by Nova
Then I drifted away. Later I came to for a few minutes and was sure he was telling me, step by step, how to field strip an M-16. Every time I would pop back up to the surface I’d hear his voice and relax and go back under.
I had come to. I had been elsewhere and hadn’t wanted to come back to the surface, but I knew something was wrong. Bad wrong.
I opened my eyes and saw Medic Man sitting at Night’s head, holding her arms down. She was thrashing and moaning. He had bandaged the back of her head, neck, and part of her back. Watery stains outlined in red marked the whiteness of the gauze. The blanket that had covered her was off, and she was wearing nothing but the bandages on her back.
I knew what he was doing. She would tear the bandages off and open the wounds if she wasn’t restrained. Yet I didn’t like the way he looked and how he was positioned next to her, his crotch almost in her face.
He was getting ready to do something. I knew this. First though, he decided to look around, which only confirmed it. He saw me watching him and his face changed ever so slightly. He was good. His eyes didn’t stay on me for more than a millisecond. He reached down, pulled the blanket up, and told her softly to be still. She already was. She had stopped moving a couple beats after I had opened my eyes.
He let go of her, got up, and went over to check on Max who was stretched out on the floor about eight feet away. His eyes were open and he was watching Medic Man too. For a second they glowed red.
I knew Medic Man had also seen it because he froze. Then Max closed his eyes, and the morphine pulled me back down. Just not as deep this time. It wanted to, and I wanted to go, but I could no longer accept its embrace.
Probably twenty-four hours later, maybe less, I started coming to for greater periods of time. Medic Man was always there. He brought me water without asking and gave me more pills.
When I asked him what they were for, he said, “Infection. It’s what I am worried about the most. Then it will be muscle damage.”
He was chewing gum like a fiend. I was conscious enough to overhear an exchange between him and Max during this period.
“I need your keys. I also need a gun—preferably a shotgun with a mix of slug and buckshot.” This was from Max. It was good to know he was up and mobile already.
“Sure,” Medic Man said. But he couldn’t hide his surprise. “Let me give you the keys to the Lexus. I haven’t unloaded the truck yet.” Interesting, I thought, how casually and quickly Medic Man agreed to this. “So where you going?”
“Back to the motel.” I didn’t have to look to know Max was grinning. He continued, “You want to come?”
“Ah … not really. I got to stay here. Look out for them. Just in case.”
“No problem. Got any more speed?”
“Yeah, sure.”
About ten minutes later, after hearing movement and the sound of a shotgun being racked, I heard Max say, “If I’m not back in twenty-four hours, tell Gardener it was real.”
I laughed to myself when I heard that. I also decided to get up and take a leak. I had been through this before when I fell on a rake that was tines side up. This was worse, probably because the wound was deeper.
Night was awake also. Together we hobbled to the bathroom. I let her go first, and then I hobbled in. It was not fun. Thank God I didn’t have to sit down. I made a mental note to avoid food high in fiber for the next four or five weeks. Maybe I could set a record for going the longest period of time without a bowel movement.
When I came out, Medic Man was standing there with Night, waiting for me. I asked him if he had a T-shirt I could have. He found one and gave it to me. I cut the back out of it and gave it to Night to wear. I think she was as touched by my doing that as she would have been if I had brought her a bouquet of flowers. I was never going to understand women, let alone the human race.
Medic Man wanted to take a look at us after that. Night was growing a lovely crop of blisters.
“How does it look?” Night asked Me.
I almost said, “Horrible,” but managed to bite my tongue in time.
Medic Man answered for me. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I don’t see any gray or charred flesh. I think you got lucky. Just second-degree burns.”
She was silent for a minute and then asked quietly, “Will I scar?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe a few faint ones at the most,” he said.
I could tell she was relieved. He hit me in the thigh with more antibiotics and gave me the pill version to wash down. Then he made us chicken soup from a can. He didn’t even water it down very much. He was being remarkably generous with expensive supplies, for no reason that I could tell. I did not like that. Plus, I just did not like him.
We were sipping our soup out of coffee mugs when I asked him, “So, how do you know Carol?”
He paused, smiled into his cup of soup before looking up, and then said, “Well, I was married to her for a couple years.”
Night was watching me. Why was she watching me? She should be watching him.
I replied, “Oh, that would probably do it.” A totally lame answer that really made no sense. So this was the never-spoken-of first husband. Yeah, I didn’t like him.
There was a bit of an awkward pause. Medic Man picked up the slack by telling me how he wanted to use maggots on my wound later. “It’s an old remedy. They eat your dead flesh and leave the good flesh behind.” He sounded excited about the idea. I wondered how excited he would be if it was his own flesh getting gnawed on by worms. I was getting tired again and let it go. Night helped me back to my mat and lay down next to me. I was asleep in less than a minute.
I woke up almost ten hours later when I heard Max’s voice. He wasn’t alone. Ninja had survived. That was it. No one else. As soon as Ninja saw Night, he burst into tears. He just stood there, his head down, and sobbed. Night went up to him. She couldn’t hug him and he had to settle for an awkward arm pat.
They were both crying. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I was supposed to do something, so I went over, slapped him on the shoulder, and told him I was sorry. Then I left the room, but not before I noticed Medic Man’s sneer.
That’s when I remembered his name. It was Jake. “Jake the Snake”—that’s what I decided I would call him, at least in my head.
Four days later, I woke up and stumbled out into the main area of the basement rubbing my eyes. Everyone was gathered around Jake’s big flat-panel watching the Icelandic News Channel. Iceland was the cool country now, especially since it was almost impossible to emigrate there. It had become a combination of Switzerland and Israel. Its transformation from the first bankrupt nation to the only one with a growing economy had been amazing.
At first it had seemed like the people there were doomed. Following the financial ruin, the cod banks had disappeared. Climate change was a double-edged sword for them. The people who didn’t flee for Scandinavia decided to make the best of what they had: unlimited geothermal power and the best-educated workforce left in the Western World. Greenhouses and what fish remained fed them.
Server farms were their version of Swiss gold. They were totally secure from the waves of government attempts to control the digital flow of information, that being the only truly valuable currency left in the world. Along with the ability to host, they had the tools and the desire—especially after being so thoroughly screwed—to broadcast. And what they broadcast was the truth—or at least what the U.S. government managed to suppress with the assistance of those who controlled the media.
“Damn, what time is it?” I asked.
Night answered. “Eight.”
“Daytime or night?”
“Nighttime. Come on, sit down with us. The president is going to make a speech.”
I groaned. “Who cares? Obama wore me out years ago when he was president.”
“You might want to listen, buddy,” Jake said. “I got a feeling it’s going to determine what’s next for a lot of people.”
“Yeah, Jake. Whateve
r.” Jake was, of course, sitting in his favorite chair. I thought of it as “the throne.” It was a leather recliner and I decided that from then on I was going to sit in it whenever I had the chance.
As usual, Jake was armed. What was interesting was how he was armed. He was wearing a Colt, a Peacemaker it looked like, in a hand-tooled holster that was tied down. A lot like what I wore, but far more expensive. That was weird. Why that gun in that style? I had noticed it when I first saw him. He kept wearing it, too, which surprised me. I figured he would switch to something more modern. He seemed like the black plastic type, after all.
Iceland News cut to the White House and the president appeared on screen. She sat behind her desk dressed in military camo. No rank insignia that I could see. I wondered if she had a cute little beret to match. She wasn’t as hot as Palin was a few years ago, but she wasn’t as obviously ignorant either.
She dropped the bombshell right off the bat: martial law. Jake and Night responded with “Wow!” and “Damn.” Max added, “She’s going to lock us all down. For our own good, of course.”
She wasn’t done. It really was for our own good. As she put it:
In this sea of internal turmoil, where so many seek to profit by undermining the authority of the state, we have decided to increase everyone’s personal and professional security by creating Zones all across the United States. Furthermore, we will stamp out the terrorist groups that have, through their wanton embrace of vandalism for the sake of vandalism, harmed so many of you, my fellow citizens.
She went on and on, of course. She was a politician, after all. Night wanted to watch the analysis of the speech afterward but Max overruled her. “You need to sleep and heal up, kiddo. We are going to need to move soon.”
She went reluctantly. I joined her. I liked lying next to her. If we were both up to it, we talked in whispers. I liked feeling her breath in my ear. We had no privacy. Our bodies were willing, but with her burns and my thigh there was not a lot we could do even if we had privacy.
CHAPTER THREE
One thing Jake had going for him was his inventory. The man had taken seriously the warnings of doom and The End of the World as We Know It. He had it all: ammo, weapons, and the high-end and hard-to-find pharmaceuticals that we were burning through.
He didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t have to. He pretended everything was just fine, but there was an edge to him that I didn’t like, a hint of arrogance that came out only when he was dealing with me. I also caught his eyes lingering on Night’s ass when he thought no one was looking.
After I was able to start moving around for more than fifteen minutes at a time without bleeding too badly I found out what he was after: He wanted to join our elite team of commandos.
I was standing on the deck outside holding on to the railing and trying to look like everything was just fine. The reality was that I was trying not to scream from the pain I felt. The sliding glass door opened behind me and I fervently hoped it wasn’t Jake. I think he knew that Mr. Pain and I were constant companions whenever I moved. He even offered me some painkillers, but I refused them.
He was almost successful in hiding his disappointment over that. It just confirmed what I already knew. I was going to have to kill him. The problem was that I was going to need to get a little stronger first, which meant he was going to get to live a little longer.
It wasn’t him. It was Max. I knew it was Max as soon as he closed the door. I can’t tell you how I knew; I just did. He came over to where I was standing and rested his hands on the railing, joining me in looking out over the overgrown lawn.
Jake wasn’t really big into lawn care. It didn’t look like he ever had been. I bet his neighbors loved that, especially as they were living in McMansions built after tearing down the houses that had once been there. Probably houses that had been a lot like Jake’s: a three-bedroom, two-bath 1950s rambler with a basement.
“How are you feeling, G?”
I looked over at Max. He was staring straight ahead, his face expressionless. I was hurting too much to come up with something snappy. Instead I gave him what was running through my head.
“I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to walk right again.” I paused and went to what was really bothering me, “I’m not as fast as I was. My stance is off and it’s messing up my timing.”
“Yeah, I imagine it would. What you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know, Max. I really don’t. Walk it back. Walk until it heals, and heals right.”
“Yep. You’re going to hate life for a while once you start.”
“Shit, something to look forward to. God, I love having a goal-directed life.”
Max laughed. “Yeah. There is that.” He spat, and we both watched as it arced out into space and landed in the overgrown grass below us. “You know, he’s practicing with that six-gun of his. He has a room upstairs with a timer and a mirror just for that.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t make him less of an asshole, Max.”
He didn’t laugh. “In all seriousness, G, try not to shoot him until I think I know where everything is. He has a couple of safes I want to see opened first.”
“You mean be a ‘team player’?”
“I know it’s hard for you to restrain yourself but give me this one. Okay?”
I grinned. “Sure, Max. No problem.”
“We both know how it’s going to end. Just don’t let him get behind you until then.”
I stood there and thought about that for about ten minutes after Max went inside. Then I found Night and told her we were going for a walk.
She was rather dubious about my idea. “You sure you’re up to it?”
“Hell, Night. I think I might jog back. You think you’re going to be able to keep up?”
Her eyes searched mine. She didn’t say anything at first; she just shook her head. Then she took a deep breath, looked up at me, and said, “Hang on. I need to get ready.” She came back carrying a daypack, really a kid’s schoolbook bag, and told me, “Okay. Let’s go walk.”
That first walk was a bitch. Actually, all of them were for a while. The first was the worst because of how bad it hurt. The second was just as bad, but at least I knew what to expect.
The first time all I could do was fifteen minutes down the trail behind Jake’s house. Once we were out of sight of his house I asked Night, “Anyone watching?”
She looked around. “Not that I can see.”
I hobbled over to a tree, leaned against it, and screamed into my arm. Night came rushing up to me. I felt her hand on my back as she whispered, “You sure you want to do this?”
I growled at her, “Got no choice,” and waved her back. Pain makes me snappish and I didn’t want to let it spill over on her. I wiped the sweat off my face, looked at her, and asked, “You see that tree down there?” I pointed down the trail.
“There are a lot of trees down there, G.”
“I know. That’s where we are walking to.”
I barely made it back to the house that day. Night ended up having to replace the dressing on my wound as soon as we got back.
Soon enough I would be showing her how much I enjoyed her help by “saluting” her when we returned from our walks. This was as much as I could do, with all the pain, to express how I really felt about her, what I intended to do when we were strong again. The first time I “saluted” her, she made my day by exclaiming, “Oh, my God! It’s back and it’s bigger!” I wished it could have happened that first day after that first walk, but the process took time.
Outside of the house, the world was getting stranger by the day. Jake had DSL, but he and Ninja both agreed that we had to be very careful about what blogs and web sites we visited. Calculated Risk had already been shut down, as had a number of others.
Their theory was that the Feds would be tracing IP numbers and making visits based on your viewing content. Iceland said it was cloaking traffic, but you had to get there first. Even getting bounced to the
m through Europe wasn’t a good idea.
The price of gold continued to rise. That got Jake all excited but didn’t do a lot for me. I didn’t have any.
Martial law was not going very well apparently, based on reports that government troops had begun clashing with so-called domestic terrorists as soon as it was declared. The government was spinning this as a good thing. It saw the situation as justifying its actions. To me, it sounded like the state was losing control.
We saw smoke from fires almost every day. The Burners were still torching buildings they believed belonged to the “CorpState.” The mainstream media hated, vilified, and generally made fun of Burners. Last week a special on the group had aired via every media format available. It included footage “never seen before” and was heavily promoted. I watched part of it. It looked like being a Burner was fun. They did attract seriously hot women.
Jake was pushing for a plan. Where were we going and how were we getting there? What was the plan once we got there? Did we have other people in mind? What was the organizational structure going to be? Would people be assigned ranks like in the military? I rolled my eyes and didn’t bother to hide it as I heard that last item.
“What, you have a problem with that?” he asked.
“No. Just curious. What rank have you picked out, Jake?”
We were all sitting around the kitchen table and it got very quiet. He knew he was on the spot. I watched him as he reconsidered what he thought his rank really should be and dropped it a couple levels for modesty’s sake.
“A major. After all, I’m pretty much bankrolling this operation.” If he had looked around instead of trying to do the death stare at me, he would have seen how well that had gone over.
