by Bobby Adair
“Even telling a bad joke is a sign of intelligence.”
“Yeah. I’m a genius.”
“But not smart enough to stay out of the pain box.”
“The meanest explanation I’ve heard is that, apparently, I’m emotionally retarded, so I can’t make good choices.” I didn’t intend to be that honest, but sometimes truth has a way of coming out all on its own.
“How about you and I—we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“With a word,” Bill told me, “I could have them put you back in the box until you die. Do you think you’re in a position to negotiate?”
“I’m in a position to decide whether to give you whatever it is you want from me. Clearly, you want something, or you could have just had me killed back in Balmorhea.”
“Is your ego so large that you think I knew who you were in Balmorhea?”
No, and no, but I wasn’t going to play into an argument he was winning. “Whatever dancing monkey game you’re winding up here, I really don’t want to play. I’m tired. You know, the box thing, and all. If you’re going to chop something else off, can we skip whatever this part is and just get on with the dismemberment?”
“Rest assured, that option and worse are still on the table.” Bill surveyed the camp and changed the subject. “For one man, you’ve made an impressive mess of things here.”
“Thank you?”
“Your exploits in battle are equally impressive.”
I’d not have guessed anybody who wasn’t dead knew how I performed in a fight. “You’re well-informed.”
“I’m clairvoyant.”
I laughed out loud. Not even sarcastically, then coughed hard. Bill waited.
“The deal I want to make,” he said, “is for you to demonstrate a degree of maturity, as your friends Murphy, Grace, and Jazz did when they arrived in New Tejas. Give me your word you’ll act like a normal human being, take a drive with me, and we’ll have lunch. I’ll answer the many hundreds of questions I’m sure you have, and you and I can decide where we go from there. You must admit, that deal is better than whatever you were imagining would happen here today.”
Yes. That was true, but the only promise I was willing to make to Bill was that I intended to kill him and as many of his yellow lackeys as I could manage. Telling him that would probably get me put back in the box, and I’d certainly miss lunch. Still, Bill’s anachronistic reliance on the honor of the spoken word created an obstacle I had difficulty ignoring. “Words are meaningless.”
“To me, a man’s word is everything.”
“Is that why you put a buzz bolt on everyone’s head?” I snarked.
“I can see I overestimated you. I apologize for wasting your time.” Bill stood to leave.
I’d overplayed my hand. I gave in. “I’ll take a ride with you.”
Bill looked at me blankly.
“And I’ll have lunch with you. I’ll listen to what you have to say, and I’ll act like a human. You have my word.” I felt like a dancing monkey, a hungry one.
87
They ran me through the cold shower behind the barracks, let me put my hook arm back on, dressed me in a new-ish set of work clothes, and I felt human again.
With Bill off engaged in whatever business he had to tend to, his toughs escorted me to one of the white SUVs. I looked around for Murphy.
“Don’t worry about your butt buddy,” said my escort. “He’ll be here when you get back.”
I repressed the urge to knee him in the nuts and throw an elbow at his mouth. “You want me to get inside?”
The tough looked at the other. “They were right. This one’s wicked smart.” He opened the door. The rear of the vehicle was laid out like a small living room, with two plush rows of seats facing each other. My escort directed me to the seat facing backward. “Bill always takes the forward-facing seat.”
I wasn’t picky—it seemed like I was living in the past these days anyway.
The SUV—manufactured before the collapse, of course—was the most luxurious vehicle I’d been inside of in years. It showed its age here and there, but was immaculately clean. In the front seat, the driver had the engine idling—burning precious gasoline just to keep the air inside perfect, not too hot, not too cold, no humidity, and nothing stinky drifting through.
One of my escorts climbed into the passenger side of the front seat. He said, “Look here.”
I craned my neck to look forward.
He flipped down the visor so I could see him watching me in the mirror. He raised a hand just high enough for me to notice that he held a clicker-zapper. The threat, or rather, the promise, was clear—behave, or suffer. Neither he nor the driver said anything else.
After a short while, one of Bill’s men opened the door for him to climb through. He seated himself across from me, and the SUV immediately headed out. “My apologies if you were kept waiting too long.”
Disarmed by his manners, I swallowed the smartass response that came to mind, and I told him, “Not a problem.”
In moments, we were floating smoothly and quietly over a country road. In some of the fields we passed, crops were beginning to sprout in bright green rows. In others, cattle grazed on new grass. I said, “You sure seem to have the Whites under control.”
“Whites?” asked Bill. “Oh yes, your people’s slang for the infected.”
“Yeah.”
“To answer your question, we maintain security in a zone that covers over a thousand square miles of farmland east and northeast of Austin. Millions of infected continue to thrive within the borders of old Texas, hundreds of thousands in Austin itself. The infected are a problem that will be with us for generations to come. They are also an opportunity and a resource.”
“Because you train them for your army.”
“Indeed, we do.”
“So, you can raid communities like Balmorhea and steal everything hard-working survivors have built.”
Bill looked at me like I’d just said something stupid. “Was Balmorhea not under siege when we arrived?”
“Preacher Dick was giving us a bit of trouble.”
“And did our forces not overrun your weak defenses in a matter of hours?”
That was a very sore subject with me.
“If you weren’t strong enough to keep what you’d built,” Bill told me, “then it was never yours. If we hadn’t conquered Balmorhea, then somebody else would have. In fact, this Bishop Richard and his militia were in the process of doing exactly that. Whatever it was you thought you possessed, you didn’t. The people of Balmorhea were merely maintaining it for the benefit of someone they hadn’t yet met. It’s only chance that that someone happened to be us.”
“And the people you killed?” I accused. “They didn’t matter?”
“The normal people were the only thing that mattered. They were who we were there to rescue.”
“Imprison you mean? Enslave?”
“Some people need a label to define their place in the world. Are you one of those people?”
“You claim to value words for their true meaning, so, you tell me what would you call a man you surgically tagged for discipline, kept in a locked cell for a month, then the pain box, mutilated him, and then the pain box again?”
“A slow learner.”
Ouch. I shifted tactics. “What do you call yourself? King? President? Viceroy?”
“Most people call me sir, as a sign of respect.”
“Was that the lesson I was supposed to slow learn in my incarceration? Respect for King Bill?”
Bill stared at me with flat eyes and an expressionless face, a shark’s look. “You like to toy with people when you’re trying to win your point. Tell me, Zed, has playing clever word games ever helped you achieve any worthwhile goal in life?” Bill cut deep with that jab, and he saw it. “Have you ever thought of applying your intellect to a constructive endeavor?” He dug into his pocket and retrieved what looked like a cell phone, an honest to God
cell phone. “Perhaps you’ll be less combative once you’ve eaten. We’ll talk some more then. In the meantime, I have some calls to make. Please allow me the courtesy of remaining quiet.” He dialed.
So flabbergasted was I that I couldn’t help but blurt, “You have a cellular network?”
“You didn’t have cell phones in Balmorhea?”
Fucker.
88
We passed the outskirts of a tiny, walled hamlet, sitting alone in the vast fields. Guards in the towers waved as we passed. Farm vehicles and even a loaded semi drove past us as we traveled west, it occurred to me, on well-maintained roads—certainly better than the ones I’d driven on my midnight run. No burned-out hulks of cars blocked the lanes. No ambushers attacked us. Though not one of the solitary farmhouses we passed appeared to be doing anything but fading into ruin. More and more of the fields appeared to be under cultivation. As I watched it all go by, the world seemed normal in a way I hadn’t seen since before the collapse. Not totally normal, but trending in that direction.
When we passed through the fortified gates to get into Taylor, Bill hung up his phone for the last time. “Do you like barbecue?”
My first urge was to say something sarcastic, but I was still cowed from my earlier interaction. “Love it.”
“We’ve reopened many of the businesses in town. As you might imagine, almost none with the original owners, and few in the same business they were before the collapse. The restaurants—we tried to keep those as they were. I think you’ll be pleased with the barbecue.”
Out on the sidewalks, people in town—who had a place to be—traveled mostly by foot. A good number of bicycles whizzed this way and that. Few cars and trucks plied the roads, so, we were able to park at the curb right in front of the restaurant Bill had selected.
Inside, smoke stained the ceiling black. Old pictures of times gone by hung on the walls. Auto license plates nailed to the floor patched over holes in the century-old planks. Everything looked shabby, a touch greasy, and a little bit unsanitary. The place seemed normal—for an old Texas barbecue joint.
A dozen or so diners sat at tables—nearly all were normals, wearing blood-red neckerchiefs, caps, or jackets. A pair of yellows, obvious because of their white skin and yellow neckerchiefs, had a table to themselves. Nine patrons stood in line, waiting to order, and all happily stepped aside to allow Bill and I to go first.
As we walked past, Bill stopped to share platitudes with a few. He reminded me of a politician working a crowd. And though I’d have expected Bill’s normals to be intimidated by him, none of that was apparent in their eyes or the tone of their voices.
At the counter, we ordered brisket, sausage, beans, and beer. Bill even made me take a serving of mock-banana pudding—real pudding, though it contained no bananas.
As we ate, Bill talked about his boyhood growing up in Dallas. Plano, actually, an affluent suburb north of the city. His father taught algebra at the local high school and his mother commuted to a job as an accountant in downtown Dallas. Bill played baseball and soccer as a kid, wasn’t talented at either, but was proficient enough to earn a place on his high school teams. He attended Texas State University in San Marcos—Southwest Texas State in those days—where he’d earned a degree in mechanical engineering. After graduation, he found employment with a consulting firm back in Dallas and soon realized he had a flair for organization. By the time he was thirty, he was the firm’s managing partner and a millionaire many times over. Affluence and its trapping rained all over his life through the following decades. Then the virus came to Texas and made his hoard of money worthless.
I felt ashamed when it turned to me to recount my pre-virus existence. Impressive test scores and tons of potential could never flourish past the mess of my childhood. After so many years, it still contaminated everything I did and thought. I probably needed a shrink and a prescription for some happy pills. We had neither in Balmorhea. I didn’t tell Bill about any of that, though. I admitted to earning a useless degree in philosophy with unimpressive grades, and I taunted him with my dead-end job at Starbucks. That segued nicely into my asking why he believed he had anything to gain by lunching with me.
He brushed past the question, and I didn’t push for an answer. Just like our lives before the virus, where Bill had excelled and won all the prizes, and I’d struggled to keep the utilities turned on, Bill’s post-apoc accomplishments eclipsed my lifetime achievements. I’d helped establish Balmorhea. I’d thought it was a shining city in the desert, the one thing I could say I’d done. What Bill built in Taylor made Balmorhea look like a Podunk backwater.
But the way he defended and grew New Tejas with an army of dimwit yellows and monkey-trained Whites, disgusted me.
Bill told me his realm held nearly eleven thousand normals. Immune survivors from all over central Texas, brought together by him. Humans, he explained, succeed when they form communities and work together. Of even greater importance were Bill’s ideas on critical mass. Five hundred people—the approximate number we’d corralled out in Balmorhea—could indeed form a seemingly successful community. We’d proven that out in the desert. But five hundred wasn’t enough for much more than providing communal protection against regional threats. A community that size could create a blanket of food security. It could support specialized members not wholly consumed in agricultural production or infrastructure maintenance. By specialized, he meant people like me and my scouts, most of whom his yellows and taints had killed when they conquered us. That reminder made me so sore that I wanted to jump across the table and skewer his skull with my greasy barbeque fork.
But, I didn’t.
Having vented my rage all over Stalag 17, it was easier to control at the moment. Besides, Bill was info-dumping a mountain of intel on me. If I listened long enough, I’d gather all I needed to help me rescue my friends and Steph.
“You can scavenge and maintain,” Bill told me. He put his elbows on the table and leaned close to make his main point. “You have to understand, Balmorhea would never have grown to be more than it was when we arrived. In fact, it was on the road to dying away. In a generation or two, it would be just as you’d found it, a ghost town crumbling into the sand. Why? Critical mass.
“The larger a community grows, the more economies of scale create efficiencies in food production. The more people can be made available to contribute in other ways, and the more people are available to collaborate on problems. In Balmorhea, you were able to scavenge Humvees and trucks, and you had a handful of people who worked constantly to keep your small fleet running. That system would eventually have run out of scavengeable materials and would have failed. In New Tejas, we’ve gathered our mechanics, along with some engineers and factory managers, and created a facility that can salvage and re-manufacture any number of vehicles. What’s more, as we improve processes and are able to source more materials, we project we’ll never have shortfalls in vehicle availability. Ever.
“You had a hospital in Balmorhea, did you not?”
I nodded. Of course, Bill already knew that.
“You were able to treat most common ailments and injuries, but most previously curable diseases were fatal to Balmorheans. Including cancer. Am I right?”
That poked at my inner grizzly, and I thought about hooking Bill’s head with my left and smashing his face into his plate.
Bill smiled. “Now you’re giving me your full attention, I see.”
“You’re referring to Steph, of course.”
“If we hadn’t shown up to rescue you—”
“Rescue,” I laughed. “You do love your euphemisms.”
“To rescue you from the desert,” Bill persisted. “From yourselves. From Bishop Richard’s militia. If you’d lived through that, and we hadn’t arrived, you’d have found yourself standing by Nurse Leonard’s grave six months from now, bemoaning the high-tech world you lost, the world that could have detected her cancer early, and possibly saved her life with some commonly available dru
gs and therapies.”
My grip on my anger started to slip. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m saying we have the kind of hospital that can treat her. Not just make her comfortable while she dies.”
“Murphy has been visiting her.” It pained me to make the accusation, not because I cared in the least how Bill would hear it, but because every time that reality came to the fore, it felt like a stab in my gut. “It doesn’t sound like you’re helping her at all.”
He shrugged. “We do what we can.”
“Sounds like salesman BS to me.”
“What could you do for her out there in the desert, dig a hole and wait?”
My fork held a round slice of sausage, dripping with slippery sauce that would lube it nicely into Bill’s skull.
Maybe Bill sensed my anger, because he leaned back in his chair. “It’s not my desire to speak harshly, but we live in a harsh world now.” He said it, maybe not quite harshly, but he definitely said it sternly. “Perhaps I misjudged you.”
“Perhaps?” I chided. “Do we live in a world of uncertainties or certainties now?” That tweaked a twitch out of Bill’s in-charge composure. “Why don’t you just finish telling me what you brought me here to tell me, and ask me what you brought me here to ask me. I’ve got an empty pain box to keep warm back at Stalag 17.”
“Petulance is for children.” Bill sliced a bite of brisket, deliberately put it into his mouth, and slowly chewed. “Defiance is for men. That’s what I think I see in you. That, and intelligence. You’re a gifted tactician, though you let your emotions rule your strategic choices. You’re a decisive thinker and a leader. You could be so much more than you are. That’s what I see. Tell me, am I wrong?”
“You want me to be all that I can be, huh? I think I saw that on a recruitment poster once.”
Bill wiped his face, scooted his chair out and stood. “I’d hoped this would be more enjoyable.” He headed for the door.
I didn’t turn my head. I didn’t look up. Still, I was losing again. “Wait.” I heard Bill’s feet stop walking. “I’ll behave. I promised I’d do that. My apologies for not keeping my word.”
