trees and up the hillside into the flames, as if they were fireproof goats.

  A wailing aid unit stopped on the dry grass that was once the Penn’s yard. A McCall County sheriff’s helicopter, the size of a wren, hovered twenty feet over Anne’s head. A patrol car, lights blazing, kicked up dust as it parked next to the aid unit. A well-built man, wearing body armor and a pistol, trotted up to Anne and her father.

  “Are you and Anne alright, Bill?” the officer said.

  Anne’s father was weary and red-eyed. “I can’t say I’m glad to see you, Gary, but was I ever glad to see you?” Anne’s father shook as adrenaline rocked his body. She was jittery herself. The EMT led them to the back of the aid unit. He draped each with a thermal blanket, despite the ninety-five-degree temperatures.

  “I don’t remember a single time, Bill,” said the officer. His name was Lieutenant Gary Schmidt. He was responsible for the scattered farms and homesteads in this part of the valley. Schmidt was one of the few cops Anne trusted. “I’m not going to ticket you this time, Bill, even if you deserve it again for that wood stove.”

  Bill lowered his head into his heads, as if hiding from the horror around him.

  “Do you need anything, Bill?”

  Anne’s father shook his head. She clung to him in a way unlike any since her mother said goodbye. Anne’s eyes—which her father said were the color of fertile loam, like her mother’s—stared toward the remnants of the house. Neither she nor her father was physically hurt, and the fact of their material losses did not feel real, despite a hollowness in her chest. Are the magpies gone too? She remembered the single nest, untouched by the fire as the tankers fought it. She raised her eyes to the refuge, and she watched another small remote-controlled helicopter buzz over its smoldering remains.

  CHAPTER 2

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  DEPUTY INSPECTOR JANINE KILEL TRACKED the surveillance drone out of the corner of her eye as it hovered over the blackened landscape of the refuge. She sat in the front seat of her forest-green cruiser, its doors emblazoned with the shield of the Bureau of Environmental Security, going over intelligence reports on her highest priority case, an oil-smuggling ring operating on the west coast of North America. As the one available case officer in the region, she was sent to the fire scene when BES monitoring stations picked up the emergency calls. A screen showed the refuge from the drone’s perspective, but Kilel’s attention was on an analysis of the smugglers’ conjectured routes. The pigeon-sized copter’s AI maneuvered among the blackened pines and halted the aircraft at each stump of wheat grass, sedge, wild sunflower, and yarrow.

  A tiny beep interrupted Kilel’s focus, and the drone’s camera showed the ash-covered corpse of a bird, its feathers burned off. Taking control of the camera, Kilel sought out a yellow band on the leg, but the bird appeared to be a juvenile, rather than an adult banded by the biologists who monitored the refuge. Kilel touched a key, instructing the copter to search for similar objects, and the aircraft found two more dead chicks.

  Kilel recalled the copter, and she opened up the local fire district database via her tablet. She found the preliminary report on the fire. It pinned the cause on flying embers from the fire at the neighboring property, which belonged to a William Penn. There was a link from the name in the fire district report to the county sheriff’s database, and she read a summary of his case file. A driver’s license photo showed a man in early middle age with short-cropped hair, kind eyes, a roman nose, and thin lips. She noted numerous carbon breaches, though the penalties were slaps on Penn’s wrists. Penn was an ongoing problem, and Kilel wondered if law enforcers in these parched Oregon counties would ever understand the seriousness of environmental crimes. It doesn’t matter. It’s in my lap now. She pressed the accelerator, and the car’s electric motor whispered.

  Kilel saw the mailbox at the gate to the Penn property before she made out the burned-out house, eddies of smoke rising from the ruins. The lights of the pumper truck and the aid unit flashed as the firefighters and the paramedics packed up. She edged the cruiser past the scene to a spot closer to the refuge. The state fire-suppression unit was mopping up near the ridgeline.

  The inspector was tall, athletic, with bust and hips proportional. She wore office-style attire, standardized for the Bureau. The com stud in her ear was functional, without the decorative flourishes some women preferred. Her blond hair was cut in a plain manner and she wore little makeup. She didn’t need it. Her father described her as pretty, but not girlish. She had a voice the color of fine dark bread, and lips as smooth as nectarine skin. She was a woman unafraid of her own power.

  Walking a quarter-mile up a trail that wound through the desolation, she found the corpses of two adult birds, a type of magpie, near a dead chick in the remains of a nest. She bent down to the victims, resisting the urge to touch the evidence in a crime scene. Kilel grew heartsick as she imagined the adult birds, torn between escape and protecting their offspring, overwhelmed by the speed of the fire. How many other times will this drama play out, as the Spike continues to devastate the natural world? All the efforts to protect wildlife for future generations undone by the thoughtlessness of one person. She had joined the BES to defend nature and her planet against such people.

  The birds were dead, but the ID chips in the bands still transmitted species, sex, banding date, and ID number. Kilel noted the codes as she tapped into the biologists’ database. Only twenty-nine nesting pairs remained in the wild. Walking through the open graveyard, Kilel found fifty-two more dead adults. She guessed that all the chicks were dead, or soon would be. All the nesting pairs lived in this refuge. No signals broadcast for the remaining four known adults. She imagined them flying off in terror; it would be up to the biologists to find them in the follow-up investigation.

  Kilel tipped her head back and opened her eyes to the sky, where a pair of turkey vultures circled overhead. She offered a prayer for the deceased birds.

  The inspector returned to her car, and she drove into Penn’s driveway. She recognized him from the driver’s license photo. Next to him was a young woman whom Kilel deduced was his daughter Anne. Her arm was woven into her father’s. A sheriff’s patrol car obscured Kilel’s view, but she watched them through the car’s glass, as if peering through layers of time. An unwelcome memory stirred: a grieving father at the bedside of a dying mother. Brushing the memory from her mind, Kilel glanced in the rear-view mirror, her mahogany-colored eyes seeking out the robot in its locker, which took up half of the rear compartment. A ready light glowed green.

  “Security, deploy.”

  The robot left the car, and Kilel followed, smoothing out the dark green fabric of her BES uniform. The color matched the green paint of the car. A small gold tulip was pinned to the collar of her blouse, the color of malachite. Kilel approached Penn, the girl Anne, and the deputy, her robot a step behind her.

  The girl glanced back to the refuge, which was smoking like a vision of hell.

  “No, you can’t take him.” Anne shook her head, in denial of facts she knew to be true. “It was an accident.”

  “William Penn?” Kilel ignored the girl and addressed a man with a dirty face and stained t-shirt. Her voice was even and smooth. The sheriff’s deputy stepped back.

  “Yes.” Penn’s eyes widened with fear. Fear is good.

  “My name is Kilel.” Her BES badge reflected the lights of the emergency vehicles. “I am an environmental crimes investigator. This is—was—your house?” Kilel saw his pulse jump, belied by the throbbing carotid artery in his neck. If he ran, the security robot would hunt and stop him.

  “I’m sorry
for the loss of your house, Mr. Penn.” Kilel’s feeling was sincere. “A preliminary investigation of this incident has found that the burning of your structure led to the fire at the wildlife refuge.”

  “It was an accident.” Anne’s blond hair hung limp against her face.

  Penn broke in. “I was cooking dinner when there was a spark—”

  “Before you say anything more,” Kilel said, “I advise you that this conversation is being recorded, and your words and actions are evidence.”

  Penn swallowed.

  “I must ask you to turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  He complied, as if it were a habit. Anne shouted and tried to push Kilel away, but the deputy restrained her. “Anne,” Penn said, “don’t make it worse. You know the bessies will, if they can.” Penn’s face tensed with rage.

  Kilel ignored Penn’s assessment and the “bessie” insult. She tightened the handcuffs around his wrists. “You are under arrest, Mr. Penn, for destroying protected habitat of an endangered species, unauthorized killing of members of that species, and violations of the Carbon Acts.”

  CHAPTER 3

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  MARTIN SCRIBB’S BEGGING BOWL YAWNED empty for three hours before the colonel dropped in his business card.

  The clunk of paper on brass echoed around the dun walls of the town square. Waves of April heat rose around Martin into a sky the blue of a gas flame. The scrubby foothills beyond the town reflected the heat back to the square and added a new load of dust. How many years has it been since April was a pleasant month in northern latitudes? Twenty? Thirty? Martin’s thought was an attempt to distract himself from the card. The attempt failed.

  The bowl’s rim glowed a poppy red when the card hit the metal. A second later, it glowed amber, instead of the usual green.

  Martin bowed to the colonel as he did to every alms-giver or petitioner. “I apologize, sir, but my bowl isn’t reading your card.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to.” The colonel was on his haunches in front of Martin. “Give the card to your abbot. It has a message.”

  Martin’s stared at the card, which was embossed with the tulip of the Bureau of Environmental Security. Martin reflected on the simple three-point beauty of the stylized flower, and the terror it provoked. The tulip mirrored the brand above his left eye, just below the hairline.

  “Thought you were done with me, eh, Brother Martin?” The colonel winked. “Never.”

  Martin felt as if something in the air had ignited and engulfed him. He held the folds of his dirt-brown woolen habit against his chest.

  The colonel stood over Martin as he sat cross-legged in his customary place in the center of the square. His vows of penance compelled him to sit far away from the slivers of midday shade, but the colonel’s shadow covered Martin, reminding him of his sins. My alleged sins.

  “How did you find me?” Martin whispered the next words. “I am dead.”

  The colonel spoke into the beggar monk’s ear. “Not easy, even for me, Brother Martin. I supervised your disidentification, after all.” The colonel resumed his full six-foot plus height. The black faux-leather of his shoes shone so brightly that Martin spied the overhead disk of the sun in the uppers. “The Bureau is skilled now with erasing an existence, though it was so much simpler in the old days, before the squeamish ruled the world.” Martin raised his tonsured head and torso from his obeisance, and he saw a grin on the colonel’s face. “The authorities killed miscreants. A couple of injections, bury the corpse, and call it a day.”

  Yes, physical death would’ve been easier, Martin thought, remembering the worst day of his life. “Our sentence of identity obliteration is too good for the defendant,” the judges on the Environmental Crimes Tribunal announced. If I don’t exist in any human record--digital or otherwise--am I alive? Or am I a damned soul in a living hell?

  Martin visited a library a few weeks after his sentence, and he found not a single hit about himself. Nothing on web pages, news groups, or com nets. No images, moving or still. He wasn’t in the government databases. His birth certificate was gone. Because he hadn’t been “born,” in a manner of speaking, he didn’t have a death certificate either.

  Before the Spike, a person would find hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of hits about Martin. The whole planet knew who he was.

  Despite his lack of ever existing—officially—Martin had a tombstone. It had no name, year of birth, or year of death. It was raised like a penny-sized monument out of his forehead, reminding all of his sins, telling all to treat him as non-existent.

  This is what happens when someone bears false witness against you.

  The colonel regarded the disidentified man. “Even though you’re dead to the world, you might say, there are always traces. I dug them up, and here I am.”

  The colonel moved back a step, letting the sun pound down on the monk again. “The Catholics have this concept of ‘limbo,’ Martin.” The colonel taunted him. “I think that’s where you live.”

  Martin found limits to society’s twisted tolerance. One rainy winter day, he took a poncho from a sporting goods store in full view of everyone—he never hid his intent—and left the store. A block away, the manager, his badge flopping on his chest, ran up to Martin and took the poncho from his hand without saying a word and ran back to the store. Martin was elated, as well as disappointed. The manager’s behavior was a silent and reluctant acquiescence to the physical fact of Martin’s existence, if not the social fact.

  “The Penitents of St. Francis took me in.” Martin blinked at the colonel. “Father Gonzales found me after I had sat at a bus stop for three days. I’m a lay brother now.”

  “Penitents? As in penance? As in forgiveness?” The colonel shook his head, as if looking at an abstract painting titled with a person’s name. “Is that what you want now, Martin? Redemption?”

  The colonel loved to dangle the prospect of a slate wiped clean in front of Martin, always before he asked for something Martin was sure he would never give, and did anyway. The thought forced beads of sweat to seep onto Martin’s forehead, as if the colonel were squeezing his skull like a damp sponge. Taking his time, hoping to hide the terror in his trembling hands, Martin gathered the card and bowl, placing them in his shoulder pouch. He kept his eyes down as he got to his sandaled feet and put on his tattered straw hat.

  “You won’t find what you want in this hellhole,” the colonel said.

  Martin adjusted his habit to maintain some dignity. He glanced upward. The colonel’s familiar face was in shadow. The eyes, though, were backlit by contempt.

  “I have some of what you want, Brother.” The colonel’s pattern was repeating. “Remember your days in parochial school?”

  Martin did remember. The severe, though loving stares of Sister Sabina. The boredom of First Friday mass. The soaring echoes inside the archdiocese’s cathedral.

  “The old nuns said that once you had confessed your sins and received absolution, your soul would be like a fine linen sheet, spotless. I can do something like that in the real world. I can resurrect you.” The colonel laughed. “You’d have a fresh start, at least in this life. What your god does to you afterwards, I can’t influence.”

  “I ask for nothing, sir, except for what people may put in my begging bowl to help my brethren.”

  The colonel sneered. “How pious.”

  It was true. It was the begging bowl that brought Martin back from physical death. Father Gonzales cleaned him up, dressed him in a habit, and set him down, back at that bus stop, with the bowl. There’s something about that open, silent request, made by someone who does it with a purpose larger than himself—in Martin’s case, supporting a religious community—that leads people to act. Despite the official ostracism, he’d never forget the joy he felt when the first coin dropped into the bowl.

  The colonel, the man who, for all intents and purposes, had put him to death, was back in his life, wanting something more. Martin made a 180-deg
ree turn, hoping to leave the BES officer behind, resigned to knowing he would follow him until he got what he wanted.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the colonel said.

  “I have my devotions.”

  “Devote yourself to this, Brother.” The colonel chuckled. “Molly Bain. It’s time to give her up, Martin Scribb. To me.”

  Martin stopped mid-stride. A death certificate for Martin, if one had been issued, would list the cause of death as Molly Bain.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Father Alberto Gonzales was at the front door of Martin’s house saying goodbye to a guest when the beggar monk returned home. The priest was a dark, demanding man who bathed irregularly. He was forty-one years old and the abbot of the community.

  “You’re back early, Martin. Something wrong?”

  The lay brother told him about the colonel’s visit.

  “Did he force you to leave the square?” Gonzales said.

  “No, Father. I was afraid of him.”

  “You should not have left an hour before your scheduled time.”

  “Father, I…”

  “Brother Martin, do I need to remind you of your vows? Four hours a day begging in the square. In full sun. In any weather.”

  A grizzled monk walked between Gonzales and Martin carrying a well-thumbed Bible, the screen scratched and the casing chipped. Like the other monks, he glanced at Martin, but offered no other connection.

  “Come to my office.” Martin followed the abbot through the reception area with its out-of-style, tattered furniture to an interior door. A life-size marble sculpture of St. Francis of Assisi guarded this private entrance, which led to the community’s cells and living areas. Lay people—except lay brothers, such as Martin—weren’t permitted beyond this door.