Deluge | Book 2 | Phage

by Kevin Partner

  Finally, hungry but warm beneath their coats and Bobby’s standard-issue blanket, they settled down to sleep. He took one side of the pile of cushions and she the other, but then she pulled his arm over her. “Hold me,” she whispered.

  So he hugged her back, breathing in the warm aroma of her hair and running a lock between his fingers.

  He couldn’t deny his desire. She was a beautiful woman who’d shown the sort of inner strength that he’d always found attractive. But he also knew she’d been through hell, much of it at the hands of other men, and this was neither the time nor the place to succumb to his base instincts. This was a time to rebuild her trust in his gender.

  She pulled him yet closer and whispered, “Good night.”

  In the night he awoke to her quiet sobbing.

  And then, just as the first traces of dawn peeked in through the window…

  “Oh, my God!!”

  He snapped awake and pulled his arm out from under her, scrabbling in his pack for his knife. “What?”

  She twisted around. “Your partner…Maria’s mother? Did you tell me what her name was? It’s not Ellen, is it?”

  “Everyone calls her Ellie.”

  “But Ellen’s her real name?”

  “Yeah. Why?” He was wide awake now.

  “Bobby, I’ve seen her! I’ve seen Maria!”

  He sat up, mouth wide with shock. “Where?”

  “I saw her photo on the wall! And then in my dream. She called…”

  “When I was on the stretcher!”

  Now it was her turn to look like a fish. “How did you know?”

  “I had the same dream!”

  The pain of hope renewed stabbed at him as his heart raced.

  “You saw her photo?”

  “It was the last one. The one I memorized so we’d know where to start again in the morning. I saw it in my dream and realized I’d seen the girl in the photo before. How long before curfew ends?”

  Bobby pressed the button on his watch. “Jeez, it’s over an hour!”

  She pulled him into a hug and they settled back down onto the makeshift bed.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “And Maria. Then let’s go find her.”

  Chapter 17

  Haystack

  “There it is!”

  Bobby pulled the postcard from the wall. It was Maria, true enough, but no wonder he hadn’t recognized his daughter to begin with. Her long hair had been cut short by someone with no expertise, and her blue eyes looked out at him with accusatory desperation. There was no sign of the vivacious young girl he’d taken to Ventura Pier for a day out. It felt like it was so long ago…

  “Ellen Fitzgerald,” he said. “So, she took her mother’s first name.”

  Eve pulled the next card down off the wall. “Kathi Fitzgerald.”

  Bobby took the postcard and looked at the face of the person who’d taken his daughter. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with gray roots in her brown hair and wearing metal-framed glasses. To Bobby, she looked like a librarian. And yet she’d taken his child.

  “Why did she take Maria?”

  “Perhaps she found her and brought her here to protect her?” Eve suggested.

  “But why change her name?”

  Eve shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she was worried that they’d be split up.”

  “But she doesn’t look like Maria’s mother.”

  Eve made a one syllable chuckle. “Would her real mother? I mean, didn’t you say Ellie’s got a pale complexion?”

  Bobby looked again at the photo of his daughter. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true. She gets her skin color from me.” He held the two photographs alongside each other. “How do we find out where they are now?”

  “Well, we’d have to go to the admin block and hope they’ll tell us. But at least we know for sure that she was here and she was…”

  “Alive,” Bobby said.

  The camp was made up of three main zones. The bulk of it sprawled over Central Park, a tent city provided by the army and supplemented by the stock of the local camping supplies company. To the north, across Bouquet Creek, a few residential streets survived on the high ground, looking out over their drowned neighbors. Most of these houses were occupied by the people who owned them, with the remainder in the hands of the military.

  Colonel Kirby had set up her headquarters in a retail zone that bordered Central Park, and the administration office was in one corner of an empty unit that had once been home to Toys “R” Us. Bobby and Eve made their way through a parking lot in which the usual stationary consumer cars had been replaced by Army vehicles moving stores into the stockrooms of Office Max and Trader Joe’s.

  Bobby had been given an ID card when he’d volunteered to work as an engineer, but it only got them to the main checkpoint leading into the retail park.

  “What’s your business?” The female soldier watched as the last person she’d allowed in made his way toward the headquarters building.

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” Bobby said, handing over the postcards.

  She gave them a cursory look. “This your wife?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “No, is this your wife?” she said, holding up the postcard. “You’re Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s my daughter’s photo, but it’s not her name, and that’s not her mother. I don’t know who she is.”

  The soldier looked doubtfully at him. “So, where is her mom?”

  “We don’t live together. She runs a boat business in Florida.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. But why would this woman—you say you don’t know her?—why would she take your daughter?” Then, before Bobby could open his mouth to reply, she sighed. “But, hey, I’ve seen plenty of messed-up things these past couple weeks. Here’s a pass to the admin block, and one for your girlfriend.”

  “She isn’t my girlf…”

  The soldier smiled and winked. “Sure. Well, good luck. I hope you find your daughter. Somebody deserves a break around here.”

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait in line.”

  Bobby groaned when he saw the queue that snaked its way back and forth until it ended at a pair of desks. “Look, why don’t you head back? I’m going to be here for hours. Michael and Josh will be worried about you.”

  She shook her head. “They’ll be at work.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Michael got hired as a C# programmer. Seems the bean counters need to be able to count more beans. Josh can go with him.”

  Bobby made his way to the end of the queue. Then he edged back again when he saw, and smelled, the man in front of him. “Are you serious? Why have you waited till now to tell me?” He liked Eve, he really did, but this habit of hers of drip-feeding him information when it was convenient was starting to get on his nerves. That’s assuming she was telling the truth. He just couldn’t conceive of a mother leaving her child behind. Then he thought of Ellie. Sure, she’d left Maria in Bobby’s care, but that was before the flood. If she was still alive—and it was a big if—she’d be making her way west. Maybe she was already here.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes dropping to the floor. “I guess I’m frightened to say the wrong thing. Michael and Josh, they don’t need me. They’re better off without me.”

  “Don’t talk like that! We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  She gave a shy smile. “Well, you might not have made it, that’s true. But Michael and Josh both owe you their lives.”

  “And I owe them. Your place is with them, Eve. That’s where a mother should be.”

  As he looked into her eyes, he saw Ellie and the familiar lethal cocktail of longing, fear and guilt poisoned the well.

  “Not all mothers. You don’t know me, Bobby. If you did, you’d understand.”

  “So, tell me,” he said, Ellie’s face merging back into the pretty, petite Angela-from-The-Office lookalike.

  She shook her head
and pulled herself into his arm.

  “Mighty pretty lady you got yerself there.”

  Bobby glanced at the next man in line. “She’s not my lady, but thanks.”

  “Well, you sure could’ve fooled me. Linwood Witt,” he said, thrusting his hand out. Bobby took it reluctantly. “My friends call me Lin. My best buddies call me Half.”

  “Bobby Rodriguez.”

  “You a military man?”

  “No,” Bobby said, spotting the trap as it was laid. But it looked as though he had a long wait so… “You?”

  A wide smile revealed two missing front teeth and a jaw full of fillings and rot. “Sure. US Marine Corps. Got my leg shot off in Helmand and, well, here I am.”

  Bobby couldn’t help looking down, just as the man lifted the left leg of his stained, dark brown pants to reveal a grimy metallic ball joint that disappeared into his black sneakers.

  “Might have been worse. Just made a mess of my foot. Vince, he was right beside me. Stepped on the mine.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bobby said as the line shuffled along a couple of yards. Witt’s prosthetic made a small squeaking noise as he put his weight on it.

  “No need. Betcha wondering what I’m doin’ here.”

  Bobby nodded.

  “I’m signin’ up again. I figure they need experienced vets to train up all the new recruits.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth. “I reckon they’re buildin’ an army.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the country’s wide open. Maybe the Chinese will take their chance.” He looked into Bobby’s eyes as if weighing him up. “Or maybe we need to protect ourselfs. Best way is through a standin’ army.”

  Bobby had given almost no thought to the international situation. He’d had enough on his plate just surviving and looking for Maria, but he couldn’t begin to guess how other countries would have been affected. In his mind’s eye, when he thought of China he saw the Great Wall and the mountains it sat in. Was all China as mountainous? What if it had survived more or less unscathed? Would they look to take over the US? Could they have had a role in all this? He shook his head before he went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

  “Well, good luck with that,” he said.

  But he didn’t get off that lightly. Over the course of the next hour, he came to know more about Witt than he was comfortable with. Invalided out of the military—though Bobby suspected there was more to that than he was prepared to admit—Linwood had drifted from one retraining scheme to another, before falling under the “evil influence” of drink.

  “But I found the Lord, so I don’t drink no more,” he said, his breath testifying for the prosecution. “How about you? What are you doin’ here?”

  “In this queue? Looking for my daughter.” He gave a summary, stopping when the older man’s blue eyes began watering.

  “It’s okay. But I sure hope you get to find your Maria.”

  They finally hit the head of the line, and Bobby shook Witt’s hand as he strode expertly over to the desk.

  Almost immediately, the second desk became free, and Bobby took a seat.

  A uniformed clerk looked briefly up at him, his gaze lingering a little longer on Eve who sat in the chair beside him. “Yes?”

  “I’d like to find out any information on these people.”

  He handed over the postcards as Linwood Witt’s raised voice carried over from the desk beside them. “Ain’t you listenin’? Two tours in Afghan and an IED to remember it by. And you don’t think I can help?”

  Bobby tried to focus on the bored man across the desk. “This is my daughter. This woman has changed her identity and I want to track her down.”

  “I’m sorry, but how do I know you’re her father?”

  “You could try looking at the photo,” Bobby said, with more snark than intended.

  The clerk’s face went rigid. “I cannot assign resources to this, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m a goddamn corporal in the Marine Corps. Yeah, retired. It was my leg that got blown off, not my brain!”

  “Then let us look through the records,” Bobby said.

  The clerk shook his head. “Out of the question.”

  A chair scraped as it was pushed back from the next desk along. The clerk in front of Bobby had opened his drawer and was removing a sidearm.

  “You son of a b—”

  Bobby put his hands out. “Please don’t, I’ll get him away. But don’t hurt him. He’s been through enough. Let’s not turn this into another tragedy.”

  The clerk looked from Bobby to the now-vertical Witt, who was pointing his walking stick at the stone-faced man opposite him as he, too, drew his weapon.

  Bobby got up and went over to Witt. “Come on, Lin. Let’s go somewhere and talk this through.”

  “But, Bob, they ain’t listenin’! He’s treatin’ me like garbage.”

  Bobby leaned close, inhaling a mix of sweat and cheap liquor. “They’ll shoot you, Lin. And I don’t want that.”

  “Why? What’s the point if I can’t help them?”

  “Then help me.” He didn’t know why he said it except that it was the only thing he thought would save the man as he heard running boots on the polished floor.

  Witt looked over Bobby’s shoulder and deflated, allowing himself to be guided away.

  “And don’t come back!” barked the stony-faced clerk.

  Witt tightened again, but Bobby accelerated until they were beyond the line, standing in a corner.

  He turned as Eve touched him on the shoulder, glancing over at where someone else was now sitting at the desk talking to the clerk.

  He cursed under his breath. “Now we’ll have to go to the back of the line.”

  “I sure am sorry, Bob,” Witt said. “But if these bozos don’t want me, least I can do is help you.”

  But Eve was holding up a small key. “He gave me this,” she said. “I think he realized you’d saved him from doing something he’d regret.”

  “What is it?”

  “The key to the records room.”

  The room looked as though it had once been the store manager’s office, though now the desk had disappeared beneath plastic boxes stamped with Office Depot.

  “Looks like they’re stored in alphabetical order,” Eve said.

  “How can I help?” Witt asked from the doorway.

  By taking a shower, Bobby thought. “I guess we’re looking for the box with the Fs. You can help us look for it.”

  Witt shuffled in, shaking his head. “See, this is what you get when you use part-timers. Jeez, what if the colonel asked for somethin’ from in here? You’d have more chance findin’ a virgin in a brothel.”

  “You saw the line out there,” Eve said. “They’ll have another ton of paperwork to file by the end of today.”

  “Good grief, some of this is classified,” Witt said, pointing up at a closet with box files balanced on top.

  Eve shook her head. “Let’s focus on what we’re here to find.”

  But Bobby found his eyes drawn to the boxes, and to the loose sheets piled up alongside them, plainly waiting to be filed. He knew he should be looking for the F box, but he couldn’t help himself, so he pretended to be looking for Office Depot crates, while he moved steadily toward the papers.

  “Bobby!” Eve hissed as he picked them up and began checking each sheet.

  “It’s okay, I won’t be a minute.”

  He sighed with disappointment. What was he expecting to find, after all? He’d been watching too many movies. Each sheet had a stamp and a signature—most of them from the staff office itself. Stocktaking reports and projections of supply needs for the coming weeks. Screening criteria for people seeking to come into the camp. Policies for removing others. He’d have been shocked by what he was reading, but it only confirmed his suspicions. He learned nothing new.

  At the bottom of the pile was a single sheet with what looked like a series of headlines. “United States Department of Justice” was written at
the top and, underneath “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Science and Petrochemical Industry Environmental Team. At large:

  Lundberg E, COO, location unknown

  Rath F, CSO, location unknown

  Bobby’s eye’s scanned down the list of people the FBI was hunting, the equivalent of a wanted poster.

  Baxter, Edwin, Exobiology team, update - believed located.

  Sought in connection:

  Baxter, Joel, Actor

  Baxter, Jodi, Minor

  Fischer, Ellen, Accomplice.

  Bobby’s jaw fell open. “Oh, my God. Ellie.”

  Chapter 18

  Patrick

  “You’re sure about this, are you?” Patrick Reid said, with little hope in his voice.

  She didn’t dignify his question with a reply, continuing to squint at the map Jodi had made. Instead, he went over to the window and pulled the curtain right back, producing a little more light in the monitor room. Blankets lay in a heap on Buzz’s camp bed, but they hadn’t seen much of him over the past twenty-four hours.

  “Do you think the kid can do it?”

  “Who?”

  Reid gestured at the door. “Max. He’s been shut in there since yesterday morning. All I can hear is sound of a computer keyboard.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Ellie said. “Sure, it’d be great if we had a more accurate map than Jodi’s paint-by-numbers version here, but either way, we’re heading west.”

  “Without knowing how much fuel we’re going to need.”

  She looked up from the map, that look on her face. “Look, I’ve told you a dozen times, you don’t have to come with me.”

  “And I’ve told you a dozen and one times that you’re not going without me. I just think we need to proceed with caution.”

  She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I know. It won’t help Maria if we run out of gas before making landfall. The prevailing wind is easterly, so we won’t make it by sail.”