The Warsaw charter included a few friends from a Sturgis run, which is sort of a bogus powwow in South Dakota but I have to admit draws an impressive number of dedicated bikers not including the dudes who put their bikes on a trailer, which they park ten miles away and ride the final ten miles. To each his own as we say, I guess.
Mighty mother Russia! I wish I had the time to visit what had been Stalingrad to see where the epic battle took place but I was there to get my tattoo. Smersh Sorokin could not have been a more regular decent guy, which was not a surprise because in my experience the real true artists with some exceptions—hello Bono and good-bye, you pretentious motherfucker—that I have met have been easy to talk to and not just about themselves. Do you hear me, Bono? Now Leonid, that man did not drink, not ever, nor take any drugs, because he wanted a steady hand and nothing fuzzy ever between his inspiration and his amazing touch. He also was a man not to gossip and when I asked him about Shannon Squier he told me gently that just as he would never talk about me to anyone he would not talk about her. A true Russian gentleman. I was surprised to see that he used the same inks as my tattoo artist in San Berdoo, CA, uses, but I don’t know why it should have surprised me. This truly is one World.
Leonid did keep vodka in the freezer for his customers and that was so cold it poured like motor oil. A shot of that with a cut-up slice of some delicious Russian black bread and then the pain is happening to someone you sort of know but don’t talk to very often. You may well ask me how is it that I could cross the Russian border wearing my Hells Angel patch, but there’s an answer. You would expect that even with the visa I had in my passport there would be resistance to admitting us, once they saw us, in the way that I could not get a visa into Australia because of the colors I proudly wear. But as explained to me the Russian Hells Angels are nationalists with support from nationalist elements in the Russian government and sometimes help out when a certain kind of help is needed. In America we are not political at all. We hate all government equally and they hate us. I don’t think СМЕРШ himself was a political person, although in Europe I found everyone is more political than here in the sense that they vote. He liked hanging out with Hells Angels because everywhere in the world the club carries a mystique that adds some high-gloss metal flake shine to the impression made by anyone we call a friend. Ride Free.
Shannon Squier sat next to Chief on the leather couch in ElderGoth’s office, looking more like a Drifter past the threshold of even recognizing defeat than someone with a partial rehab and a will to live. Erin had a copy of People magazine with Shannon on the cover. Inside were pictures of her in a high school production of Cabaret, when her name had been Sandra Tur. But once she invented Shannon Squier, she buried Sandra Tur and never appeared in public as anyone but the character she played. When Sinatra arrived from Covina, Chief told ElderGoth to wait outside. “The room is small. It’s getting crowded.”
“Frank!” said Chief. “Look at what you found! And look at these pictures. It’s her. It’s really her.”
Sinatra saw enough of the pictures to believe them.
“Do you remember me?” he asked her.
“When will you give me my chisel back?”
“Turn around and take off your shirt.” He didn’t say please and she didn’t act like it was expected.
The tattoo was as good as Redwings had said.
“You used to be famous. People listen to your music. I’m not one for songs, but people do like your music.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“How did you end up in drifting?”
Chief stopped him. “Talk to her later. This is a lot for her to absorb.”
“Security is my responsibility if anything goes wrong.”
Chief nodded his head for Sinatra to follow him. “You’re wondering what my plan is. She can be useful. People still listen to her music.”
“Do you?”
“Erin does.”
“This woman is not who she was, Chief. The way none of us are.”
“You’re wrong. She’s still exciting. From what I hear now, she was one of the most exciting people alive in the Complete World, right up to the end, which is maybe why she’s still exciting.”
“She’s not working on me.”
“I think she is, just by the way we’re all talking about her. The Woman promised me something and Shannon is the answer.”
“If she’s that powerful, you shouldn’t just let me take her back to where I found her. You should kill her. We know why we’re in charge of the city now; we know what we did to put ourselves on top. And we remember who we stole the power from. Here comes someone with what you say is power and you want to give her more. Introducing Shannon into our community is going to bring trouble.”
“No sign of the rider coming from the east?”
“Chief, listen to yourself. The Woman told you—what? That someone was coming. Not that two were coming. There’s either a rider from the east, or there’s Shannon.”
“You’re not convinced.”
“How can anyone be convinced of anything, Chief?”
Chief called for Erin to come back to the room and told Sinatra to just listen, and not interrupt or ask any questions.
“Am I in trouble?” Erin asked.
“Erin, you’re a smart girl. You’re important to life in the Fence because of how early you got the rehabilitation treatment and I know you worry sometimes that others might not like you for the way you haven’t made yourself useful. But today is the day that you get to say to yourself, and I get to say to everyone else, that your value to the community needs no greater proof than the way you can be credited with verifying Shannon Squier. Let everyone know from this day forward that you recognized Shannon Squier when nobody else did, and that in appreciation of this service, you are now in charge of her. She stays with you. Get her cleaned up, make her comfortable, get her dressed, and be ready to bring her to a meeting of the committee heads when I call for her.”
“Yes, yes!” shouted Erin. “I have the magazines, I have the pictures, and I have the music. I’m going to get her hair back to the way it was when she was Shannon. I’m going to teach her to talk like she used to talk, with an English accent, when she pretended that she came from Manchester instead of San Diego. She’s going to be my new best friend.”
Chief turned from Erin and then she stopped him. “Chief,” she said. “What about branding her? She’d be the only person in the Fence who doesn’t have the brand.”
“What do you think?”
“No. That’s not the way to welcome her home.”
Seth, Marci, Franz, Eckmann
After the pilot’s surgery, Seth moved him to the bed in one of the Dreamliner’s private first-class cabins.
“How soon can you fly?” Eckmann asked the pilot.
“I need to rest.”
“We need to get out of here. We don’t have a lot of time.” Eckmann was scared. If Center Camp knew about the living pilot, Chief would probably attack, herding wispy Shamblers through the minefields. Eckmann wanted somebody to do something right and yelled at Marci and Consuelo. “Help this man. You two are nurses. Be nurses!”
Consuelo denied that she had been a nurse. “I worked in a hospital. My badge says I worked in a hospital. It doesn’t say Consuelo Santos, RN. That’s registered nurse. If I’d been a nurse, the ID would have said so. I probably just worked in the kitchen or mopped the floors.”
Marci said, “And I was a flight attendant. I was trained in first aid, not medicine, and do not raise your voice at me. Not after what I’ve been through in the motor pool.”
“I’m sorry,” said Seth. “I’m really sorry. I’m pretty sure I used to be a good doctor. I worked with very sick children at UCLA and that means parents trusted me.”
Marci put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Doctor. And you g
ot the bullet out and sewed him back up. You’re not the one who shot him; you’re not the one who screwed up getting him here and then screwed up getting you here. I don’t want to make you feel bad.”
“I have to say that I’m happy to be where I am,” said Seth. “I’ve been given something to do that brings me back to what I was like before everything changed. Dr. Piperno didn’t help me. I’ve made great advances in one night with you.” He wanted to take care of his patient. Of all the things he could do, just being quiet around a sick man offered Seth the greatest protection from everyone else’s expectations. What he said next surprised him. “I want everyone to leave me alone with my patient, and I’d like Marci to stay.”
Eckmann protested, “She’s not a nurse.”
“No,” said the doctor. “She’s a flight attendant, and we’re in an airplane. This is where she belongs, right, Marci?”
“He’s right,” she said, with an eagerness that was new to her.
Seth didn’t know what to say to Marci after Eckmann cleared the plane and the crew went back to work testing the electrical and hydraulic systems while others swept the runway clear of dead palm fronds, dog bodies, gravel, strips of metal. Alone inside the quiet plane, with the curtains pulled down and the lights dim, they felt a pleasant instability, as the pilot’s fate depended on powers neither of them could petition for help.
Seth looked through the magazines and newspapers that no one had cleaned out of the plane. Most of the newspapers were dated October 16, 2019. The magazines on the plane were all from October or September. It confused Seth that the plague was front-page news in some but not all of the papers. There was local worry but little global panic.
The New York Times had an article about the rehabilitation centers at UCLA and USC giving secret priority to people who knew how to run and maintain the central systems that society needed or would die without, and how this policy enraged some of the hospitals’ wealthiest donors, who found that having their names on the hospital buildings didn’t give them a free pass to the next empty bed. The rehab centers in New York denied they were giving privileges to anyone who didn’t have skills. Hospitals in Chicago and Atlanta had no comment. It was noted that as the syndrome spread, social outrage diminished.
Time magazine’s cover that week was a black question mark on a white background.
?
Why did the newspapers and news magazines, at least by page count, show that fear of extinction was in only one compartment of readers’ minds? The magazine and newspapers did not devote all the news to NK3. They still printed reviews of movies and books, articles about new cars, ways to make inexpensive costumes for Halloween.
Something happened, though, on or around October 18, 2019, to keep the Singapore Airlines plane from flying again. On the planes at the airport that had arrived that day—the planes with the galley trash bags full—there were carry-on suitcases filled with clothes in the overhead bins, books and small tubes of toothpaste, still pliable. Jackets. Hats. Children’s dolls. Why did the passengers leave their bags? Were they told to get off the plane quickly for fear of an explosion or fire or because the police knew that someone on the plane was infected and everyone had to be taken away? Or did the infection spread so quickly that the passengers forgot what they’d brought with them?
Marci wiped Franz’s hot forehead with a cloth soaked in a bowl of water.
Seth showed her the Time cover and the articles about the rehab centers. She told him she didn’t care.
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t change anything to know. Do you feel bad that I don’t want to know what you want to tell me?”
“Maybe a little.”
“That little is all that’s left of what we used to be like and I don’t want to hear anything more about it. It makes me too sad. Is his forehead still hot?”
Seth cupped his hand over Franz’s wet brow.
“That’s the first time you’ve been gentle with him. You cut him open but you didn’t touch him just to make him feel better.”
“He’s cooler now, isn’t he?”
“I think so.”
“How quickly can Eckmann have the jet ready to fly?”
“It takes two hours to fill the fuel tanks. A truck will tow the plane to the head of the runway. The engines won’t be turned on until we’re ready to go, because the sound of the jet will be the loudest thing anyone in Los Angeles has heard in four years.”
“I think I can fly this plane,” said the pilot. His eyes were open and clear.
“You heard what we were saying?”
“Yes. Yes. I don’t want to fly with me any more than you do, Dr. Kaplan. But Eckmann won’t let me run away.”
Marci asked, “Do you think you can do what he needs?”
“I think I can get it in the air, yes. I don’t know if I can bring it down so that we can walk away from the plane, even though the plane can land itself. Although it’s not clear to me that it can land itself without the right signal coming from the airport we’re approaching.”
“Thank you for being honest.”
“Is that what I am?”
“You’re not lying,” said Marci. “I know that much.”
“I’m scared of my mind splitting into pieces. I hear two different sets of words, Doctor. I haven’t told anybody. I hear a voice in my head that speaks a different set of words than the one I’m speaking with now.”
“Stay here,” said Seth and walked back into the cabin. He returned with a copy of Der Spiegel. The cover was the picture of a damaged brain cell. He handed the magazine to the pilot, who turned the pages, mumbling in German as he read phrases aloud.
“I can read this.”
“Of course, you’re German. And this is German. This is an article about the plague. What does it say?”
“This says, ‘Scientists at the Max Planck Institutes are working on a cure.’”
“What else is there in the magazine?”
“Turkish skiers are advised to make reservations now if they’re planning on skiing in Austria next January or February. The Austrian hotels are recruiting seasonal guest workers from Australia and Spain and are trying not to hire so many Turkish guest workers, because last year the Turkish guest workers at the resorts went on strike over housing conditions. The hotels don’t want Turkish staff making the Turkish guests feel uncomfortable.”
“I don’t know why that story makes me feel calm,” said Seth. “But I would rather listen to news from the past than eat.”
“Eat what?” It was Eckmann coming up the stairs to the cabin, followed by the three senior maintenance crew. He put a hand on Seth’s forehead, then Marci’s, then the others’. “I’m taking an average. My pilot feels normal. Am I right? How do you feel?”
“It hurts when I laugh.”
“What were you laughing at?”
“Everything.”
“Are you ready to fly a plane, Franz?”
“Yes.”
“Are you thirsty?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will feed you and be ready to fly away from here when they have the big Burn. It may be that they’ll postpone for a few nights, but I don’t want to bring the jet out to the runway until the moment we’re ready to leave. And the Burn will add the cover we need. And I expect you to be scared. We’re all scared. But what choice do we have?”
Franz asked if he could shower. Seth said the stitches were fresh and that Marci should bathe him with a wet cloth but that she should make sure to keep the wounds dry.
“Is it day or night outside?” asked Seth.
Eckmann said, “Night.”
“I’m going for a walk.”
He nodded for Marci to join him, but Eckmann saw this and told Marci to stay with Franz. “You were a flight attendant. He was a pilot. Read the flight manuals with him.”
Seth left the plane. The door to the outside was ahead and he went to it, expecting to be stopped, but with the pilot now safely out of danger except for Eckmann’s demented fantasy that what might go up will come down in one piece, no one checked in with the chain of authority to see if Seth needed permission to leave the building.
The air carried sounds that caught the uneven gusts of westbound wind, the distant thump of music from Figueroa and from the Fence. The weave of tangled beats reached him, interrupting the interruption of his interrupted life.
Marci was inside. Seth said good-bye to the night and went back into the hangar. He wanted to be with her.
Hopper
The crew in the West Covina Radisson was busy fucking and they missed Hopper as he pedaled by three hours after sunset, tasting the lingering but not unpleasant air of the ash moat. He knew what to do, as his Teacher directed, when he came to the Los Angeles River on the east side of the city.
Hopper rolled his bike down the riverbank and then carried it overhead as he walked through the stream where it was slowed by marsh grass. He left the bike in a thicket of bushes and took his city street clothing out of his bag.
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