The Savior of Seattle

by Nat Kozinn

  David looked on from across the table, frowning.

  Alfonso’s café had been a nice, somewhat upscale neighborhood Italian restaurant in 1982, and then the Plagues went to work on the building and the neighborhood around it. The owners tried their best to fix it up, but the paintings of Venice on the walls weren’t big enough to cover the massive and seemingly growing cracks. It had long ago given up the pretext of being a fine sit-down Italian restaurant. It was now an open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. general-purpose market in addition to a restaurant. Next to the dining tables, there were stacks of groceries and liquor bottles. This is what it took to survive in the Heights these days, and from the looks of it, Alfonso’s was barely doing that.

  “Most proud… The Gilbreth Dam,” David said and put his hands up. “That sounds bad. I know it does, but it’s not because it has my name on it. Well, maybe it’s a little because of that. I don’t have any kids, so I guess, in a way, that dam is my legacy. It’s the one thing I created that will still be around after I’m gone. But it also saved more lives than anything I did besides stopping the bomb.”

  “I think readers would be surprised to hear that. I don’t think that’s what comes to mind when most people remember what you’ve done.”

  “What do people think of?”

  “Well, stopping the bomb of course, or maybe you stopping the Younger Gang, or your fight with that one idiot. What’d he call himself? ‘The Rebirth’? Or that Russian battleship you sank in the harbor before it could finish Gorshev’s job.”

  “Yeah, that’s how people are. They remember the fights, not the contaminated water that was slowly killing them. The thing of it is, when it comes to fighting the other Differents, if it wasn’t me, someone else would have done it. I mean, it was still a good thing that I stopped them, and I don’t regret it, but the army managed to handle plenty of similar nuts during the Reclamation. They secured seven Metro Areas. I’m sure they could have handled Seattle if they had to.”

  “But they didn’t have to, thanks to you. And I don’t recall them sinking any rogue Soviet warships,” she said with a smile. She didn’t want to talk about the damn dam.

  “That was pretty cool. But what I’m saying is that—those other things—I wasn’t the only one who could have done them. But the dam… I was the only one who could have done that. They say BlueHawk is the only other Different that ever lived that could have pulled it off. They could have gotten enough heavy equipment out here eventually, but that would have taken years. Years of Seattle having nothing but irradiated water from the north. That dam saved more lives than anything else I’ve done. Maybe even including the bomb.”

  “Yes, well, that may be true, but construction projects don’t make for riveting news coverage. I want to go back to the Soviet battleship. Take me through it,” Alexis said and tapped her pen on her notebook.

  “It was just the tiniest shove,” David said and paused for effect. “It was no effort at all, but it was enough to bring a twenty-story building down to the ground. The building was already weak. Cabot’s Plagues had eaten away at the pipes, which caused flooding, which ate away the concrete, exposing the rebar and more metal to feed the bacteria. But even if it hadn’t been damaged, I could have toppled it like a domino. I was so strong then. Hell, I could have picked the building up and juggled it.

  “Anyway, I was knocking the buildings over for the city. Tearing them down in a controlled fashion so they didn’t fall down unexpectedly and kill some poor, unsuspecting soul. That’s what I was doing when an army Jeep drove up, honking its horn like crazy. Lieutenant Gibson was driving; he was the liaison between me and the armed forces. I think his main job was to watch me and make sure I stayed on the right side.

  “He told me that they needed me right away. A Soviet battleship had been spotted by a fishing boat. It was headed straight for Seattle. What was left of the U.S. Navy at the time was busy hauling supplies between failing cities along the coast. We may have still had a few ships in the fleet that could have stood up to a Soviet battleship, but they were days away.

  “Not that we knew it at the time, but General Gorshev had been killed a few weeks earlier. After he launched the nukes, what was left of the Soviet Army realized that he had to be stopped. Gorshev had quite a few men, but not enough to stand up to the might of the entire Soviet military when it turned its sights on him. The Soviets dropped bombs and fired artillery at his compound for three days before they moved any troops in. Long enough to turn the place into a giant crater. Who could blame them? No one knew just how many minds Gorshev could control at once. Although we did finally get evidence that all of his followers were not mindless zombies, because after he died, some of them managed to get a single battleship out of Soviet waters, where they set their sights on Seattle. They were trying to rectify their leader’s failure, though I don’t see how shelling Seattle would have changed anything. But that’s what they came to do.

  “I was in a hurry, which meant I got to do one of my favorite things in the world: jump. Back then, all I had to do was bend my legs and release, and I could soar through the air like I was riding a rocket. I could jump twenty miles like it was nothing. Aiming was another story of course. And the other problem was physics. The issue with soaring like a rocket was that when I took off, I basically blasted off, minus the fire. I would blow out nearby windows and obliterate anyone standing nearby. But the landing was even worse. I was essentially a five-hundred-pound bomb when I came crashing down. I’d blow open a crater and demolish anything nearby. That meant I never got to jump very much unless I was moving around the wilderness. But I was safe to take off from condemned buildings I was near, and they cleared a landing area for me in Port Townsend, right at the neck of the bay.

  “The army had set up a checkpoint there and was waiting for me. I was only seventeen, so I was giddy at the idea that I’d be fighting a naval battle. I remember looking through a spyglass, expecting to see a terrifying floating fortress. But what I saw was less than impressive.

  “It was big—there’s no denying that—but while the battleship had survived the Plagues, it didn’t exactly make it out unscathed, and the ship had fought its way out of Soviet waters. Its hull was patched in more places than I could count, and it was moving as slow as molasses, to conserve fuel no doubt. Even if it did look like it was somehow limping into port, it still had a battery of giant guns—guns that could have devastated Seattle.

  “I didn’t have to fear them, though. They were designed to bombard the shore or maybe an enemy ship. I was just a dot in the distance. Those massive shells may have been able to tear apart buildings, but even if they could hit me, they wouldn’t have done more than knock me off my feet. The Soviets never even saw me, and even if they had, there was nothing they could have done to stop me. I leapt out toward the ship. Like I said, my aim wasn’t very good, and I almost overshot the giant hunk of metal. I had to catch myself as I went over the far side. I tore a hole down the whole length of the ship when I grabbed on, and then I threw myself back onto the deck.

  “The army had shown me a picture of the missile launchers; I took those out first, just in case they had managed to bring another bomb. Then I went to work on those big guns, bending the barrels and pounding them to hunks of twisted metal. The army had told me not to sink the ship. Anything that could still float had value back then, but that turned out to be impossible. The thing was barely above water before I attacked. Some of the sailors opened fire with rifles, and there was a grenade or two, but I didn’t even notice those things back then. I could barely feel them. The sailors gave up pretty quickly. They had run out of food halfway through the trip, so there wasn’t much fight left in them. They jumped overboard as the ship sank; they barely had enough strength to swim. I helped the army fish them out of the ocean.”

  “Saved the very men who had just tried to kill you. That’s true heroism,” Alexis said.

  “I guess. Most of them were just kids who had no idea what they were doing. I fe
lt bad for them. I don’t think any of them ever made it back home.”

  5

  Alexis walked into the front door of an office, passing under a banner that read “Reelect Alderman Acado.” The office space was large, with many desks and many stacks of paper. There were more workspaces than there were people to fill them. There were a handful of fresh-faced young kids going through papers or lost in the think.Net stare, but not nearly enough to justify the size of the space. It reminded Alexis of her own offices: way too much square-footage for way too few people—like the place had peaked years ago but its lease hadn’t run out yet. It made sense for her office, but not for a long-tenured alderman who was supposed to be seeking reelection.

  Alexis tried to make eye contact with the young man who was manning the front desk, but he was “busy” on think.Net. There was a large smile on the kid’s face; there was no way he was working. Alexis snapped her fingers right in his face to rouse him out of the mental world.

  “Oh, hi. Can I help you?” the young man said.

  “Yes, I was looking for Loretta Danvers. Is she in?”

  “The campaign manager? No, she’s not here.” The man answered like he was surprised at the question.

  “This is Alderman Acado’s campaign office, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “His main campaign office?”

  “Uh, yeah. Can I ask who you are?” the young man said, finally realizing he might actually have to do his job.

  “My name is Alexis Quinn. I’m with the Seattle Times. I had some questions for Loretta. Do you know when you’re expecting her back?”

  “And that’s a newspaper, right?” the young man asked. He genuinely wasn’t sure, perhaps even about the continued existence of newspapers in current times.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Oh, then you can’t be here,” he said and got to his feet. “You’ve got to call and schedule an appointment with the media manager.”

  “And who is that?”

  “I don’t know. You can look it up on think.Net,” the young man said and held his arm out to indicate Alexis should head back out the door.

  “It’s a real tight ship you run here. Is it always so crowded?” Alexis asked as she headed toward the exit.

  “We have some people out at events. Now, if you’ll please,” he said and opened the door.

  “Or you’ll call security?” Alexis asked.

  “Is it going to come to that?”

  “No, but do you even have security?” she asked as she walked out.

  “Thank you,” he said and closed the door. Then he locked it.

  ◆◆◆

  “Six? You found six? You mean yesterday?” Alexis asked.

  The intern she was talking to was clearly terrified. The young woman winced at every word Alexis spoke like at any moment the words would turn to slaps. They were in the Seattle Times office. Alexis was slumming it in the intern section, where three other young workers were hard at work on something or other. Since real journalists were expensive and interns were cheap, more and more of the responsibilities at the paper had been shifted to the interns’ inexperienced shoulders.

  “No, ma’am. Not just yesterday. That was all of last week,” the intern said.

  “That can’t be right. Check again,” Alexis demanded, shoving the single sheet of paper back toward the young woman.

  “I did. Twice. Then I stayed up all night re-watching the actual think.Net broadcasts on fast-forward. I am certain there were only six ads for Alderman Acado’s reelection campaign that ran on think.Net last week.”

  “That’s crazy. What about print? I know we didn’t run any. Did the Metro Post?”

  “No, they didn’t,” the intern said, shaking her head.

  “This is great, but now I need more. I want you to go back to his last campaign and count how many ads there were at this same time back then. I know it’s a lot to ask…” Alexis said.

  “Already done,” the intern said and picked up a small stack of pages.

  “Wow, great work,” Alexis said as she thumbed through the pages. “How many?”

  “Sixty-seven. Why do you think he’s running so fewer ads this go-round?”

  “We always say it’s not a journalist’s job to speculate, just look at the facts. But that’s a load of crap. What do you think it means?”

  “He’s having trouble raising money for his campaign?” the intern said.

  “Good guess, but what if I told you that his campaign disclosures show he’s raising more money than he did last time?”

  “Hmmm. Then I don’t know. He’s doing something else with the money. Maybe he’s stealing it,” the intern said with a laugh.

  Alexis tapped her finger on her nose. “You might just have a future in this, kid. The paper itself might not, but you do, probably working for someone else. Thanks for the great work.”

  ◆◆◆

  “You know what I miss about the telephone? Yelling at someone. It’s just not satisfying to ream someone out if I don’t feel like I might have a heart attack afterward. You just can’t put the same gusto into a think.Net call,” Harry said.

  Alexis sat at her desk, pecking at her typewriter. She spun around in her chair as soon as Harry started talking. When he had something to say, all work was halted until the weight was lifted off his chest.

  “Don’t worry, chief. You’ll find another way to get there,” Alexis said with an atta-boy fist pump.

  Harry let out an approving grunt. “Can you believe Morris was trying to tell me it’d be three days before he’d print another run? I told him he can either tell the high school yearbook, or whatever the hell else it is, to wait, or we can find another printer for dozens of interviews with the Savior we have planned.”

  “Dozens?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

  “No?” he asked with a smile. “Well, whatever it is, we’re going to be giving Morris more work than he’s had in ten years. God, I miss having our own printer. And a daily edition. And walls,” he said with a skeptical eye to many piled boxes that served to create Alexis’s cubicle.

  “Don’t get too many ideas, Harry. I don’t know how long I can keep him talking, and even if it keeps up, this goose only has so many eggs to lay. If we start going daily, it won’t be long till we’re running exclusives on what the Savior eats for breakfast. Spoiler: it’s nothing because he doesn’t need to eat.”

  “I’ll try to contain myself, but it’s hard. NYC.net called me today. They want to run the interview, and they told me they are even thinking about making a viewable version, some sort of documentary thing mixing photos and B-roll. Sounds like a half-hour of fluff instead of a five-minute read, but that’s what the kids want.” Then he saw the disapproval on Alexis’s face. “Assuming the Savior is on board, of course.”

  “I’ve got a scared little bird here, and you’re asking me to make nothing but big sudden movements. We’re light-years from a Sunday night movie; I’m just hoping he shows up to the next interview.”

  “Come now, Lexi. We both know you have your ways.”

  “Okay, fine. But now that I have you over a barrel, it’s time to take advantage. If I’m going to keep doing this, you’re going to have to run my sanitation story. Now that we’ve got some readers again, somebody might actually notice it.”

  “What was this one again? Ultracorps lobbying politicians to get a contract? Where’s the story?”

  “The alderman who’s pushing the contract—Acado. Twenty-five percent of the sanitation workers live in his district. He’s getting hammered ever since he started talking about Ultracorps. His poll numbers are in free fall. Now, I don’t have any illusion concerning politicians and how responsive they are to the will of the people, but it sure seems like he’s tanking this election. The one thing I know about politicians is that they like to keep getting elected, so there must be some good reason he’s burning his bridges on the way out of town. Cough—money—cough.”

  “Alright, I’ll prin
t whatever you want. Boring corruption stories, your shopping list, that recipe for the horrible cake you made last Christmas. Whatever. Just keep the Savior talking.”

  ◆◆◆

  Alexis Quinn knocked as hard as she possibly could on the door to David’s apartment for a minute straight. She only relented due to the pain in her fist. She pushed her ear up to the door and listened. Nothing. She let out a heavy sigh and walked, her head hanging low.

  Her foul mood was assailed the moment she stepped out of the apartment building. The filthy, dilapidated street had been hidden under a thick layer of paper streamers and smiling faces. It was some sort of block party, and it made the impoverished ghetto known as the Heights seem almost livable—for an afternoon at least.

  She had managed to fight it when she first walked up, but now the smell of freshly fried Manna enveloped Alexis, calling her with its fried, sugary siren song. She forgot all other purposes in life as her primal needs took over. Her nose led her right to the cart a block away. She had to stymie her understandable urge to reach into the pot of fried oil and stuff her face with the sugary strands within. The only thing stopping her, besides the specter of severe burns, was the rules of civil society. There was a line, and she reluctantly took her place at the back of it.

  Forced to expand her singular focus, Alexis spotted an even larger crowd close by. It didn’t take long for her to see why they’d gathered. There was a giant man sitting on top of a podium. It was the Savior of Seattle, and he was balancing over a shallow pool of water. It was a dunk tank, and people were taking their chance to hit the target and drop their hero.

  Through a feat of willpower, Alexis removed herself from the line for the fried Manna and joined the line to try to take down David. It was mostly little kids lined up for the chance, and their throws were adorably off-line. Everyone was having fun. It was all for charity, a dollar a toss.