Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I)

by Andrews, Linda

  The clerk’s attention bounced from her to Sunnie then back again. “Burgers in a Basket accepts credit and debit cards.”

  “How nice for you.” The little twerp! Embarrassment singed Mavis’s ears. She unsnapped her wallet’s front compartment. The edges of neatly folded bills fanned against the black satin interior.

  “Never?” Sunnie drummed her fingers on her ten-dollar bill. “Not even when the Redaction was at its height?”

  Mavis winced at the internet term for the Rattling Death. God, how callous the cyber world could be. Pretending the largest influenza pandemic in human history was nothing more than the government eliminating swaths of the population with a black pen.

  “Not even then.” The clerk dipped under the counter for a tray. Water sprinkled the metal surface when he set it down.

  At least, they were taking their cleaning seriously. Mavis snapped the compartment shut before moving on to the one on the back of her wallet. “Credit cards hold less germs than paper or coins, and the clerks get the bonus of not having to touch either—reducing the spread of infection.”

  She had written that memo the first official week of the pandemic. Greed had stopped many businesses from heeding it. They’d wanted greenbacks, gold and silver and it had showed in the soaring body count.

  “Your company must care about its employees.” Or money. Following the rules meant the burger joint’s drive-thru remained open. After unsnapping the right compartment, she sifted through business cards until she came upon a gift card for the restaurant. She presented the red and green plastic with a flourish before swiping it through the reader.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The clerk ducked his head, but not before she saw the whites of his eyes flash.

  Teenagers! Mavis sighed and filed the card back in her wallet. Just once, she’d like their expression to freeze in a mask of insolence, forcing them to go through life staring at the tops of their skulls.

  The Point of Service machine beeped its approval just as a team member bustled over with two red plastic baskets. Shoestring fries poked through the open weave, while a burger perched on top of the mound of golden slivers of potatoes.

  The door opened, adding to the buzz of voices inside. Cold crept along the floor to envelop her ankles.

  “I’ll get my drink and find us a table.” Sunnie grabbed her upside-down cup off the tray and skipped over to the soda fountain.

  While the cashier greeted the newcomers, the machine in front of the wrinkled team member whirred with the contents of her shake. Mavis sidled away from the family of four. Had they survived intact?

  As if feeling her gaze, the mother glanced in Mavis’s direction. Dull gray eyes swept over her to settle on the stack of wooden highchairs. She gripped her school-age daughter’s jacket. White tipped her knuckles. Muscle roped her neck when she swallowed. For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut. The motion highlighted the fatigue bruising the delicate skin under her sockets.

  Mavis’s stomach cramped. Guess it was too much to ask for one family to have escaped the pestilence unscathed. Nodding to the old woman who placed the chocolate shake on the tray, Mavis grabbed the food and turned around. Where was her niece? Faces turned in her direction, but not the one she wanted, no needed, to see. Her heart rate kicked up tempo.

  “Aunt Mavis?”

  Her ears pricked at the sound of her name. There—behind the glass divider—Sunnie waved her pale arm above her head.

  With a roll of her shoulders, Mavis released the tightness that stretched across her back. It had been silly to think the girl would get sick and die in minutes. Silly. Her stomach roiled as she waded into the seating area. Dodging around a man unstrapping a toddler from a highchair, she passed a couple absently stuffing fries in their mouths. While their fingers fumbled on the tray for more, their attention jerked from child-to-child-to-child. Eyes never resting on one face too long, never ceasing, never finding the one they desperately wanted to see.

  Never.

  Their raw grief zinged through her like she’d touched a live wire. Muscle turned to rubber and her knees shook. Loose fries tumbled across the paper covering the tray.

  No, not never.

  Ghosts returned in a familiar smell, a burst of laughter, and the unguarded moments of sleep.

  Metal squeaked before a yellow bucket bumped against a bench, jerking her away from her thoughts. With her back toward Mavis, the employee swished her mop from side-to-side.

  “Excuse me.” Mavis stepped over the darting mop, and her loafers squeaked on the wet tile. Reaching the table, she plunked down the tray and collapsed on the burnt-orange bench. The vinyl sighed as it adjusted to her weight. Snatching up a napkin, she swept the white granules strewn across the table into a neat pile and caught them in another napkin, folded the bundle and chucked it in the trash can near their booth. People needed to be more careful with their spilled salt.

  Sunnie’s lips quirked. “What? No bleach wipes or hand sanitizer?”

  Clearing her throat, Mavis dusted her hands on her pants. She loved her niece, but God, kids could be such a pain in the ass. “No. With things back to normal, it’s time to let our immune system meet a few harmless bugs.”

  She brushed her hand over the tabletop. Good. Nothing sticky. She drew the line at sticky. There was a reason icky rhymed with sticky.

  “The bug that caused the Redaction wasn’t harmless.” Sunnie set her packet of hand wipes on the table, tugged one white cloth out, and then ran the damp towelette over her fingers.

  Mavis wrinkled her nose at the alcohol smell. How long before she could have a drink without thinking about the Rattling Death? “That was an aberration. Most bugs are harmless, especially the ones you’ve just killed off with that wipe.”

  “Geez.” Sunnie dropped the towelette. “Wash your hands, don’t wash them. Do this, don’t do that.”

  Proper washing involved soap and hot water, not a wipe. Not that she’d tell her niece. Obviously, this outing was stressful for her, too; she just hid it better. Mavis ripped open a packet of ketchup and squirted the red contents onto the paper tray liner.

  “Can you believe that?” Sunnie snatched two fries from the tray and dunked them in Mavis’s pile of ketchup. Her head bobbed toward the flatscreen TV in the corner above the booth behind them.

  Mavis stabbed her straw into her milkshake. She never listened to the news anymore. It was too depressing. “Let me guess, another suicide-by-cop.”

  So many couldn’t face the empty silence, yet lacked the will to end their own lives—especially when the police could do it for them at the price of waving around an empty gun.

  Cheeks bulging with fries, Sunnie shook her head.

  “Suicide-by-bridge? Building?” Using her teeth, Mavis ripped more ketchup packets open. Boy did that sound cold. True, but cold. Suicides hit the ten-percent mark last week. The head-shrinkers predicted the number might rise to twenty-five percent by the end of the year.

  Almost as deadly as the flu.

  “No.” Sunnie raised her soda toward the screen.

  Mavis pushed a pickle further under her bun. “What then?”

  “North Korea.” Sunny tucked another helping of fries inside her mouth. “They’re threatening military action, saying the epidemic was a terrorist attack by the US.”

  Sweet Jesus! Why did fools have to think everything was a terrorist attack? Couldn’t Mother Earth just be pissed off at the polluters clinging to her skin? “How in the world do they plan to fight with half their soldiers dead?”

  Sunnie’s brow furrowed. “Half? I thought the Redaction only had a thirty-five percent fatality rate.”

  Doubts bubbled through Mavis’s chest and emerged as humorless chuckles.

  “That’s the official body count.” But the classified satellite photos told a far different story. Asia was on fire, and it showed in the smoke permeating the air from Alaska to Florida and the haze swallowing the Phoenix skyline. “The Dear Leader underreports bad news.”

&
nbsp; Or maybe his thugs had burned so many citizens alive in the cities, they didn’t count them as Influenza casualties. But still… to blame someone else for a worldwide pandemic was new level of insanity for Pyongyang. Swiveling on the bench seat, Mavis drew the straw to her mouth and pulled hard on her shake. Although the TV’s volume remained low, she read the newscaster’s lips. The sweet, cold creamy taste turned to ash on her tongue.

  “Not just military action. If the US doesn’t give into their reparation demands, there’ll be war.”

  Chapter Two

  The cot groaned as David Dawson hunched over the acoustic guitar in his lap. His thumb plucked at the string while he adjusted the silver peg heads. For a moment, the repeated notes mingled with the snores of his two sleeping barrack mates before escaping out the tent’s open window and lost themselves in the snap of an unsecured flap.

  David strummed his guitar softly before using his nails to pick out the notes of a lullaby. The music swelled against the canvas of the Tent Expandable Modular PERsonnel barracks. Closing his eyes, he blocked out all thoughts of the TEMPER quarters and lost himself in the melody.

  No more empty spaces in place of unnecessary cots. No more garbage bags for over-ripe corpses. No more refrigerated trucks needing rotting bodies to be unloaded and dumped into dirt pits—mass graves of the forgotten.

  Forgotten.

  His fingers stumbled over G. Before the discordant note faded, he opened his eyes. Hell, he had no one to remember him even before the Redaction took half his unit. More than half. Sixty-three percent to be exact. He had to wear two copper bracelets to have enough room to etch every name.

  God must be a woman to pick and choose so illogically who stayed and who was called home.

  His right hand silently played the rest of the song while his left hung from the guitar’s ribs. Why leave him behind? Gutierrez had a wife and baby daughter. Martin had two orphaned sons. Washington had his bride.

  He had the service.

  And soon even that would be gone.

  Sweat beaded on his lip. Four months of civilian life. One hundred and six days out of the Army, and he’d signed up with the National Guard. He loved those weekends and looked forward to the two-week duty. But it wasn’t enough time in uniform. Not nearly enough to fill the white noise of freedom or the stretch of meaningless down time.

  If it hadn’t been for the Redaction…

  He licked his lips, tasted the fear above the salt. Soon, they’d muster him out again.

  Too soon.

  Removing the pick from the strap, David switched to a Jim Croce song. He rocked to the rhythm, but his heart thudded to a different beat. The thick, full notes weighted with the emptiness of his future. He’d take up fishing in the summer and hunting in the winter.

  And the other two seasons?

  He strummed harder.

  Six cots away, Michelson snorted in his sleep and rolled over. His hand covered his eyes, blocking out the twilight.

  David forced himself to ease up, to tease the notes from the string, instead of bullying them out. Maybe he’d travel the country. Visit every national park, every scenic wonder, and every large ball of twine in every territory, federal district and state.

  That might fill up a few years, but then what was he supposed to do?

  Forty-five was too fucking young to retire.

  And he refused to become a mercenary. A real man needed a mission not money.

  Light flooded the vestibule at the end of the sixty-four foot long tent. Moments later, the plywood door hit the shock-cord. The impact rippled along canvas.

  “ShitFuckDamn!”

  Private Robertson must be having a good day to use only three swear words.

  Smiling, David continued into the song’s last refrain. At the Redaction’s peak, the North Carolina private had gotten up to twelve by his count. Gutierrez had argued that Robertson’s record was seven because he’d repeated many words in Spanish.

  Robertson hadn’t sworn the day they’d shipped Gutierrez’s body back to Sierra Vista.

  “Yo, Big D!” Private Robertson strutted into the barracks. His military gait interrupted by the cocky hitch he adopted when off-duty.

  David stopped the song before the last chord finished resonating though the guitar. Well shit! If Robertson was calling him Big D, he might be in for a seven-swear word night. “That’s Sergeant Major Dawson to you, Private.”

  “Yes, Sir. Big D, Sir!” Robertson snapped to attention and saluted like he was performing for a five-star general before flashing his palm. The camouflage t-shirt of his Active Combat Uniform stretched tight across his muscled chest and rode up the bulging biceps.

  David checked the urge to laugh. That would only encourage the private’s bad behavior. Not that he needed much. If the kid wasn’t such a top-notch soldier, his mouth would have gotten him busted down to swamp gas the day he enlisted, almost had on the day he came under David’s command.

  “You retarded, Private? Must be to keep calling me, sir. I work for a living.” Hugging the guitar to his chest, David glanced at the black-haired, blue-eyed devil who had kept up the group’s morale while on grave duty. “Let me make this simple. My first name’s Sergeant, last name’s Major. Got that, you ass?”

  Robertson winked. “That’s me, Big D. I’m an ass man. Big asses, little asses.” He cupped his big hands in front of his body and thrust his hips forward suggestively. “I’d tap practically any ass, so long as it’s not a real ass. Not into none of that bestiality shit.”

  David cleared his throat. Yep, the kid took any word as encouragement. “Is there a point somewhere in your ramblings?”

  “Not a point exactly, Big D. But my sword is long and thick.” He stopped pumping his hips, threw back his head and ran his hands up his chest. “Makes the ladies scream, ‘enough, oh God, enough.’“ Even white teeth flashed and dimples dented both of his cheeks. “It’s why you all should call me G instead of—”

  “Rubberman?” David pinched the bridge of his nose before the throbbing flooded his head. “The man who bounces from subject to subject?”

  Robertson snorted and crossed his muscular arms over his chest. His ACU’s stretched taut. “Yeah, well, you’re the dog who chases the chicks with doubleD’s and above.”

  “I’m Big D, for Top Dog.” David shook his head, knowing he should let the comment pass. He liked breasts—small ones as well as large. What straight man didn’t? “I’m in charge of Jack-wagons like you.”

  “I’m feeling the love from you, Big D.” Robertson swiped at his dry eyes. “Lots of love. Course it’s a tough love; must be why you’re called S-and-M.”

  Old joke. David rolled his shoulders. “Why don’t you take those magazines in your foot locker to the latrine and leave me in peace for an hour?”

  Robertson grinned. “I’ll take that as an order.” He strutted down the aisle between the remaining cots. “And speaking of orders…”

  David picked randomly at the chords. No point rushing the private. Off-duty, the man lived on his own clock. One where seconds were minutes, and minutes were hours.

  “Colonel Lynch wants to see you in his office ASAP.”

  David’s fingers stopped. The Commanding Officer wanted to see him? He wasn’t due on morgue duty until oh-five-hundred tomorrow, didn’t have any family and hadn’t broken any rules for days. He carefully lowered the guitar into the red velvet-lined case on the insulated tent floor.

  “Don’t you want to know what it’s about?” Robertson hitched-stepped the five feet to the end of David’s cot.

  Hell no. A meeting with the CO was never a good thing. David checked the shine on his boots and stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his ACU jacket. Hat? Hat? He’d had it a minute ago. He scanned the area around his bed looking for it. Had one of his men hidden it?

  “I’ll find out in a minute.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to know now?” Robertson bounced on the balls of his feet, a cocky smirk on his lips. “So
you can prepare for the big news on the walk over.”

  Well, hell, if it made Robertson happy, it had to be bad.

  Hooking his cot with the toe of his boot, David lifted it up a foot. How the hell had his hat gotten on the floor? Dropping the cot, he knelt down and snatched the thing up. “What do you know?”

  “Talk is our Title Ten will be extended.” Robertson ran his fingers through his black crew-cut. “Once we’re done dumping our buzzard bait, our unit’s being deployed to the Korean DMZ in a show of force against the Young Dear Leader.”

  David hoped so. He desperately needed a fight.

  Especially, one he had a chance in hell of winning.

  Chapter Three

  “Do you think there’ll be a war?” Tugging the purple scrunchie from her hair, Sunnie Wilson slipped out of her sneakers and wiggled her toes under the heat vent of her aunt’s Honda Civic. When would things get back to normal?

  Real normal.

  Not this shattered looking-glass world that had become reality.

  Her aunt’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “It’s highly unlikely.”

  Like she’d believed that answer the first seven times she’d heard it. But Aunt Mavis being Aunt Mavis wouldn’t say anything else until she thought things through.

  And she was definitely thinking.

  The air practically hummed with it. Even the silvery wisps of hair at her aunt’s temples fluttered in agitation—like an insect banging on a war drum.

  War. Sunnie sucked up a mouthful of Dr. Pepper. Sugar bubbled across her tongue, washing away the bitterness. Like there wasn’t enough dead. After returning her drink to the cup holder, she snapped the scrunchie against her wrist. The sting was sharp against the soft tissue, but she didn’t flinch. Physical pain meant life.

  Life was precious.

  What was left of her generation would remember that lesson.

  Always.

  But would there be anyone left if there was a war?

  Sunnie stared at her aunt—designer loafers, beige polo shirt under a navy pea coat, brown Dockers and tan socks. Mom had said Mavis was a genius—a government genius with a high security clearance.