by Ryan Schow
“Panel van?” she says.
“Yeah,” I reply, thinking this is going nowhere. “No side windows, just the front ones and two in the rear.”
“There’s a guy who drives one, but he lives on the island.”
“Which island?”
“Harbor Island. It’s accessible just up the street. I think he’s with the Nautical Detention Facility.”
“The what?”
“My dad says that’s where they hold pirates. Not real pirates, but you know…sea criminals, or whatever.”
“Sea criminals,” I say, suspicious.
“Yeah. It’s the seventh or eighth house on the left once you cross over onto the island. Just follow the road up here and it’ll take you there.”
“And it’s a house?”
“It’s the only house that doesn’t look like a house. Plus there’s a shingle on it that says Nautical Detention Facility, but it’s not big. I told you what you wanted, now get your foot out of my door.”
“Thanks,” I say, doing what she asks. The door closes fast, followed by the throwing of a deadbolt.
Smart girl.
Tyler and I walk to the island. Once we get there, a few houses up, I say, “You have to stay here. If I’m not back in the next half hour, you know how to get back to that lady’s house? The one we just talked to?”
He nods his head.
“You sure?”
“I ride my bike here all the time.”
“Okay then,” I say.
He just looks at me, waiting. A kid like this, he’d have the cutest school pictures. If he makes it, he might even grow up to be a well adjusted young man.
Or not. Who can really tell anymore? Two dead parents, orphaned to a world that wants him dead, a city laid to waste by flying robots.
I take back the well adjusted part. Anyway…
The driveway leading onto the island is narrow, the concrete charcoal colored and stamped in eight inch squares with drainage grates in the middle of the streets. The houses are close to each other, older and ornate. Like old money if old money didn’t care about zero lot lines and a distinct lack of privacy.
I continue on, unarmed, disadvantaged in my sight but determined to find Bailey. I see the facility before I see the paved foot paths going either right or left. The facility is a home that looks nothing like the homes here. This is newer but built to look older. It isn’t quite right.
Government projects.
Alongside the detention facility is a tall, two-car carport and in the second stall I see the van. On closer inspection, I see the two bullet holes.
My heart is officially galloping.
Heading to the front door, knowing this man has not seen my face, I knock and wait. There’s no answer. I knock again to a silent response. For a good five minutes I wait before heading around back. At the rear of the house is the harbor, complete with docks and sailboats and the familiar breeze of a port city.
There is nothing special about the back of the house, except two healthy peach trees and its relative starkness. It does not have a dock or a slip, and the backside is very utilitarian. I try the back door, but it looks solid, like reinforced steel.
Heading back to the front of the house, I’m prepared to kick in the door, but instead I knock again. Just as I’m about give up, I hear the sound of a shotgun racking its load behind me.
“What do you want?” the husky voice asks.
“Can I turn around?”
“No.”
“I’ve been beat up and mugged. I’m hurt and in need of medical attention. If I turn around right now, I couldn’t really see you that good anyway since I’ve been pepper sprayed in the face by a pack of Barney’s intent on teaching me a lesson.”
“What lesson is that?” he asks, some of the tension melting from his voice.
“Not really sure, to be honest with you.”
He laughs, then says, “C’mon inside. I got something for the burn.”
He walks around me, opens the door and I can see from the back of him that this is the guy who took Bailey. He’s big though, and alert. I feel weakened by my ordeal and desperate. Some small voice inside says this is how guys like me end up with their heads chopped off.
“I appreciate your help,” I say.
Before letting me in, he looks at my face and it’s him. I’m absolutely certain of it.
“Man, you got the crap kicked out of you,” he says. “Not joking or nothin’, but damn, they got you good. Plus your eyes. Jeez, bro. They’re red as cherries.”
Just act natural, I tell myself, even though nothing about anything warrants me acting natural.
We head inside and it’s a government facility through and through. Stark white floors, practical walls, stairs leading to the second floor where there’s a jailhouse door at the top.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“A reason for the government to seize what was once a park. It’s pretty messed up if you think about it. Most valuable real estate on the west coast and Uncle Sam claims Imminent Domain, or something like that. So now it’s a fake house in a real paradise and I get to live here for free and get paid to do it.”
“What is it you do here?” I ask, casual.
“Holdover facility for those who commit crimes at sea. The cops here, they’re beach cops at best. Not real men. Bunch of sissies who live in crap neighborhoods inland but want to make sure decent folks like us are obeying laws they themselves probably break.”
“You from here?”
“Yep. Up the street. Soon as I heard this place was coming up, had my mother place a call to the Mayor. She said only a resident should run a place like this. So here I am. Been two years now. Best job I ever had.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing.”
“And you get paid for this?”
He laughs and says, “Pretty much. But I’m good at it.”
I look down and see the food bowl. The name FIDO. Real original, I know.
“You named your dog FIDO?”
“No. They didn’t have a bowl named Demogorgon, so I took FIDO instead.”
“That’s an interesting name.”
“I’m just kidding. The dog died last month, but his name was Chuckie. The FIDO bowl was on sale when I got it, so I figured…anyway, you want me to show you around?”
I shrug my shoulders then say, “Sure. But didn’t you say you had something that could take a bit of the sting away?”
“I did. I mean, I do. Follow me, and don’t touch your eyes or skin.”
“Too late.”
We head to his kitchen and he clears a few dishes out of the sink. He then hands me a clean towel to wash my face with water.
“You need to flush the eyes first. Blink a lot and try not to rub them at all.”
I do that as I hear him rooting around in the refrigerator. This whole time I’m thinking this is the monster that killed Quentin. He killed Quentin and he took Bailey. So many terrible things are going on in my mind right now, like what he might have done or is doing to Bailey, whether or not she’s even alive, if he still has her on site. But here I am, in his house with my back to him and my face stinging so bad I can hardly stand it. Good God, this is the worst rescue attempt in history!
When I’m done, my eyes still prickle, specifically my eyelids and the surrounding skin. I turn around and he has a bowl of milk and a wet rag.
“Let me get you a chair,” he says, his skin slick and pale, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. I notice red scratches all up his arms and my heart sinks even further. He grabs me a chair and says, “Sit down and lean your head back.”
I try not to panic as I sit down. I look at the rag with the milk, then his dirty fingernails, and then I look at the tufts of hair on his scratched up, meaty forearms and think to myself, if I act like I’m scared, he’ll sense something. But if I do exactly as he wants, he could slice my throat right open—I’d be giving it to him!
Naturally I sit down, lean back, let him p
ut the rag over my face and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem to help.
“How’s that feel?” he asks.
“Like heaven,” I say, the soaked rag muffling my words, but not so bad that I can’t carry on a conversation with this behemoth.
“Where’d you say you were from?” he asks.
“San Francisco. My wife and I, we’re staying with friends. We thought a nice trip to the beach would be great, but then we got hit by those things.”
“The drones?”
“Yeah.”
“You got hit personally?”
“Wife died, friends died. I don’t know where I am, or where I’m going, and then I get pepper sprayed and robbed, then you come along and you’re so nice. Thank you for your hospitality and your care.”
Am I overdoing it? Actually, I think I’m doing quite—
Something like a leather belt goes over my neck and jerks down. The pain is ungodly, and I can’t breathe. I claw at what feels like a belt, then I tear off the towel and see his beet red face straining over mine.
“Why are you really here?” he snarls.
“Got…robbed.”
“That’s a bunch of bologna. No one comes out here. This place is barely even on the map, let alone easy to find on a small island at the edge of the continent. So why are you here?”
“Pepper sprayed. No one…else…home.”
He tightens the belt, getting the bulk of his weight under me for leverage. That’s when everything gets fuzzy on the edges. The black crowds in and pretty soon the world around me winks out.
Chapter One Hundred Four
All the President ever wanted for the country was a way for Americans to grow up in peace, to have family, friends and freedom. Washington D.C. was the heart and soul of the country, and at that heart was a slew of double-dealing, corrupt politicians whose stock and trade were payoffs, bribes and blackmail. They were bad for the country in so many ways, adrift from the checks and balances that kept America from being what she was supposed to be. But through it all, Benjamin Dupree was the one in charge of the nation’s security and here he was now in a bunker, his family dead, the outside world in complete and utter chaos, contemplating nuking everything.
There was a knock on his bedroom door.
“Five more minutes,” he called out, barely able to muster any strength in his voice.
Within three he was composed, a few splashes of cool water on his face, his hair combed in place. His family wouldn’t be joining him.
His wife was dead, his two girls gone. God, what an awful, sickening revelation.
He pushed the pain back into the deepest corners of his mind, the darkest spaces, and then he locked those cherished memories into the smallest of iron boxes. He promised himself he would mourn, but it would not be now. Not in this, the country’s hour of need.
Inside the command center, he was surrounded by his strategists, his advisors, the most powerful men and women in the country.
His crisis team.
“There are other options, Mr. President. But none as clean as this one,” the head of the National Security Agency said. Cooper Daniels was a holdover from the last administration. Supposedly trustworthy. To the POTUS, the man was all red flags from the beginning. Then again, maybe they were all this way. Or maybe he was just paranoid. Either way, the man was a war monger, and it only made sense for him to climb on board something of this magnitude. When they talked about nuking all of North Korea, he didn’t even bat an eye at the thought of sentencing tens of millions of souls to a horrifying death.
A cold fear snaked over him. It slid like icy fingers across his soul. It became a block of chilled stone in his gut. The President swallowed hard, looked eye to eye at the most important people—those he relied upon to help him make the best decisions for the country—and not a single one of them flinched or looked away.
“Has it really come to this?” he heard himself ask.
“It’s a difficult day,” Cooper Daniels said.
“Do you know what all this means for our country?” he said, the question spoken softly in the chambers that were now dead quiet.
“Ninety percent casualty rate within a year,” General Slater said.
“Worse,” General Root replied.
“The infrastructure will fail,” O’Malley added in her trademark, no BS voice. “People will freeze to death, starve to death. There will be bloodshed and rioting in the streets.”
“We know,” his Secretary of State replied.
In a choked voice he could barely even temper, Benjamin Dupree—President of the United States, grieving husband and father—said, “This is not the kind of world I would have wanted my girls to grow up in.”
Wiping his eyes, he looked from face to solemn face, desperate for something else, for another idea, a way to not have to make this decision. But there wasn’t a face among them.
“There has to be something,” he said. “Some other alternative.”
“There isn’t, Mr. President,” General Root said solemnly.
“You won’t be able to call me that after I make this decision,” the President said. “There will be nothing left to preside over. Only the crust of something once great. Something that turned on itself and ate itself.”
“We’ve already got the coordinates punched in, sir.”
“Where?”
“Two isolated satellites carrying two different payloads.”
“Targets?”
“In the atmosphere over St. Louis and Chicago. The range is enough.”
“What about Palo Alto? Why can’t we just nuke California? Lord knows half the country would cheer for that den of heathens to go down.”
“AI is tied into the entire grid. There are command centers all across the nation. They have not only taken over our military, they’ve taken control of the lights, the water, the electricity.”
“So why haven’t they crashed the grid yet? Put us in our respective coffins?”
“I think they’re toying with us, sir,” O’Malley said.
“How do you mean?”
“They could have killed us already, but there is a cat and mouse program, something one of the original programmers put in place. It was designed to break an enemy down inch by inch.”
“Legal torture,” he said.
“If you can break an enemy’s mind, devastate and destroy it, then there would be no uprisings, no reprisals. You will have crashed their CPU.”
“Why not just kill us all and get it over with?”
“Remember, sir, this is a computer simulation,” Miles Tungsten said, “but it is also a game. Which is why we shouldn’t be so quick to make that call.”
“Who would play such an abhorrent game?” the POTUS asked.
“Sir, you see people as citizens, most of them law abiding and honest, but there is a deviate underclass, a society of people who live for the sort of torture porn this program created,” Cooper Daniels said. “It’s easy to nuke a society. Crash a grid. Force a population to submit. That is not enough. The rich, and I’m sorry to say this because half of you will disagree and the other half won’t say a word because you know it’s true, the rich—and I’m talking the world’s top billionaires—want to see the ninety-nine percent fall. They don’t want these useless eaters around. They don’t want the world plundered, overpopulated, polluted by the unwashed masses, and so what they want most is this. The death of ninety-nine percent. To take down the world though, to turn it into their paradise, they must stamp out the roaches, sweep away the mess and create their own version of paradise.”
“That’s a ridiculous conspiracy and you know it,” the President said.
“Is it now?” Daniels asked with a solemn voice.
Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps there really was a despicable sect of society who thought like this. Who pulled for this. Torture artists looking to burn the fields and start anew. But why start with America? Why turn the most prosperous nation on earth into a mass of killing fields
?
“This makes no sense, Coop,” the President said.
“You don’t share their dreams, their visions, their twisted fantasies, Ben. They don’t think like you. It’s not the way they’re wired. Still, we need to kill The Silver Queen before she finds these off-the-books satellites we’re supposedly using.”
“This isn’t a rogue group of elites hell bent on taking down humanity,” Miles Tungsten argued, anxious, eyes flaring at Daniels, “this is—”
“They would see it as them saving humanity,” Daniels said, interrupting his friend. Then, looking at the President, and at the obvious dismay of Director Tungsten, he said, “This is why you must press that button, sir. You need to do it as soon as possible.”
“All this is fantastic mental masturbation,” O’Malley said to the agreement of the two dozen or so people present, “but that doesn’t change the fact that we are in check mate and the longer we stall, the more our only contingency plan faces the risk of discovery. If the machines…if AI realizes we have the satellites, that we are planning on ending them, then this game becomes a slaughter. Right now we can save the strongest ten percent. Or you can stall and save no one.”
“When does the window open?” the President asked. “You said the satellites have the coordinates, but what is the timeline?”
“You press the button and the next round of nukes drop over the intended coordinates,” General Slater said. On the table sat a different looking nuclear football.
“How long?” he asked.
“Until they’re in position?”
“Yes.”
“A little less than ten hours.”
He thought about it for a moment, almost gave the order. Finally he looked around and said, “In these next ten hours we are going to find another way.”
“And if we can’t?” O’Malley asked.
“When is the next window?”
“There will be no next window, sir,” Daniels said.
“That’s not true, Cooper,” Tungsten argued, red faced and agitated. “If these satellites haven’t been destroyed already, what’s to assume they’ll see them now? We can hold off, like Ben says, see what the next ten hours brings.”
“Everything can be found, even a speck of gray in a sea of darkness,” the POTUS said. “This thing is one hundred million times smarter than us. The Silver Queen. It’s faster than us and more conniving and right now it wants to break our will, to kill us slowly but thoroughly. According to its creators, it wants to chase us into a corner and let us think there’s some small measure of hope right before it stamps out every last ounce of faith. The who’s who of Silicon Valley tell me we’re the mice. That our the AI God will always be the cat. That’s how it was built and that’s why it took over.”
