by Ginger Booth
“Emmett!” I cried. I might not have recognized him even if the lights were on, or even recognized the feel of his body against mine. He was in full combat gear with infrared goggles on. But the kiss and the voice were pure Emmett. “We’re good!”
He nodded, kissed me again, held me close. But his attention quickly veered back to the operation. As soon as my anchor soldier made it into the chopper, Emmett yelled into his mike, “Mission accomplished! Let’s go, let’s go!”
I didn’t joggle his elbow while he was focused on the retreat. I did wriggle around to sit on his lap, but he kept one arm locked around me. Apparently the other choppers bugged out as soon as he gave the all-clear. Then we were all speeding away. There was one surface-to-air missile explosion to add a touch of terror, but fortunately it missed.
When Emmett started to relax a little, I yelled over the noise, “Did you take out the Judgment camp?” He seemed to think the action was over by then. Airborne Infantry, after all. He must have done this dozens of times. I’d never expected to see him in action, though.
Emmett shook his head. “Only objective was you.”
“Canber wasn’t there,” I told him. “He’s in Charlotte, North Carolina.” Emmett nodded, gave me a squeeze, looked away. My eyes had adjusted to the slightly LED-lit gloom. Emmett’s jaw was set. But this was no place to talk. “Where are we going?”
“Border garrison, north of Morgantown,” he replied. “Van from there to Pittsburgh. Then home.”
“How much longer in Pittsburgh?” I asked. I desperately wanted to go home to my own bed, in Brooklyn.
“We’re done, darlin’,” Emmett said. “Just needed you.”
Yelling over the rotors was exhausting. We left it at that.
-o-
“You want a bath?” Emmett asked awkwardly. Finally we were alone in our room together, back at the hotel. Brief bits of information were conveyed along the early-morning drive back from the Ohio–West Virginia border garrison. Brandy and Blake and I sketched our story for Emmett, accounted for our days away. But he’d seemed reserved and strangely incurious.
I leaned against one side of the short entry hall by the hotel room bathroom, him propped against the opposite wall.
“Not really,” I replied. “Just had a shower last night. Emmett?”
He half-smiled sadly. “Not sure how to treat you now. Do you want to see a counselor or something? That’s what they tell us to do next in officer training. For one of our troops.”
“God, no,” I said, heartfelt. “I hate shrinks.” Women who play mind games should not play with psychologists.
Tentatively, I reached for his hand. “Emmett, I’m alright. Really.” He gazed uneasily at our lightly linked hands, not even squeezing back. “My knight in shining armor came through for me again. Thank you, for getting me out of there. I knew you would.”
Suddenly, violently, he yanked me into his arms, hard. I eeked a little, and he pushed me away again. “I’m sorry!” he said in panic.
“For what?” I asked. “You just surprised me.” I stepped back to him and clutched him tightly to me around the waist. “I want you to hold me!” He’d been holding me all the way back from Nowhere, on the chopper and van. I didn’t understand what his problem was now.
Reluctantly, tenderly, he enfolded me in his arms and stood holding me, cheek to cheek. He started crying. “I was so afraid I’d lost you.” I just held him, letting him cry. “Canton sent me a video, Dee, of him…”
“Raping me,” I completed the sentence. “I don’t remember it, Emmett. Only the first part, before he gave me a rufie. I was already sky-high on oxycontin. I mean, being raped, that’s repulsive. But, I’m not hurt.”
“That wasn’t directed at you,” Emmett whispered.
I stilled in his arms. So Canber had said, and I had concluded. But Canton, Emmett had said, not Canber. And no, that rape scene was directed at a video camera, not me at all. Canber drugged me to keep me out of it. “How well do you know Canton Bertovich, Emmett?”
“Well,” he reluctantly supplied. “We were friends once.”
I drew Emmett to the bed and sat cross-legged beside him, while I drew the story out of him.
They weren’t just slightly friends. During their first year at ILE school in Leavenworth, before they’d ever heard of the Calm Act, Canton and Emmett had apartments in the same building. They carpooled to classes together. Ate together most days, at least one meal. Studied together. ILE was a course full of happily married men and women, like Dane and Marilou Beaufort. Their classmates eagerly seized the opportunity of being stably stateside for the year to bond with their families. The social scene was replete with family barbecues and kids’ ball games. Meanwhile, Canton was enduring the last death throes of a vicious divorce, and Emmett was recently and miserably divorced as well. Both ardent environmentalists. Both brilliant and analytical officers. Doing outdoor sports and weekend trips together to escape the happy families. Both roped into planning and vetting the Calm Act the following year.
At one point, Emmett even considered Canton as a replacement best friend for Zack Harkonnen, the man who’d brought Emmett and me together. Zack had left the Army behind, and never really enjoyed it. At the time, Emmett thought maybe he should let Zack go, let that friendship fade. He and Canton had more in common, it seemed.
“That was then, this is now,” I murmured. “He’s a mass murderer now, Emmett. Did you see the signs?”
Emmett plucked at the bedspread. “Uh-huh,” he finally settled on. “I don’t think they’ll ever catch him, Dee.” He wouldn’t look up.
My eyes narrowed. “Never catch him? Or never look?”
“Uh-huh,” Emmett breathed.
The Ohio Army attack force hadn’t even gone after the Judgment camp in West Virginia. Just kept them occupied while Emmett’s team extracted us. Then we left. No one was going after Judgment, or Canber.
“Why did he kill Dane, Emmett?” I hazarded. Judging from Emmett’s flinch, my guess was right.
“Dane had gone rogue,” he whispered. “Moral crusader. No other leverage to keep him quiet. And Canton didn’t kill Dane. Just beat him up. Didn’t know the head injury was serious.”
“What leverage does Canber have against you?” I demanded. Emmett just shook his head. “Emmett, I think I deserve an answer. It’s one thing to honor a promise to your secret SAMS club. But Canber dragged me into his secrets, not you.”
Emmett didn’t want to answer the question, but I waited him out. “You,” he eventually said. “Among other things. Other people. For leverage.”
It felt like a sucker-punch. Based on what Canber had said, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Canber was certainly angry with Emmett. I was so caught up in my own thoughts, it was a few minutes before I glanced up at Emmett again. He looked scared.
“It’s not your fault, Emmett,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.
“Uh-huh,” he breathed.
“Canber is responsible for what Canber did,” I insisted. “Not you.”
“Uh-huh.” He grasped my hand back, hard. His mouth worked in several false starts. “Maybe I should get another room this time?”
“No.” I sighed. “Emmett, you say you want to marry me. If you really mean that, we need to face things together. No matter how –” I hesitated. “Life sucks sometimes. I thought we were good at facing that together.”
“Uh-huh.”
-o-
Emmett left with Drum the next morning, to serve up a final harangue to the Pittsburgh community leaders, church leaders, and ex-militia, at a large auditorium at Carnegie-Mellon University. I followed along separately with the IndieNews team. Blake Sondheim recorded the event.
The address was a command performance – the audience was required to attend. No-shows were to be rounded up, stripped naked, and locked into public stocks for display. A Puritan-era punishment for resurrecting the wars of the Reformation. Attendance was good. Only a dozen or so individuals volun
teered for the stocks to help Drum make her point. They were all religious dissenters, so later Drum displayed them on the front lawns of their respective churches.
The Resco manual, which constituted the written orders for Emmett and Drum and other Rescos, advised that a Resco must first, last, and always establish himself as the biggest bad-ass in the neighborhood, the authority that cannot be thwarted. And simultaneously, he must establish himself as the community’s best asset and opportunity for help from outside the local district. What a Resco declares is law, and the citizens’ best hope for a good life is to cooperate and implement the Resco’s plans.
And there were ample rewards. Drum laid out a one-year plan for Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County. Based on local agricultural output, everyone could earn a full meal ticket – a 2500 calorie per day Pennsylvania meal ticket at that – if they were willing to work full time. Power would be rationed, but free, and restored throughout the city within a few months. Every household could have enough power to run a refrigerator and freezer, and a few lights. The details were complex, but homes could be heated to at least 55 degrees in winter, and might have hot water, depending on their equipment. Jobs would be available accomplishing all this. God knows, if it took steel and machinery, Pittsburgh had the means.
The churches were to remain shuttered and barred except during religious services. No food was allowed in church. No discussion of religious views would be tolerated outside church or the home. There would be no single-sect work crews. Punishments for infractions would remain harsh.
The city’s primary and middle schools would reopen after New Year’s. Religious groups were forbidden to operate a school, and mention of religious ideas at a public school would be punished.
The re-industrialization joint venture with Ohio was off the table, pending proof of restored order in Pittsburgh. General Schwabacher of Ohio–West Virginia wouldn’t invest until he was convinced that Drum was in firm control, not only in Pittsburgh but all of western Penn.
Based on personal interviews and Dane Beaufort’s records, Drum found most of the rural and outer suburban militias to be perfectly sound, and re-authorized them. Inside the city and certain suburbs, the militia units were permanently disbanded in favor of expanding the Pittsburgh police department. Ex-militia were invited to apply for the new jobs. If hired, they would be isolated from previous team-mates and co-religionists for a fresh start, and receive training.
I rather thought Paddy Bollai, Dane’s handyman, would make a good cop. Also the Apocalyptic militiaman who asked if Emmett could stay on as Resco during Q&A that night in the tornado shelter, despite glares from his fellow militia. There were good people to be freed from the old dysfunctional militia structure.
Drum’s speech to her new flock comprised most of the lecture, but Emmett took a turn. He recounted the investigation’s official findings, that a terrorist organization called Judgment had waylaid and badly beaten Dane Beaufort and his second, Dwight Davison, and that both men had later died of their wounds. Judgment was not to be mistaken for a religion. They were a sophisticated and highly dangerous terrorist group. Any suspected Judgment activity should be reported to the police immediately.
Emmett also hammered home that Drum had the complete trust and authority of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania behind her, and the backing of Hudson and Ohio–West Virginia as well. He said that anyone who dared to call a Lieutenant Colonel a ‘whore’ or ‘harlot’ deserved every minute they spent naked in the stocks as a result. Verbally abusing a woman for her clothing, or non-conformity to someone’s idea of her proper role, constituted a violation of the rule prohibiting the mention of religion in secular life. Treating women with respect and courtesy, at all times, was required.
Drum happily added that women were encouraged to apply for jobs in the Pittsburgh P.D., and any other job funded by the Resco government. Pittsburgh would be an equal opportunity employer, with equal pay for equal work. Absolutely. Day care would be subject to the same religious prohibitions as public schools.
No religion in public. Period.
Brandy O’Keefe of IndieNews sat next to me and took copious notes. At the end, outside the auditorium building, she handed me a distilled bulleted list, and made me introduce, then summarize the meeting on camera. To do that required looking directly into the camera, but one side of her face was still too battered for that. Her face wouldn’t make it past the censors, because we couldn’t explain the injuries.
Brandy did carry out exit interviews with attendees, getting reactions of the locals to their new Resco and her plans. For that, she could turn the unmarred side of her face to the camera. Her interviewees ended up looking mighty shifty on video, embarrassed by the obvious signs of abuse written across Brandy’s face, which our Internet viewers never saw.
-o-
I left most of my email to catch up on during the long train ride back to Hudson. But one item leapt out at me. Jean-Charles Alarie of the gran caravans wrote back about their experiences with ‘sixers’ and the huge swath of Pennsylvania not controlled by any Resco.
Heavily encrypted, Jean-Charles’ email told me what the gran caravans knew and suspected about Canton Bertovich and his far-flung operation. That the culling of the American people was by no means left to chance and rogues, but was carefully orchestrated. The sixers and other doomsday cults were fronts for systematic extermination. And their East Coast operations found their best sanctuary in central Pennsylvania.
Jean-Charles strongly recommended that I not mention this to Emmett or any other Resco. At some level, they already knew. But civilians like myself tended to disappear if they knew such things. The end of the U.S. hadn’t changed that.
Good warnings. Sadly, his email had arrived in my inbox a couple hours after Canber abducted us.
-o-
I had a late farewell lunch with Brandy and Blake before we went our separate ways back to Hudson. IBIS agent Donna Gianetti joined us. Mrs. Wiehl’s buffet was as magnificent as ever. But we’d eaten our fill. None of us were very hungry.
“I don’t see how that speech solved much,” I admitted. “It’s like Drum and Emmett just played good cop bad cop.” I didn’t care for my hero playing bad cop. I’d worked too long on his PR campaign painting him a hero, perhaps.
“I think it was good for Pittsburgh,” Brandy surprised me by saying. “They need a public act of contrition, to work their way back from this mess. Strong punishments and firm rules will make them feel better. Not that I’d support this high-handedness on IndieNews, of course. Not allowed to say anything about this on IndieNews.” Her voice trailed off, haunted, on the last.
We had both been informed by our censors that our abduction had never happened. And specifically that Canber did not exist and would not be mentioned. Our original explanation of Dane’s death, that we filmed just before our kidnapping, as edited by Brandy’s producer in our absence, was approved for publication. Modifications or corrections would not be approved.
“You can always talk to me,” I offered. “If you need to talk, Brandy. Any time. You too, Blake. I owe you. And I care about you.” Blake, sitting next to me, engulfed me in a hug.
Brandy nodded. “Same here.” She sighed. “Although you’re still going to know more than us about what’s going on. And you’re still not going to tell me.”
“One day in the garage,” I reminded her, “you told me you didn’t want to know. You were right. You don’t want to know.”
Gianetti backed me up. “Dee’s right. I know more. Maybe not everything, but… It wouldn’t make you happy and you can’t change it. You know, the long range weather forecast was updated while you were gone. The pattern looks like a repeat of two years ago. Hundreds of tornados for Pittsburgh. Strong thunderstorms, Alberta Clippers, hurricanes, blizzards, freaky ball lightning, the works.”
“And that’s what it’s all about,” I said. “Martial law and the Resco Raj. Just a way to maintain order while the weather goes to hell and the whole s
ocial structure unravels.”
“The semblance of order, anyway,” Gianetti quibbled.
“I’m damned glad the Rescos are in control,” Blake argued. “I’ve never seen something as beautiful as those Army helicopters when they came to fly us away from Judgment.”
We could all agree on that.
“Oh, hey, Donna,” Blake added, “did you ever figure out Paul Dukakis and Matt1034?” I was glad he asked. That had bothered me, what the original poster of the death video, Matt1034, was trying to accomplish. And why Paul Dukakis tried to save Dane, failed, and delivered the body, yet claimed it all happened in Green Tree.
Donna Gianetti nodded. “Paul Dukakis was a militia informant Dane planted with the Judgment sect. Paul led Dane Beaufort and Dwight Davison back to Station Square later that day, after the rally, to surprise a Judgment operation. Judgment got the drop on them, but Paul managed to escape. He snuck back later and found Dane beaten and unconscious. He didn’t find Dwight. We think Dwight went into the river during the fight with Judgment. Anyway, Paul loaded Dane into his truck and tried to get him to a doctor. But Dane died on the way.
“Matt1034 was Paul’s girlfriend. She recorded the rally on her cell phone. Paul edited together her footage with his own snapshot of Dane and posted it on Amenac using her account. The Green Tree encampment was Judgment’s headquarters here in Pittsburgh, so he tried to direct interest there.”
“Judgment caught and killed him,” Blake offered. “I found him hanging from a high-voltage power line pole in Green Tree.”
Donna nodded. IBIS had already found the body of Paul Dukakis. “With Dane and Dwight both dead or missing, Paul didn’t know who else to turn to. He figured posting that video on Amenac would get high-powered attention from other Rescos outside Pittsburgh. He succeeded.”
“Why didn’t he flee Pittsburgh?” I asked.
“According to his girlfriend, they planned to,” Donna said. “But he left her to pick up some things from his apartment first, and never came back. She escaped. We found her hiding with a cousin in West Mifflin. Anyway, Paul Dukakis was one of the good guys here.”
