by David Achord
“Got it,” Joe said. “Right, guys?” Everyone muttered their agreement.
“Alright, there are a few other little rules regarding the cafeteria, but the next one is going to seem silly.”
“What’s that?” Abby asked.
“Everyone has their own preferred table. I know, it sounds juvenile, but that’s how it is. If you sit at any table that’s already spoken for, people get in a snit.” I pointed out the various tables and who sat at them, and led them to a table that was only used sporadically. I stood before it and made the sign of the cross.
“I hereby dub this the Bristol table,” I said and motioned for them to sit down. About the time I got seated, I saw Cutter sitting at my table, staring curiously. What the hell, I thought and waved him over.
“Do you guys remember Cutter?” I asked them while pointedly looking at Riley. “He’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s a good dude.”
“Hello, everyone,” Cutter said.
“Alright, so listen up because I’m going to recite their names only once. This is Joe, his son Little Joe, Little Joe’s wife, Abby, their two snot-nosed kids who I don’t even know the names of, Abby’s father Ned, and her brother, Collin.” I purposely paused a second. “And last but certainly not least is Riley.”
Cutter gave Riley a grin. Riley stared back at him, giving him the once over up and down. “I remember you,” she said.
“I hope I left a good impression,” Cutter said hopefully. Riley didn’t answer.
I motioned toward an empty seat beside Riley. “Why don’t you join us? I’m trying to fill them in about Mount Weather.”
Cutter did not need to be asked twice. He readily sat, and for the next hour, we conversed and attempted to bring them up to speed on Mount Weather and our mission to rebuild America.
I excused myself after dinner and headed back to our suite with Kelly and the kids. My workday sometimes lasted sixteen hours, and that was when I wasn’t gone on missions. So, when I had free time, I tried to spend as much time with my kids as possible.
I had played with them for a couple of hours and had them in bed reading a Harry Potter book to them when there was a knock on the door. I glanced at my watch.
“Okay, kids. It’s sleepy time,” I said, gave them both a kiss, tucking them in, and closed their bedroom door. Kelly had answered the door and was talking to both Joes.
“Is there something wrong?” I asked.
“I hope it’s not too late,” Joe Senior said. “But, we’ve been talking and we want to know what to expect from this meeting tomorrow.”
“Sure.” I started to ask them in, but then Frederick started calling for me from the closed bedroom door.
“I’ll take care of it,” Kelly said and disappeared into the bedroom. I motioned for the men to step out in the hallway.
“It looks like we caught you at a bad time,” Joe said. “I apologize. We can talk in the morning.”
“No, it’s okay. Let me fill you in. After breakfast, we’ll all meet in the main conference room. The debriefing will be conducted by the people who used to be the politicians of America. Most of them were evacuated when the balloon went up. Oh, and there are people who are called the secretaries. There were originally eleven of them, but there’s only three left.”
“What’d they do, take memos?” Little Joe asked.
“They ran Mount Weather, which was a part of FEMA. One of the many things they did was create doomsday scenarios and then create models on how to properly respond to them.”
“So, they run the place?” Little Joe asked.
“Not exactly. Abe Stark is the president. The various day-to-day operations are delegated to the politicians, but make no mistake, Stark is in charge.”
“So, back to the original question,” Joe said.
“You will be debriefed. Most likely, you will be chosen to speak for the rest of you. They’re going to ask a lot of personal questions.”
“Like what?” Joe asked.
“What kind of life did all of you have before, how you were able to survive, what you did in order to survive. What kind of exposure you had with zeds. If you engaged in any nefarious activity, have you ever killed anyone. Questions like that. Oh, and one of them, Parvis probably, will ask how all of you intend to be productive members of Mount Weather.”
“Will we be vaccinated?” Joe asked.
“It will be encouraged, yes,” I answered.
“We’ve already been told the vaccine is corrupted, or something.”
I sighed, wondering who told them, and explained everything. When I was finished, Joe looked somber, as if he was trying to come to a decision.
“Will you be there?” he asked.
“Yes. Believe it or not, I’m part of the operation of Mount Weather.”
Joe nodded, like I’d told him something he already knew. “Alright, we’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
I watched them disappear around the corner before going back inside. Kelly was waiting for me.
“What did they want?” she asked.
“They wanted to know what was going to happen at the debriefing. I think it’s Joe’s nature to be prepared. I don’t know if I told you, but he used to be a lawyer.”
Kelly scoffed. “We sure do have a lot of lawyers around here. You’d think we’d already have people suing each other.”
She was right. In fact, there was an issue that happened a couple of years ago. It was a silly dispute over a house and who had the right to live in it. One family moved in immediately after we had fixed it up and another family claimed to have dibs on it. Stark ultimately ruled on it, but then appointed Seth Kitchens as the Mount Weather mediator. Now, with Seth gone, we’d need to appoint someone new. I made a note to discuss it with Parvis.
Chapter 24 – Matchmaking
“Everyone’s in a festive mood,” Ruth said. She and I were the first people in the conference room.
“Yeah, Christmas seems to do that,” I said. That was the good thing about the Mount Weather community. Nobody was alone. I’d read of suicides increasing during the holidays due to loneliness back before, but that was not a factor here. In fact, Harlan Fosswell Junior was the only suicide in a long time.
“How’s junior?” I asked, referring to their son, Justin Smithson Jr. He was almost five years old now and every bit as rambunctious as Frederick.
A big grin crossed her face. “He’s excited about the upcoming play.”
“How’re are you and Justin doing?” I asked.
Her smile faded slightly. “He and I are fine. It’s the rest of the nonsense going on that’s getting old.”
I wasn’t sure if she was speaking about the vaccine issue, or if there was something else I was unaware of. “Yeah, I can see that, I suppose. Nothing is ever simple, it seems.”
Ruth did not respond, but there was a frown on her face. After a minute, she got up and walked out. She didn’t return until the president walked in.
I sat quietly and watched the interview of the Bristol people by our esteemed Mount Weather government infrastructure. Sometimes, their self-perceived importance was overbearing, but Trader Joe handled them well, even when they pressed on personal questions. He surprised them when he informed them he was a graduate of Harvard Law School, and was even personal friends with the late-President Richmond. I met them in the hall after it was all over.
“Is it always like this?” Joe asked.
“I’m afraid so. It’s almost like an initiation process but, I’m not totally against it. It’s an easy way to identify the crazies and people with possible nefarious motives.”
Joe scoffed. “Yeah, I dealt with people like them all the time, back in the day. What time is it?”
I checked my wristwatch. “Almost eleven. You don’t think they would’ve run their dog and pony show past lunch, do you?”
Little Joe laughed. “Speaking of lunch, I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”
I’d no sooner gotten seated at ou
r table when Kelly spoke my name. I looked at her and saw she was not happy about something. I racked my brain wondering what I’d done as I answered her.
“You need to have a talk with your son,” she said.
I frowned and looked over at Frederick, who was paying extra attention to his food and avoiding eye contact with me, his father.
“What did he do?” I asked.
She looked at Frederick briefly, but he was still concentrating on his food.
“Doctor Salisbury was kind enough to give a class to the children today. She’d rigged up a microscope to the projector screen. It allowed the children to look at various slides she had prepared. It was an excellent presentation. She had slides of skin cells, hair follicles, things like that.”
“So, what happened?” Rachel asked.
Kelly looked at Rachel and then fixated one of those stares that only mothers could execute. “Frederick was helping change out the slides while Doctor Salisbury stood by the projector screen and spoke to the class.” She gave that look again. “He decided to alter one of the slides and then stuck it under the microscope. The next thing you know there’s this magnified image on the projector screen. Doctor Salisbury looked at it in confusion and asked what it was. Your son, shouted out it was a booger.”
“He put a booger on the slide?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. He had a big one smeared on the slide.”
The table burst out in laughter. Even Fred smiled. Kelly, however, was not. Her frown deepened.
“Doctor Salisbury was not amused,” she said. “In fact, she walked out of the class.”
I fought to get the grin off of my face. Kelly was no doubt embarrassed by the incident.
“Okay, you and I are going to have a long talk about this after lunch,” I said to Frederick. “Right?”
“Yes, sir,” he muttered.
“I see those folks from Bristol have joined Mount Weather,” Fred said, changing the subject.
I looked at him in surprise. “Do you know them?” I asked.
“I bumped into them on my way up here. They seem like decent people,” he said.
“How’d it go with Riley?” I asked Cutter. He wiped his mouth and glanced over at the Bristol table before answering.
“Pretty good. I showed her around and she asked me a lot of questions,” he said in a low voice, and then lowered it to almost a whisper. “She’s a little different though. I can’t get a good read on her.” He finished up his breakfast and wiped his face again. “Okay, I’m assigned to the QRF for the next twenty-four hours. See you guys later.”
Riley waited until Cutter had walked out before walking over to the table. “Can I sit?” she asked.
“Of course, you can,” Kelly said and motioned to the chair Cutter had been sitting in.
She looked over at Fred. “I remember you,” she said. Fred responded with a micro. Realizing that was going to be the extent of the conversation, she turned back to the rest of us.
“Some sour-faced woman stopped me in the hall and said I have to clean the women’s locker room for the next three days.”
“Yeah, that’s Lydia,” I replied with a smile.
Lydia Creamer recently celebrated her fiftieth birthday in about how you would imagine a spinster turning the big 5-0 would celebrate; with too much wine along with an overabundance of self-pity. She was a plain-looking woman who had a perpetual scowl and spoke in a tight, toneless voice. She loved Kelly and my kids though, so I always went out of my way to be nice to her.
“That’s how it works around here. Everyone has to pull their weight,” I said and gestured around the table. “All of us have work assignments. We either had guard duty or cleaning assignments for the first six months we were here. Now, Kelly teaches. Janet and Maria help with the daycare. Fred tends the livestock and horses. Cutter is on the Quick Reactionary Force this week. That’s why he scooted out of here.” I looked at my watch and wondered if he was late reporting, which was not unusual for him.
“I have radio duty for the rest of the week,” Rachel said. “Boring as hell, but it beats cleaning the shitters.”
Janet rolled her eyes, as she often did when Rachel joked about something, and then patted Grant on the arm. “Grant here is with the medical team. He is often embedded with the missions, which means during nice weather he’s gone a lot.”
And he does that on purpose, although I did not say it out loud. Grant and I exchanged a knowing look and suppressed a grin.
“And we run the motor pool,” Jorge said while nodding at his father.
Josue pointed a fork at me. “Are you working today?”
He’d been pestering me for the past couple of days to give them a hand in the motor pool. It’s not that I minded, but it seemed like something else was always getting in the way.
“Yes,” I said. “Barring any unforeseen issues, I’ll be there.”
Josue responded with a grunt and went back to eating.
“So, you guys are going to get stuck with grunt work for a few months,” Kelly said to Riley. “Lydia will probably have someone working with you, but she’ll also come along behind you and inspect your work.”
“Okay, I guess it’s to be expected,” Riley said. She then leaned closer. “Who are all of those people?” she asked and gestured toward another table.
“Ah, it’s the Marines and some of the military teams,” I said.
Liam and Logan were sitting with them. Logan saw us looking, grinned and waved.
“Are they all single?” she asked.
“Some of them, yes. The one grinning at you is named Logan O’Malley. He and his brother are recently from Pittsburgh.”
“He has lots of muscles,” Kelly said. “I’d bet you’d like him.”
“He needs a haircut,” Riley said, “and a shave.”
“I cut Zach’s hair,” Kelly said. “Logan doesn’t have anyone to cut his. Why don’t you offer to do it?”
“Could you introduce me to them?” she asked.
“Logan?” I asked. “Sure.”
“No, all of them.”
This time, Janet and Kelly rolled their eyes.
I checked in with Parvis and informed him I’d be at the motor pool all day. He started to say something, but then leaned back in his chair and gave me a thumbs-up. Josue was waiting for me expectantly when I walked in. He pointed to a line of vehicles.
“Balancing and alignments,” he said.
“You’re kidding?” I asked.
“You forget how?” he retorted.
I gave him a look. A couple of years ago, we upgraded our garage facilities with a front-end alignment machine and a wheel balancer we found at a Firestone tire dealership. We hauled them back home and put them to use. I had been trained on how to use one by my old friend, Howard Allen, and though both Garcia men were skilled in front-end alignment, Josue seemed to think I was the resident specialist.
“I suppose I need to get started then,” I said.
I did not tell Josue, although I’m sure he knew it, but I liked working on cars and trucks. I remembered when I got my first truck, a little Ford Ranger pickup. The front end was badly out of alignment, so the first thing I did was take it to an independent mechanic my buddy’s father recommended. He was a rough-looking man with a thick walrus moustache and a lit cigarette perpetually dangling out of his mouth. Even so, I was fascinated watching him fix my truck with practiced ease.
I was working on my third vehicle when Big Joe and Little Joe wandered in. They were accompanied by their friend, Ned.
“How did the physicals go?” I asked.
“The doc said I had a bad case of dermatitis. She said I should use diesel fuel on it, but other than that, we got a clean bill of health,” the senior Joe said. “Abby and the kids are having theirs performed as we speak and Riley’s is later this afternoon.” He looked around the motor pool with an appraising eye.
“This is quite an operation here,” he said. Ned and his son nodded in agreement.
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“You people have a lot of things going on. I especially love the greenhouses,” Ned added. “Where did you get the lemon trees?”
He was referring to four lemon trees we had in one of the greenhouses.
“We found some seeds on a scouting expedition about three years ago. We hope to have them bearing fruit soon.”
Ned nodded. “They’re in superb shape, a little small though. Fruit trees begin bearing fruit after three years, but those may need an extra year or two.”
“That reminds me, did you guys bring any coffee beans with you?” I asked.
Ned shook his head. “We’ve tried, but we haven’t found any.”
“Figures,” I muttered. “Okay, be sure to let Lydia know you’re a horticulturist.”
“Oh, we’ve met,” Ned said. “Someone had already told her. When she confirmed it, she assigned us to heating duty, starting tomorrow night. Before I could ask her what heating duty was, she took off chasing someone down the hall. So, what the heck is heating duty?”
I laughed. “I don’t know if you noticed, but all of the greenhouses are heated with wood burning stoves. So, during the cold months, someone must sleep in the greenhouses overnight and keep the stoves stoked and the temperature properly regulated. It’s not a great job, but it’s important.” It also made me wonder why Lydia would assign strangers to such an important job.
“That would explain the cots we saw in them,” Ned said.
I nodded. “Cots with no blankets. The theory is, even if you’re asleep, if it gets too cold, you’ll wake up. But, don’t worry, whoever has guard duty will check on you every few hours.”
“There’s one with marijuana growing in it,” Ned said with a tone of disapproval.
“Yes, there is,” I replied.
“That greenhouse could be put to better use,” he contended.
“That’s a lot of weed y’all are growing,” Little Joe said with a grin. “You guys must be a bunch of stoners.”
“That’ll do, son,” his father admonished.
I nodded. “I must admit, some of our people smoke more than they should, but we also use it as a barter commodity.”