by JL Bryan
“They did,” she said. “I took a bullet in the back from the Freedom Brigades. And the bastards killed my husband.”
“Jorge Mendez, right?” Ruppert asked. “The director?”
“He saw the hammer coming down,” Maya said. “I used to laugh and say he was paranoid. Then they started posting Terror agents at all the studios, and then the purges…By the time they finished, there was nothing left but cowards and fools.” She raised an eyebrow. “Present company excepted, naturally.”
“No, I’ve been a coward and a fool,” Ruppert said. “I’m trying to change that.”
“Once this interview circulates, they’ll come after you,” Maya said.
“They’ve been after me already,” Ruppert said.
“Not like this. You’re showing the world the rabbit hidden in their hat.”
“What do you think people will do when they find out?” Ruppert asked.
Maya smiled. “Rise up, revolt, destroy the system. Start anew, with better ideas this time. That’s what you’re hoping I’ll say, isn’t it?”
“How else could they respond?”
“Denial,” Maya said.
“What is there to deny?” Lucia asked. “It’s the truth.”
“Never doubt the human capacity for self-delusion,” Maya said. “Terror doesn’t. That’s how they rule.”
“Then what’s the point?” Ruppert asked.
“Not everyone will refuse to believe,” Maya said. “The truth will be available for those who risk looking for it. It will take time. It may not even happen in our lifetime. But now there’s a record of what Columbus really was, and who was behind it. And in the end, I don’t think an armed revolt will be possible. Or necessary.”
“But there’s no other way to stop them,” Lucia said.
“Eggs, overeasy,” Archer set plates in front of Ruppert and Lucia. “Toast, gently blackened.”
Lucia wolfed her food. Ruppert poked his fork at the greasy, pepper-sprinkled whites of the eggs, not convinced he had an appetite.
“Did you ever learn about the Soviet Union? How it collapsed?” Maya asked.
Ruppert nodded. "It was because of a weapons race."
"Not precisely," Maya said. "Some people say it collapsed because it lost a war, or because of poverty, but I think they’re wrong. I think it really fell apart once the Russian people stopped believing what they read in the newspapers.”
“And you think people will react that way when they see the interview?” Ruppert asked. “They’ll stop believing?”
“In the long run, truth is powerful because it doesn’t change. Lies fade, and political lies are the weakest kind, because they so rarely make any sense in the first place. Westerly’s confession takes Columbus away from them. It removes the keystone from their false reality. It will change minds.”
“But not enough minds,” Ruppert said.
“Possibly not,” Maya agreed.
“Clear out!” Turin burst into the room wearing only a shirt and his briefs. He was fumbling his way into a dark suit. “Cops! Front door!”
The room erupted around Ruppert, chairs overturning as Lucia and Turin scrambled to their feet. Maya rolled backwards into the main hall of her house, looking towards her front door.
“How many?” she asked.
“Three cars,” Turin said. He hurried to buckle his pants. Lucia and Archer grabbed plates, glasses, silverware from the kitchen table, slopping the contents into the sink before hurling the tableware into the dishwasher.
“Hurry!” Archer snapped at Lucia.
“Is it Terror?” Maya asked from the hallway.
“Just Hartwells,” Turin said.
“Thank God for that much,” Maya wheeled back into the room. “You two have to get downstairs—”
Booms echoed from the front door. It sounded like the police were knocking with a wrecking ball.
“—right away,” she finished. Turin rushed by her, on his way to answer the door.
Ruppert felt a compression against his skin, as if all the air in the room had suddenly turned heavy, and then a loud crack echoed through the house. The police forced the front door with a pressure gun, blasting it from its hinges.
“You! Down! Hands on head!” a rough voice shouted from the front doorway. Ruppert heard the two thuds as Turin’s knees slammed into the floor.
“I just work here, sir,” Turin said.
Maya pointed towards the short hall leading to the bathroom and the front parlor. Ruppert took Lucia’s hand and pulled her in that direction. Following Maya’s hand gestures, he opened a folding door to reveal a recessed alcove with a washer, dryer, and a towel shelf.
He looked back towards Maya, but she only shrugged and turned her chair towards the table, where one plate of half-eaten food remained, as if she'd been eating alone.
Ruppert and Lucia climbed up on top of the laundry machines. They drew their knees to their chests, and sat with their backs pressed together in the compact space. Ruppert eased the folding door along in its track, closing it, willing himself to move slowly to avoid making noise.
“Hands up! On your knees!” a man’s voice bellowed, much closer.
“Sir, I’m unable to leave my chair,” Maya said. “If you want me on the floor, you’ll have to put me there.”
“Throw her down.” More boots approached. Ruppert heard Maya gasp, then a thud as police dumped her on the floor. “Search the wheelchair for weapons.”
The confined space in the laundry room grew hot and suffocating. Ruppert could feel the sharp points of Lucia’s shoulder blades digging into his back, between his own shoulder blades. She squirmed against him, her skin blazing hot. She was probably angry, resisting the urge to leap out and protect the paraplegic woman. But that would only get everyone killed.
“Took you a long time to answer that door," the cop said. "What were you hiding from us?"
"I didn't hear you knock, sir." Maya spoke in a low, submissive voice.
"And the black guy in the hall?”
“He helps me around the house. And with my groceries."
"Answers the door for you?" asked the same cop, apparently the leader of the group.
"Yes, things like--"
"He's doing a real shit job of it."
"Yes, sir," Maya said.
"What do you know about the bomb last night?” the policeman asked.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Really? You didn’t hear an explosion late last night? Nothing?”
“No, sir. It must have been after my night meds.”
Ruppert tilted his head as far to one side as he could, and he was just able to peer out between two of the wooden slats composing the folding door. He immediately wished he hadn’t. One of the black uniforms approached the laundry door—a young man, his head shaved down to stubble. Ruppert could see the golden Hartwell badge on his chest, the “H” with the hollow heart in the crossbar looming closer with each step.
“How many people currently in the house?" the cop asked Maya. "Including visitors and employees?”
“Just me,” Maya said. "And Eldred, the young man in the front hall."
"He works for you?"
"Yes, sir."
The young, shaven-headed policeman passed by and into the bathroom, only three feet from Ruppert, where he urinated noisily without bothering to close the door.
"Then I'll need to see your employer permit and his worker permit, won't I?" the cop asked Maya.
"I'm certain they're in the state database," Maya said.
"I don't want to check the database. I want to see your permits in my hand."
Ruppert held his breath, and he felt the muscles in Lucia’s back tighten. She fell completely still. Though she couldn’t see anything but towels and detergents from where she sat, she was responding to Ruppert’s own reaction, sensitive to his nervous energy.
“Have you seen anyone unusual in the area?” the policeman asked Maya. “Any foreigners? Anyone from out of town?
Anyone handing out political literature or media?”
“Sir, I’ve hardly left the house in ten years,” Maya said.
The laundry room door rattled. The young policeman was coming back, trailing his fingers down the wooden slats. Ruppert craned his neck and was able to see the man looking carefully at the door, then leaning forward, hands cupped around his eyes, to look between the slats.
Ruppert and Lucia froze.
“Why don’t you have a screen in this house?" the cop asked. "What do you watch?”
“I have an old box in the living room. Movies on disc. I just don’t like people to see me when I phone them.”
The lead cop ordered a full search of the house--fortunately, he called away the bald pisser to search the upstairs. He continued asking Maya about her personal, political and religious affiliations, though the police would have all that information on file.
Ruppert and Lucia remained folded up against each other in a hot, tense silence, neither willing to risk even a whisper. The sounds of the police slamming doors and overturning furniture spread through the house.
After the sounds of their searching had died down, Ruppert relaxed a little, breathing deeper, and then the folding door suddenly rattled open.
“They’re searching the outbuildings now,” Maya said. She’d managed to climb back into her wheelchair. “Hope the rust gives them all tetanus. You better get underground.”
Lucia slipped away and dropped to her feet. Ruppert hurried after her to the back bedroom with the false closet wall, and down to join the others underneath the house. They huddled together in the dark, eight people who did not want to be found, and they waited.
TWENTY-THREE
Though the bomb had only demolished a rotten, long-disused water tower, and there were no victims, Terror never missed an opportunity to flex its muscles. Over the following days, the swarm of local Hartwell cops gave way to the black coats of state and federal Terror agents, knocking on doors, inviting themselves into homes and businesses if nobody answered. Helicopter formations patrolled the sky.
Ruppert and Lucia remained underground with the others. They lived off the only available food, which happened to be a pantry of canned vegetables and rack after rack of aged wine. Occasionally Turin brought down a loaf of bread or carton of milk. They slept on nests of blankets and clothes—Ruppert had a bare foam pallet. Nobody spoke more than necessary, and never above a whisper.
On their third night underground, Ruppert and Lucia slipped off to a remote room that might have been a well or cistern in the forgotten past. They shared Lucia’s last cigarette.
“What do we do now?” Ruppert whispered. “Do we have a plan?”
“When Terror finishes beating their chests, and gets tired of kicking in doors up and down the valley, we’ll leave here with copies of your interview. We’ll pass them along to others by hand, and we’ll upload them to some people we know internationally. We have to send it everywhere.”
“People like me, or whoever has my job now, will just ignore it," Ruppert said. "If it ever got too well-known to ignore, they just call it enemy propaganda. They’ll bring in experts from Terror and an Ivy League university or two, who will explain just how fraudulent it is."
“You don’t think I know that?” Lucia snapped. “We just have to put it out there. Let people make their own decisions.”
“‘He who has hears, let him hear,’” Ruppert said. It was an expression of Pastor John’s—and, if Ruppert remembered correctly, Jesus.
“Terror will want you to die,” Lucia said.
“I was a little concerned about that, too.”
“You’ll go north, into Canada.” She didn’t need to say why they wouldn’t go south—they would never make it through the walls, land mines and guard towers along the Barrier. Originally built to keep out immigrants and refugees from the Mexican civil war, the Barrier was equally good at keeping people in. “Archer will take you, probably.”
“You aren’t going?”
Lucia shook her head. “I don’t know anything about the escape routes. Compartmentalization. And I always have more work to do.”
“I could stay and help you.”
“With Terror out for your blood? You wouldn’t really be an asset. Sorry,” she added.
Ruppert felt a gnawing discomfort in his gut. He’d lost his entire life, and even as unhappy as he’d been, he felt rootless and without any purpose. Going north might be his best hope of survival, but then what? He’d be alone in some remote, frozen place—he would never be able to return to a city, with all the security systems picking up his image. Terror could find him as easily in Vancouver as they could in Los Angeles.
He thought of Liam O’Shea, the pudgy man with the rubbery smile who worked at Child and Family Services. Ruppert had been thinking about him off and on since they’d stayed with Dr. Smith in the desert.
“I can help you,” Ruppert said. His voice was very low.
“You’ve helped us enough,” she told him. “You should go north.”
“I mean about your son.”
She shook her head and turned away from him. “Don’t talk about that. I should not have told you.”
“I know someone,” he said. “A senior case analyst manager, or some arrangement of those words, in Family Services. He’d have access to their databases, probably even from home.”
Lucia looked back at him. Her mouth was trembling, from anger or from fear. “He would help me?”
“No. I think I could make him help.”
Lucia stared into the dark, then shook her head. “It won’t work. Terror will be looking hard for you, and he’ll know that by now.”
“That’s not the point. I have an idea of how we could—”
“Don’t speak about this to me again.” Lucia glared at him. Her eyes were wet. “Never mention my son.” She threw the cigarette stub on the floor and left the room.
Lucia stopped speaking to Ruppert. After several days, Terror lost interest and the agents in black faded away. According to Turin, the news media had settled on blaming unspecified Chinese agents, allegedly trying to spread fear and disorder along the West Coast. There would likely be more attacks, or so the Department of Terror warned the nation.
“Fear,” Turin muttered as he recounted the official narrative. “Keeps the swine in line.”
The underground rooms had initially seemed to Ruppert like a good and fortunate place to hide, but he was beginning to feel more like a prisoner. There was a restroom but no bathing facilities, and everyone looked dirty and unshaven. They slept in the same clothes every night, and the rooms took on an odor of sweat and stale air. Lucia still refused to talk to him, and that made the dark rooms even more suffocating.
At last, Maya judged that the federal dragnet had ended, and people could soon begin to leave. Each one would leave in a different direction, smuggling thousands of tiny discs on which Turin had copied the interview. Ruppert heard there was more evidence on the disc, linking Westerly to a high-level official in the Department of Terror. He didn't ask to look at it. He'd done enough journalism.
Ruppert visited the room he’d avoided since the interview, where Hollis Westerly remained locked in his cage. Westerly looked more decayed than ever, coughing up lumps of black and letting them drizzle through his beard stubble onto his scabby chest, staining an image of Thor’s hammer there. The air smelled sick and greasy, like rotten fat.
Ruppert thought about those around the world who would see the interview. Ruppert and Westerly would be linked together for all of history, if history survived Terror. It wasn't exactly the legacy Ruppert would have chosen for himself.
“Looks like we’re going to be famous,” Ruppert said to him. Westerly looked up with hazy eyes under drooping lids. A cigarette with a two-inch ash rested in the crotch of his fingers.
“Ain’t you famous no how?” Westerly asked.
Ruppert remembered that, as far as Westerly knew, Ruppert was st
ill a working newsman. Apparently it had never occurred to Westerly that the news was as scripted as any sitcom, and a real story like this would never break there.
“Did they put me on the TV?” Westerly asked.
“Not yet. We’re putting together a special event.”
“Like the Super Bowl?”
“Yes."
"Always wanted to be big onscreen."
"Tell me something…" Ruppert began, then hesitated. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the man's answer. "Don't you ever have any regret?"
"For what?"
Ruppert wanted to scream and kick at the man's cage. "What you did. Columbus.”
“Well, sometimes you do,” Westerly said. He noticed the long ash in his hand and shook it, breaking it into gray dust. “Yeah, people died. But that’s war."
“Even if you helped start the war?”
"We didn't start it. White man got to struggle to survive, against them others."
"You realize that it was a psychological operation? You were a pawn? It actually had nothing to do with your personal cause or beliefs. You were completely manipulated. You get all of that?"
“Hey, I get it…somebody had to do it, though. Needed to be done. Fetch me them blue pills.” Westerly gestured towards a folding table littered with medication and empty food cans.
Ruppert looked at the shrunken, dying man with the Nazi insignia tattooed into his flesh, frightening and ludicrous all at once. Anyone could see Westerly was sick in the head as well as the body. But was he really that different from anyone who was happy to see millions die for the sake of his own sacred brand of stupid bullshit?
The man Westerly called Brother Zeb, whom Ruppert assumed came from the PSYCOM group Dr. Smith talked about, had gone into prison to recruit disposable men. He waved the proper symbols, and Westerly and the others obeyed him like trained dogs. Entire nations could be manipulated in the same way. Ruppert had done it himself, for a living.
"Pills. Now. Son of a bitch," Westerly growled.
Ruppert found the clear bottle of strong, dark blue pills and snapped off the lid. There were about fifty left, surely enough to kill a man. He pushed the bottle through the bars and turned it upside down, raining them down onto Westerly's piss-stained mats and rugs. A raw, feral glee lit up Westerly’s eyes as he scrambled after the rolling pills and sucked them from the floor.
