by Ginger Booth
I considered our earnest young camera woman. “Melinda? Why don’t you go back to the van and have Martin review the footage? Let Martin decide.” I beamed at her encouragingly, and she trotted off to Brandy’s producer. “It’s probably fine, Brandy. You do live coverage all the time.”
Brandy considered and pointed. “We could add a sequence trotting onto the dock, showing how close he was to escape and safety. Adds drama.”
“Nah,” I decided. “We’d just end up cutting it for length. Or Emmett or IBIS would cut it, because we don’t know that for sure. Let’s just stick to the facts. Oh! I wanted to show you the ThingSpace!”
I dragged her into the dancing corridor, and demonstrated. “Isn’t this awesome?” I cried. “Best public Internet and power in all Pittsburgh. Only nobody noticed.”
“Internet?” Brandy asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Those voice recognition databases are huge. And I haven’t asked for a song yet it couldn’t play for me. It’s getting all that off the cloud, not stored locally. Pick a song!”
Three songs later we were laughing like loons, leaning on each other and taking a breather.
“Dee Baker,” a man’s voice said behind me.
I whirled toward him in surprise. A vaguely attractive man stood there, hands casually in his pockets, about Emmett’s age. His brown hair was cut military short, but his clothes were unusually fresh and clean civilian, a heavy burgundy fatigue sweater over olive cargo pants, bloused into work boots. His expression was blandly pleasant, yielding no clues.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I said. I was sure I’d never seen him before in my life, but spoke the polite response on automatic. I wasn’t worried. We had four of Drum’s guards from Meadville with us, around here somewhere. He probably walked right past them.
He took a few steps to my left and pushed the big button to activate the ThingSpace again. “Alexa, play American Pie, by Don McLean,” he told the machines. “Louder. Louder.”
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
He turned back to me and confided, over the now loud song, “I love the old tech, don’t you? You don’t know me, Dee Baker. But I’m an old friend of Emmett’s. From Leavenworth. We took ILE and SAMS training together. I’m Major Canton Bertovich, retired. Call me Canber.” The ghost of a smile played in his eyes. “Did Emmett ever mention me?”
I stared at him for a moment. The Calm Act went into effect right after Emmett left Leavenworth. His classmates weren’t permitted to retire. Tibbs added ‘Canber’ to the meshnet traffic filters at Niedermeyer’s suggestion. Emmett had seemed alarmed.
“HELP!” I screamed and turned to run for it. Someone in 101st Airborne uniform already had a thick gag over Brandy’s mouth and was laying her out on the ground. I tore past, trying to make for the river. Running for the street might have made more sense, but I was reacting, not thinking. Dane Beaufort had run for the river. So did I.
I yanked out of my pursuer’s grasp twice and tripped forward, my hands and knees scraping on the concrete plaza. With two runners behind me, they corralled me along the building, not letting me break out into the open. But the storefronts would end as soon as I reached the walkway at the pseudo train platform, where the blast furnace sat. Only 60 feet, then 40, then 20.
But Canber got a firm hold on me next to the fountain, and flipped me onto the ground. His partner got a gag over my face. I fought the cloth, thinking it was chloroform or something. But that was simply to muffle me. To incapacitate me, they used a taser.
Damn, that hurts, being electrocuted. Dazed and twitching, unable to speak or control my limbs, I could only watch and listen for a minute or so. The soldier took away the cloth gag and forced me to swallow a pill. Then he stuck duct tape across my mouth, and flipped me over to tape my wrists together thoroughly. He patted me down quickly and removed everything from my pockets, strewing the contents across the sidewalk, except for my phone. That he handed to Canber. My shoes he chucked at the abandoned storefront. Then he cut my hands with a knife, and turned me onto my side, so he could stamp my bloody paw prints around the sidewalk.
Not exactly subtle. They were painting Dee was attacked here in big bloody letters, intentionally. Why?
In front of me, Canber tapped out a message on my phone. He held it up to show me, a happy light in his eye, mouth partly open in delight. A message to Emmett, from me, a single word:
Canber
Canber artistically used my own bloody finger to send the message, then dropped the phone from waist-height by one of my shoes. Dee was attacked here, by Canber, Emmett take note. No, not subtle at all. Why the hell was Canber baiting Emmett? A second soldier walked by, half-supporting and half-dragging Brandy. Sadly, I recognized him as one of my guards from Meadville. The IBIS agents hadn’t found them all. My electroshock grogginess was turning into drugged wooziness.
“Did you rufie her first?” Canber asked the second soldier. “Good. Carry them from here. Let’s go.”
Canber set off across the platform fence and the train tracks, toward the docks. The first soldier carried me after him. I was fighting desperately to remain conscious, and losing the fight. ‘Rufie’ her indeed. They’d fed us date-rape drugs.
Dane didn’t flee across the railroad tracks, I thought muzzily. They dragged him this way. I wonder if Paul Dukakis spotted them, and cried out. Then they dropped Dane and ran for it.
But why would they…? Oh. The ThingSpace. Maybe they came here to use the Internet and power. And Dane just ran into them by accident. But Dane would have recognized Canber. Canber would have been a Resco. There’s no good excuse for Canber to be here. No good at all. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have noticed leaps all over the logic here, but at the time, I simply realized this as the truth of what happened to Dane Beaufort.
They dumped me into the wet bottom of a Boston whaler, alongside a bunch of guns and electronics, bait and tackle, and Brandy. She was already out cold, her hair bloody.
There were no whalers out of Boston, I reminded myself, as though this were a momentous clue, my mind going. We learned these things in childhood along the Sound. Boston whaler was a brand name for a simple fiberglass open-hull boat with an outboard engine, around 15 feet long, one of the cheapest motorboats available. I learned to water-ski off the back of a friend’s Boston whaler. Do teenagers water-ski on the Monongahela? I bet the water’s cold. Does it get warm in the summer like the Sound?
They didn’t need to start the engine right away. They just kicked off from the dock and let the current take the boat out of view. They threw a tarp over us and the gear. The tarp smelled only of gasoline and mildew. Nobody went fishing. It’s all people bait. No fish bait.
I’m glad I moved back in with Emmett first. That would hurt him, if I died while he thought I was mad at him. I’m not that mad at him. He just worries about God too much. God, take good care of Emmett for me. He’s a good man. He tries so hard to save the world, but that’s Your job. Screw You.
American Pie is a long song, over 8 minutes. It was still playing when I blacked out, still telling God how to do His job so Emmett wouldn’t have to do it for Him.
22
Interesting fact: Before the Calm Act, West Virginia was the second-poorest state in the U.S., surpassing only Mississippi. Churches in the rugged Appalachians tended toward local idiosyncratic sects, isolated from the large national congresses. Coal mining and natural gas were major industries.
My eyes drifted open leadenly. I was in a bus seat, head bouncing against the window. Somebody lay heavily against my shoulder. Morgantown, West Virginia, 30 miles, proclaimed a sign flowing past. Next time my eyes opened, I stubbornly held out for a sign to tell me what road I was on. It was an interstate, empty of traffic except for the cara
van my bus traveled with. A methane-powered bus, not gas or electric – I could smell that much.
The road wended its way through endless steep hills, the landscape seemingly uninhabited, primordial hardwood forest starting to turn its autumn colors. I lost the fight and closed my eyes twice before spotting the longed-for sign: I-79 South.
Not that I had any clear idea where I-79 South was, or Morgantown, West Virginia. I vaguely recalled that West Virginia wrapped around the southwest of Pennsylvania. Whether Morgantown was south or west or southwest of Pittsburgh, was unclear. Probably more south than west, or else the interstate would have an even number. Interstates out here didn’t hug the coastline the way they did in New England, and say ‘North’ when they actually traveled east. OK, so I was heading south to Morgantown, some city I’d never heard of, yet big enough to be worth mentioning on an interstate sign. Maybe.
This act of passive defiance accomplished, I dared to turn my head to see what warm body was lying against me. Oh, good – Brandy. Someone had bandaged her head, too, though blood still matted her gorgeous red hair.
I was right not to look before. A woman across the aisle noticed, and stared at me. She was gaunt, with matted brown hair, dirt on her face and bare feet and ragged dress. Her crazed eyes bugged out, bloodshot white showing around the irises. She dug into a grubby skirt pocket and brought out another of the rufie capsules in her filthy fingers. She ripped off the duct tape over my mouth – Ow! – taking several layers of skin off with it. She forced me to swallow the pill. It was almost a relief when she pinched my nose off, because it cut off her reek. I was glad she didn’t put the duct tape back on. My wrists were still duct-taped, but at least in front of me now, instead of behind me.
As my head nodded back to bouncing against the window, I noticed my own clothes had been replaced with a brown rag dress, as well. Not that it was originally brown. I suspect it started out blue. But if cotton cloth is stained badly enough, long enough, it turns brown. The idea of Bug-Eyes stripping me and dressing me again was as revolting as her putting her filthy fingers in my mouth.
Charity, I decided firmly. I shall call her Charity, not Bug-Eyes. Charity was rocking in her seat, last I looked. She was muttering, possibly to a demon, but maybe God. Charity deserves my charity. She must live a very uncomfortable life. If the demons whisper all the time, how scary for her. And her feet must get cold. Yes, if I lived Charity’s life, maybe I would act as she acts. There but for the grace of God go I.
And the rufie fairies carried me away again.
“I’m so sorry, Dee,” Blake sobbed, rocking back and forth over me. He hardly looked like Blake anymore, though. Blake was such a tidy young man, with neat hair, usually in a pastel preppy sweater over an Oxford shirt and business-casual chinos and loafers. Now one black eye was swollen nearly shut, a fat split lip curling his mouth into an unintentional sneer. His workman’s brownish collar was blue once. “I tried not to say anything,” he moaned.
“I forgive you, Blake,” I murmured groggily. “Forgive me, Blake. I’m so glad you’re alive.” That was the main thing. But I was puzzled. “What are you sorry for?”
“About you,” he said. “They wanted to know how to hurt Emmett, how to lure him out. I told him about you.” He broke down in tears.
I struggled up to a seated position and hugged him to my shoulder, and encouraged him to cry it all out. I needed him to start talking sense, but it probably wasn’t urgent. I wasn’t tracking too well yet myself. And hugging someone familiar was nice.
I contemplated our surroundings. Brandy was a couple feet away, huddled with her head on her knees. Her wardrobe was as degraded as ours, feet muddy with a broken toenail. We were in a basic one-car attached garage. Rainy day gray light streamed in through high garage door windows.
A typical American garage provides all manner of tools and potential weapons in its piles of stored junk. But this one had been stripped to down to empty shelves. There were still the shelf brackets. Hefty springs running along the garage door track. No life light on the door opener, so probably no power. A bucket in the corner, apparently our excuse for bathroom facilities. Smelly blankets.
Oh, well. Weapons weren’t exactly my medium, anyway. Emmett refused to teach me how to fire a gun, on the grounds that I had better options. Tech whispering, for instance, with a lesser talent for mind games and manipulating people. Two minutes with a cell phone and an Internet connection could solve all my problems. I’d just have to play mind games until I got my chance.
“Are you alright, Brandy?” I asked softly.
“You slept forever,” she complained faintly. She turned her head to face me, but didn’t raise it from her knees. Her body language screamed utter defeat.
“I woke on a bus headed down I-79 toward Morgantown, West Virginia, with you passed out on my shoulder,” I informed her. “Then they dosed me another rufie. Do you know any more?”
“Blake and I are hostages for your good behavior,” she said. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she didn’t sob. Her voice just sounded dead.
“Good information,” I encouraged her. “So what am I?”
“Bait, to make Emmett crazy,” she supplied. “According to Blake. Keep your voice down, or they’ll beat us again.”
Extracting information from my team was slowed by their emotional needs. But I persevered, alternately asking questions and bleeding off their fear and hurt. I was an old hand at this, from dealing with the Apple Zone survivors, especially our once prickly housekeeper Gladys. The basic formula was, ‘OK, that sucks, but we deal with it. You are strong, capable, and appreciated. Next problem?’
I started with Brandy, and let Blake cling to me until he calmed down. She must have awoken not long after Charity drugged me again on the bus. She couldn’t see out the window as well as I did, but we’d turned left off the interstate at some mid-sized town onto an empty country road. Based on eavesdropping, she estimated we’d spent an hour on that road, before turning right onto even less of a road.
Soon after that, we’d arrived in a patchy little Appalachian town of the no-street-light-required variety. The town center was a T-intersection with a gas station and tiny decrepit church, plus a few visible trailer homes and impoverished little houses. The caravan disbanded there and spread into the woods. Our garage was maybe a 10 minute walk from downtown, such as it was. The attached house was the most upscale she’d seen, maybe a 3-bedroom ranch. It was getting dark by the time we arrived here, so maybe net 5 hours since we’d been abducted, unless we were missing a day. After that, I’d slept through until morning.
“So who told you about this hostage and bait concept?” I asked.
Brandy turned her head away. I put a hand out to stroke her back, and crooned, “You’re alright, Brandy. We’re together. We’ll get out of this.”
“They raped her,” Blake volunteered. “Last night.” His tears had subsided by then, but he’d stayed quiet on my shoulder for comfort.
I didn’t see any useful follow-up questions to that. “You’re OK, Brandy,” I insisted. “Their sick actions have nothing to do with you. Ready to talk, Blake?”
According to Blake, when he arrived before the big disarmament operation six days ago, he found Green Tree an ordinary looking, prosperous Pennsylvania suburb. He’d stopped in to chat at a farm market. People seemed excited about the new meshnet communications, but alarmed by the news that Dane Beaufort was dead. They liked Dane. There was plenty of food available. A nice baker fed him lunch in return for stories about life back east, and news about the world. The nice lady rolled her eyes at what was going on in Pittsburgh, and said she avoided the city.
She avoided the mass grave site, too. Some bad people had moved in there. Besides, suicides, she said were buried there, with a shudder. Blake got the impression she meant the oxycontin volunteers for depopulation, from the first winter under the Calm Act. Seriously ill? Afraid for the future? Mentally ill, or disabled? The oxycontin suicide kit was a one-size-fits-all
final solution, handed out by doctors in the millions all over the U.S. that winter. Like everybody, I kept several bottles of the stuff at home for use as a painkiller or last resort. Oxycontin was easier to obtain than bread.
Blake filmed some footage of the farm market and the helpful baker, then drove over to the graveyard. They were old graves. The barrow mounded as tall as he was, but didn’t smell. The encroaching greenery looked like it had grown all summer. He recorded perfectly usable footage of that, too, even clambered on top to show its extent. The mound climbed the middle of a narrow wooded valley like a million others, between steep hillsides. The kind of landscape where effective visibility was maybe 50 feet. From New England, I knew those kind of woods intimately. You could hide almost anything in them. No one would know unless they stumbled across in person.
It’s a shame he didn’t leave then. But Blake figured he had another half hour before he needed to drive back into Pittsburgh to meet Emmett’s deadline. I’d mentioned that the grave might have signs cut into trees. So he nosed around, walking along one edge of the barrow.
The first mark carved into a tree was a simple fish glyph, nose down, with an arrow pointing onward up the sloping valley. The next said ‘666’, with another arrow. The third looked like a Nordic rune. Then he stepped into a clearcut for a high-voltage long-distance power line, perpendicular to the barrow mound, running up the bracketing hill slopes. A corpse hung from one of the power poles.
Now a sensible person would have high-tailed it back to his car at that point. But I’ve noticed this about my camera men and women, and wished to strangle them for it. They kind of disappear behind the lens, so intent on the images they’re capturing that they don’t have the sense God gave kittens. On Long Island, my camera woman Kyla faced off a would-be rapist by turning her lens on him. Not an effective defense.
That corpse was fresh, and Blake wanted a closeup of his face.