by Mark Kelly
“Yep, he’s Warrant Officer Abrams now,” Dines said, nodding, “but he’s still a dick.”
“And you’re still a puta,” Lucia muttered under her breath as Dines glared back at her.
Mei sighed. Oh, for God sakes. Would the two of them ever stop? They’d been at each other since the very first time they met.
“When do you think you will leave?” she asked Baker, changing the subject.
“Tomorrow or the next day.”
“Really?”
Her heart sank. She knew the day was coming, but wasn’t prepared for it to be so soon.
Baker pursed his lips and said, “Afraid so. General Leduc radioed this morning and said he might have a lead on Raine’s location. We’re heading back to the base now. After that, we’ll probably head east and then south. I want to stay away from Toronto. The general says it’s still a no-man’s land.”
“There’s an Indian Reserve near Cornwall,” Mei suggested, remembering Michael Otetiani and his sister and wondering how they were doing. “They might be able to help you get into the States.”
“Lucia mentioned them too,” Baker said, nodding. “She thinks she can remember the route back, but even if they can’t help, I’m hopeful we’ll be able to find a boat large enough to carry the bikes and make it across ourselves.”
“Before you go, I have something for you,” Mei said, turning and running back into the house. She returned a minute later with the hand-carved wooden walking stick that had once belonged to Michael Otetiani’s grandfather.
“Here,” she said, offering it to Lucia.
Lucia’s eyes widened in surprise. She shook her head and pushed it away. “I can not take it. It is yours.”
Mei pressed the smooth wooden cane into Lucia’s hands and folded her fingers over it.
“It’s ours—not mine. Joseph didn’t give it to me; he gave it to us—all of us. It helped us get into Canada, and it might help you and Baker get back across the border into the States. Before Kateri’s grandfather died, he told me I should only give it to someone who had helped me.”
She squeezed Lucia’s hands and spoke softly. “There is no one who has helped me more than you. You gave me something to hold on to while we were quarantined at Bellevue, and you’ve helped me every day since. Please, take it.”
Lucia pressed her lips together. She nodded and took the walking stick from Mei. They gazed at each other until Mei wiped a tear away with the back of her hand and stretched forward to hug Lucia.
“Thank you.”
3
Seeing the general
Knowing it would make her sad, which in turn would make her angry, Lucia refused to look back as she and Baker rode their motorcycles down the long driveway and away from Mei and the others. She regretted not saying anything, but it was Mei who had helped her, kept her alive and gave her a reason to live—not the other way around.
Baker slowed his bike. He tilted his head to the side and glanced at her. She couldn’t see his face behind his helmet’s mask but knew he was asking if she was okay.
She nodded and gunned the throttle. “Race you,” she yelled in a choked voice as she sped past him.
Two hours later they reached the base. A soldier stepped out of the gatehouse and yanked his mask up to cover his mouth and nose. He waved his rifle, warning them to stop.
“Base is closed. Military personnel only. Turn around and go back the way you came.”
“Jesus H. Christ—what the hell is wrong with you?” a voice bellowed from inside the guardhouse.
Startled, Lucia glanced over to see Chenney, the soldier who had first allowed them onto the base, scowling through the window at the guard who had stopped them.
“Don’t you know who they are?” Chenney shouted and disappeared from the window, reappearing at the door a second later. He marched over and yanked the guard’s flimsy face mask down. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re immune now, and it’s because of them. They’re the ones who got the girl back.”
Chenney left the soldier’s side and walked over to where Lucia and Baker were stopped. “Sorry, it’s the noobs’ first day outside the wire. He still hasn’t figured out he doesn’t need the mask anymore.”
The guard’s eyes widened as he realized who Baker and Lucia were. He snapped to attention and saluted Baker.
“I’m sorry, sir…I didn’t recognize you.”
“Don’t worry about it, soldier,” Baker said with a smile. “But it’s her you should salute. She did all the work. I was just there for the ride.”
Confused, the young guard turned to face Lucia. He started to raise his hand in a salute, stopping mid-way as he realized she was a civilian.
“Uh, sorry, Ma’am. On behalf of all the men on base, I’d like to thank—”
“Tell them to open the gate,” Lucia said, scowling. The last thing she wanted to be doing right now was standing around listening to this fool blather on about nothing. If Leduc had news about Raine’s location, she wanted to hear about it as soon as possible.
“Yes, Ma’am, right away,” the young soldier said, turning to shout at the men inside and nearly tripping over his own feet as he took one final awe-struck look over his shoulder at Baker and Lucia.
Chenney rolled his eyes. “Christ almighty, next he’ll be expecting you two to walk on water.”
Baker chuckled and then turned serious. “How many people have been inoculated since we left?”
“Everyone pulling duty outside the wire got a dose,” Chenney replied. “Guess that makes it about twenty here at the base and another five up at the lab.”
Baker frowned. “I thought the numbers would be higher. Is there a problem?”
“Don’t know anything about that,” Chenney said. “It’s above my pay-grade and Abrams and the General ain’t talking. All I know is I never thought I’d be so happy pulling guard duty.”
“Why’s that?”
“I got my dose. Now, I don’t have to worry about the bug anymore, just them,” Chenney said, glancing down the road at a group of fifteen or twenty people clustered around a handful of tents. Most of the crowd was sitting in a semi-circle listening to a man in the middle of the circle preach.
“Who are they?” Baker asked.
“Just a bunch of nuts,” Chenney replied. “Every morning when the sun rises, they chant for a few minutes and then one of them—a different one each day—walks up to the gate and asks for Ushas.”
“Who is Ushas?”
“The girl you brought here. That’s what they call her.”
“What do they want?” Lucia snapped, suddenly wary.
Chenney shrugged. “Same as everyone, I guess, to be cured. They started showing up here a couple days after you left. They’re a pain in the ass, but I think they’re harmless.”
Harmless had a way of becoming harmful, Lucia thought. She cast a wary eye down the road and noticed Baker doing the same.
“Do you want to check them out?” he asked.
She nodded as the base gate clanked open.
“Now or later?”
“Later. Let’s go see Leduc first.”
The door to General Leduc’s office was closed, but unlike the last time they visited, this time the general’s bespectacled assistant, Cox, jumped up from his desk and smiled as he dashed towards them.
“General Leduc has good news, very good news,” the man said with giddy enthusiasm. “Come on, I’ll let him tell you himself.” He knocked on the general’s door and poked his head inside.
“Baker and the woman are here to see you, sir.”
The woman?
Lucia scowled at the back of Cox’s head. My name is Lucia—not the woman. She almost said it aloud.
“Don’t just stand there, show them in,” the general yelled at his aide.
Cox stepped aside, allowing them into Leduc’s office. Other than a new 8x10 photograph hanging on the wall next to a Canadian flag, the office hadn’t changed since the last time they visited.
&n
bsp; Lucia stared at the photograph, not recognizing the general’s son, at first. The man in the picture had a white hard hat on his head and wore a pair of dark blue coveralls. He was smiling into the camera, his face dirty with mud and grease that must have come from the gigantic drill casing his arms were wrapped around. He looked nothing like Little Mouse, the man who had died helping rescue Saanvi.
Leduc saw her looking at the photograph and said, “I found that in an old photo album. Dylan must have sent it to his mother. He left home at seventeen to go out west and find work in the oil fields. We didn’t hear from him for years. He was pig-headed and stubborn—a lot like his old man.”
Leduc paused for a moment and looked fondly at the photograph. Then he turned back, all business and focused his attention on Baker.
“Do you remember that kid I told you about—the Comms Tech? It turns out he’s a smart little bugger. When Raine called back, the kid was able to trace the phone number through the network. Turns out the phone Raine used wasn’t military. It was a civilian unit connected to the Iridium network.”
Baker looked perplexed. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would he use the public satellite network?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Leduc replied. “You said he was a spook. Maybe he thought it was safer hiding in plain sight, or maybe he just wanted to keep his operation off the government’s books. Whatever the reason, we should be thankful the unit wasn’t hardened. The phone’s GPS was disabled, but the kid was able to reactivate it.”
Leduc reached into his desk’s top drawer and removed a slip of paper. He slid it across the desk to Baker.
37.6319° N, 97.2515° W
39.1974° N, 96.5847° W
“What is that?” Lucia asked, reading the handwritten scribbles on the piece of paper.
“The latitude and longitude for the two locations we tracked Raine to,” Leduc answered. “He spends most of his time at the first location, but he’s made three trips to the second one.”
Baker folded the paper up and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
“Where are they?”
“The first one is McConnell Air Force Base, and the second one is the Kansas State University campus. They’re about one-hundred and twenty-five miles apart.”
“Any information on why he’s traveling between the two locations?”
Leduc shook his head. “None, I hoped you might know.”
“Haven’t got a clue about the university,” Baker replied, “but McConnell Air Force Base makes sense. It’s one of the COGCON locations.”
“What is COGCON?” Lucia asked.
“It’s short for Continuity of Government Readiness Conditions,” Baker explained. “When the pandemic struck, the president invoked COGCON Level One. That triggered the relocation of key personnel and strategic operations to three alternate sites.”
“Why?”
“To ensure continuity of the government in case the pandemic broke out at any one of the locations. The president was moved from Washington to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, and the vice-president went to Raven Rock in Pennsylvania. I think the speaker of the house was sent to McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.”
“What does any of this have to do with Raine?” Leduc asked.
“Raine isn’t stupid,” Baker answered. “He would know better than anyone that his best chance for survival is in a guarded military complex. There’s no way he would have been allowed in to Cheyenne Mountain or Raven Rock. They’re VIP only, but with his credentials, McConnell would have been open to him, and if the speaker of the house is there, the base would be heavily guarded and quarantined. Raine’s plan is probably to sit tight in his bolt-hole and ride things out until they get better.”
“Then we will go there, to this place in Kansas—and then we will kill him,” Lucia said.
Baker looked pained. “It won’t be quite that easy.”
“Why not?”
“Do you know where McConnell Air Force Base is?”
“You just said it was in Kansas,” she replied, confused by the question.
“Yep—it’s in Kansas, which is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the United States. It’s nearly fifteen hundred miles from here. You make it sound like a trip to the grocery store, but it will take a couple of months to get there.”
“Then we should get going,” she said with a blank expression. “I’ve seen how fast you drive.”
Leduc smiled and then spoke. “Do you have everything you need for the trip?”
“Yes, sir, we do,” Baker replied. “Abrams has been a great help.”
Leduc rolled his eyes. “I’m sure he has. That reminds me to ask Cox to check and ensure Warrant Officer Abrams isn’t working one of his two for one deals.”
“Two for one, sir?”
“Two for him and one for you,” Leduc said with a sigh. “That man is like an octopus with his arms into everything.”
The general stood, signaling the meeting was over, and stepped around his desk to shake their hands.
“I don’t believe in vengeance,” he said, “but I do believe in justice. What Raine did was an unconscionable crime against humanity. I pray to God you two are successful.”
“Prayer will not have anything to do with it,” Lucia said. “We will succeed and John Raine will die.” She was more certain of it than she had been of anything in her life. The general might not believe in vengeance, but she did. She would avenge the death of her children or die trying—and God would have nothing to do with it.
Baker placed his hand on her shoulder. “We should get moving.” He took a step towards the door and stopped.
“Sir, may I ask you one more question?”
“Fire away.”
“It might not be any of my business, but are there problems with the inoculation program?”
Leduc pressed his lips together and nodded. “The Professor hasn’t made much progress on that contraption of his, and we’re having problems with the girl.”
A flash of anger welled up inside Lucia. First, it was Cox calling her ‘the woman’, and now Saanvi was ‘the girl’.
She glared at Leduc and spoke. “The girl has a name. It is Saanvi in case you have forgotten.”
Not used to being spoken to in that manner, Leduc’s expression hardened for a second and then relaxed. “You’re right. She does have a name, and I should have used it. I’m sorry. Two days ago, Saanvi stopped eating, and now she’s being uncooperative.”
“Uncooperative how?”
Leduc grimaced. “She’s contaminating her…uh, fecal matter…and the bacteria, or whatever it is the professor needs for his cure, can’t be used.”
Taken aback, Lucia stared at Leduc. That didn’t sound like Saanvi at all. “Have you told Mei?” she asked the general.
He shook his head. “We’ve tried to handle it ourselves, but I was going to bring it up when I saw them at the lab tomorrow.”
Lucia spun on her heels and marched towards the door.
“Take me to Saanvi. Now.”
4
Are you leaving?
General Leduc had moved Saanvi into a small bungalow in the residential section of the base. Even in the brisk chill of the late afternoon wind, she was outside stooped over working in the garden by the front of the house. Behind her, on the lawn, a garden rake lay atop a pile of leaves. She was doing what she loved most—working outside, gardening.
Lucia stood on the street corner and watched for a moment. “I want to talk to her alone,” she said to Baker and Leduc. She stepped away and walked up the street.
“Hola!”
Saanvi’s eyes lit up. She jumped to her feet and bound across the roughly cut grass to the sidewalk where Lucia stood.
“Lucia, you’re here!”
Lucia smiled and threw open her arms to hug the teenager. After a moment, they separated and she studied the girl, taking in the large black bags beneath her eyes.
“You look tired and underfed. Are you eating?”
Saanvi opened her mouth to speak and then frowned angrily when she spotted Leduc and Baker further down the road. “Did the general talk to you? What did he say?”
“He told me you are not eating your food, and that you are doing things…doing things with your mierda to make it unusable.”
Saanvi’s cheeks turned dark red. “It’s not fair,” she said, stomping her feet. “He has no right to talk about me. It’s none of his business what I do or don’t do.” She folded her arms and tucked her hands into her armpits as she stared at the ground.
“But it is, mi cielo,” Lucia said softly. She gently placed a hand on each of Saanvi’s cheeks and lifted the girl’s head up. “He is only looking out for you, as he must. You are special—you did not ask to be, but you are.”
“I don’t want to be special. I want to be normal like everyone else.”
“Don’t you ever say that,” Lucia snapped. “Normal people die.”
“Then maybe I should die too,” Saanvi yelled back defiantly. “Just like Dishita and her brother, and Gong, and Aunt Tayi, and my parents.” As she spoke, she began to cry. “They’re all dead and I’m not. I’m here all alone.”
Lucia reached for her. “But you aren’t alone. You have Emma and Mei and Tony—and me, you will always have me.” She hugged the girl tight to her chest and whispered in her ear, “Don’t cry, my love…No llores, mi cielo.”
After a moment, Saanvi pulled away. She ran her hand across her face, wiping at the tears as she sniffled. “But Lucia, it’s boring here and I’m so lonely.”
“There’s the garden,” Lucia said, looking at the barren patch of dirt and feeling guilty that was the best she could come up with.
“It’ll be winter soon,” Saanvi muttered. “At least at the farmhouse, I had Emma to talk to, but there’s nothing to do here and there’s nobody my age.”
Lucia understood. Unlike the lab, there were no children on the base. The youngest of Leduc’s soldiers was eighteen or nineteen, but they had nothing in common with Saanvi. And even if they did, Leduc would never tolerate fraternization between his troops and the teenager.
