Anticipating that someday I might need the kind of knowledge that would have come with time and study for advancement in the department, I hunted for books on law enforcement procedure and forensics. But none of those books were a decent substitute for experience—for having to go through investigation after investigation, stumbling your way at first, then getting to the point where you’re not reaching foolish conclusions and making your partner look bad.
Having Luther, Pritch, and Kloves has been a relief, but also a burden in its own way. At least I went through the Coast Guard Academy. I had to teach my officers everything I knew, while at the same time trying to figure out what it was I needed to know myself.
Luther was the hardest to work with, and many times I came close to regretting the decision to let her put on the badge. After all, she didn’t endear herself to me on our first encounter. Her father came to me seeking help for his troubled daughter: Adelaide would sneak out of the Little Five at night and take pot shots at hollow-heads with an air gun she’d found. When I confronted her, she said she was trying to clean the world. She even tried to shoot me, that first time.
Mr. Luther insisted that she was a good kid. It was only the collapse that had changed her, and the death of her mother at the hands of looters in the first days after the oil soured. A few days before he was killed outside the perimeter, Mr. Luther begged me to take her under my wing. She needed structure; she needed a purpose. Something that would let her vent her rage against the unfairness, the injustice, of our lives. He made me promise. So there really was never any question of her washing out.
When I finally let her join up and made this a four-person team, she was barely eighteen, so of course there were going to be problems. But there were also advantages. She hadn’t seen enough cop shows, for one thing, which meant she didn’t have any bad habits to break. Her young brain sucked in information like a vacuum cleaner, making her a much quicker study than Pritch or Kloves. She just didn’t like taking orders or doing things the way that I told her to. She thought she had better ideas, and on the rare occasion that she was right, it only reinforced the impression.
Eventually, though, she grew up. She didn’t have much choice.
“Someone could’ve gotten in over the wire, maybe.” Luther stands again, looking up at the barbed wire running across the top of the fence.
“Maybe,” I say, not moving. “But that’s not exactly quiet. And you checked the wire, didn’t you?”
“Of course, Chief. We didn’t see anything laid over it, or any scraps of anything that got stuck. But like I said, it was fucking dark out.”
We’ve had climbers in the past. Desperate people trying to get to safety, charging the fence and throwing blankets or jackets over the wire to keep from cutting themselves. They don’t know that they can come to the tunnel wall to ask for sanctuary or assistance, so they try to get in without us finding out. But the fence makes a lot of noise when you’re wriggling against it, and it’s a lot higher than it looks from a distance. We find blood and body parts on the outside ground from time to time, where hollow-heads caught the climbers before they could reach the top. We don’t like that it happens, but we don’t have an alternative. The only way to keep out the hollow-heads is to keep out the survivors, too.
“You should get some sleep,” I tell her. “I’ll come find you if there’s anything new.”
Luther gratefully accepts the plan, and I leave the guard with a promise that I’ll be sending someone to repair the fence soon. That task will fall to Vargas, who has the tools and materials for fence building.
The biodiesel enterprise began in the back of a camper van, looking for all the world like a meth lab, after Vargas and Braithwaite had cobbled together the equipment and ingredients they needed to make their first few batches of alternative fuel. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, figured out what happened to all the petroleum. The last rumor, reported as fact by desperate people, was that someone had released bacteria that did something to the oil—ate it, changed it, no one knew. It seems as good a theory as any, and certainly no one here is in any position to say otherwise. Whatever it was, it was never fixed, and the scramble to replace the world’s petroleum infrastructure wasn’t quite fast enough. The pandemic arrived too quickly after the oil ended.
What remained after the collapse were the people like Vargas, Braithwaite, and Abraham. Young turks who found that they were now the primary bulkhead between survival and chaos.
In the beginning, Braithwaite was able to make batches of fuel in one-liter containers. Vargas spent most of his time converting motorcycles, cars, and even lawnmowers, replacing the gaskets and other parts that could be corrupted by biodiesel, until he had a small fleet of vehicles of various shapes and sizes. These he would trade to other groups for food, equipment, and supplies.
Eventually, the two biodiesel hackers accumulated enough equipment and chemicals to expand to a converted shipping container brought west from the Port of Savannah. They began trading with farther flung communities for vegetable oil, both new in bottles and the used sludge. In exchange, Vargas converted their vehicles, and soon there was a biodiesel network centered in the Little Five that supplied and supported most of the greater metro Atlanta area. It only grew from there.
Today, the Little Five has a functioning tractor and three short-range Volvo station wagons. Most of the biodiesel is used to run generators—which, in turn, supplement the solar generators that provide the bulk of our electricity—and to fuel the vehicles that allow other communities to trade with us.
The parking lot that Braithwaite likes to call her “farm” is occupied by rows of oil barrels and a building on the south side constructed out of the shipping container. Braithwaite does most of the biodiesel manufacturing herself, though she occasionally enlists the help of others involved in the Little Five’s power company group, while Vargas focuses on rebuilding and maintaining the equipment and vehicles.
I find him working on one of the Volvos in the small square of the farm that still serves as a parking lot. The son of a diplomat, he was born in Honduras but moved to the United States when he was ten years old. He enrolled at Georgia Tech a year before the collapse and never made it back to Virginia, to his mother and stepfather. He likes to believe that his parents escaped to Honduras before all the good fuel ran out. I’ve refrained from pointing out that this doesn’t put his parents in a very good light.
Vargas’s English is lightly accented, but I’ve become so used to it that I rarely notice it now. Twenty-eight years old and one of the brightest men in the Little Five, he has played a crucial part in keeping our community alive and comfortable. I know that I can rely on him for anything I need; he tells me often enough. So when he sees me approaching, he stops tinkering with the Volvo, wipes his greased hands on his pants, and says, “What do you need today, Chief?”
I explain the situation, and Vargas stands up, shaking his head. “This is about Owen, no? Belinda told me. Terrible thing. She’s in the lab and won’t come out. But what can you do? You have to let a person grieve in her own way.”
For a moment I’m surprised, though I shouldn’t be. Vargas and Braithwaite have been together for as long as I’ve known them, and for as long as I’ve known them, they’ve not been exclusive partners. I suspect this is more her idea than his, but he goes along with it amiably enough. They both have had many lovers over the years, some fleetingly, others for much longer periods. Most of their polyamorous adventures have been with other members of the power company, but from time to time, Braithwaite at least has taken lovers from outside that social circle. I wasn’t aware that she was sleeping with Owen, but it certainly isn’t out of character for her.
Vargas packs up his tools, following me over to the shipping container. He opens a small shed attached to the main building and retrieves a section of chain link fencing. I knock on the door to the container, but Vargas tells me to enter uninvited: Braithwaite isn’t going to answer. I
nside, I find her hunched over a workbench, her flowing skirt billowed out around her chair, her bare feet propped against a crossbeam despite the cooler temperature within the lab. With one hand she mixes the dark brown contents of a large piece of lab glass, while in the other she holds up a half-eaten sandwich. She doesn’t look up when I enter, focusing instead on a book on her table.
I call her name, and still she doesn’t look up. “Good morning, Chief Edison,” she says. Braithwaite’s personality is usually a cyclone, energetic and chaotic and exhausting. Even if Vargas hadn’t said anything, I would know that something is wrong.
“Ernesto says you and Owen were close,” I say, trying to be circumspect. Braithwaite isn’t the sort of woman who needs to be coddled, or demands censoring, but right now she isn’t behaving like Braithwaite.
“I enjoyed his company,” she says. She uses the crust of her sandwich to turn the page of her book and push her glasses higher on her nose. “Is there something you wanted, Chief?”
The shipping container is poorly insulated, and the solar panels lining the top and upper sides don’t help with heat retention during the colder months. I feel the chill of the room in my lungs. The air is tangy and strange, as it always is, with the colliding smells of biodiesel and body odor and food.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last night,” she answers without delay. “We were here. That’s the deal.”
“What ‘deal’ is that?”
“My deal with Ernesto. The apartment is for us. For everyone else, we use the lab or their place. But the girl was there. So it had to be here.” She gestures toward a bare mattress at the far end of the container lab, then takes a large bite out of her sandwich and stops stirring her concoction. She sniffs the contents of the glass, turns another page, and remains completely uninterested in my presence.
“When did he leave here?”
“Couldn’t say,” Braithwaite says. “I had to get home, so I told him to lock up when he left.”
“Was that such a good idea? Leaving him here alone?”
At that question, Braithwaite finally deigns to turn toward me. She sets down the remnant of her sandwich, and I catch a glimpse of the fire that usually flickers on her face. But only a glimpse. “Afraid that he might steal trade secrets? Come on, Chief, don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing here to steal. Nothing I can’t replace. And even if he was going to grab some of my things, where would he take them? Why bother?”
Defensively, I respond, “Just because it doesn’t fit your logic doesn’t mean no one thinks that way. Not everyone is as smart as you are.”
Braithwaite slouches in her chair, chastised, and I regret what I said. It was the voice of a callous parent. A voice I’ve always been careful not to use. It comes too easily.
More thoughtfully, she says, “He said he wanted to sleep a little before going home. I didn’t think there was any harm in it. But he must’ve changed his mind because I wasn’t home more than twenty minutes when—” She takes a deep breath, and when she continues, her voice is higher, softer. “Oh, fuck, Sam, what happened?”
“I’m trying to find out,” I answer. “I have to ask these questions. They’re important. I don’t mean to be—”
Braithwaite shakes her head. “No. It’s all right. I understand. Thank you.”
“Did he say anything to you about Abigail?” I press. “Did he tell you anything about her that he didn’t tell anyone else?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t talk about her much. I don’t think he cared for her, really. He said the baby wasn’t his. He was very clear about that: the baby wasn’t his.”
“What time did you leave the lab?” I ask.
“Midnight, maybe? I don’t know. I remember hearing—it. The gun. I figured it was a hollow-head at the wall. And then in the morning I found out what happened.”
“How did you meet? Did he seek you out, or was it just by chance?”
Braithwaite furrows her brow the way she does when she’s working on an engineering problem. “I guess it was by chance. He was talking to Ernesto about the cars. I showed him the process we use for the diesel, but I don’t think he was interested in that. If that’s what you’re asking.”
“I suppose it is,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. About all the questions, and about Owen.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Braithwaite says. “You didn’t know.”
“I still don’t know. But I’m going to find out, if I can.”
I leave the container lab and head back toward the fence. As I am passing Cassidy’s Bar, I see Mayor Weeks flagging me down from across the street. I am impatient to be on my way, but Weeks has a habit of being too insistent to ignore.
“Do you know what happened?” he asks, falling in step and allowing me to continue walking. My update is brief; I don’t have much more than what he could have gleaned from Luther or one of the people at the bar.
“You don’t think anyone else is in danger, do you?”
I tell him I haven’t really considered the possibility. I’ve worked under the assumption that Owen and Abigail were the only targets. He seems satisfied with the answer and grips my shoulder momentarily. “Don’t overwork yourself, Chief. The Little Five is still safe in your hands.”
And then we part ways, Weeks heading off toward his office in the old Carter Center while I continue to the north perimeter.
Watched over by the sweep team guard, Vargas is using a portable welder to marry his patch to the chain link fence. The generator supplying power to the welder is making its loud, unpleasant chugging sound. Hollow-heads have begun to investigate the noise, coming down from Ponce de Leon in pairs and threes.
The sweep team guard, a midthirties former bank teller by the name of Tenclin, is a master with a bow. Standing on the middle rung of a metal ladder so that his shoulders are above the fence line, he watches the approaching groups down the length of a nocked arrow. His weapon of choice is a Strother compound bow that he has owned since he was sixteen.
“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” I call to Vargas while he welds. I point to Tenclin.
“No reason to add unnecessary noise,” he calls back.
I unsnap my holster and draw my service pistol. I don’t like that it’s becoming a habit. “You’re joking, right?”
“That’s done,” Vargas says, flipping up the visor on his welder’s helmet. He starts packing away his equipment. “They will not stop coming just because I have turned off the generator. They already know we are here.”
Of course, he’s right. The dozen hollow-heads that are coming down the middle of the road didn’t even pause when Vargas shut down the generator.
Knowing what could happen, I scan behind them for signs of other hollow-heads lying in wait. If Tenclin or I take out one of the hollow-heads in front, that will start a cascade of frantic running. I will be very grateful if they don’t have any friends joining them from the main road.
“There are too many for just one bow,” I tell Tenclin. “You won’t get all of them before they hit the fence.”
“Yeah,” he admits, “you’re right. I’ll get maybe six or seven.” Then he smirks. “Where’s your sense of fun?”
“Were you there yesterday? Did you see what they did to Jake?”
Tenclin wipes the smirk off his face. “Sorry,” he says quietly and sets his bow on the top of the ladder. He draws a Colt Anaconda from his belt.
“Better. Don’t shoot until they come within twenty yards. If there’s a horde on Ponce, I don’t want them spotting their dead and turning this way.”
We wait. Most of the time, hollow-heads move as slowly as a normal person on a Saturday morning stroll. The difference is that they don’t look at anything except their intended prey. They stare at us as they approach, silent, footfalls barely registering on the pavement. Tenclin’s undisciplined finger is agitating against his trigger.
“Come off that ladder,” I r
emind him, “or you’ll break your neck when the recoil knocks you off.”
He steps down, rattling the metal, and the hollow-heads react by focusing on him instead of Vargas. They converge like mice heading for a sewer drain. Some are better dressed than others, making it easy to identify when they were lost to the rest of humanity. The ones in polyester hospital gowns got sick first or were in hospitals when the disease struck. Some are in tattered pajamas, suggesting they were taken at home in the early days when people still thought the pandemic was the flu. The ones that are dressed well knew what was coming but couldn’t bring themselves to end their lives.
I track their distance relative to an arbitrary paving stone about twenty yards out. Then, when the curious hollow-heads are inches away from my order to shoot, there is a loud shriek from the trees near Ponce de Leon. I shiver at the sound, but that sensation is followed by a wave of relief even before the hollow-heads fully react. First, they halt, listening for more. The shriek comes again, and they turn toward it, now facing away from us and shambling back toward the main road. I relax my grip and step back from the fence.
We wait a minute while the hollow-heads make their way back to Ponce de Leon, just in case something else on our side catches their attention. But nothing does, and I’m grateful for that. A second breach in as many days would exhaust the sweep team and make us vulnerable to a third.
“That was lucky,” I mutter. I tell Tenclin he can head back into town, with a stern reminder that archery is not a hobby. Then I give Vargas’s generator a friendly kick. “No bows, Ernesto. You know better. Unless you’re bringing a whole line of archers, they’re just not fast enough.”
“Yes, yes,” he says, collecting his portable equipment. He starts back to town, and I follow.
“How is she?” he asks. “You talked to Belinda, no?”
“It’s hard to tell,” I admit. “Has she not said anything to you?”
Vargas shrugs. “Like I told you, I haven’t really seen her since yesterday afternoon when she told me she was going to be with Owen. Since then she’s been holed up in the lab. So I am giving her space.”
The Post Page 6
