Martial Lawless (Calm Act Book 3)

by Ginger Booth

  I didn’t see any useful follow-up questions to that. “You’re OK, Brandy,” I insisted. “Their sick actions have nothing to do with you. Ready to talk, Blake?”

  According to Blake, when he arrived before the big disarmament operation six days ago, he found Green Tree an ordinary looking, prosperous Pennsylvania suburb. He’d stopped in to chat at a farm market. People seemed excited about the new meshnet communications, but alarmed by the news that Dane Beaufort was dead. They liked Dane. There was plenty of food available. A nice baker fed him lunch in return for stories about life back east, and news about the world. The nice lady rolled her eyes at what was going on in Pittsburgh, and said she avoided the city.

  She avoided the mass grave site, too. Some bad people had moved in there. Besides, suicides, she said were buried there, with a shudder. Blake got the impression she meant the oxycontin volunteers for depopulation, from the first winter under the Calm Act. Seriously ill? Afraid for the future? Mentally ill, or disabled? The oxycontin suicide kit was a one-size-fits-all final solution, handed out by doctors in the millions all over the U.S. that winter. Like everybody, I kept several bottles of the stuff at home for use as a painkiller or last resort. Oxycontin was easier to obtain than bread.

  Blake filmed some footage of the farm market and the helpful baker, then drove over to the graveyard. They were old graves. The barrow mounded as tall as he was, but didn’t smell. The encroaching greenery looked like it had grown all summer. He recorded perfectly usable footage of that, too, even clambered on top to show its extent. The mound climbed the middle of a narrow wooded valley like a million others, between steep hillsides. The kind of landscape where effective visibility was maybe 50 feet. From New England, I knew those kind of woods intimately. You could hide almost anything in them. No one would know unless they stumbled across in person.

  It’s a shame he didn’t leave then. But Blake figured he had another half hour before he needed to drive back into Pittsburgh to meet Emmett’s deadline. I’d mentioned that the grave might have signs cut into trees. So he nosed around, walking along one edge of the barrow.

  The first mark carved into a tree was a simple fish glyph, nose down, with an arrow pointing onward up the sloping valley. The next said ‘666’, with another arrow. The third looked like a Nordic rune. Then he stepped into a clearcut for a high-voltage long-distance power line, perpendicular to the barrow mound, running up the bracketing hill slopes. A corpse hung from one of the power poles.

  Now a sensible person would have high-tailed it back to his car at that point. But I’ve noticed this about my camera men and women, and wished to strangle them for it. They kind of disappear behind the lens, so intent on the images they’re capturing that they don’t have the sense God gave kittens. On Long Island, my camera woman Kyla faced off a would-be rapist by turning her lens on him. Not an effective defense.

  That corpse was fresh, and Blake wanted a closeup of his face.

  His face was Paul Dukakis. One of Emmett’s informants had provided a good photo, and Emmett broadcast it across the meshnet asking for leads, so Blake recognized him. Blake got great shots, he told me proudly.

  And that’s where they nabbed Blake, while he was too intent on his camera to notice the three guys walking up behind him.

  They dragged him through the woods and over a little rise into their encampment. Maybe several hundred people camped there. The well-fed, better-dressed sort had tents around a couple cabins. About a hundred more lived in a slave pen, walled in with a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. They stripped Blake of his stuff, forced him to change into his new rags and bare feet, and threw him into the slave pit for safe-keeping.

  Naturally enough for a news professional, Blake grilled his fellow inmates, mostly attractive young women and teenage girls at that hour of the day. They were new converts to Judgment, they told him. It was a choice of that or death, apparently. Once they came into the fold, no one left to carry tales. The guards would come and take a team out to work or service them, then bring them back. No one got fed in the pen. They got picked for work, or they starved.

  The goal of Judgment was to carry out Lucifer’s work, and rid the land of the human infestation until no more than one in ten survived, and inherited the earth. God had ceded the field to his right hand angel, and left Satan to cleanse the world. And Judgment were his legions. All hail Satan.

  As a good little well-educated, well-adjusted non-observant Jewish boy, Blake had trouble believing anyone could buy into this. But the women seemed sincere. In fact, when he argued, they shunned him, afraid to be seen anywhere near him.

  I pointed out that even if the women weren’t sure in the beginning, it sounded like sincerity was the price of dinner. And most people wanted to live. In the Apple Zone, we could take it as a given that a woman of a certain age range had performed sexual favors in exchange for food at least once.

  Emmett and Drum unleashed the 101st on Pittsburgh that evening, so Blake had a couple days to get mighty hungry before anyone had time to question him. All the slaves got hungry, and the men weren’t nearly as kind when they came back from their work details for the night. Blake didn’t realize it until later, but the slave pit also suffered from opiate withdrawal. Emmett’s police action preempted their chance to work for their fix as well as their food.

  Eventually the Judgment community’s religious leader, Uriel, took Blake out of the pen and got his story in exchange for a meal. Blake was given oxycontin to make him happy and cooperative.

  “That’s good stuff, oxycontin,” Blake said despondently. “I told him anything he wanted to know. He was my best friend. He’s a monster, Dee. He really believes Jesus screwed up and now it’s Satan’s turn to purify the Earth. The storms and pestilence and climate change are Satan’s tools. On the drugs, I happily believed it all and wanted to help him.”

  Eventually Uriel sent Blake to Canber. “Canber’s something else, Dee. Cool and collected. Better informed than anyone else I’ve met in Penn. Knew about you, and Emmett. What you’ve accomplished. I told him more.”

  On the day Brandy and I were captured, the camp was already packed and ready to move out. They just waited for Canber to return.

  When Blake’s anguished story ran out, we fell into silence for a few minutes. Then the guards came and took Blake away. I couldn’t help wondering if that was intentional. Maybe our captors put our friend in with us to teach us the ropes.

  “You’re alright, Blake!” I called out after him softly. “You’re a good man.” I almost wished I hadn’t said it. His face crumpled, on the brink of tears.

  Chapter 24

  Interesting fact: Oxycodone is made by chemically altering one of the natural opiates. The oxycontin pill form is designed to be long-lasting, providing pain relief over 12 hours. For a more intense high, abusers crush it to defeat the time-release feature. The simplest method is to chew it. All opioids are products of the opium poppy. Afghanistan produced more opium than the rest of the world combined. But in the Americas, the opium poppy also thrived in Mexico and Colombia.

  I was awfully thirsty by the time the guards came to take me to Camber. It was raining lightly, and I stumbled along with my head back, mouth open to catch every drop I could. Thank you, clouds. Bless you, rain. There is nothing so delicious as water when you’re truly thirsty, a bite of food when you’re truly hungry. And it was a long block, down a hill and around a forested bend, to the house Canber claimed.

  Fortunately, the ratty plaid-clad men didn’t object. When we entered the house – quite possibly the nicest in town – one of my escorts even fetched me a glass of water. He handed it toward me, then yanked it away.

  “Swallow this with it,” he said, sticking a white pill in my mouth and leering at me. “Or don’t. Spit it out and you’ll regret it later when we rape you.” Then he handed me the water.

  I drank it, every drop, and swallowed the pill as well. Much as I resent obeying orders, I suspected he gave good advice. The w
ater was excellent, my duct-taped wrists little impediment. The pill was probably oxycontin. I gave it a brief chomp before swallowing. No, I had no experience at abusing oxy. But the stuff was so ubiquitous, those days even an 8-year-old would have heard the tricks.

  The guards smirked. They delivered me to the home office, and closed the well-hung door genteelly behind me. I gazed around appreciatively, drinking in my surroundings. A corner office, with two walls of cheery windows on the glorious dripping autumn woods, reds and oranges and yellows glowing, vivid color almost pulsating in the grey day. Built-in bookcases and office storage cabinets lined the solid walls, in a beautiful oak veneer to match the generously sized desk. A cheerful print comforter and plump throw pillows lay on the daybed under the windows. Flawless joinery on the oak-stained wood molding and windowsills.

  The tech was so lovely, too. Video cameras on tripods for two angles. A matched pair of large computer monitors. LEDs blinking happily to proclaim excellent Internet service and WiFi, ample processing power, best quality gear. I knew the person who bought this equipment was a fellow connoisseur of fine machines.

  I loved this office. I remembered not to fixate on the tech, letting my eyes roam right past to appreciate other features. The oak floor. The lovely shade of soft grey wall paint. I didn’t need to focus on the hardware. I could feel the Internet surrounding me, the electronic lifeblood that connected me to the rest of the world. I could almost reach out and touch Emmett. No need to even reach. I stood bathed in the same radio signal that touched him.

  “Hi, Canber!” I finally greeted the man seated at the desk, with a beatific smile. “I love your office!” He smiled back crookedly, and waved an invitation for me to take a seat on the daybed.

  “So you and Emmett are old friends from SAMS!” I burbled on, taking a comfortable seat amidst the puffy pillows. “You must know Cam and John, too.” Our friends Cam Cameron, Resco of Long Island, and John Niedermeyer, ranking Resco of New England, were Emmett’s room-mates at Leavenworth. According to Canber’s introduction back at Station Square, they must have worked together vetting the Calm Act. That was a deep dark secret. But that was OK, since Canber already knew.

  “Cam?” Canber inquired.

  Oops. “Oh, that’s right!” I said. “Cam wasn’t in your SAMS class. They just knew each other at Leavenworth. I forgot. Well, anyway! So you said you’re retired? How’d you manage that?” Resigning from the Army had been barred for over two years now, for the duration of the climate crisis. That’s why the anti-slavery clause in the shiny new Hudson Constitution was such a big deal. Bless Sean Cullen for that. Such a nice man, our governor-general.

  “I worked closely with General Tolliver,” Canber shared. “It didn’t seem wise to stay on after you killed him.”

  “Me? I didn’t kill him,” I denied. “Seth did.”

  He chuckled, surprised. “You’re on a first name basis with Seth Taibbi, too? Military governor of PA? My, you have been a busy little girl, haven’t you, Dee!”

  I waved that away. “They’re really Emmett’s friends,” I confided.

  “They?”

  “Seth, Charles, Sean, Ivan.” Off-hand, just for example, I named the four governor-generals who sent us to Pittsburgh. Lovely men, other than that. “Not really my crew. I mostly hang with other geeks,” I confided. “So Canber. What brings us here?”

  “So, Dee,” he replied in kind, tapping his desk. “You’ve caused me all sorts of trouble. Amenac. Weather reports, saving lives right and left. Safe trade route reports. Project Reunion. Meshnet communications, no need for infrastructure. Emmett, even. Don’t get me wrong, your boyfriend was an adequate field officer. Even bright enough for SAMS. And I’ll admit, the Resco concept was rather brilliant. Though I question how much of that was his idea. Cam… Now would that be Major Cameron?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel now,” I corrected him. “Yeah, Cam got a promotion for his work on the Hudson Constitution! And Long Island. We’re so proud of him.”

  “Ah, yes. That Cam,” Canber agreed thoughtfully. “How did they know each other again? Back in Kansas.”

  “They were room-mates,” I supplied. “Cam and John Niedermeyer and Emmett.”

  “Hm, interesting. I did not know that,” Canber said. “Anyway, I was saying. Emmett’s adequate. But without you, he wouldn’t have branched out and claimed New Jerkzey. He says so in all his hero interviews. He wasn’t supposed to be in the Northeast at all.” Sounded like sour grapes to me.

  “Hudson,” I corrected him sunnily. “New York–New Jersey is named Hudson now.”

  A brief flare of anger crossed Canber’s face. He didn’t like to be corrected. But he smoothed it over and plowed on. “You cost me several million lives in New York, Dee,” he scolded pleasantly. “And who knows how many with the weather alerts and so forth. All of New Jerkzey. That was mine to take for PA, not his. You’ve been making him way too effective.”

  “What was your job for Penn?” I asked.

  “PA,” he corrected. “Our enemy calls us Penn. Well, you obviously know Rescos were put inside the borders to help survivors rebuild, yes?” I nodded. “But surely you understand that wouldn’t work, unless the population was culled. They even admitted it publicly, that the minimum necessary culling was to 200 million Americans.”

  I nodded.

  “That’s still too many,” Canber informed me, shaking his head in disapproval. “And we didn’t even get there. We still have 230 million. Far too many. I still think 200 million was a mistake – 30 million is more than enough humans, and more in line with our targets on other continents. People like Emmett have failed to abide by their agreements.”

  “What agreements?”

  “Never mind,” Canber said. “The point is that Emmett’s been far too effective at saving lives.”

  “I’m confused,” I confessed. “So I’m here to make Emmett less effective?”

  “That, too. But mostly I want you to stop helping my opponents. We’ll use you ourselves, of course,” Canber clarified. “Amazing, isn’t it? Hundreds of millions lost their livelihoods. Yet you and I still have skills in hot demand, Dee.”

  “Use me to do what?” I asked.

  “You’ll be surprised to hear that I have my own meshnet,” he shared. He didn’t like to be corrected. So I didn’t mention that I already knew that. I just smiled. “You’ll make modifications for us.”

  “Oh, good!” I cried, and reached for his phone.

  In a flash, he was sitting with me on the daybed, arms around me, my wrists in his vice grip. “If you try to touch tech again without my permission, Dee, I’ll cut your hands off. You wouldn’t like that. Would you.”

  “No. No, I wouldn’t like that.” That made me cry, just the thought of all the things I enjoy doing, that I wouldn’t be able to do without hands. Gardening. Putting my own clothes on. Sewing new clothes. Making love. Playing with tech. Of course, there were voice interfaces. So awkward, but I was sure I could get that to work. I’d need to hire people to supervise for some of the rest –

  He pushed my chin up. “Look into the camera, Dee.” I looked. One of the video cameras was trained on the daybed. “Now what do you think would drive Emmett crazier. If I tortured you? Or raped you?”

  “Torture,” I replied instantly. They were both torture.

  “Rape it is,” he crooned. “Here, swallow this.” He rummaged in his uniform breast pocket, and handed me a familiar rufie.

  “I already had oxycontin,” I objected. I looked sadly straight into the camera, to beg Emmett’s understanding.

  “Yes, I noticed,” Canber replied. “But you don’t want to remember being raped, do you?”

  “No. I don’t,” I agreed. I swallowed the rufie with alacrity.

  “That’s right, darling,” Canber encouraged, stroking my ear, my cheek, my neck. “This little video only needs to be between Emmett and me. No need for you to suffer. You’re my asset, now. My own pretty little tech wizard. And I take very good
care of you.”

  I couldn’t see Canber behind me, with my eyes riveted on the camera. His build wasn’t so different from Emmett’s. Emmett called me darlin’. Canber couldn’t know that, could he? I tried to take it as a sign, tell myself that I wasn’t really being raped. Emmett was making love to me, not Canber making hate. It was the only way Emmett could reach me now, and me him. No, it wasn’t very convincing.

  Canber twisted my nipple, hard, through the fabric of my dress. “Does Emmett ever do this to you?” he asked.

  “Not that hard,” I replied blearily. It didn’t hurt in the slightest. I was feeling no pain.

  The two drugs combined with unholy power, and flew me away. It’s almost like a bear-in-the-woods joke. If you’re raped but can’t remember it, were you ever really raped?

  Hell, yes.

  But I don’t remember it.

  Chapter 25

  Interesting fact: Stockholm Syndrome arises from a captive’s compassion for the situation and goals of her captors. In their fairly benign care, she comes to identify with her captors as being in the right.

  I roused slowly to a tuneless and desperate demonic muttering. A blanket was thrown over me. But my back was in agony from the cold concrete floor, my breasts sore, my thighs sticky and – sore, I firmly told myself. Just sore. And very cold.

  I cracked an eye open to check on my surroundings before committing myself to being awake. Back in the familiar garage. I turned my head ever so slightly. Not demonic muttering. Brandy praying.

  Stiff as a board, I rolled to my side, and creakily levered myself up to sitting. Brandy remained focused on her muttering, and didn’t acknowledge me. So I set to stretches and bits of yoga until my body regained some flexibility and warmth. Our bathroom facilities had improved. We now had a covered bucket for a toilet, and a second bucket of clean water, with a ladle. I guzzled two cups greedily. One of the patch pockets on my dress was coming unstitched, anyway. I ripped it off and used it as a washcloth.