*
THE STREETS WERE dark ahead of Curfew and Tom didn’t know why he was surprised Wilhelm followed him out of the dinner theater.
“Tom,” the Councilor said. “Wait up.”
“You want to lecture me some more?”
“Don’t I have a right?”
“A ‘right’?” Tom replied and frowned. “You can have an opinion. I didn’t vote for you.”
“But would you?”
The earnest question paused Tom’s desire to simply hurry home as fast as he could through the quietening City.
“If things like this continue,” Wilhelm said, “we’ll have to move towards some kind of elections faster than we ever planned. It might be the only way to avert something much worse.”
“You . . . planned on elections?”
Tom’s question was loud enough Ortega heard it as he stepped out uninvited to join them. Wilhelm cast the Chief a perfunctory look and swiveled back to his self-anointed “special investigator” Tom.
“We never really discussed those sorts of options, no,” Wilhelm said. “We’ve been too busy. There’s always too much to do. Maybe one day, I thought . . . But some kind of democratic election’s better than an armed coup, wouldn’t you say?”
“You think the risk’s that great?”
“The Councilor’s jumping at his shadow,” Ortega said as he tried to keep it breezy.
“I’m not jumping at shadows,” Wilhelm said. “You saw Madeline Plume in there tonight, Chief. She’s stirring because Rhymes isn’t getting his way. I don’t think he realizes he’s a billion years old now and no alive one thinks his way anymore.”
“Then why’re you so tetchy?” Ortega asked.
“Because ideas like that grow legs,” Wilhelm said.
He motioned to draw the Chief’s attention to Tom.
“I expect you two to work together, right?”
“Sure,” Ortega said.
He and Tom shared a look of mutual dislike which eluded Wilhelm only because he didn’t want to know. Muttering something about his wife home in bed sick, the Councilor gave one final try at his usual beaming confidence and finished far too quickly for it to have a chance as he turned and hurried back into the building.
*
“I’M WALKING FROM here,” Tom said and left the alleyway for the street, but Ortega followed, eventually giving a mock-exasperated sigh before chasing genially after him.
“Hold your horses there, Vanicek,” Ortega said and chuckled.
“Too soon?”
“I didn’t fall off a fucking horse,” Tom lied. “I barely escaped alive from that fucking clusterfuck and you’re the one who set it up.”
“Why didn’t you rat on me, then?”
“To who?” Tom asked.
Luke’s description of a “sad pirate” flashed into Tom’s mind as Ortega did a pretty good mime of a sad clown pulling out empty pockets.
“You tell me, Tommy Gun,” the Chief snickered. “Who do you fancy? Wilhelm? He likes you. Lowenstein? They’re schtum. That’s the word, right?”
“I didn’t figure you for a pot-head,” Tom replied.
Ortega LOLed at that.
“Whatever gets you through,” he answered. “Best drugs I ever got was in the military. It’s hard adjusting, but we grow that shit now, and we make a tidy profit.”
“‘We’?”
Ortega shrugged.
“Pamela says hi, by the way.”
“I’m glad she made it back,” Tom said. “That woman has balls of steel. You didn’t think to tell someone what happened?”
“I did.”
“Who?”
What Lucas told him dawned on Tom again.
“Oh,” Tom said. “You came and saw my son.”
“Yes I did,” Ortega replied. “Or did you want them little cuties thinking you quit the City on ‘em for good?”
“Don’t you give a shit about sending MacLaren to his death and now letting him take the rap for the whole thing?”
“Sounds like some good came out of it, if this deal you’re talking about’s legit.”
Tom couldn’t frame an adequate reply. His gaze narrowed.
“Stay away from my family,” he scowled. “And keep me out of any other schemes you’re cooking up. I have to beat that Curfew.”
He had the distinct sense of Ortega allowing him to leave, which Tom didn’t like one bit. He felt the Safety Chief’s eyes between his shoulder blades all the way until he turned out of sight down the next side street.
*
TOM MANAGED TO get through two sets of squats before the desire to throw up overtook him and he sat on the scrubbed-clean toilet with his right arm in a retightened sling. Taking care with his breathing, by the time he ventured out into the common area, his two children sat on stools at the kitchen counter as if obediently, breakfasts already devoured and cleaned, Tom’s going cold in a bowl beside them.
Thanks to Tom’s mystery ride, they were much better provisioned now, not that it was reflected at all in the bland oatmeal waiting for him. Spending the bulk of the past two days eating and trying to heal, the porridge glue didn’t hold much appeal. And Luke and his sister watching his every move didn’t encourage Tom to take his time over coffee and the two-day-old newspaper. The pair radiated pants-wetting excitement.
“You want to go now?” he asked.
“Hell yes,” Lilianna said.
“Let’s go,” Lucas said. “We can catch him while he’s still at the Night Market.”
“You sure you don’t want to go to classes?” Tom asked instead.
Lucas’ broad grin dimmed as he shot his dad the stink-eye.
“Dad.”
“What?” Tom said, clearly glad just for such a mundane thing as good-naturedly teasing his son. “You’re the tough guy, right? Your sister’s convinced I’m dead and you kept going to School?”
“There were things I had to do,” Lucas answered lamely. “And we might’ve needed the rations.”
“How’re things with your buddy Kevin?”
“Dad,” Lucas said. “Can we go? You know I’ve never seen the Internet.”
Tom moved the oatmeal from the bench to put it back in the larder untouched.
“And you’re not going to today,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“Well, you know,” Luke replied unfazed. “The Internet or . . . whatever it is.”
The mystery 4WD also had a military anorak packed in it, and the distinctive ASAT camouflage made Tom feel ironically high profile wearing such tactical gear. But he needed a new coat. The day outside was cool and blustery, some of the trees already losing leaves. He imagined the streets colder still and then he shivered.
Einstein was more than happy to pack up his post-dawn efforts trolling early risers at the Night Market. He lashed his stall back together and left it under the general watchfulness of the trooper patrols encouraged with the occasional free meal to keep the market area in their sights.
Like many in the City, the stoop-shouldered old Asian man lived close to his work. Einstein led them across The Mile and up the fire escape of a soot-stained three-story tenement. The ground floor was hollowed out like a bomb site, the whole area a hive of activity with people going back and forth from a series of industrial ovens sending a smoky heat haze out across the nearby street. The smell of roasting meat filled the air and Lucas chuckled without propriety, wondering aloud how anyone could live with such a stink. Einstein only shot the boy an unimpressed look.
“Oh, my place not good enough for young sir?”
He unlocked a chipped, green-painted door and let them into his small quarters with a dismissive wave as if no longer bothering to excuse the hovel inside.
“So this is bachelor life in the City, huh?” Tom asked.
The two-room dwelling was sectioned out of a bigger apartment using sheets of plywood and a pair of stolen doors, though not the ones from Tom’s building. The noise of a muffled conversation played th
rough one of the thin walls. They didn’t have any insight into Einstein’s sleeping arrangements, and maybe that was for the best, but the room into which he invited them had couches lining every available wall, as well as a trolley table with a personal computer tower, monitor and keyboard neatly stacked together and masked like a damsel under one of the old ragged lace curtains.
“Why do you even have a computer?” Lilianna asked.
Tom was curious for the reply, but Einstein only tittered.
“I’m Asian,” he said. “I don’t need an excuse. Where’s this disk?”
Tom extracted the DVD from inside his camouflage jacket and Einstein motioned for them to sit as he adjusted a pair of jumper cables, hummed to himself, then fired up the PC.
“It’s running Windows 10, so this might take a while,” he said.
Tom laughed, but it hurt so much he had to stop, and he palmed off Lilianna trying to help him into a chair by taking one of the sofas instead, sinking further into it than he expected and unearthing a dirty article of stained clothing he was worried to touch. Plastic containers beneath the room’s twin windows grew an assortment of weird sprouts and fungi, though at least one of the cacti looked like it would be better for recreational medicine than nutrition.
It was good of Einstein to let them into his sanctum, and Tom ventured into it with the spirit of nothing left to lose. It was only as he sat there, aware of the broadening silence, time traveling at the mere sound of the DVD drive firing up, that he really started contemplating the gravity of the moment. The children, of course, sat with their eyes fixed on the screen, Lucas not even checking where he was going as the boy sat down, locked on the blue start-up screen and the interminable waiting prompts before the desktop finally sprang into life.
Einstein faffed around with the mouse for a minute, tutting to himself as he opened several windows and leaned back to look at Tom.
“What are you expecting this to be, exactly?” he asked. “It just looks like a cached website.”
“A website?”
Lucas stood from his seat and pumped a fist.
“We’ve got the Internet! Fuck yeah!”
“Sit down, kid,” his father said with a distracted chuckle.
He motioned at the screen so familiar and yet jarring, given the setting.
“Can you load it?”
“Easy.”
And then he double-clicked.
*
THE WEBSITE WAS the entire cache of a self-contained intranet forum – and the latest posts were only a year old.
Tom ignored the others’ chatter to eventually take over the PC’s controls from Einstein, muscle memory not losing an inch as he navigated through the pages and resumed his journalistic scanning of the text focused on only the most relevant parts.
The forum was hosted in a facility most users called “the GW”.
The USS aircraft carrier George Washington, in fact.
And, like something from one of Colonel Rhymes’ wet dreams, every person posting on the forum signed off with military ranks. Tom exhaled heavily as he drank it all in.
They were all sorts. Air Force. Navy. Rangers. Marines. In fact, it quickly became apparent ranks and designations had a greater significance, with even self-professed supply clerks and ordnance and logistics personnel signing off forum posts with full rank, name and serial number like it was some kind of social proof.
And their posts focused on only one thing: piecing together scraps of intel about the reason for the end of the world.
“Holy shit,” Tom said and rocked back on Einstein’s creaky swivel seat. “This is all the answers.”
“Answers to what?” Einstein asked.
“Everything,” Tom said. “Or at least some of it. Look here.”
He dialed back a few pages, clicked a link, and dragged the page to the top.
“Pinned posts. A FAQ. There’s a file here: Everything We Know So Far.”
“Other survivors, dad?”
Lilianna and Tom swapped looks.
,“Some of those entries are from what would’ve been last year, right?” she asked. “That means there’s people.”
“Possibly a lot more people,” Tom said.
Einstein barked a strange laugh.
“Everyone in the City will want to know what you got here.”
The trader looked Tom up and down.
“Did I really agree to this for just a fishing rod?”
“Listen,” Tom said. “If you can tell me how we can rig this up to print these files, I’ll give you almost anything.”
“You’d let me date your daughter?”
“Ew,” Lilianna cried. “I have a say in things, you know.”
Einstein motioned Tom back with a chuckle, resuming his seat on a second stool near the door as if guarding it. Tom slowly averted a hostile gaze, not thrilled with the trader’s sense of humor, which was neither funny, nor really a joke at all.
“You know, if you want to keep this to yourself, you’ve got to cut me in,” Einstein said matter-of-factly. “Printing all those pages out, that’s a whole other thing. You should ask Delroy Earle. What the hell I need a printer for?”
“Dad,” Lilianna said. “You can’t go to Earle. He’ll be the first one to blab.”
Tom nodded, thoughtful, and resumed his trawl, but the others’ appetite waned without any PowerPoint slides or shiny graphics to keep them informed. Tom finally wrangled the computer for himself, while Luke went to classes after all, deflated and morose, while Lilianna departed on “errands”. The skip in his daughter’s step reminded Tom about her offer from the Enclave, and then of course he remembered Beau.
And filed that one away for later.
He turned back to the computer and soon lost himself in the screen.
*
From: Petty Officer First Class Diane Higgs
To: USSGW Enlisted Forum
Time: 0645 Day +1521 ATA
Subject: Stateside contact
God bless America.
Information flowing to the Inner Circle about the new contact is limited, but I am collating all confirmed details in this thread. Please add only what we know for fact. We will continue to update this document as new information arrives and is verified.
USSGW departed Boeing Island at 0735 on +1516 ATA after what is believed to be visual reconnaissance.
We’ve been out to sea a long time. Looks like some Virginia and North Carolina survivors have consolidated.
Congress has classified the Raptor pilot’s report. Here’s what we know.
A visual flyover of the defunct Cherry Point Marine Air Corps Station showed the base and nearby infrastructure on the Neuse River appeared to be in recent use. Locations between Cherry Point and the coast, the town of New Bern, and possibly as far north as Washington township on the Pamlico River showed signs of agriculture and cleared roadways.
One of our members received verbal confirmation from the pilot 2Lt Sanjeewa himself. Not much was disclosed due to reigning policy and concerns about the Congress reaction. Flyboy seemed spooked.
Based on the reconnaissance mission it is believed planning for contact is already underway.
We are also hearing Congress might push for another suicide run at Newport. Fingers crossed two years has taken care of that nightmare. As you would all agree, we lost too many good men and women during the exodus for another SNAFU. Stay tuned.
While in the galley, Sanjeewa told our member he eyeballed individual survivors using horse and carts. The term, “Gone full Amish” may have been applied.
These updates have been relayed to our loyal personnel who remained behind in Europe.
We may have boots on American soil by month’s end. God bless.
Higgs.
*
AT SUNSET, TOM rose once more from the settee and struggled into his jacket, wearing it just to conceal the handgun he now carried on him as a matter of course.
Several scraggly young Urchins lingered suspiciou
sly close to the parked 4WD which still occupied the street corner. The nightly campers setting up nearby – as well as the wagon’s now well-demonstrated security alarm – were an adequate deterrent, especially with nothing else of value inside the vehicle itself.
Hugh’s Ancestrals, as they were apparently called, held their gatherings at a small historic building a few blocks back from The Mile in what was once a brick church, then a gymnasium, later renovated as a funky bistro, and then as a suite for backpackers. It carried its faded historic signage still – honoring the building’s ancestry, as it were – and apart from the main church entrance, the brick-walled enclosure had green-painted gates wide enough for a truck around one side. One of those gates stood perpetually open, granting access to the inner courtyard for the various comers and goers among their gathering. Several men walked towards the compound ahead of Tom, and he fell into their step, following through the open gate and into a rear brick-paved courtyard.
Recent tarpaulins sheltered the enclosure from the weather for the sake of several sets of outdoors weight-training gear and a big circle of sand designed like a wrestling ring. Tom’s eyes widened at the weights, similar to the ones he’d once owned, back in the mountains, but he followed the smell of incense and the other men as they filed into the side door and the candle-lit gloom of the old church itself.
The Ancestrals’ shrine retained a monastic feel with the industrial brick and polished wooden floors divided by several wide passageways into a main hall, and then another almost equally big room set up as a boxing gym with a full padded ring. Glass oil lamps and rough-looking candles provided plenty of light.
Numerous low conversations drew Tom through into the nave, with thirty-or-so men and a half-dozen women gathered in front of two rows of pews, no altar in sight. Two short plinths were set for the occasion with a candle-lit statue each, the figures garlanded with flowers. A neatly-kept Japanese-American man stood with his hands together as he talked quietly with several of his apparent followers, his tailored goatee all that could be seen of his face because of a fraying ecru cassock with a hood worn over the top of his street gear. A necklace of thick wooden beads hung about his neck and almost to his belt. Although there was no altar, at the far back of the room, beside the door to the old priest’s quarters, a low wooden bench was also lit by candles as well as a low-burning oil lamp set amid fresh cuttings before a pair of mounted Japanese swords. The light caught on a framed photo amid the setting, obscuring whatever it showed, but Tom was reminded again of the shrine at Hugh’s house. The statues honoring the two slain men were the same.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 47