by Janden Hale
“My mother.” Clearly Dressler’s mother is not here, assuming he’s telling the truth.
“And she...”
“I did not make it in time.”
Ed looks down at the porch floorboards, spreading cigar ashes around with the toe of his shoe. “I’m truly sorry.” He takes another puff of the cigar. “I’d love to stay and chat more, but I better get back in and see if Jane needs any help. I want to link up with you later before your team heads out. Give you some intel on that area, seeing’s how I’ve got some experience with it.”
“Much appreciated.” Dressler pops the cigar between his teeth as he steps down off the porch. Ed calls after him as he opens the door to go back inside.
“And I’d love to hear more about the Rangers, if you’d indulge me.”
Dressler looks back and nods. “Sure thing.”
Liar
EIGHT
Ed shoves his head into Dan’s bedroom and lifts an eyebrow. “Jane. Talk to me for a sec?” He summons Jane out into the hallway. She’s taking Dan’s temperature with a mercury thermometer because they don’t require batteries, but she doesn’t wait for the results. The look on Ed’s face means it’s important.
She follows him out into the hall. He closes the door behind her and lowers his voice. “He’s lying.”
“Who is?”
“Dressler. I just talked with him. Some things have come to light.”
“Such as?”
“He had originally told me he was out of 3rd Group. That’s what he claimed when he first showed up here. Fort Bragg.”
She waves her hands for him to get on with it.
“Well, that’s not the case. I got a look at his beret. It has a green flash.” He pauses, smiling, then realizes she has no idea what he’s talking about. “Each Special Forces Group has its own unique flash. That’s the patch beneath the crest. He said he was from 3rd Group, but their flash has four colors. The one on the beret I saw today was solid green. That means he’s not from Bragg, he’s from 10th Group. They use the green flash.”
She stares blankly for a moment, then runs her tongue across her teeth. “You think he’s not really a soldier?”
Ed holds a finger up. “Not so fast. I see where you’re going with this. Sure, it’s possible that he’s not who he says he is. I see only two options here. Either he is ignorant of the flash meaning—not who he says he is—or he knows the meaning and he’s trying to be deceptive about it.”
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “The first option is more likely. Why would he lie about the unit he’s from? What difference does would that make?”
“10th Group is stationed out of Fort Carson.” He wipes the sides of his mouth with two fingers. “Colorado.”
She nods, a flare of enlightenment manifesting, spreading across her face. “Ground Zero.”
“Exactly. Colorado Springs. Facility 42. Operation Rainwall.”
“That makes sense. Anyone could easily see why he’d lie about that.” She cracks the door open to make sure Dan is still in bed, to make sure he’s not eavesdropping. She gives Dan a thumbs up and closes the door. “You think he was involved?”
Ed shrugs. “Maybe. Impossible to say without further information. I don’t like to assume things, it leads to wrongheaded decisions. Could be he just doesn’t want people to make the connection, whether he was part of it or not. No one would want anything to do with him if they knew he came from Carson. Can’t say I blame him, he’d probably get crucified. But still. You were right. He wasn’t entirely truthful.”
“Are you sure the beret was even his? Anyone can get those things. Maybe he got it off some dead body.” She gazes closer at a portrait of the Burton family still on the hallway wall.
“That’s a very real possibility. I could have asked more questions to find out for sure. There are certain kinds of questions they ask people they suspect are lying. To oust the fakers. Things like class numbers, graduation dates, things only another one of them would know. I needed to play it stupid, though. It would have given me away.” He offers her a quick smirk. “Never thought that ‘useless trivia’ would ever come in handy, did you?”
“It’s not the usefulness I find contentious, only the flaunting of it. Seems a pretty pointless thing to brag about.” And it is something he’s proud of. Ordinarily he likes to demonstrate his skills in real time. He’s full of trivia, in fact. Overflowing with it, because he is a voracious reader. She has never given him any praise for it, even now when he feels it might be warranted. She pushes on with the conversation as if he never even brought it up.
“And now,” she glances at the door to Dan’s room to make sure it’s still shut all the way, “we’ve got this man, this liar, going to Soquili. Which I did not want. We can’t take the risk, Edward. You know this. He might find out too much.”
“I know it.”
“Something needs to be done. If he goes, he might encounter other survivors, which could likely ruin us.”
“Maybe, maybe not. All he knows is that there are rovers out that way. He knows what we’ve told him of the dangers. If he encounters any survivors in Soquili, they’ll corroborate everything. They’ll probably do a better job of relaying terror than we do even. Because they live it.”
“Yes, but he’s smart. He has skills, Edward, skills we thought we could exploit for the time being. You know as well as I do how valuable information can be. It’s leverage. With the right kind of information, that man is even more dangerous than he already is. He could sway public opinion to favor himself as leader. Preventative problem solving is always easier than trying to wrestle a solution from a larger problem. I think he’s outlived his usefulness.”
Ed sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “What do you propose, my love?” He knows she is about to offer a suggestion with difficult implications. She was always better at the hard choices. She was also always a sight more paranoid than Ed, so it was up to him to salt her ideas with caution. Between the two of them, they usually arrive at the right course of action.
She thinks for a moment and wags a finger when she arrives at the right thought. “He offered to go alone at one point. I say we use that. Tell him it’s too dangerous for the others in his group, but not for him. That will also boost his ego and put him off-kilter. He’ll be overconfident, more prone to mistakes. Send his team out like usual, but distanced from him, to their own zone. That will get them out of the way. Tell him they can cover more ground that way so he’s not suspicious. Or tell him you think it will attract less attention from the rovers if he goes alone. Tell him it’s a matter of saving this boy’s life. It’ll work, I swear it.”
“Okay, but then what?” He looks down and notices one of his shoelaces is loose.
“I think you know what.”
There it is. The hard decision.
The Request
NINE
Jane Landry lets herself back into Dan’s room to finish up. He is lying there trying to read a Tom Clancy book with the thermometer still hanging out of his mouth. The previous day he had Dressler bring him something of girth from the library, thinking it would last longer that way. He is having considerable trouble turning the pages with only one hand. With civilization regressed, literature has made a comeback as the king of entertainment. He’d managed to get a portable MP3 player, but the power hadn’t lasted long. If he could come up with some batteries he could make a charger for it. Another setback he encountered was that most of the music on it was teen pop, whereas he preferred country or rock.
“You should rest.”
He glances up from the book. “All I do is rest.”
She props her hands on her hips. “Don’t be smart with me. You know what I mean. It might not feel like it but you’re exerting yourself and you’re going to make everything worse. We can’t afford to take any chances.” She st
alks over and commandeers the book, puts it aside on the dresser with a heavy slam. “You need to rest. No more fussing. Keep drinking water, I’ll bring you some more ibuprofen. You’ll need it to help with the inflammation, but even more than that you’ll need it for the fever.”
“I don’t have a fever, do I?” He angles his eyeballs down at the thermometer. She finally removes it and consults the mercury level.
“Not yet you don’t. But you will.” She tucks the thermometer in her breast pocket and places a full bottle of water next to him. She’d had Virginia Pencott refill all the water bottles this morning from the 65-gallon tank reservoir they use to store rain water that’s been collected and filtered. They collect alternative sources of water make the stuff in the water tower last as long as possible. “They’re going out for antibiotics tonight. We need to be vigilant until the meds are in hand.” She surveys the room to see if anything else needs to be done while she’s here. “Do you need anything? I’ll leave the radio in case you need to get a hold of me.”
Dan’s thoughts immediately turn to Amy. She hadn’t been back once since she left that first night, after the attack. He spent the last three days in misery, both physical and emotional. The worst part isn’t the arm or the infection. It’s the hollowness in his belly. The pervasive thoughts that never leave, the wondering what Amy is thinking, if she’ll ever come back. Wondering why she didn’t come back. He’d done more wondering in the past few days than he had his entire life it seems. His chest tightens just thinking about it again. Sometimes he thinks he can still smell her perfume.
“Actually I do have one request. Will you...” he swallows, feels his body starting to tremble just thinking about asking, “...will you send Amy? Please?” He waits, his breath lingering, all his hope welling up for this one thing.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replies flatly, clearly not as stimulated by the idea as he is, then points at the water bottle. “Drink fluids. I want those both gone by this evening. I’ll radio you with her decision either way.” Then she’s out the door and he’s back in the company of the hollowness. He shivers, pulls the covers a little tighter. The room got colder all of a sudden.
Team Meeting
TEN
Thank you all for coming on such short notice.” They are congregated in the family room at Curtis and Shondra Davis’s house. Of all those on Ed’s team, theirs sits the farthest inside Ashland’s safe zone, which means farthest away from anyone who might have a mind to eavesdrop. Namely Buck Weaver or the Judge. They need to keep this meeting under the radar, since it’s not their week to go out. As they don’t normally meet like this on off weeks, their doing so might raise a red flag.
“What’s going on, Ed?” says Jack Rohn, who’s leaned against the wall with his arms and legs crossed, looking especially confused.
Ed rotates his attention between Jack and the others. Curtis and Shondra, the Birkmans, Hector and Maria Martinez. Ed’s team. “We have a situation.” He takes a deep breath and looks down at his shoes for a second. “The urgency of it cannot be understated.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then finds his footing, stands firm to present a leaderly posture. He can’t help it. Putting on appearances has become part of his DNA.
“Adam Dressler has found us out.” He pauses to let the lie sink in, to appraise their emotions from their reactions. Curtis glances over to his basement door. The padlocks. They all have them. Ed doesn’t fail to notice.
After his earlier discussion with Jane he finally formulated a decent plan. Convincing them all to go along with it won’t even be a challenge. He knows how to manipulate people. He made two careers out of it. Knowing that it’s to protect them takes some of the sting out of lying to them. Hell, even if they found out he had lied, he’s confident they’d forgive him because of what’s at stake.
“What do you mean?” Maria says, stiffening in her seat.
“I mean he knows. He knows everything. He’s gone to Soquili.” This one fact is enough to instill more fear in them than anything else. Secrets getting out are frightening things. It gives him plenty of leverage to do what he needs to do. This is what makes blackmail such a powerful tool. Fear. He had used an assortment of other fear tactics to keep them quiet. Because of this, he knows he can rely on them to do whatever he asks.
“That’s our area, Ed,” Jack remarks. “He ain’t supposed to be poking around over there.” Ed closes his eyes to gather his composure. Jack Rohn’s stupidity can be difficult to abide sometimes. He searches his thoughts for an appropriate response that doesn’t include smacking him on the back of the head.
“I know it is, Jack.” He pinches the bridges of his nose. “Were you awake when I said we have a situation?” Ed shakes his head. “Never mind.” He looks at each of them in succession. “Here’s the deal, people. He knows everything, but that’s not the whole story. Some other information has surfaced. Dressler was not entirely truthful with me about his military background.” He takes a deep breath for added effect. “I discovered today that he was stationed at Fort Carson.” He presses his lips together. “Where the virus originated.”
Tracy Birkman’s gasp seems to saturate the whole room. Every survivor in the world knows about the experiments.
“My wife and I have reason to believe he was involved.”
“So he’s on the lam, then,” Curtis adds.
“So it would seem.”
“If that’s true, then what business is it of his what we do?” Jack Rohn’s face is pure confusion.
“Don’t bust your brain trying to figure it out,” Curtis says to him.
“Curtis is right, Jack. It won’t do to try to ascertain logic in what’s probably being done with pure emotion. People behave erratically. Could be he’s trying to do something to clear his conscience. That’s the best I can figure. Either way, he’s gone to Soquili. Alone. I think he means to tell the others everything, tell his team everything, but he wants some sort of proof before he does. He’s a smart man. It’s what I would do if I wanted to infiltrate and disrupt. That’s what he’s trained to do, you know.” Ed tries to keep himself from smiling. Sowing the seeds of doubt and chaos—what he’s insinuating that Dressler is doing—is exactly what Ed is doing now.
“Well we can’t let him blow the whistle to the others, Ed,” adds Jack Rohn, who had been staring at the carpet for a long while. “They wouldn’t understand.” Curtis shoots a look at the padlocked door again.
“Of course they wouldn’t.” Ed feels frustration welling up again at having to spell everything out for Jack’s sake. “That’s why we take precautions. That’s why the teams were chosen, why we have different zones. All so the others don’t know. Because you’re right, Jack, you’re absolutely right. They wouldn’t understand.” He lets his thoughts wander, finds himself looking at the door to his own basement with his mind’s eye. Everything he is trying to protect down there. Everything he tried to give Jane, all she’d ever wanted. He shakes the thought away, amazed that even he almost believes his own lie. Dressler doesn’t really know their secrets, but Ed needs his team to believe he does. He can’t let this thing spiral out of control. So many lies to keep track of, and he just heaped another one on top of the pile. If he’s not careful, they’ll all come barreling down like an avalanche. Even Jane doesn’t know all his lies. He’d been lying his whole life, it’s second nature to him. Still, he knows his limits. He had always been good at juggling falsities; he thinks he can handle one more.
Tom Birkman throws his hands up. “What are we going to do, then?”
Ed Landry solemnly regards each of them in turn. “His desire for evidence buys us some time. We are going to Soquili. Tonight. We’ll just make it seem like it’s all part of the boy’s emergency.”
He spends the next half hour laying out the details of his plan. They’ve got a long night ahead of them and he wants to make sure they’re all prepared. When
he’s sure they each understand, he leaves the meeting while they prep everything for the mission; he already gathered his own gear earlier and staged it in one of the vans. This leaves him just enough time to take care of one final thing before they depart.
Blanketflower
ELEVEN
Dan Shenk sits on the front porch of his tiny house wrapped in a quilt, probably made by the previous tenant, Patricia Burton. He’d been there for some time, since before the sun went down, waiting impatiently as ever. Amy finally shuffles up the walkway. True to her word, Jane had radioed ahead and relayed the good news. Amy had accepted. She will come and see him. Every second since then has been an eternity. He doesn’t even have any cigarettes to help occupy the time.
Amy finally arrives. She pauses at the bottom of the stairs, her arms thatched across her chest in a tight self-hug. She is barely illuminated by the moonlight, but he can still see how beautiful she is, he can see the light glint across her ice-blue eyes when she moves just right. She’s the prettiest thing he’s seen all day, all week in fact.
He offers a smile but she doesn’t respond with one of her own. Her white teeth stay hidden for the time being. “Hey,” he says, calibrating the position of the quilt so it’s not falling off on one side anymore. He looks over at the empty chair next to him. “Appreciate you coming by. And no, that seat’s not taken, thanks for asking.” He issues a lurching laugh, but she doesn’t budge from her spot.
They share a long moment of awkward silence, all the excitement he’d been feeling evaporating quickly.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be out here,” she finally says, still not moving any closer. Not the greeting he was hoping for but at least she’s talking.
“You want to come inside? We should go inside.” She squeezes herself tighter, glances down the street like she’s got somewhere else to be. “Just for a little while?” He can hardly discern her shaking head.