by Ryan Schow
“They’re right,” Daniels said. “Don’t wait the ten hours.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” the President thundered.
“Ten hours, Mr. President,” General Slater said. “Ten hours and you can make that decision or we will make it for you. Because as you said, after this there will be nothing to preside over and you’ll just be a man. We won’t even be citizens because this won’t even be a country. It’ll be a nuclear wasteland inside of a year.”
“I’ll have the decision in ten hours,” he said, getting some of his fighting spirit back.
Those same solemn faces no longer held him in such high esteem. In fact, they had little regard for his humanity. Had he lost his edge? Did it happen when his family died? Perhaps it was best to gather up the ten percent and lead them than lose a hundred percent and gain nothing. And what the hell was going on with Daniels and Tungsten?
“These are not your ten hours, sir,” Cooper Daniels said. “These are the AI’s ten hours. And for the record, I think you’re gambling not only America’s lives, but our lives as well. If you want to save this nation, you have to sack up and make the decision now.”
“Don’t give up on America, sir,” NSA Miles urged.
“I’m not giving up, Miles.” Then, to Cooper Daniels, he said, “We’ll take the ten hours and we’ll find a solution. And then we’ll route this infestation out of our home for good. I don’t care if we drop a hundred kiloton warhead on all of California, I’m not giving up the entire country.”
Looking at him, awkwardly appeasing him, Cooper Daniels ignored Miles Tungsten before saying, “You have the right thinking, sir, but you’re still thinking too small. This is not a Palo Alto problem. This is a United States problem.”
Chapter One Hundred Five
I wake up in a cage the size of a small bedroom with three other men looking at me. It’s an open jail cell but in a larger space, almost like something they’d put serial killers in. Someone like Hannibal Lecter or Charles Manson. And these guys? They’re not standing over me, eyeballs hot and intense, just waiting for me to wake up and see them seeing me. Nope. They’re all on their respective cots. But I will say this: none of them look very kind.
The normalish of the three looks like a surfer. Not a Barney (a new surfer) or a Grommet (a young surfer), but a guy who surfs as a lifestyle and has been at it awhile. He looks dirtyish-clean with his curly, shoulder-length blonde hair. He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him thinking his surf-washed hair looks a little too feminine for my tastes. But the three day shadow, the dark circles under his eyes and the chipped front tooth, these are all the signs of a more chill lifestyle. And his skin…it’s like the sun’s beaten it to a tougher consistency. Yeah, definitely a lifestyle. But he isn’t the guy I’m worried about.
It’s the other two that bristle my senses.
When I swallow past an incredibly dry lump in my throat, out of the mouth of one of these hard-weathered clowns, one says to the other, “So I’m guessing that’s now four mouths to feed.”
I sit up, my face and eyes still on fire, my senses slow to return. These two guys look nine hundred years old. Their skin is haggard, their eyes foggy, their hair as ratty as their beards. One is older than the other by ten or twenty years based on the color of his hair and the homeless look of him. He’s got gray hair while the other guy’s is brown. The younger one waits until I’m up and stable to say to his buddy, “You say four mouths, but it doesn’t have to be four. Could still be three.”
Neither of them take their eyes off me. They don’t even seem to mind that I just sat up in what I now know is a small, stiff cot. I’m all eyes on them. Not taking any chances. In fact, I think they want me to hear them and this makes me just the slightest bit freaked-out.
Looking at the surfer on the other side of the cage in a cot of his own, I say, “How long have you guys been in here?”
He looks away, says nothing. I glance at the other two. The two vagrants with schoolgirl secrets and maybe murder on their minds. Now they won’t look at me either. It’s like everyone’s suddenly got a case of the big cold shoulder. Of course, if I thought of killing a person, I wouldn’t make friends with them either.
“We’re surrounded by homes and food,” I say, my heart racing, a slight tremor forming in my hands at the realization that I’m now being held prisoner in a murderer’s house, “so acting like there’s some kind of a shortage is just ridiculous.”
“What is going on out there?” the surfer guy asks.
All these guys, they’re jeans and t-shirt kinds of guys. They’re of the old sneakers and un-brushed teeth crowd. And me? Man, let’s be honest. I’m too pretty-boy for this pack of unwashed louts.
“Drones are hitting everything,” I finally say.
“Just us?” he asks. The surfer. The beach bum with flip-flops and torn jeans. The real kind of torn jeans, from wear and abuse. Not the brand-new-but-made-to-look-worn kind you buy for two hundred bucks at Nordstrom.
“No,” I say. “It’s more than just here. I came up from San Diego by boat. It’s like this all up the coast. Looks like it’s this way inland as well.”
“Why didn’t you stay on your fancy boat?” the oldest of the two vagrants asks. He’s got his cot pulled head to foot with his buddy’s cot along the cage’s bars flanking me.
“There were several of us,” I whisper. “We needed food, supplies, weapons. We came in through the harbor, thought we’d grab a few things. I was beat up not too far from here, found this place thinking there’d be medical supplies.”
“He ain’t here, if that’s why you’re being all secretive,” the geezer says.
I know he’s not a geezer in the real sense of the word, but he’s certainly old before his time. We’re talking fifty-five going on seventy. From a glance, I’d say it was lots of years in the sun, some hard drinking and drugs, maybe even a dozen lost fights against guys twice his size. This old guy, he has that look like he’s not afraid to pull up an old sheet in a dumpster if it keeps the bayside gusts off his face and the beat cops off his back. And his little friend? He’s well on his way to looking like death warmed over. Ten more years and you won’t be able to tell the two hobos apart.
“Where is he?” I ask, still keeping my voice low, not sure how much I should say when referring to the psycho who killed Quentin and kidnapped Bailey and is now holding me hostage.
Both guys shrug their shoulders.
I look at the surfer guy who’s picking at a longish toenail like somehow it’s holding buried treasure, or at the very least, a bit too much grime.
Pretty toenails are the best conversation openers, Margot used to say. It’s because women these days are making the worst decisions in footwear every single day. Crusted heals with cracks and flaky skin, hammer toes, gaps in the lineup of toes—that’s the kind of horror show guys just don’t want to see on a woman. At least, that’s what Margot used to say. I never really understood her obsession, so now I really don’t know this kid’s obsession either. Maybe it’s a genetics thing. Maybe I’m hating on Margot too much again. She had a good side, long before she hooked up with Tad who loved himself more than he loved anything. Perhaps this kid has a good side, too. He realizes I’m looking at him and stops, his eyes slowly rising to meet mine.
I raise both eyebrows, like, Hey bro, the question’s out there, how ‘bout you try answering it?
“What was the question again?” he asks, catching a clue.
“Where is he?” I say enunciating each word. “The guy? The chunky dude who put us in here?”
“How the hell should I know?” he says.
“I thought that maybe in between you scraping the entire beach out of your toenail and now you might’ve developed a theory,” I answer, sarcastic.
“Theory?”
“Good God,” I mutter under my breath.
I’m feeling my face again. Feeling my eyes. Everything still has that acute sting to it, that piercing agitation that has ev
erything feeling über-sensitive to the touch.
The milk my captor put on my face did a lot to squelch the pain, so for that I’m grateful. Well, as grateful as one could be to a man who killed my traveling companion, kidnapped Bailey and has now stuffed me in this cage with three deviants, two of whom haven’t even met me, yet have now decided I’m one too many mouths to feed.
“How’d he get you?” the geezer asks.
“He just did,” I say, disappointed in myself for getting caught.
“Got any smokes?” the geezer asks.
Frowning, too abruptly I say, “No I don’t have any smokes.”
Right now my eyes are looking around, trying to find a way out. There has to be some way! In the corner, there’s a bucket that’s supposed to be the toilet and I have to go. Shaking my head, irritated, I stand, head to the bucket and just do my thing. If there’s one quality you’re forced to give up when everything’s gone to the dogs, it’s your modesty.
But is everything truly lost? Or is this just an attack on the city and one madman’s wet dream of conquest and capture?
Sitting here, pouring over what I know of what’s happening, I can’t stop wondering, is this a now problem, or will this be a forever problem? In the distance, the sounds of bombing and things blowing up resumes. Marcus was right about one thing: this isn’t over, not by a mile.
“So who else is here?” I ask. “Or is it just the four of us?”
The two vagrants exchange glances and say nothing; the surfer, he looks at me and says, “Some girl, I think.”
“Oh?” I ask, casually like it’s no big deal, even though my heart is now kicking.
“Why you wanna know?” the geezer says.
“I’m just wondering why we’re here,” I say, my heart officially double-timing it at the possible confirmation that Bailey is still alive. “I mean, with everything going on, what’s the point?”
“Maybe there is no point,” the guy who isn’t the geezer and isn’t the surfer says. “Maybe you being here is him wondering what was your point.”
“I got hit with pepper spray then robbed,” I say.
“Thought you got sunburned,” the surfer replies, pulling his hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. In his hands is a toenail he’s just peeled off. He looks at it, sniffs it, then turns and flicks it at me.
“Are you kidding?” I ask, ducking out of the way.
“Got one on deck, too,” he says, showing me his other foot, specifically his other big toenail.
“Maybe you should throw it at the Manson family rejects over there,” I say.
“What’s that mean?” the geezer’s friend says.
Shaking my head, I bite my tongue, then do my best to ignore them all, which is pretty hard when you feel like there’s nowhere to hide and everyone’s watching, waiting, plotting. If I go to sleep again, I won’t have to see them, but then again, in this crowd, I might never wake up.
When the surfer kid gets the other toenail off, he looks at it, turns it over in his fingers, then flicks it at the geezer and his awkward companion. It catches the geezer in the cheek. He startles, then he hops of his cot and drives the surfer’s body into the back of the cage so hard, the kid goes ooof!
After that comes the brutal, hard packing sounds of the surfer getting absolutely pulverized. Within seconds, there’s a rushing noise of feet in the hall, then hollering, and then a fire extinguisher being jammed through the cell bars and offloaded into the center of the fight.
I back up to avoid the chalky clouds of white, then bump into a body. I turn and it’s the other guy, who promptly head butts me into sheer and utter blackness.
I wake up to someone yanking on my leg. Shifting to the pain of a cold, unforgiving surface, slowly blinking my eyes open, I feel a brutal throbbing in my head—front and back—and then I feel someone yanking on my foot. Instinctively I draw my foot back, but hands tug and pull at me as if they’re trying to take the whole damn leg. Rising into awareness, I suffer one last jerk. My shoe comes off and the heel of my foot bounces painfully off the concrete.
Grimacing, I hear myself say, “You stealing my shoe, bro?”
The old geezer is reaching for my other shoe, but I catch him with a kick and he stumbles backwards, cursing under his breath.
Yeah, these two dirtbags are taking my shoes. The Manson family rejects. My eyes finally clear and I see them together, looking down on me. The geezer’s sinewy body is powdered white with fire extinguisher discharge, the area around his eyes pawed clear.
If I’m wondering how long I’ve been out, it isn’t long enough for this guy to clean himself off.
The younger of the vagrants makes a grab for my other shoe, but I jerk my foot away, give him a solid kick in the shin. He buckles forward, catches himself, then staggers backwards the same as the geezer. The geezer has my shoe in his hand.
“I’m gonna get that back,” I growl, trying to sit up, but carefully because any fool can see these two are mounting an attack.
“Ten bucks and a half pack a smokes says you ain’t,” the geezer says.
“You ain’t got ten bucks or a half pack of smokes you freaking turd-burglar,” the surfer says, getting to his feet. He’s got fire extinguisher discharge on him too, but not as bad as the geezer.
The cage around us is about eight feet tall with views to the other room leading to the kitchen and the back of the house. This isn’t a house converted to a jail; it’s a jail made to look like a house. I wonder if it doubles as some kind of naval black site, a place to stash undercover agents or hostile enemy combatants. As far as I can tell, though, the only thing hostile about these two morons is their bad breath and their undeniable repugnance.
“Back off blondie, this don’t concern you,” the geezer’s buddy says to the surfer.
While they’re looking at him, I hurry to my feet and they step forward, but I’m up already. I’m standing tall, hands up, ready to fight.
“Give him his shoe back,” the surfer says.
The geezer is already trying to put his nasty, powder-coated foot in it. Without thinking, just reacting out of an immense amount of anger, I rush the guy, driving my shoulder into his chest with all my might. He slams into the cage and I slug him in the kisser three or four times until I see blood. By then the other two guys are pulling me off him and that’s when a heart stopping boom! erupts and I’m hit in the back hard enough to not be able to breathe.
Rearing up in pain, gasping for air, I slowly turn around, see my jailor standing outside the cage with a shotgun aimed at me. I can’t believe he just shot me in the back.
Over a shoe no less!
My right leg fails me. My eyes water from the pain. I half-stagger, half-drag myself over to my cot, try lowering my body into it, but miss the edge entirely. Instead I slide off and land on the concrete floor right on my tailbone. This agony…dear God, I so want to howl out right now! But with these idiot shoe-thieves and this fatheaded nut bag waiting for me to react…
“He was only trying to get his shoe back,” the surfer says.
“I told you, no tomfoolery!” the jailor roars. Tears drip from my eyes and my mouth hangs open, still gasping. I bring my hand around, sure it’s a bloody mess, but there’s no blood. Okay, I’m confused. I look up at my jailor who is looking down at me saying, “Beanbag.”
“You shot me…with a beanbag?”
“You prefer buckshot?”
My head shakes back and forth and for a second I’m grateful I’m not going to die in this cage with these troglodytes looking for a girl I never rescued while my daughter is half the state away in God only knows what kind of condition.
“No,” I say, my breath now fully back. If I piss blood in the next few hours, I won’t be surprised. At this point, I don’t even want to move.
He continues to stare down at me. “Since you’re new,” he says, “I’ll tell you what I told them: no tomfoolery.”
“Why am I in here? I just came for help, not to be
held captive, beat up, robbed and shot with freaking kids’ toys. Why am I in here with these guys?”
“Keeping you safe.”
“You’re keeping me as a prisoner.”
“You weren’t safe out there, not in all that. You got robbed, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I’d rather be robbed and be free than shot in the back and stuck in a cage like a damn chicken with these butt plugs.” Looking over at the surfer, I say, “But he’s okay. I’m alright with him.”
“Well when it clears outside, if you behave yourself, you’ll get out of here.”
“But I can’t leave now?”
“You were bad just a few minutes ago. You were bad and that’s why you needed to be brought back to center.”
“Brought back to center?”
“Made right. You want a peach? I’ve got some fresh peaches.”
“Sure,” I say, my back still aching to all hell, warning bells screaming like cymbals crashing in my head, my temper pressed but manageable…barely.
This mother—
“You like ‘em harder or a little softer?”
“Softer,” I say, biding my time.
He brings me back a bruised peach, but it’s pretty good. When I look around, the other three are watching me eat.
“I’d share but…”
“No need to,” the surfer says. “We all get rewarded for being shot.”
“Rewarded for…punishment?”
Whispering, the surfer says, “This guy’s five cokes short of a six pack. Real freakin’ whackededoo.”
