by Ryan Husk
“What if it’s like this everywhere?” asked Wade, voicing some of Edward’s own fears. And he noticed that the biker was lowering his voice even more, so that others wouldn’t hear. “I mean, Tennessee’s been hit, too. An’ those roadblocks…and all this possible exposure to rain. What if…?”
Edward tilted his head to one side, licked his lips. “If that’s the case, then we got a long road ahead of us. But I doubt that it’s everywhere, or else they wouldn’t be so focused on keeping us in here.”
“Speakin’ o’ that,” Wade said. “What do you make of that? I mean, what do you make of it really? I saw a look on your face back there just before we heard the helicopters. You were workin’ on somethin’ else. What was it?”
“Just a theory, Detective.”
“So let’s hear it.”
Edward looked the big biker up and down, gauging him. For the most part, he liked the cut of Wade’s jib, but he wasn’t sure just how far he was willing to go in trusting him, or any of them, for that matter. Especially since he might be cutting ties with all of them at any second. They’re weak. Except for Wade, they’re all weak. They’ll just slow me down.
For the moment, though, there was no reason he couldn’t at least trust Wade with a tidbit of information. Perhaps it would help them once Edward left them to their own devices. But it would take some explaining. “Did you, um…did you ever have a long-lasting relationship with someone? A relationship where you got to know everything about them, and you knew when they were lying because…because…it just didn’t jibe with how they behaved before?”
Wade shrugged. “Sure.”
“How about with work? You were a cop, so you had to see something that bothered you about one of your partners, or one of the other LEOs you came across in your day. Something that didn’t quite fit with the routines you know you were all trained to have? Like something you were taught at the academy, and then saw done in practice—like, I dunno, how to conduct a high-speed chase, or the proper way to go about getting a search warrant—but then you saw someone in your department doing it…wrong. Or…shady?”
Wade scratched his beard again. “Of course. I reckon that eventually happens to everybody wears the shield, one time er another.”
“Describe that moment. What did it feel like to you?”
The big man sighed heavily. “Well, it was, eh, a friend of mine, man named Scotty, that joined the academy with me. I worked at one department, and a year later he moved to Detroit, got work there. But after eight years, he came back, an’ he was…erratic, I guess you could say. He was harsh in his interrogations. Things just weren’t right, ya know? I mean, in interrogations, the police are permitted to lie at will, the Supreme Court decided we could employ all sorts o’ deceptions in order to get a confession.”
“Like?”
“Like, well…like telling a suspect that you’ve got his best friend in the next room ready to sign a statement sayin’ that he saw him do it, or that you’ve got a surveillance video of him doin’ it. Things like that.”
“And these are the steps you followed, Detective Wade Winchester?”
“They are.”
“And what about Scotty? What did he do in interrogations that was so wrong?”
“Well, at first when he got back from Detroit, he was just fine. But after a couple o’ months, he started pressuring people harder and harder for their confessions. We all did this, to see who’s lyin’ an’ who’s tellin’ the truth, but…Scotty, he…he nearly crossed the line sometimes in terms of threats of the death penalty, and offerin’ to get the suspect a better deal if he just confessed. Threats of death an’ leniency aren’t permitted in interrogations, they’ve been deemed unconstitutional, but…”
Edward nodded. “But Scotty did them anyway.”
“Yeah. But it was subtle at first. So soft an’ gentle at times that I didn’t think anything of it, ya know?”
Edward did know. It was the same way he felt when his superiors kept pressuring him to word his reports so that it seemed plausible that there would be WMDs in certain garages or warehouses back in Iraq. Edward had known he was being asked to be underhanded. He knew something else was up, and it wasn’t how he was taught to be in training, it wasn’t the standard of integrity he’d been told to hold himself and others to. “Scotty was doing something outside of the norm,” Edward said. “Something you were all told in the academy wasn’t right. You felt it. Scotty had changed. He was doing something he shouldn’t be doing. He felt off.”
“Yeah,” Wade said, slowly. “Yeah.”
“And what about the others around him? They just went along with it, right? They just sort of accepted it. Maybe a few of ’em made polite suggestions that he should ‘tone it down,’ but otherwise he got results and that’s all that mattered.”
“Yeah.”
“That feeling you got, right around the time you became sure that Scotty wasn’t the same Scotty you knew from years before, and when you figured out everybody around him was just gonna support his bullshit, even though it was unconstitutional? Well, that’s exactly what I felt before coming home from Iraq. And that’s exactly what I felt while talking to whoever that was on the radio.”
Edward shook his head.
“Something’s not right, Detective. They’re not doing what they should be doing in this case—oh, they’re deploying CBIRF and enacting COGCON, all right, but they’re not quite doing it right. Something’s off. People like you and me, who are willing to question the Scottys of the world, we’re the minority. The vast majority are gonna go right along with it, because their superiors want results.”
“I’m…not quite sure that I’m following here, Ed.”
“You ever been part of a cover-up before?” Edward searched Wade’s face. “Don’t lie to me. It’s just you and me talking here. You and I both know that you can’t be a soldier or a police officer for any amount o’ time without covering up at least one secret. So, what was it? A fellow LEO that you pulled over one night for drinking and driving, then letting him go because you didn’t want the other guys on the force turning against you? One of Scotty’s forced confessions? What was it?”
Wade looked a little uncomfortable. That’s how Edward knew he had him. “There was, uh, a guy who served a warrant with us. Murdoch was his name. He was the skittish type. We ran inside the house together and…there was a woman with a gun in her hands, but it was at her side. I shouted for her to drop it, an’ when she bent down to comply, Murdoch shot her. Plugged her in the head.”
Edward nodded. “But you all wrote it up differently, didn’t you? To save Murdoch?”
“The others did,” he said quickly. “They said it looked like the woman started to raise the gun. I was the only one who disagreed. But after a while, they were all so adamant…I began to question my own memory, ya know?”
Edward smiled. He did know. “There’s an experiment on this. Put a bunch of people in a room, tell them to look at two lines: one long, and one obviously shorter. Everyone in the room is in on the real test, except one person. They get every actor in the room to say that the short line is longest, and in more than seventy percent of the cases, the last guy will finally give in, and agree that the shortest line is, in fact, the longest. The more people you add into the experiment disagreeing with the one guy, the faster he changes his mind, and rewrites his own memory.”
“I fought it,” Wade said. “I really tried to fight it. I went back and ‘stood on the shield’ as we used to say—you go before a committee, an’ stand on a huge rug with a giant police shield symbol on it—and I tried to tell ’em all what really happened.”
“Let me guess. Not one of them even thought to reopen the investigation. Even more, they probably even made you feel bad for bringing it up again.”
“You’d be right on that guess. Chief Santone, a good friend o’ mine, he was actually one o’ the most vocal against me. He told me it wasn’t good to stir up trouble on a fellow badge.”
Edward nodded, and looked back out into the rain. Just the way it’s always been, he thought.
Wade said, “What is it, Ed? I mean, I guess there was a point of havin’ me take a trip down Memory Lane?”
“There’s a bunch o’ Scottys out there right now,” he said. “A lot of them have persisted. They’ve climbed the ladder of promotions into places of power. They’ve got skittish Murdochs working for them, and people like your police department partners willing to cover up for them. It’s a story older than even Caesar. They did it to Jesus, too, enemies and friends turning their backs. And the Wade Winchesters of the world are quelled by committees putting them ‘on the shield’ and making them feel guilty for asking honest questions. It’s all in motion right now, and everybody’s playing their part.”
“A cover-up?” said Wade.
“Yep.”
“What are they coverin’ up, Ed?”
He nodded towards the blood-red light coming through the closest window. “That that fucking Face is over the whole goddamn world. They’re trying to control the panic. The United Nations…every member nation…they’re all trying to keep the planet from losing its mind. These particular soldiers are keeping us in because there’s nowhere else to go. And the NEST and CBIRF guys are trying to keep us contained because they’re afraid we’re infected by…something.”
He looked at Wade.
“It’s like this everywhere, Detective. All over the world. They’re trying to keep us from crossing state lines because that’s only going to fuck things up more. At least for them.” He nodded towards Janet. “Back in the jeep, about an hour ago, Janet showed us pictures from the International Space Station. Live streaming pics. This thing…it’s not a goddamn illusion, and we’re not losing our minds or imagining it.”
“An’ the nukes?”
Edward sighed heavily, and shrugged. “Somebody somewhere got antsy, thought the Face was some kind of attack. I don’t know. We may never know. But I got a feeling, Detective, that we are in serious fucking trouble here.” He nodded. “We’re going to need another plan.”
Wade crossed his arms. “You got one o’ those?”
Edward smiled. “As it happens, I do.”
X.
Jeb and Marshall were tasked with looking for keys. Any keys. In Jeb’s experience, large warehouses and garages like this usually had a pegboard somewhere, almost always in somebody’s office, where anybody could come and grab them, then set the keys back when finished. There was such an office, but the only keys were to the tractor and the four-wheeler ATVs, as well as a custom Indian motorcycle parked at the far end of the warehouse.
Jeb was just about to grow tired with all the searching when he finally came across a drawer filled with keys. Too many, in fact. It took a while to test them all before he figured out which ones would work on which truck. One was a 2013 F-150, dark red, like dried blood. The other one was a 2013 Super Duty, straight silver, and with a bumper sticker that said “HOW IS THAT HOPE AND CHANGE WORKING OUT FOR YOU?” Jeb smirked. Some folks were still butt hurt about Obama winning, about as many as were butt hurt when Al Gore lost the 2000 recount. Jeb once counted himself among such pissed off assholes. A staunch Republican, his own truck had a bumper sticker that said “RED TILL I’M DEAD, BABY.”
Good God, how fucking trivial now, Jeb thought.
Jeb cranked up the Super Duty, checked its gas, mileage, all that. Satisfied, he switched it off. The vehicle that really had is attention was the Porsche. It was a 911 Turbo, fiery red, with brand-new wheels. He patted the thing like it was his woman’s ass, then got in and cranked it up. Never heard a thing so gorgeous in all his life. Filled up on gas, too. Good to go.
As he was stepping out of the Porsche, Marshall came up to him, jerking up his britches since they were constantly falling off from the considerable mountain around his midsection. “How you feelin’?” Marshall asked.
“About what? Leavin’ the bikes here? Fuckin’ sucks ass.”
“No, I mean…how you holdin’ up? Your dad an’ all.”
Jeb shrugged it off. “He’s the one’s got the bomb shelter eighty miles from here. I reckon he’s gonna be fine. We’re the ones up Shit Creek.” He glanced over Marshall’s shoulder, where Margery and the girl were just emerging from behind the tractor. The girl’s clothes had all been removed, but she now wore a dirty towel around her waist and Marge’s jacket over her top. Sniffling, the wee girl pulled out her blood-sugar tester. “Fuckin’ Christ,” Jeb whispered, looking away.
Marshall nodded. “I know. Poor thing.”
“Ain’t got a snowball’s chance. Not if things are even half this bad all over. Hospitals an’ insulin…what she needs is gonna be a rare commodity in the new world.”
Marshall looked at him. “You really think it’s a ‘new world’? I mean, like, it’s all over? You really believe that?”
Jeb shrugged. He saw Margery shuffling over to a seat. She was massaging her temples, and whispering something to Janet. “What about Marge? How’s she holdin’ up?”
Marshall glanced at her, then took on a very confidential tone. “I dunno, ya know? The headaches…they’re more common, but she tries to pretend. She thinks that I don’t see, but I do.”
“Fuck,” Jeb muttered, reaching into his pocket to pull out a pack of Marlboros. He opened the top of the pack and offered it to Marshall.
“Naw.”
“Ya sure?”
Marshall sighed, and took one.
Jeb lit them both up. It had been Marge’s lifelong mission to get Marshall off of tobacco and alcohol. She was successful, as long as she remained around him all the time. Once she’s gone, he’ll be hell-raisin’ again. God bless him, it will be ugly. Then, Jeb gave that a second thought. He looked at his old buddy’s face. Marshall’s countenance had changed in recent months. Jeb reassessed the situation. He’ll either die from grief and the bottle, or else he’ll never touch another drop again. One or the other, and nowhere in between.
Marshall stared after his woman for a moment, then glanced across the warehouse. Jeb followed his gaze, saw Wade talking it over with Edward. Jeb said, “Whattaya think o’ this fucker? Legit?”
“Certainly seems to know his shit,” Marshall said.
Jeb nodded, took a long drag of his cigarette, let it fill his lungs, then exhaled slowly. “Yeah, he knows his shit, all right. But what about him? He seem cool to you?”
“At a glance?”
“At a glance.”
Marshall took a toke, looked back at Edward, then said to Jeb, “He’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous as fuck.”
“Good in a pinch, maybe. His knowledge is good, but…”
“But he’ll drop us all in the middle o’ nowhere if it’s in his best interest,” Jeb said, taking another drag. “S’what I was thinkin’.”
Marshall shrugged. “Still, he seems to care enough. Not a total psycho. If he was, he wouldn’t have brought the kid an’ Gordon this far. He’s jes a survivalist. It’s in his blood. Can’t help it.” He looked at Jeb. “See the way he just hauled off an’ slapped that girl, though? He didn’t even think. It ain’t even his kid. Surrounded by adults like that, an’ he didn’t even hesitate.”
Jeb took another toke, let it out slowly. “Yup.”
“Him an’ Wade are gettin’ friendly.”
“Yup.”
Marshall looked at him. “Ya thinkin’ that’s a mistake?”
He snorted. “Wade fuckin’ knows what he’s doin’. He knows what Ed is. He’s chattin’ him up, feelin’ him out. You know Wade. Still interrogatin’ motherfuckers. Look how he’s standin’.” Wade was standing with his arms folded, with one arm occasionally lifting towards his chin, nodding like a reporter, feigning intrigue. Classic cop stance. Hands up, ready to defend if need be, otherwise the hands were used to direct and appear nonchalant. Even stance was wide, as if bracing himself for a possible impact. “Any other day, Wade would’ve beat the shit outta some guy smackin�
� a girl like that, especially a girl that ain’t the guy’s daughter. But things are a little diff’ernt right now, an’ he knows we all gotta make some sacrifices. Wade’s go-ready, same as that Ed fucker, they just have diff’ernt approaches.”
* * *
Colt stood staring out the window, and up at the red eye, and the storm forming around it. The Eye didn’t blink. It never blinked. He’d been watching for it. Occasionally, he saw some long, gray tendril descend from the clouds, almost as fast as lightning, and then retreat back into the sky. It looked like an octopus’s tentacles, only much faster.
“Dear God,” he whispered to himself. “What have you done to us, O Mighty Lord?”
The Eye was just a portion of the terrible Face that now engulfed the whole world. The sun penetrated some, because the Face was translucent. He had seen snatches of it after the explosion that morning, but he’d believed…wanted to believe…that it was mere trickery of light. But it wasn’t. A pitted black Face now hovered over the whole world, hateful and gleeful at the same time, with eyes suffused with volcanic malice and otherworldly mischief. It had done this, he was sure. Colt didn’t know when he had decided on this, but there was no running from it now. The Face was the source of all that was happening. It was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of this fiasco.
He thought of his sons. He believed they were safe. They had to be. And he also believed that, wherever they were, the Face could not see them. They’re safe. They’re safe.
He snapped himself out of it, then looked around until he found a bathroom in the garage—no shower, but there was a sink and a toilet. Running water to wash with, like Ed told them. He rummaged through a closet and found four sets of dirty gray overalls that smelled like they had been there a while. Someone forgot to do laundry, he thought, taking them out. “Here, girl,” he told his wife, handing her a pair. “Might be a tight fit, but—”