Tsunami Wake: Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Calm Act Book 4)

by Ginger Booth

  “Beautiful, Will! Great work. All of them. Everywhere. Now.”

  “Whose budget?”

  “Mine. Just do it, Will. Bump every other ad. Saturate Navy IP addresses. Get Popeye and Mangal to help.” After getting off the phone with Will, I shot a quick text to Popeye, Mangal, and Dave to back that up.

  Then I quickly called him back with another thought. “Will? Once those are running, get me designs for Philly loves Navy, Boston loves Navy, and um, Carolina?”

  “Did they agree to that?”

  He knew me too well. “Not yet,” I admitted. “Don’t run them until I say so.”

  He laughed. “On it.”

  “It’s already live,” Link said in wonder. He turned his laptop to show us an Amenac browser window. Hudson Loves Navy was splashed all over it, three designs on that particular page.

  “Well done, darlin’,” Emmett said softly, with a warm smile. He gave me a slow gentle kiss, and stole my phone back. “I do the talking from here.”

  “Philly?” I begged him.

  The phone buzzed first. “Hey, Sean,” Emmett answered it. “Beat Navy, sir!”

  I hit him. Emmett waved it off as a joke that Sean would understand, even if I didn’t. He continued, “Emmett, here with Ivan and Dee in the hospital. … Laryngitis. … On speaker.”

  “Brilliant work, Dee!” Governor-General Sean Cullen assured me. “I have requests to add Penn loves Navy, and Carolina loves Navy. Ken-Tenn and Ohio want in on the love-fest as well. Ken-Tenn sent a graphic. I forwarded you that.”

  I located the graphic and sent it on to Will from my computer. Ken-Tenn had a comedian for a graphics designer. The banner featured a cute illustrated fat pig with lipstick, puckering up for a kiss, with a speedy blue plate special of bacon and eggs zipping toward a battleship. Add Ken-Tenn loves Navy using this. Add Ohio loves Navy. Grain field?

  “Boston loves Navy,” Ivan spoke up. “Sir, the wharfs can be up and running with a few days’ notice. Not much fuel.”

  “Excellent idea, Ivan!” Sean said.

  “That was Dee’s idea, sir,” Ivan said. “She already requested art for Philadelphia, Boston, and Carolina.”

  “Outstanding. Philly works for me, instead of Penn,” Sean concurred. “Dee, if Amenac–PR receives queries, I’m also sending you a statement, with who to contact in Hudson, on behalf of all the super-states in the love-fest. Colonel Netty will be coordinating.”

  I didn’t know Colonel Netty, presumably from Sean’s military staff. “Why Ken-Tenn and Ohio?” I croaked. My voice didn’t reach the phone. I forwarded the official response to queries to Mangal and Dave.

  Emmett squeezed my leg. “Dee asks why Ohio and Ken-Tenn, sir.”

  “Let’s say we’re in wider discussions regarding the Virginia problem,” Sean said. “But let’s not say it in public.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emmett said, nodding to me. I nodded back with narrowed eyes. That’s obvious, Emmett. “Ah, sir? Could we call you back? Have another call.”

  “No need. Exceptional work, Dee! Bye.”

  “Pam, it’s Emmett,” he answered the next call. “I’m Dee’s voice box today. Dee and Ivan Link are here on speaker. Ah, we are not in private.” He glanced belatedly across the room at nurse Adderley and our fellow patients, drinking up the drama. Well, we hadn’t said anything too sensitive.

  “Understood,” Pam agreed. “Dee, evening broadcast starts in fifteen. I want a statement about this Navy love-fest going on. Jennifer’s standing by.”

  My mouth hung open for a moment. Emmett glared at me and pointed to the keyboard. I closed my mouth and started typing.

  “Pam, Dee’s composing a statement,” Emmett explained. “It’ll need to be cleared. So it’ll probably waft down to you through Sean or Carlos. Twenty minutes? I don’t know.”

  “OK, I’ll keep Jennifer available,” Pam agreed. “Get well soon, Dee and Ivan! And Ivan, I was so terribly sorry to hear about Abby and Leah. You’re in our prayers. We will broadcast that tonight as well.”

  “No!” Ivan cried.

  “Correction, Pam,” Emmett hastened to say. “Abby Link survived. She and Leah were caught in the tsunami, and separated. Leah is still missing. But Abby was here with Aaron a few hours ago.”

  “Oh, thank heavens! Ivan, please send Abby my love. I’ll call her soon!”

  “Thank you, Pam,” Ivan said, moved.

  “Gotta go fix that,” Pam said, and hung up.

  The flurry of activity died down in success, the ads all running. With a sigh of relief, the whole banquet hall medical ward sat back to watch the 6:00 p.m. PR evening news on a giant wall monitor. It came together beautifully.

  Dave called us just after 8:00 p.m. Emmett still had custody of my phone, and put him on speaker.

  “Dee, I just received a call from an Admiral Huyck. Who is Admiral Huyck, please, Emmett?”

  “Commander, Navy Northeast fleet,” Emmett supplied.

  “Not Admiral O’Hara?” Dave asked.

  “No, O’Hara is military governor of Virginia,” Emmett said. “She has no direct authority in the fleet.”

  “Cool,” Dave acknowledged. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Admiral Huyck ordered a double-high banner ad. Navy loves Hudson. They added the other super-states, too, in smaller print. I emailed it.”

  I found the graphic in my inbox. I smiled so hard tears came, then turned the screen to show Emmett and Ivan. The ad background was another iconic image from the Thanksgiving spread, of sailors serving the starving of New York City. In the foreground, a solicitous ensign walked between two painfully frail and malnourished women, who held her arms for support as they moved through the buffet line.

  “Run it,” I breathed. I doubt anyone but Emmett could hear me.

  “Run it, Dave, Dee says,” Emmett said. His eyes looked a little full, too.

  “Do we kill the other ads?”

  I shook my head vehemently.

  “Let them all run,” Emmett told Dave. “At least through midnight tomorrow. On our tab. Don’t charge anyone else.”

  “Will do,” Dave said. “And Baker? Well done. I know you can’t talk, and you need to rest. I’ll buy a few rounds for Will and the art team for you tonight, down at the Brewery.”

  “Dee says thanks,” Emmett said, “and gets mushy and huggy all over you.”

  Dave laughed, and signed off.

  “Does that mean no attack?” I whispered. “On Jersey?”

  Emmett kissed my knuckles. “I don’t think the Navy would have attacked, darlin’.”

  “Then why…?”

  Emmett shrugged. “Because we do support the Navy. It was a meaningful gesture. It didn’t have to stop a war to matter, darlin’. What you did, it mattered.”

  I must have still looked a little downcast.

  “It matters in real terms, too, Dee,” Ivan added. “Sean was negotiating for the Navy’s new harbors, to replace Virginia’s broken facilities. This evening, the Navy accepted our offer, and Penn and Carolina’s. And Ken-Tenn and Ohio offered to help us fuel and feed the Navy. We need public support for that, too. Oh, it mattered.”

  I should have realized right then, but I missed it. The army officers and enlisted personnel I shared that hospital ward with, wished some of those ads were directed at them.

  Fortunately, by morning, Connecticut’s governor Ben Fallon corrected my oversight. He commissioned a Connecticut Loves Army banner, with Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, Marines, Air Force, and Merchant Marine floating around in a smaller font.

  Fallon’s was the first, but it wasn’t the last. Ty Jefferson arranged the ad on behalf of the Apple. His featured Emmett and me, Ash Margolis and Sean Cullen, and all branches of the military during the great Thanksgiving feed. Every part of Hudson, including New England, and Penn besides, came up with a Loves Army banner, organized by civilians, sometimes with help from Will’s team on the graphics.

  When the week’s military love-fest campaign on Amenac was over, I
gave Emmett a complete set of the ads as a keepsake. Naturally, my sweetheart immediately gave it away, to share with the rest of the Raj.

  “Best Valentine ever, darlin’,” he told me, misty-eyed.

  33

  Interesting fact: The Punxsutawney Pennsylvania groundhogs, mostly named Phil, emerged in late February that year, several weeks overdue, completely unharmed. Since the no-show Groundhog Day preceded the tsunami, this sparked new speculation regarding woodchuck precognition. Belief in Groundhog Day, never high, increased slightly.

  “Did you ever review the infrastructure presentations, darlin’?” Emmett asked the next afternoon, the last of my medical incarceration. Done in Boston, he’d visited several suburbs earlier in the day while I processed reports. We had our three-hospital-table office going again, with Ivan Link.

  “I did. They were excellent,” I said. I showed him where I’d put my summary notes, and copies of my followup questions and the responses. “One followup is for you, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The best part of the discussion, I thought,” I said, “was at the end. When you asked what they thought of Ivan, and what the Raj did right, and room for improvement.”

  Naturally this caught Ivan’s attention, still in the bed beside mine.

  Emmett’s eyes flicked his way. “Uh-huh. It was constructive, Ivan. No witch-hunts. Complimentary about you, actually.”

  “My followup wasn’t you, Ivan,” I assured him. “It’s you, Emmett. You’re going around asking Rescos what they want. But did you stop to answer that question yourself first?”

  Ivan studied the far wall, listening. With dark hair and firm chiseled features, younger than the other super-state governor-generals, Ivan was a handsome man. Not warm, more stern than charismatic, but good-looking.

  Emmett glanced again at Ivan uneasily. “Not sure what you mean, darlin’.”

  “You’re between assignments as a Resco,” I said. “Doing this analysis for now. But after that, what do you want to do next?”

  Emmett sighed. “Whatever Hudson needs me to do next, darlin’. You know that.”

  “Wrong answer, Emmett,” I told him. “The question was, what would you like to do?”

  “Uh-huh. Dee, that was the answer. Let’s do this in private.”

  “If you want,” I conceded. “But Emmett, look. You could make a solid case for yourself as lead Resco for nearly any district in Hudson. I think the district that loves us back is the Apple. The Apple works for both of us, career-wise. There we’re partners. Connecticut, too, but not like the Apple. And Carlos has Connecticut.”

  “And Ash Margolis has the Apple. It’s his hometown. I’m from the Ozarks, Dee. Anyplace no one else wants, that’s fine by me.”

  “Quit being a martyr, Emmett,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said with a clear edge to his voice.

  “Emmett,” Ivan cut in, “I think Dee brings up a valid point. She’s asking what you want, not what you think you ought to want. Or deserve. The two of you are an effective team. And this goes beyond you. Cameron and Perard are also a highly effective couple. I think Sean is considering whether to use Dwayne Perard on North Jersey, and Cam on Narragansett. By Dee’s reasoning, Cam and Dwayne and Long Island deserve to stay together. And you and Dee and the Apple deserve to stay together.”

  “Thank you, Ivan,” I breathed. “You and Abby and Boston, too.” The house in Gloucester was in Abby’s family for generations, I’d overheard. Ivan himself grew up in a Boston suburb near Cambridge.

  I looked back to Emmett. “You like living with your wife, Emmett. And your chickens.”

  “I do miss the chickens,” Emmett allowed. “They’re transportable, Dee.”

  “But my work isn’t, Emmett,” I said. “I need to be within easy reach of Totoket. Long Island, too, and the Apple. Connecticut, Long Island, or the Apple could work for us. That’s all I’m saying. Now, would you be bored in the Apple?”

  “Course not!” Emmett said. “With this Navy deal, and sea rise, there’s the wharves to restructure. Tourism to support navy leave time. Ought to add the northern suburbs, too, take that away from Upstate. Make the Apple Zone one integrated food ecosystem. The rebuild is nowhere near complete.”

  “Yet you have terrific Rescos in the Apple,” I pointed out. “You could supervise and still be available part time for the Resco-troubleshooter role.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What Ivan said,” I replied.

  “Uh-huh,” Emmett said. “I’ll think about it.”

  Ivan added, “Martyrs are a pain in the ass, Emmett. And in case you’re wondering, I liked Dee’s advice. My own wish would be Resco of greater Boston and Narragansett, with Abby and Aaron. For now.”

  “Not leading the New England Army, sir?” Emmett asked, perplexed. That’s what the announcement said, when Ivan capitulated New England to Hudson. Ivan was to command the New England Army.

  Ivan shrugged microscopically. “I’d rather take a demotion to Resco. This year… I want to be with my wife and son. I feel like Boston is the only thing I’m succeeding at. And Cullen would be a fool to have two separate armies. In my experience, Sean Cullen is not a fool.”

  “Huh,” Emmett acknowledged. “Excuse me.”

  I watched him walk out, then grumbled to Ivan, “He probably left to talk to Cam or Pete about it, instead of me.”

  Ivan shrugged. “Let him. He needs it translated into Army.”

  “You understood me. Thank you, by the way. You’re right, Emmett wasn’t understanding me.”

  “Abby and I have been married nineteen years. She envies you, you know. The Niedermeyers, too. We used to have that kind of partnership.”

  He lapsed into silence, and I gave him space.

  I knew my husband, and left it at that. Emmett heard me. Or he heard Ivan, at any rate. I wasn’t planning to be married to a martyr, sacrificing himself hither and yon, looking for the yuckiest rock to climb under next. Yet I was planning to be married to him, forever. Therefore, he needed to get over some of his martyrish tendencies. Emmett had more than paid his dues. And unlike Emmett’s, my faith didn’t lionize martyrdom. I preferred the good life with my good works, myself.

  My lungs finally approved for release, Emmett elected to park us with Lieutenant Colonel Bob Brazeau next, headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire. We spent a few days there, Emmett and Bob often off visiting people and facilities, but back every night.

  I stayed in a hotel, still recuperating, with most of Sump’s company for company. They continued as our security escort, and finally got the R&R Emmett intended for them in the first place. Apparently Ruggiero’s crew belonged to Boston, and stayed behind.

  Sea level rise slowed at 8.2 feet, but was expected to continue at inches per year instead of the inches per decade we saw before the tsunami. For planning purposes, the Raj rounded that up to 10 feet, and set minimum habitable elevation 20 feet above prior sea level.

  Citizens along the lucky Long Island Sound tended to argue about this. When they voiced complaints on the Amenac boards, they got an earful from the rest of Hudson, especially Upstate. The inland public considered them fools. They were understandably concerned about what it was going to cost to re-engineer our shoreline infrastructure.

  Sean Cullen’s official word on that topic was that he awaited recommendations. Hudson would not make decisions lightly. Those recommendations included Emmett and my report regarding the Resco status in New England. But we weren’t the only ones. The Army Corps of Engineers and civilian transportation experts were busy all along the coast. John Niedermeyer for the Coast Guard, and representatives from the Navy, were just as busy. The humanitarian crisis past, planning was the priority.

  Pam Niedermeyer did beautifully on PR News. With less than an hour of my time per day, a full evening news program appeared as if by magic. We had our moments, arguing things out. The roughest growing pain was when Pam thought we should try a professional anchor instead o
f Jennifer Alvarez, our Yale drama student news reader.

  I wanted to back Pam’s authority. And I’d considered getting more polished. Yet I liked Jennifer, silly ‘Live Free or Die, New Hampshire!’ cheer-leading and all.

  I asked around with the New Hampshire locals. Sure enough, Jennifer won their enduring devotion that night. Emmett and Bob opined that Jennifer was hot, and cute. Sump’s troops agreed with them. My boss Pete Hoffman liked the eye candy, and no one needed an ‘authority figure’ to lecture them at 6 p.m.

  With regret, I told Pam that professionalism would have to come from our reporters. Our pretty bouncy lead news reader stayed, and yes, she dressed like a fresh outdoorsy New Englander, not a woman executive. The formula worked for us. But Pam was welcome to try young male eye candy, to spell Jennifer for reporting assignments and days off. Though I privately suspected we’d go heavy on sports on the weekends. The audience would appreciate an even bouncier young woman cheer-leading that.

  Our first sports specials were already in the works. The UConn Huskies women’s basketball team was reunited and in training, though they were no longer university students. The Huskies would take on teams from the Army and Navy, probably all-male. Betting heavily favored the women.

  Apparently Emmett’s ‘Beat Navy, sir!’ joke came from an ages-old football rivalry between West Point and Annapolis. He estimated that a West Point plebe recited ‘Beat Navy, sir!’ ten billion times his freshman year. Regardless of whether either team could beat the Huskies, there would be an Army-Navy game. Probably in Philadelphia, for nostalgic reasons. Though of course, fall football would be the game for that rivalry.

  Leaving Manchester, we raced a blizzard to Montpelier, Vermont. The blizzard won. Near the New Hampshire border, a Coco kindly directed us to a gorgeous ski lodge to wait out the storm and the plows. Some of our troops had to share beds. Emmett and I got the best room, of course, complete with jacuzzi. Power was a non-issue, supplied by small hydroelectric thereabouts, though the Internet was down. The locals lavished us with luxuries, delighted at the unexpected chance to earn hudson dollars. Emmett waved a hand and declared us on vacation for the duration. He picked up the tab for unlimited food for the troops, with four hours of open bar.