by James O'Neal
Just as he was about to check the next ten-foot section of the bank his V-com beeped. He stood as he pulled it off his belt and flipped open the screen. He grinned as he saw the image of his two smiling children before they even spoke.
“Hi, Daddy,” they sang out in unison.
“What are you two nuts doing?” he asked, a wide grin across his face.
“We missed you,” said Emma, his eight-year-old daughter.
“I miss you too.”
His son, Tommy, asked, “When are you coming home?”
That always made his heart hurt. Their mother had left the family more than a year before and now he knew it was hard for them to understand that Mommy was dead and not coming back. Hell, it was hard for him to understand. He quickly glanced at his watch and said, “You know what?”
“What?” they both asked, their dark eyes reflecting a light inside his home.
“I’ll come home right now.” He dropped the stick he was using to probe and started marching with purpose back to the checkpoint. He had spent too much of their young lives on long surveillances or patrols.
He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. The big cop had given up his search and was now crossing the bridge back to the district. He knew his escape would be easier now but he had liked the idea and challenge of seeing his knife stick into the cop’s neck.
Now he had a project; he had to find out who this cop was. Find out all he could and maybe let the buildup work him into a frenzy. He could still experience the thrill of seeing his face when he stuck a sharpened implement into his neck.
He watched from under the cover of the tree limbs as the cop met with the patrolmen and then they all pulled away in hives and on Hive-cycles.
It would be an exciting time tomorrow.
FIVE
Tom Wilner pulled his government-built and -issued hive into the driveway of his house in the Eastern District. This was considered the family area of the district. Emma and Tommy had playmates here and would actually go to their houses to study and do things that kids have done for thousands of years.
Wilner paused as he noticed a car very similar to his parked in the driveway of the empty house next door. He knew who it was and wasn’t sure if he was happy or annoyed that he had a visitor. He locked his pistol in a metal box welded into the frame of the car under his front seat. It had taken a couple of months to convince himself that he was past the trouble he had seen because of his wife and the Serbians. He no longer felt as if he needed to take his weapon into the house with him. Not that it had done much good against anyone in that group. But he didn’t like the kids to see him with a gun. They were already skittish enough when he left the house.
He used the hand scanner at the front door to unlock the various locks that had been installed since his wife was killed. As usual, the first sounds he heard were the kids rumbling toward him. He bent down and took one in each arm. He could always tell when they were happy and had good days and knew he wasn’t entirely the source of their squeals now.
He looked up toward the family room and saw his visitor get up from the couch.
“Hey” was all Shelby Hahn said as she smiled and stepped toward him.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” said Wilner.
“I was in the area and wanted to say hello. I hope you don’t mind.”
He stepped to her. “Don’t be silly.”
She embraced him and laid her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you. I’m sorry you can’t forgive me.”
He pushed her away and looked down at the kids. “Hey, you guys, go find Miss Lynn.”
Shelby cleared her throat and said, “You were running late so I sent her home. I didn’t think you’d mind if I played with the kids for a little while.”
It was right then that Wilner knew his night would be as perilous as his day.
Steve Besslia sat across the table from Johann Halleck. Between them were the remnants of a dinner from one of two casual restaurants in the Western District. Their plates of processed turkey loaf and synthetic vegetables had been tasteless but filling. The vitamin-enhanced vegetables made from a combination of real vegetables, polymer and animal product had become so accepted that unless someone said it was a real vegetable no one knew it was.
Besslia raised his vodka and synthetic orange juice. Vodka was so simple and easy to produce that it was real, but virtually all mixers were man-made. He looked at his tall friend and finished telling him about his day.
“Then we chased the killer toward the zone where the guardsmen on the bridge shot him.” He took a swallow of his drink and continued, “We never found his body.”
“Why do you sound so disappointed if they stopped him?” Johann’s slight accent pointed toward his European childhood. His blue eyes and light hair also pointed to his ancestry.
Besslia looked down at the table. He had only known Johann for a few months but they had become good friends. He hesitated, then said, “I just feel like I have something to prove.”
Johann laughed. “You stood up to members of the Simolit family and lived. You have nothing to prove, my friend.”
Besslia smiled at the comment. “I couldn’t really tell anyone about that or about your family.”
“Another sign of good judgment. A man of his word.”
“It’s just that everyone knows Tom Wilner is a big-time war hero, plus he kicks ass on the job.”
“So you’re envious of him?”
Besslia considered the word and just shrugged. “Maybe.”
Johann took a swig of vodka and said, “I have been many places and have much experience built up in three hundred and fifty years of life.”
Besslia stared at him. He was always amazed when any of these young-looking people mentioned their real age. He and Wilner had learned about the two great families of an undocumented species several months before. The Hallecks and the Simolits had an uneasy peace. No one knew how many there were. Outwardly they looked just like humans but they were hearty. They lived incredible life spans, recovered from all but the most catastrophic injuries and had a DNA structure just slightly different from humans. They had kept their identity secret and blended into human society. They had no superpowers but time, and discipline had made them tough. His friend, Tom Wilner, had unknowingly married a member of the Simolit family and assumed he had fathered their two children. Over the course of a brutal investigation the truth had come out. In the end, Wilner’s wife, Svala, had been accidentally killed and her lover, Tiget Nadovich, was assumed to be vaporized in an explosion.
Johann continued. “Men like Wilner are rare. Brave, smart and, most important, decent. He’s raising those children even though they cannot be his. He loved his wife even though she had betrayed him. He works hard no matter what. The only difference between him and you is a military record that happened to take notice of his actions. Steve, you have not faltered. You are a decent man and that’s all any one could ever hope to be.”
Besslia smiled and threw back another gulp of vodka, then said, “Thanks, Johann, you know how to make a guy feel better.”
Tom Wilner just kept his mouth shut like the marines had taught him. He stared at the beautiful face of Shelby Hahn as she explained her current bombshell.
She said, “I’m sorry, Tom, but I had to take the assignment. I’m not sure it’s good for either of us if I stay down here much longer. We need some distance and time.”
Wilner nodded. He didn’t disagree.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What’s to say?”
“That you want me to stay.” She stared at him.
“I’m sorry. I’ve lived with too many lies. I can’t say that. Not right now.”
“You still think I misled you.”
“You did.”
She paused and considered it. “You understand why.”
“I understand you have an obligation to your family to keep their secrets. But you know about
my family. You knew a lot you could have told me. I just happened to discover it.”
She looked down.
He hated to be so blunt, but he had no room for false sentiment or uncertain feelings. Shelby had been forced to tell him that she was a member of the Halleck family; a relative to the human race just as he was grappling with the knowledge that his wife at the time was a member of the Simolit family. He had found it difficult to completely trust her after that and it had shown in his unwillingness to continue their relationship. Now she was putting it all on the table.
“I may be in Pennsylvania for up to a year.”
“Helping with the relocations?”
“You make it sound like a Nazi program.”
“That is what you’re doing, right?”
“I’ll be making sure no terrorists, or Simolits, slip in with the regular people. The Department of Homeland Security is the only agency that can do that kind of stuff anymore.”
“I heard the government might try and re-form the FBI so there’s more than just one federal law-enforcement agency.”
She shook her head. “No way. After the things that have happened and the attacks that hit New York and here. No one wants that kind of bureaucracy back.” She looked into his eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck, then kissed him on the cheek. “You have no idea how much I wish we could start over.”
Wilner returned her embrace, but his mind was on the killer and what he would be doing tomorrow to find him. He also looked forward to a trip to the zone to visit Maria Saltis again.
SIX
It was just after nine in the morning when Tom Wilner walked through the doors of the Unified Police Force station. No one cared if the detectives kept a particular schedule. They were so understaffed that even with the reduced crime there was plenty to do. A detective needed to be out on the street. That was a code that had carried over from the earliest days of professional police work.
Near the turn of the century a series of devastating hurricanes had spooked people and slowed the migration to the-then Sunshine State. The ensuing insurance crisis made new houses unaffordable. Then Hank, a monster category-five storm, blew up through the Gulf and destroyed the coastal areas from the south in Naples for almost one hundred miles. With the wars and the economy tanking, almost no effort was made to rebuild and the area was essentially abandoned.
Then the terror attacks in Miami and Jacksonville showed the state’s vulnerability and started a stampede north. Once the climate started to change and the cloud cover became constant and the cold drizzle fell from the sky without end, Florida was a near wasteland. Without a tax base and no work to attract people, the only way for any government to survive was to cut and economize. Now they were left with forced relocations.
As he plopped into his chair, a relic left over from the early part of the century, his V-com on his belt beeped. He flipped open the video unit and saw his boss’s face.
“You in the office yet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come in here and see me.”
Before Wilner could give him a good marine, “Yes, sir,” the screen went blank. Wilner liked that about his boss; he was direct and no-nonsense.
Down the hallway and past an administrative assistant, who looked like she was a teenager, he entered the open door of the UPF district commander and automatically took one of the chairs in front of the wide oak desk.
“You did a good job yesterday chasing that freak.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Any word on the body yet?”
“Nothing. I’m gonna look into a few more things and if the guy is not dead I want to identify him as fast as possible.”
The commander nodded. “I don’t want this popping up again. Not with all the media about the new residents and how they don’t really want to be here anyway. If that corpse doesn’t show up somewhere in the next few days, have a good idea where you’re going with the case.”
“Yes, sir.”
The older man looked up, his extended forehead wrinkled. “How’s everything else, Willie?”
“I got a handle on the bank case and the guys selling fake pig meat in the Western District.”
“I mean at home.”
“Not bad. The kids seem to accept that Svala is gone. They really miss Mrs. Honzit.”
“Did you tell them what happened to her?”
“No. I just said she had to leave.” He still struggled with the idea that his housekeeper and nanny had been a member of the Simolit family sent to keep an eye on his children. It was chance that he had stumbled onto their plan to make South Florida a “human-free” zone and foiled the plot. Mrs. Honzit was killed in the struggle to keep the plan alive.
The district commander said, “I doubt you’ll be called up for service right now. It looks like Germany is staying put and not advancing any farther into Poland.”
“The Tehran nuclear blast made them think twice.”
The commander chuckled. “Who has such ancient labs that work on making a nuclear weapon under their main city? I wasn’t sorry to see the city destroyed. You ever in Tehran?”
“Once after the Second Iranian War. We caught transports from there on our way to Bosnia.”
“That regime didn’t last too long after we pulled out.”
“That’s why I doubt they’ll ever send us back in. Twice was enough.”
The commander nodded. Wilner knew the tubby commander was one of the first recruits of the new draft laws and had worked his way up to a captain in the army. He had fought in Indonesia and took part in the Central American conflict. That was back when the United States had the manpower to fight a couple of small wars. Before they started using the court system and immigration to fill the manpower needs of the U.S. military.
“What’s your plan on the killer?”
“I want to find out more about the victim upstairs. That was his target. The second woman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Thank God the media isn’t jumping on this. If we had any local reporters we’d be in trouble. The Northern Enclave reporters are all in the center of the state for Disney’s incorporation as a separate county.”
Wilner nodded. He didn’t care what the largest employer in the state did. They could be their own county; it had little effect on the Lawton District.
“I’ll start by going by the hospital where she worked and see what they might know about her. Maybe the killer picked up on her there.”
“You think he stalked her?”
“By the way the body was positioned, I’d say he planned it and this wasn’t his first time.”
“Any other murders like this?”
“I checked our files but without the old FBI databases or former local police departments I doubt if I could find anything here. It’s also possible he’s been preying on people in the Quarantine Zone and none of those would ever be reported.”
“You got anyone you could ask down there?”
“A couple of informants who might clue me in. I’ll cover all that in the next few days.”
“Excellent. You know, I never worry much when you’re on the job. I’m happier than you the marines didn’t call you back. Then I might have to promote your idiot friend, Besslia, to detective and nothing would get done.”
Wilner didn’t hesitate to say, “Steve’s a good man. He wouldn’t let you down.”
“I’d like to see him come through once in a while too. He’s lucky we got no applicants to ride a Hive-cycle up and down the district in freezing rain or he might be an evidence custodian.”
Wilner knew his boss wasn’t too serious. At least he hoped he wasn’t.
Steve Besslia had on his heavy, weather- and water-proof boots as he stood in the gray mud on the banks of the canal that separated the United States from the Miami Quarantine Zone. The zone had been formed when immigration to the country had been banned and people still poured into the southern tip of Florida. Then the sighting of bioplague vi
ctims—or, as the correct term, victims of the Gleason-Raab disease—had forced the government to send the military to seal off the former Dade County. Many U.S. citizens were able to return but after a time limit the southern end of Florida was permanently sealed and became the fifth of the country’s seven Quarantine Zones. New York was the largest, the dirty bombs having made Manhattan virtually unlivable anyway. South Dakota held the bioplague victims. The others were either concentration camps for jihadists or areas hit by some lasting terror attack.
Besslia liked being so close to the border because it made things interesting. It was also one of the reasons he had met his friend, Johann Halleck. Johann and his other “family” members were here in response to the move of many Simolit family members.
Besslia just wanted to make sure the killer who had run from Wilner was really dead. He admitted to himself he’d like the attention if he found the body, but he did want to make sure the creep didn’t kill anyone else. Anything beat riding in the rain and issuing speeding tickets to any of the few drivers still on the road.
After working his way up the U.S. side of the canal he crossed the checkpoint into the zone. The National Guardsman barely acknowledged him as he nodded hello, his dark uniform clearly identifying him as a member of the UPF.
He took his time working along the bank of the Quarantine Zone side. The heavy vegetation clogged the side with a solid wall of vines running from the trees a few feet from the bank of the canal. Besslia could see Wilner’s footprints from the night before. How he edged along the canal. As Wilner’s long footprints ended he noticed the dirt disturbed. He squatted down and examined the thick soil. The rain had softened up some of the marks but he could clearly see a handprint and as he followed the trail into the bushes he saw a gap in the vines where they had been torn apart. He probed the vines, then stepped through the gap. It opened into a low, empty field. The weeds were also parted near the edge and Besslia followed the trail until it died out into an open area of sand and low grass.
