“I’m Daniel Brickman,” he said. “I’m the President of…of Washington, D.C., I guess,” he chuckled.
“President, huh?” said the woman. “As in elected president?”
“Yes, ma’am,” interjected Monsen. “He wasn’t even on the ballet, but won by a landslide.”
“I was the first person to come to the White House,” Daniel explained. He told her the story of how they had set up operations and begun restoring D.C. “And you?” he asked, expecting to hear her story.
“All we want is to be left alone,” she said.
“Oh,” Daniel wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to that. “Well, we don’t want to force you to do anything.”
“That would be a mistake,” the woman said, her tone icy.
“But we would like to work with anyone or any group that would be willing to help us restore as much as we can. We’re a democracy, everyone is working together.”
“We’re not interested,” said the woman.
Daniel realized that she had not even given him her name. The two men with her were silent and seemed to cower whenever she spoke.
“Alright, well, I’d like to help you,” Daniel said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “But if you prefer to remain here, isolated, that is your decision. You must know, however, that you’re occupying an Air Force base. Naturally that makes me a little nervous.”
“I don’t give a damn what makes you nervous. We were here first and we’re not leaving.”
“Alright, thank you for your time today. I’m sorry we couldn’t work together.”
Daniel turned on his heel and walked away. Alpha One followed him and together they climbed back inside the helicopter. Daniel pointed up toward the sky and Hank lifted off the ground. As Daniel snugged the headset over his ears, he looked down and saw the three people still on the ground; it appeared that they were arguing.
“Jason, did you hear that?” Daniel asked.
“Most of it,” he replied through a crackle of static.
“Can you and your men stay on site and keep an eye on this group?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good, I’ve got a feeling that there’s more going on here than a separatist group. That woman seemed more like a cult leader.”
“I got the impression that the men with her were on a major power trip,” Monsen added.
“Could you see inside that building?” Jason asked. “What were the others doing?”
“They were in lines getting food,” Monsen said, “or sitting at long tables eating from bowls. I couldn’t tell if they were talking or socializing.”
“Let’s head back to the White House,” Daniel said. “We’ll figure out what to do from there. Jason, I’ll send Monsen back with Hank to set up a communications relay. Surely the maintenance crew has something up and running by now.”
“Roger that, Eagle One,” Jason said.
***
A week passed and nothing happened. Surveillance on the Andrews community continued, but there seemed to be nothing to report. The people there lived only by the most basic definition of the word. They stood in lines for food, ate at long tables, and stayed at those tables all day long. The woman who had spoken with Daniel stayed in a room that had no windows and could not be seen. She often sent for certain members of the community, but those individuals soon returned to their places at the long tables. Daniel wanted to send in a spy, someone who could report on what exactly was taking place at the base, but he was always voted down when he tried to raise support. His fellow council members argued that sending someone into a community where the individuals seemed to have no rights was too dangerous. They also pointed out that no people had come into the Andrews community in the last several weeks, just as no one had come into their community. Someone showing up now would seem very suspect, at the least. So they waited and watched, but did no more. Daniel also wanted to move in force against the community, but he kept those thoughts to himself. He had no reason to attack the group, they posed no visible threat. If he forced them to join his community, he would be no better than the other militant groups, several of which had been identified, but none were large enough to worry about. The Andrews group had weapons and equipment that could be very useful to Daniel or very dangerous in the wrong hands, but so far they had no real interest in those things, so Daniel had no reason to move against them.
There was good news from the naval base, which was quickly becoming a self-supporting community in its own right. Most of the maintenance team had moved to the base, finding the tools and supplies there to be far superior to anything at the White House. The pilots that Hank was attempting to train were doing very well, at least according to the reports he was sending to Daniel. And transportation by boat was up, due to the fact that the rivers didn’t need to be cleared of wreckage or stalled vehicles the way the streets did. Many of the new citizens of the D.C. community had connected with members of the opposite sex and moved into plush homes along the rivers. Enough time had passed that people were beginning to feel at ease with life in this post-plague world and a sense of normalcy had set in.
Daniel was fed up with his hectic schedule and the constant need to get the council’s approval for everything he wanted to do. They had formed several new positions that would enlarge the council at the next election, and a team had begun meeting to make amendments to the Constitution for a more permanent government. The ball that Daniel had started rolling was now so big and moving so fast that he could only hang on and hope that they were still headed in the right direction. He was ready, however, for a vacation.
When Jason and Hank joined Scott and Daniel in the Oval Office, the fledgling president felt a sense of brotherhood he hadn’t felt since high school. The four had become close, even though Daniel was the only one who wasn’t seeing a woman in his spare time. Jason and Dakota still lived in one of the small bedrooms just across the hall from Daniel. Dakota was more than ten years younger than the security chief, but age no longer seemed to matter, and Dakota had matured in the past months. She had taken the job of curator and decorator of the White House and worked tirelessly to ensure that the center of the new government was all it needed to be. Scott had moved into the Queen’s Bedroom with the podiatrist, Amy. He had even cut back his hours to spend more time with her, claiming that he was learning from his past. He was still Daniel’s executive assistant, but he acted more like a Chief of Staff, only he was the only staff Daniel had. Even working a basic eight hour day, he accomplished twice what anyone else could, his ability to network and organize things amazed Daniel and kept him on top of the constantly shifting hill he was king of. Hank had made nice with the cook at the naval base, and together they effectively ran the entire military organization. Their main focus was training the new pilots and organizing the relay stations so that the radios, which had become the main form of communication, were able to reach the entire community. And finally, they oversaw the river traffic.
Daniel looked at his friends as the three men took seats on the leather sofas and almost felt a twinge of longing. He had made up his mind in the past week as he ran into constant pushback on every idea. It was time to take a vacation. He wanted to go home and see about his parents, although he wasn’t quite sure how to get there. Still, he knew that these men, his friends and partners, the people who would effectively pick up his slack while he was gone, would help him find a way to escape the prison he had build around himself.
“Gentlemen,” Daniel said, “I think it’s time for a vacation.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jason said.
“I’m sure you’re ready for one,” Hank said.
“What are you planning to do?” Scott asked, the only one of the three who didn’t seemed thrilled about the idea.
“Nothing at all,” Hank answered for him. “That’s what a vacation is; time to turn off the noise around you and take off the weights of responsibility that we carry every day. I think one of the reasons the plague took out so many
people was because we work too hard.”
“That’s not a vacation,” Jason said. “A vacation is going on an adventure; doing something you can’t do every day.”
“You guys pipe down,” Scott said. “You didn’t answer my question, what are you planning to do on this vacation?”
“I’m taking time to go on an adventure and do nothing at all,” Daniel said, smiling. “I don’t think I could actually relax if I stayed here and I want to go home for a while.”
“I thought you were living here in D.C. when the plague hit,” Jason said.
“I was, but I want to go home to Arkansas and check on my parents.”
“Do you think they might have survived?” Hank asked.
“No, but I’d like to see that they are properly taken care of.”
“That makes sense,” Hank said.
“How in the world do you plan to get to Arkansas and back?” Scott asked.
“That’s what you guys are for,” Daniel said, smiling. “Surely between the four of us we can figure this out.”
“You could drive,” Jason said, “but it would take you a week just to get there, that’s if you could make it through the Smokey Mountains without too much trouble.”
“A week is really all you could afford to be gone at this time,” said Scott. “Are you sure this can’t wait until after the elections? It’s only a few more months.”
“No way,” Daniel said, totally serious for the first time since his friends had arrived. He dropped down on the sofa beside Jason and ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve got to get some space, get some perspective on things. I know the council was my idea, and I’m sure it is a good thing, but if I have to explain myself to them one more time I’m going to go crazy.”
“I know we need to restructure some things,” Scott said. “Perhaps we could-”
“No, I’m going. I’m getting out of the White House and out of Washington for at least a week. Maybe even ten days.”
“Fine, give us a week or so and we’ll get Camp David ready for you,” Scott said, unperturbed at being cut off before.
“I don’t want to go to Camp David,” Daniel said. “I want to go home.”
“Could you take a boat?” Hank suggested. “There are some nice yachts in the Navy yard. You could go down the coast and up the Mississippi.”
“That would still take a week of travel,” Jason said. “Your best bet is going by air.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Daniel said.
“Out of the question,” Scott said. “Hank is much too busy to leave for a week just to fly you to Arkansas.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Hank,” Daniel said. “I was thinking about one of his students.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Scott was on his feet now, his face red, his voice raised, almost yelling. “None of those guys are ready to fly anywhere, much less fly the president. You’d crash and be killed. What would we do then? Huh? Have you thought about that?”
“Yes, I have,” Daniel said patiently. “And I know that the new pilots couldn’t get their licenses in the old days after only a week, but they’ve focused on nothing else. They’ve been flying every day. And Hank, correct me if I’m wrong, but all they really lack are hours logged in the air. What better way to earn those hours than actually flying me to Arkansas?”
“That’s insane,” Scott said.
“It is a little on the crazy side,” Hank said, “but technically, he’s right.”
“Oh, come on. You know those hours, and I believe it is several hundred, are supposed to be logged with a licensed pilot in case of an emergency. Besides, where are you going to get fuel? And what happens if you break down or crash—you’ve got no way to communicate with us. And, and…”
“I’ve thought about all of that,” Daniel said. “The fact is I’m going one way or another, so you can either help me figure it out, or just cover for me as long as it takes me to get back.”
“I could have a pilot ready in a couple of days,” Hank said, “if one of them’s willing.”
“Security’s not an issue,” Jason said. “And we could sure use some intel from a wider range, especially since the satellites aren’t working properly.”
The other three looked at the security chief.
“The satellites are going offline and we don’t know if it has to do with power or what,” Jason explained. “It could be that our feeds are going through a receiving station, or stations that are losing power. That would explain the outages.”
“You mean we can’t even track his progress by satellite?” Scott asked.
“I don’t think we were ever at that level of competency,” Daniel said.
“No, even after months of training and research, we could never get the calculations right. We need someone who can work out the trigonometry of longitude and latitude and also find the base reference for the satellites orbital position.”
“So this is what we’re doing,” Scott said, aghast. “We’re sending you up in what?”
“Helicopter, the VH-71,” Hank answered. “They’re actually remarkably easy to fly and have a great safety record.”
“Alright, so when do you leave?” Scott said again. “Why not tomorrow? Better yet, why not now? Would you like me to pack you a sack lunch? You could be back by dinner tomorrow night.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Daniel said. “I know you need time to get things ready. But I’m going.”
“I can see that, but I don’t have to like it.”
“Are you just mad because I didn’t invite you?” Daniel teased.
“Oh, shut up,” Scott said as he stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him as he left.
The other three men laughed and laughed.
Chapter 27
At four thousand feet, the world seemed so peaceful and empty that Daniel forgot all his troubles as they flew west toward the Smokey Mountains. It was beautiful country and the weather was bright and clear. Occasionally they passed snarls of traffic below, but most of the highways seemed clear. The pilot who had volunteered was consumed by his instruments and did not talk. Daniel enjoyed the silence and let his thoughts wander. He thought about home, and tried not to worry about what he would find there. Had the neighborhood he had grown up in been looted like the stores in D.C.? Would he find his parents rotten and decayed, or whole and sound like the plague victims in Washington? And then, of course, there was Lana, always hiding just behind whatever subject occupied his mind. She was always present in his thoughts, never fully letting him go, never giving him peace. He longed for her, the sound of her voice, the smell of her cooking, the feel of her lips. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life and the ache of her absence was almost overwhelming. He tried not to think of the Washington community, of the people who had elected him and were now wearing him out with their incessant demands.
He was on a vacation, he told himself. He had never gone on a personal vacation before. As a child he had taken family vacations with his parents, sometimes skiing in the mountains, sometimes visiting the beach in Florida. In college he had always worked through his summer breaks, so he had never understood the need to get away, to do something totally for himself, to escape the world of work and the constant demands of responsibility—even if only for a week. Now, as he rode high above the ground, looking out over the foothills, he felt a wonderful sense of release.
After another two hours of flight it became necessary to find an airport where they could refuel the helicopter. They landed at the airport in Memphis and, after an hour of searching, found a refueling truck. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find keys to the truck, so they settled for flying the helicopter to the truck. The pilot was a superstitious man who insisted that Daniel stand clear of both the chopper and fuel truck. After a bumpy landing and another hour spent trying to get the pump on the fuel truck to work, they finally managed to get the helicopter refueled.
Daniel was from northwest Arkansas, so a
nother hour was required to get them over the right city. They were forced to land in the middle of a major intersection near the abandoned highway. It was fortunate that the roads were relatively clear and they were able to settle onto the roadway. Daniel hadn’t walked home from this location, which was near a convenience store and a hamburger stand, since he was fifteen years old. As a teenager, before he had been able to drive, he used to walk this route with friends, but since then they had widened the road to include four lanes and the convenience store had grown into a strip mall. The burger stand was still there, but it, too, had grown, and now sold fancy sandwiches, ice cream, and other treats he had never dreamed of as a child.
Turning off the main road into the residential subdivision, he was amazed at how rundown the homes seemed. The lawns were overgrown and paint was peeling from the eaves and shutters of the cookie cutter houses. He had always thought that his parents had done well financially, but the neighborhood looked shabby after a few months of neglect. It took several minutes to walk down the overgrown sidewalk to Daniel’s childhood home. When he stopped and looked at the house, he was disappointed. The brick looked old, the garage door seemed a bit cock-eyed, as if someone had tried unsuccessfully to jimmy it. The tree out front, always strong and majestic, now seemed to droop tiredly. Daniel had never seen his father’s lawn unkempt. The door and windows seemed intact, and Daniel took that as a good sign. He had a key in his pocket and fished it out now.
“I’ll just wait out here,” said the pilot who had accompanied Daniel.
After unlocking the door, he swung it open and sniffed the air. There was the scent of dust, of a home that had been left closed up too long, but no smell of human decay. He stepped into the house, which was hot in the humid Arkansas summer afternoon. He felt as if he were in an abstract painting, one where everything was familiar, but not quite right. He noticed that his mother hadn’t changed anything; the furniture was in the same place as his last visit, the pictures on the wall and mantel were the same, but the whole house seemed dead. He realized that it wasn’t the house that had made him feel comfortable, safe, and happy, it was the people in it, the people the house seemed a part of. Now the life was gone and Daniel felt a deep recess of grief opening up inside of him. He wanted to cry, to scream, to curl up on the couch where he had taken Sunday afternoon naps and pretend that nothing had changed.
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