by Jackson Ford
When you have a stomach bug that won’t quit, or a strange rash on your arm, you start Googling for solutions – even when you know shouldn’t. When you have a psychotic four-year-old who could end the world at any moment and who is missing in the woods, you do the same thing.
We still can’t find people who are lost at sea, or stumbling around on the ice at the north and south poles. And they aren’t covered by a thick tree canopy. There’s a reason why people who get lost in the woods stay lost – even hikers who wander off the path, and who are desperately trying to get back to civilisation. And if that’s not convincing enough, let me share a little nugget I dug up a few days ago.
In 2009, a three-year-old named Joshua Childers wandered away from his family into the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. He wasn’t even wearing pants – just shirt, shoes and a diaper. Now: think about this for a second. The kid’s three. Tiny legs. Can’t get far. Probably bawling his eyes out. Desperately wants to be found. And there was a huge manhunt to pull that off. Layup, right? Well, guess how long it took to find little Josh? Who was still alive and kicking when they got him, by the way.
Fifty-two hours.
Over two freaking days.
Now up the stakes. A target who doesn’t want to be found. Who is way, way more intelligent than most kids his age. And who has abilities that would make disguising his trail very easy.
UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, the big Predator drones – have thermal imaging, sure. But they struggle seeing through dense tree canopy, and telling the difference between a human and, say, a coyote. You could fly some smaller drones through the trees of course, but the problem is that most drones rely on GPS, and signals get real weak in the woods. I hear the guys at MIT lent Burr and company a couple of special drones which don’t use GPS… but they only had a couple. Not nearly enough.
So it’s about manpower. Boots on the ground. And in this case, manpower came up short.
So yeah: it’s been a pretty terrifying few days. But the longer we went without a catastrophe, the easier it got. Here’s what I think: I think the woods just swallowed that boy, like he made the earth swallow me, and Paul. If he is still out there, he hasn’t gotten close to the ETS zone.
Good fucking riddance.
We’re still trying to untangle just who his mom was. We don’t know where she came from, how she landed up with a superpowered kid. More importantly, we don’t know why she helped Matthew. That’s the thing that gets me the most. Matthew was psychotic. It was all a game to him. But what I can’t figure out is why his mom – his parent – would not only let that happen, but actually help him.
It’s not as simple as genetics – as if I would ever consider genetics to be simple. Psychos like Matthew don’t come along often. A mother-son pairing? That’s lottery odds. So what was her deal?
It doesn’t exactly simplify things that she was found dead in the forest. Crushed by rocks. It means that Matthew turned against her, right when he probably needed her most.
Too much for today. Too much for any day.
I wind my way into the kitchen, which is nice and bright and airy thanks to the collapsed back wall. Probably isn’t a very safe room, especially if we get any lingering aftershocks, but it’s still packed with people. Annie is at the kitchen table, beer in hand, hunched over it protectively, speaking to a large guy with dreads who I don’t recognise.
We haven’t talked about what happened at the Vance Campground.
It should be easy. She saved my life, coming to help me when she had a real chance to get revenge on Matthew. I’ve tried to thank her a billion times, check in on her, let her know I’m around if she wants to talk. She doesn’t. It’s like she’s trying to pretend the whole thing – including helping me out – didn’t happen.
Annie and I have never been all that close. But over the past few months, ever since Carlos died, we’ve become… not friendly, exactly, but at least nicer to each other. We don’t get on each other’s nerves like we used to. Then she saved me, and I thought…
Well, I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t expect us to be bosom buddies suddenly, but I didn’t expect to get frozen out, either. It feels like we’ve taken a massive step back, and I have to keep reminding myself to give her space.
Looking at Annie now, seeing the tightness in her shoulders, the way she grips her beer bottle like she’s trying to crush it to powder, makes me think: fuck it. I’m booze-brave, more than ready to have it out. If I can’t get her to talk about it, at least I can let her know that we’re still cool. I wipe my mouth, taking a step towards her.
And stop. Because, even drunk, what am I going to say to her that I haven’t said a billion times already?
No, seriously: what? What combination of words is going to get her to open up, and even if that actually does happen, what then? She collapses in floods of tears, and we hug it out, and she’s suddenly miraculously OK? That’s not how this shit works.
As if sensing my thoughts, Annie looks up. I thought she was drunk, way more than me, but in that instant, her eyes are completely clear. Patchy, red, set in a face that looks ten years older than it did two weeks ago, but clear.
She gives a little shake of the head. Almost invisible – the guy she’s talking to doesn’t even notice the movement, just keeps blabbering on. I stand, swaying in place, the urge to say something growing and fading with every in-out breath. Does she think I’m going to be pushed away by a little head-shake? But if I do say something… and she still doesn’t listen…?
Then she raises her bottle, tilts it in my direction. Gives me the smallest ghost of a smile.
I make myself smile back, returning the toast.
Then I get the fuck out of there and into the backyard before I do something stupid.
The rear of Sandra-May’s house is much smaller than the front yard. An uneven rectangle of slightly scruffy grass, running onto a low wall which lets me see right into the property opposite. That house is in even worse shape, one whole side collapsed, the windows dark and dead.
LA is getting itself together a little faster than I would have thought. Dodger Stadium was a clusterfuck – and came very, very close to being a full-on New Orleans Superdome situation. Fortunately, it didn’t. If the soldiers had been police, motherfuckers would have ended up getting shot. But the National Guard are soldiers, and soldiers are trained not to fire at things unless they really do pose a threat. That much, at least, I learned from Burr and Okoro. So Dodger was on the edge for a while, but it never truly got to disaster territory.
As for the rest of the city, it turns out FEMA actually learned some lessons from Hurricane Katrina. Congress threw a shit-ton of money at the problem – both during, and after. Especially when the California reps reminded them just how much money the state itself makes for the country. A few billion dollars in emergency funding gets a lot of things done. As does a shit-ton of private funding from Facebook, Apple, Google and just about every other tech company in the state. Give them this: they know a good PR opportunity when they see one.
Of course, the authorities still would have fucked it up in some way – they’re the government, after all, and I have very close and personal knowledge of them fucking things up. Fortunately, a day or two after the quake, Japan arrived.
Here’s the thing about the Japanese government. They are really good at fixing earthquake damage. Remember Fukushima? Quake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown? That was a 9.0. There were plenty of big freeways near the plant – freeways that got wrecked by the quake – and the Japanese authorities fixed most of them as good as new in under a week. I looked up the before and after photos – the roads are better than they were before the quake hit. Japan does not screw around.
Admittedly, our little 9.3 is a bigger job. It’s been slow-going. But it’s surprising just how much has been achieved, even after two weeks. Several freeways are still down… but there are also plenty that can now handle traffic. It’s going to take a long time for LA to feel nor
mal again. Maybe years. But it’s a lot better than it was a month ago.
Whole sections of the city still don’t have power. But it could have been much worse – at least the fires were contained. The debris was cleaned up – or pushed to one side anyway, so cars could get past. The population plummeted in the days following the quake, but people have slowly been moving back.
We are not a post-apocalyptic wasteland. We are not Mad Max, or San Andreas. We’re a city that took the biggest punch the earth can throw… and we’re slowly getting back off the mat.
After our little adventure in Washington State, Tanner put us up in a hotel in Seattle. A good one, with a bed bigger than my living room. Weirdly, I didn’t want to be there at first – I wanted to get back after the kid. I’d positively identified him. I’d tried to talk to him, and it almost got me killed. But as Burr put it: what the fuck was I planning on contributing? He had his own people combing the woods, along with the entirety of the Air Force’s drone complement, and I was being ordered to butt the fuck out. They’d find the kid, observe from a distance, and take him out. Gives me shivers just to think about it, but it’s a good strategy.
I could have gone out there, I guess. I don’t see how in the hell they were going to stop me. Instead, I put on the complimentary bathrobe, the one so big it went down to my feet, and completely wrecked the room service menu, ordering everything remotely good. Then I got blackout drunk.
When I woke up, I stayed in bed for a long time, trying to process the fact that I can move organic matter. Something I had no idea I could do.
I practiced. Wouldn’t you? Tried moving some flowers in a vase. I got the same sensation – that tinnitus again – but I couldn’t actually move them. I needed adrenaline. Or fear. Or anger. Something. At that particular moment, all I had was bone-numbing exhaustion.
Annie stayed in her room. Whenever I knocked on the door, she just told me to go away.
I spent a lot of time walking around Seattle, trying to get my head straight. Ate at restaurants whose names I don’t remember. Got drunk at bars. Talked to strangers and waved off dudes trying to pick me up and waited for the world to end.
It didn’t. And after a while, Tanner sent us down to LA. The way today is going, I kind of wish I was back in that fluffy bathrobe, drunk out of my mind on overpriced minibar champagne.
I rest my arms on the low wall, beer dangling, and let out a low sigh.
“Hello there.”
Reggie makes me jump. She’s off to one side, by the corner of the lot. Her new chair is a slim, motorised model in hospital-white; it doesn’t look like much, but apparently it handles dirt and grass just fine. It’s nothing on the beast she had before, but as she pointed out to me, she doesn’t have a Rig to drive any more. Reggie’s chair: another casualty of that fucking kid. Along with just about everything else in this city.
“Scared the shit out of me,” I mutter, but without much feeling.
“Oh good. Thought I was losing my touch.”
I snort, despite myself. “Yeah. Even without your old super-powered stealth chair. I never used to hear that thing coming.”
She bursts out laughing, wheezing a little. “That piece of junk? Good riddance. You would not believe how often I had to plug it in to charge.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you a new one. If you’re really nice to me, I’ll make it fly. You can have a floating chair, like the bald dude from the X-Men.”
“Or MODOK.”
“Who?”
“One of their bad guys? MODOK? Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing?”
“That cannot be his name.”
“Of course it is. You’re half my age, how have you not heard of him?”
“Not a big comic book person.”
“Really?” She looks genuinely surprised. “Your education in the classics is lacking, young padawan.”
“That one I do know. Don’t you young padawan me. And is that really the guy’s name? Like someone actually wrote that, and people took it seriously?”
“Of course.”
“And you’d rather be him than baldie?”
“Professor X, yes. And of course. MODOK’s a big head in a floating chair. Describes me perfectly.”
This time, my laugh is genuine. Even so, there’s a sense that the little chit-chat we’re having is like skating on ice over a very dark, deep pond. We’ve got a shit-ton to discuss, and it feels as if neither of us really wants to go there yet.
I lift my bottle to my lips, right as I realise she doesn’t have anything. “Hey, what are you drinking?”
“Hmm?”
“The Coors is pretty nasty, but I think I saw some Buds in there somewhere – at least you can drink those. Oh wait, you’re wine, huh? I’ll get you—”
“Already got someone fetching me some.”
“Oh. Cool, cool.”
The silence between us isn’t as comfortable as I thought it would be.
She shakes her head. “I’m glad you’re OK, darling. I heard about how the boy…” She clears her throat. “How he did to you what he did to Paul.”
I haven’t told her – haven’t told anyone – about my sudden ability to move organic molecules. Don’t plan to either, not until I’ve got a handle on it myself.
“Yeah,” I say, draining the last of my beer. “Not fun.”
“That’s one way of describing it.” Reggie’s voice is a little harsher than before, more uneven. She’s not looking at me, gazing at some point in the distance. She blinks, then says, “Hell of a thing, you getting out in time.”
“Yeah,” I say, not meeting her eyes. “Annie helped.”
“Did she now?”
What was it she said, back when we were first arriving at Dodger? You think I haven’t noticed how much more you can lift nowadays? How much more control you have? You’re getting more powerful, and it’s starting to make people very nervous.
“Um. So.” I straighten up. “Whoever you sent to get you a drink obviously couldn’t find their ass with both hands, so I’m gonna—”
Reggie glances over my shoulder. “No need.”
I turn, and Moira Tanner is standing right behind me.
SIXTY-FOUR
Teagan
It’s the first time I’ve seen her in two years. I’ve spoken to her on the phone, gotten text messages from her, heard her commands relayed through Reggie. Seeing her here, standing in Sandra-May Cruz’s backyard, is like having a storybook monster suddenly pop into existence at the foot of your bed.
She’s dressed for DC, not Los Angeles. Leather flats. Dark, tailored suit over a white shirt, buttoned to the neck. No jewellery, not even an American flag lapel pin. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure she was wearing the exact same outfit when she sat across from me at the Facility in Waco all those years ago, and told me that I was going to be working for her. It’s easy to picture her closet, nothing but five or six copies of the exact same suit. Maybe a dark blue one for the office Christmas party.
She has the blank, neutral face of an Easter Island statue. Long angles and hard bones, eyes the colour of old ice. Her hair is pulled back into a severe bun. There’s more grey there since the last time I saw her, but only a little. If the folks in the house were wondering why there was a Navy dude’s picture in Sandra-May’s living room, they must have bugged the fuck out when Moira Tanner walked through the door.
Then again, given her aura of instant death, my guess is nobody said shit.
“Good afternoon, Ms Frost,” she says, leaning on the surname. After the whole thing with Jake and Carlos, I asked her to stop using my birth name. Well, asked isn’t quite right. I more or less told her, then hung up on her.
I find my voice, which was curled up in stunned surprise somewhere in my stomach. “You too.”
She’s holding two Buds. In her elegant piano-player fingers, the bottles look like a joke. She glances down at them, then passes one to Reggie, the one with a straw in it to make it easier for her to drink from
.
“Apologies,” she says. “If I’d known you were joining us, I would have fetched a third one.” She looks down at her own beer, as if she can’t quite fathom how it landed up in her hand. “I represented us at the funeral, of course. And originally I wasn’t planning to come today, but I needed to be in Los Angeles anyway. I want us to meet as a team, talk about how we move forward. And offer Ms Cruz my support, of course.”
“That’s cool. So hey, listen, you can’t fire Reggie.”
Reggie, halfway through a sip, chokes on her beer.
Tanner raises an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“I know you were planning on firing her because you didn’t think she was doing a good job or whatever, and you absolutely can’t do that. It’s a stupid idea.”
Tanner frowns. “I don’t—”
“If you fire her, then you’ll have to fire me, too. I won’t work with anybody but Reggie. She’s the best computer person you’ve got, don’t try to tell me otherwise—” Reggie tries to interrupt, but there’s no way I’m going to let her cut me off. “—and I know there was that whole thing with Schmidt and the car arriving and Reggie not realising he’d left the hotel, but that’s only because she was checking out the earthquake thing, and if she hadn’t done that then we still wouldn’t know the kid did it and Cascadia would have gone off, so when you think about it it’s actually really lucky.”
Tanner tilts her head, examining me. Like I’m an organism under a microscope.
“Anyway,” I say. “That’s all I wanted to say. No firing. Reggie, I mean. She stays, or I go.”
Reggie clears her throat loudly, looks away. From inside the house, there’s the crash of a dropped bottle, followed by a gale of laughter and applause.
“Let me be clear on something.” Tanner’s voice is like a calm sea, with black shapes swimming just beneath the surface. “Any conversation Ms McCormick and I are going to have will be conducted in private, with all the proper protocol being observed. You will not—”
“Will not what? Defend my friend?”
