by B. C. Tweedt
Mr. Tomlinson had opened the driver’s door and inserted the keys. Her breath had caught in her throat, but she forced it out long and slow. She couldn’t pass out back here. In a man’s vehicle. With a man who could be one of the worst Plurbs in the country. He had to be smart. He had to be ruthless. He had spawned Katelyn and Jordan.
There were electric dings and a hum as his seat positioned itself, but soon after there was another hum – longer and punctuated with a pleasant beep in the end.
[Sounds like a bug sweeper], Jeremy said in her ear.
Sydney felt for the inactive bugs in her pocket. They wouldn’t do much good if he swept for bugs every time he got into the vehicle.
The man fished in his clothes for something. A plastic click against the dash. Static fuzz, as if he were searching for a radio station. Then the static was gone.
“Pontiac Solstice. Bravo, Nine, Kilo, Mike, Kilo, Seven, Victor, Alpha, Two.”
The man was listing off random words and numbers. But to whom?
[Is he on his phone? Tap twice for yes. Once for no.]
Sydney gulped. She knew what she had to do.
“Pontiac Solstice. Bravo, Nine, Kilo…”
As soon the man began repeating the string of words and numbers, she pushed her head just above the rear console.
One of his hands on the satellite radio receiver. The other on his earphones.
She tapped once on her ear bud.
He wasn’t on his phone. So how was he talking to anyone?
“…Alpha, Two.”
There was a long pause as Sydney fought the urge to sneeze.
[Tap three times if you’re in danger, Syd, and we’ll get you out. Be smart and we’ll get through this.]
Her finger hovered around her earlobe as she lay back down on the floor’s carpet.
“What is it?” came Mr. Tomlinson’s crackly voice. He had just woken up and didn’t sound happy.
There was no reply that she could hear. Only Mr. Tomlinson would hear it in his earphones.
“Look, here. I’ve told you a dozen times. It will work. Keep Redmond and his DNA close. Nothing else can stop it. But that’s on you.”
Sydney squinted, hoping with all she had that Jeremy was recording this somehow.
“I didn’t wake up at 3am to hear your doubts. Our end is foolproof. You’ll see first hand in eight hours, get the assurance you so badly need. Two simultaneous tests, two locations. Full control. Full deniability.”
Another long pause.
“The self-destruct will work. Even if it doesn’t, he has men ready for cleanup. Now, do you have anything new for me? No? Then contact me when Dallas burns.”
There was a flurry of activity from the front, and the door opened again. Sydney pressed her body as flat as possible until the lights faded off. She waited until the door to the garage shut, rattling the garage doors.
“You get that?” she asked the ceiling in the quiet.
[We got it all. You sure he wasn’t on his phone?]
“I’m sure. He was listening to the radio.”
[The radio? Satellite?]
“Yeah. Station 81.5.
[Clever. That should be all we need. Now let’s get you back to your room.]
“All we need? What about Dallas? What happens in eight hours?”
[We’ve got options to find out, but none involve you getting caught.]
“We have to find out soon. You can contact the same station with the same password. Or make Mr. Tomlinson do it again.”
[Syd, Rubicon’s already there, trying to find out. But you heard him. These are tests, which means something bigger is happening later. Our concern is what happens after the test. We can’t burn our bridges here yet by doing anything rash. We can take it from here.]
Frustrated, Sydney crawled over the rear console and watched the garage door before opening the passenger side door. “What if it’s a nuke?” she asked, her fingers on the handle.
There were several seconds of silence before Jeremy came on again. [Then that means there are more out there, and Mr. Tomlinson and the man on the other side of the radio may be our only leads. If your friend Greyson is as good as you think he is, he would agree.]
Sydney closed the door softly behind her and caught her reflection in the SUV’s window. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he was right. But that’s what scared her. If a nuke went off in Dallas, and she could have stopped it – could have stopped Greyson from dying – she would never forgive herself. Never. No matter if Greyson thought it was right. No matter how much Jeremy told her that it was for the greater good.
But still. She couldn’t do anything about it. Even if she could figure out how to contact them, they would pay no attention to a girl’s voice.
She turned from her reflection and padded through the garage in her socks, all the way to the door inside. A moment later she was inching it closed, letting the knob swivel back in place.
She was helpless, one very tiny cog in a machine and hundreds of miles from the action. The best thing she could do now was to not screw it up.
As she tiptoed past Jordan’s room, she had an idea. It was a bad idea, but she let it play through her mind longer than it deserved.
Chapter 34
One hour until martial law
Four days until the election
The atmosphere was an electric mix of carnival and warzone. Memories of the Iowa State Fair peppered Greyson as he followed Drake and his squad through the crowd to the sound of live music provided by a ragtag band of street performers. The energy and excitement were just as high as the Fair, but for entirely different motives.
The crowd that dotted the streets and alleys, pressing in and out of the shops, was young, angry, and bubbling with anticipation of conflict, arrest, or worse. There were a few in Halloween costumes, and a few more just playing Frisbee or Spike Ball, but most were taking themselves more seriously, wearing bike helmets, hard hats, or surgical masks. Of these, some passed out poster signs; some began building barricades in the streets; others recruited as many followers for their organization or militias as they could, with one bearded militiaman jumping to a car corpse and bellowing chants paired with invites to join him in fighting for the Constitution. But when a motorcycle gang rumbled through flying Gadsden flags, the man gave up, dropping once again into the flowing crowd.
“PEACE, PLEASE! PEACE, PLEASE! PEACE, PLEASE!”
Greyson avoided eye contact with the PAAC protestors to his right and then swerved around a camera crew and journalist searching for someone to interview. It was too busy. Too many players in a complicated chess game. But there were more colors in this game. Not just black and white anymore. And he was just one of the gray players.
“Got to hand it to them,” Drake said, looking back at the PAAC chanters. “They don’t give up.”
“I know, right?” Windsor exclaimed. “That car bomb, man. In what’s that place – Charleston. And then the…the…”
“The St. Louis bridge thing,” Drake added.
“That, too. But I was thinkin’ the hack thing. Where those hackers sent them those picture virus things – that sent out their picture albums from their clouds to all their contacts.”
Grimes butted in. “Picpocalypse.”
They scoffed at the collective memory before sobering at the thought. Someone had waged war with PAAC from all fronts. Rubicon knew what their enemies were called. Wolves. And they were after one in particular.
For the most part the crowd was headed toward City Hall, but PatriARC had called for a rally at 11:30 a.m., and it was only 10. Many people didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Neither had Greyson. Rubicon had let him know that one of their spies had uncovered the fact that Dallas was part of a test for something bigger. Dan suggested letting the test play out, not playing their hand too early. The team had even discussed extracting Greyson.
But he’d had nothing of i
t. He wasn’t going to leave, letting another attack happen, no matter what it was. Forge had agreed. They decided to scale back Greyson’s attempts at making himself known, but they’d stick to finding PatriARC.
Drake’s squad had packed their things at dawn, hiding them behind the brick façade that Ankeny had taken him to in the night. Since then they had been vigilant, searching every head of hair for a man-bun and every neck for a wolf tattoo.
{I’m scanning Dallas’ CCTV surveillance system. Diablo and Smokestack are searching with you. We’ll let you know if we have anything.}
Ankeny had provided a verbal description to Rubicon and they had submitted it to an artist who had made a drawing of the man. According to Ankeny, the drawing had been accurate.
“Finding a man-bun shouldn’t be too hard in this crowd,” Windsor said, bouncing on the balls of his feet and drumming a beat on his stomach. “Unless he let it down and looks like a lady now.”
Drake smiled, but held back a laugh as a police drone buzzed overhead, warning them of the coming martial law at noon. They ignored it. “That’s a good point. He could be in disguise.”
“Or,” Beep said, pointing her finger in the air, “he could be long gone – like a shooting star.”
“A fart in the wind,” Windsor added.
“A sublimating block of dry ice,” Grimes noted.
Ankeny rolled her eyes, kicking at the remnants of a ripped martial law announcement. “He wouldn’t leave. Keep looking.”
“Maybe we should split up. We’re running out of time,” Greyson said, glancing at his watch. “If we don’t find him…”
Frustrated, Greyson blinked hard, trying to stay awake. It’d been a long night with little sleep. He’d be fine, but he needed food.
Kit must have been thinking the same thing. His nose was going crazy, and his tongue jostled about between his fangs.
“What you smell, boy?” Beep asked Kit.
“Someone’s grilling,” Windsor noted, lifting his own nose toward the smell. “And it smells like heaven.”
“Like heaven?” Beep asked. “Heaven smells like beef?”
Windsor smiled. “Yup. Dead burned cows.”
Beep’s mouth hung open as wide as Kit’s before she jumped at Windsor, swinging play punches.
Greyson would have come to Windsor’s defense, but an idea had fused his shoes to the asphalt. He stared at Kit and Kit stared back, panting. The dog cocked his head, his ears perked.
By-passers swerved around him, and the play-fight between Beep and Windsor was interrupted by Drake’s long, peace-making arms.
It was Grimes who noticed Greyson first, and his mind found the reason even before Greyson. “German Shepherds’ sense of smell is thousands of times stronger than a human’s. They can detect a drop of urine in a million gallons of water.”
Beep and the others gave him an odd look, but Grimes continued, cocking his head at Kit. “They can detect drugs, cadavers, and even cancer.”
Windsor smiled. “Cadavers? He smells dead people?”
“Or live people,” Greyson added, jolting his head to Grimes. “Do you still have the phone from the dumpster?”
As Grimes rummaged through his backpack, the others caught on to their plan with a release of excitement. They shimmied next to Grimes, reached into his bag, and made the search a team-effort. Soon Beep emerged with a phone grasped in her hand. “Got it!”
She knelt before Kit and held the phone up to his nose. “We want you to find the dumpster dumper. Can you smell him?”
Kit sniffed the phone several times. Beep rubbed behind his ears, keeping the phone on her palm. “That’s it, poochie. Got the scent?”
The anticipation grew as another man jumped on a car nearby. “Take your masks so you can see your victory and breathe your freedom in the midst of their smoke and tyranny! Take your earplugs so you can hear our defiance and their desperation! We, the governed, won’t give our consent! We are their power!”
Kit walked a few steps forward, sniffed again, and then began to trot through the crowd. “That’s it! Hurry! Let’s go!” The kids took off after him as the man’s voice faded behind them.
“They no longer secure our rights, they bind our wrists. They no longer secure our rights, they destroy them and give us the remains, expecting us to be thankful. But our rights don’t come from Almighty Government! They come from the Almighty! Thank the Maker, not the Taker!”
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The Herdsman droned on and on about the election, but Sydney’s mind was elsewhere. He asked for more volunteers in the Get Out to Vote effort in poor neighborhoods, but wasn’t getting any bites. Sydney knew why. They were afraid. Not just of poor neighborhoods. But of wearing their uniform. They were all aware of the threats Katelyn had received. Her name and address had been published on an extremist website devoted to taking down the Shepherd program. The whole community knew in a matter of hours the story of Katelyn’s accusations against Marshall’s family and her own grandfather. Her story was only one of hundreds on the website, but it was the most recent and had received thousands of views.
The bicycle ride to the community center had been scary enough for Sydney, being Katelyn’s “friend”. Though Sydney didn’t have much sympathy at first, seeing her fear made her rethink it.
She was slumped in her seat, staring past the Herdsman, blank-faced and red-eyed.
“Look,” the Herdsman said, sensing their reservations, “did you expect it to be easy?”
The kids snapped to attention.
“There have been bigots and violent hate-mongers from the beginning of our nation, and they’ve always fought hard 'til the end. The slavers, the KKK, anti-choicers, homophobes, et cetera. They all get angry and desperate in their last throes – but we have never given up. If they’re throwing threats at us, we know we’re doing something right.”
Sydney met eyes with Nick. She knew how much he hated this place. This man. And he wouldn’t love being lumped together with the likes of the KKK.
“So we have to keep fighting. And we can’t let a candidate win who will take us back when we need to keep moving forward.”
Katelyn’s face didn’t change. She was lost in some other time or place.
“This election is the biggest since Lincoln’s. And we have an obligation to do whatever we can to give Reckhemmer a chance to finish the job Foster started.”
Sydney snuck a glance at her watch.
Greyson had an hour to finish his job.
“Plus, it’s Halloween. When you go door to door you could dress up in whatever costumes you want – as long as they’re not offensive.”
Jordan blurted out, “What’s considered offensive again?”
“Whatever offends somebody. Triggers their discomfort.”
“Like what? Wearing my birthday suit?”
The kids laughed, but the Herdsman knew he had to make his point. “Yes, yes. But let’s see. Last year there were inconsiderate Native American costumes. Ghosts – too much like the KKK. Any past presidents. Nuns. Priests, or any religious figures. Merks – I mean, soldiers and what not. What else am I missing?”
“Bacon. That was Wyatt.”
“Oh, yes. Some religions don’t mesh with pork.”
Annoyed, Sydney took the first chance to excuse herself to the hall and call Jeremy. “What have you found out?” she asked.
“We have distributed their communication technique to affiliates nationwide. They’ve already intercepted multiple communications and will have more in the future. This was huge, Syd.”
“What about Dallas?”
“Nothing substantial yet. There are a lot of eyes on it, though.”
“You’re just going to let it happen, aren’t you?”
“It’s not up to me…but yes. We can’t reveal that we are on to them. If we do, we lose our advantage when we may need it most.”
“But we need it now. Greyson i
s…”
“I know, I know. We’ve told the team, and they may extract, but it’s not my call – it’s not your call.”
“Whose call is it?”
The pause was telling. He couldn’t say.
Sydney sighed and hung up.
When she walked back inside, she chose an open seat next to Jordan.
He was pleasantly surprised.
-------------------------------
Kit was on the trail. Head down, snout leading the way, he barreled through the crowd with the kids in hot pursuit. Greyson swiped protestors out the way one after the other. “Sorry. Sorry. Excuse me! My dog…sorry!”
They swerved past the tent for Free Legal Aid, around a crowded food truck, and past a barricade being formed from luxurious furniture, streaming from inside a hotel lobby.
When Kit slowed down in an intersection, Greyson took the chance to glance to the east where lines of protestors watched a caravan of APCs churning in the middle of the street, flanked with riot cops on each side, eyeing the protestors without a word. Two police drones hovered, watching the cops’ flanks with their incessant glare and their scorpion-tail guns hanging beneath.
“APCs. Riot cops. A whole buttload of ‘em,” Windsor explained. “And two Scorpion drones. They’ll need a whole lot more than that to…” He trailed off as he turned to Greyson, his confidence vanishing as he caught sight of a caravan of military vehicles inching along only a block parallel to the protestors’ march, the Bradleys’ treads grinding on the street to the right. National Guardsmen marched alongside, armed with rifles, gas masks, and bulky body armor. Greyson’s HUD lit up, placing green “friendly” triangles above each unit and giving him numbers he didn’t like.
A caravan of police on the left. A caravan of military on the right.
They were being surrounded.
Still, Kit led them forward, where blocks away, between the towering buildings blocking out the sun, was a bright park blotted with people. The sun was not hindered from striking the park, making it seem brighter still – a light at the end of a long tunnel.
