Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  The rain suddenly doubled down in intensity, making me flinch. I collected towels and a couple man-sized robes, to bring to the kitchen as a hint. By the time I made it there, Emmett and Carlos were already indoors and puddling on my kitchen floor. There didn’t appear to be any blood or contusions. They couldn’t have been any wetter if they’d jumped into a pool again, though. Other than looking like drowned rats, the pair seemed to have turned a more affable corner in their relationship.

  “Thank you, darlin’,” Emmett said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Join us?”

  “Sure...” I said. “Why don’t you change in here. Call me when you’re ready...”

  Once the dryer was clonking away, I took a seat with them at the dining table. “So! How’s stuff at home, Carlos?” I inquired. “It must be tough, raising a ten-year-old single-handed. You’re welcome to bring him over, next time you come. Our foster teen, Alex, has a whole room of rabbits and guinea pigs next door. I bet your son would love it.”

  Mora nodded slightly. “Probably. I don’t bring him around, though. Keith is autistic.” He turned his attention to Emmett. “We moved in with my brother and his wife, day before yesterday. Too many ghosts at home. And I just can’t handle Keith alone.”

  Emmett looked alarmed. “Didn’t your brother suggest, um, oxycontin on Keith?”

  My eyes widened.

  “Yeah, I finally had that out with Manolo,” Mora said. “It’ll be alright. I think.”

  “That’s...” I didn’t know what to say. And no, I shouldn’t open my mouth when that happens. “That’s a tough thing to get past. I’m not sure how I’d deal with it if my family, um...” I couldn’t imagine my family suggesting that I euthanize my own child.

  Mora shrugged. “He said he was just testing, to make sure I knew what I was doing. He’s old school.” He shrugged again. “They have the room. Manolo wants to teach Keith to handle oxen. That’s useful.”

  “Well, Keith is always welcome,” I reiterated. “I don’t have much experience with autism. But I know Alex does. He used to help his gym teacher with the special ed kids.”

  “Oh, yeah? Cool.” Mora actually looked impressed at that.

  “I’m glad you’re getting some help with him, Carlos,” Emmett said. “Hope you find some time for yourself, too. Not just make time for work.”

  Mora looked unappreciative of the personal time management suggestion. I couldn’t blame him.

  “Dee,” Emmett said. “Carlos is going to pitch in and act as censor for Project Reunion for me. I need to delegate that one.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Maybe you could show him your article? On Pete Hoffman.”

  “Censor.” I sat frozen, gazing at Emmett in disbelief.

  “To publish about a military operation, you need a military censor,” Mora explained. “Hoffman, huh? Let’s see it.” Emmett nodded, his face pleasantly neutral.

  I pulled up the article on the tablet I kept at the table, and handed it to Mora. I looked daggers at Emmett as Mora tackled the article. But my attention quickly drew back to Mora, who stabbed his way through my article in nothing flat. I hadn’t realized the tablet program was capable of highlighting. But Mora annotated in three colors, just as quick at tech as lightning-fingered Emmett. After a half-second consult with Emmett, he beamed the results up onto my living room big screen.

  “Pink is a no,” Mora explained, pointing his way through the highlighted parts. “That’s an operational detail. Never – ever – publish ops details. Could put soldiers’ lives at risk. Location, date, time, troop movements – those are ops details. Yellow is a caution. Pass it by Pete. I don’t think he’d want to go on record saying that. Green is feedback. I think the paragraph would read better without this sentence. I don’t know that word, or that phrase. Achilles heel?” He shook his head. “You want to reach a broad audience. So, dumb it down a bit. So people like me can understand.”

  I stared at the screen. Mora was dead right on every comment. And he’d done it in minutes. “I think you’ve done this before, Carlos. You’re good,” I said slowly. “You have a master’s degree, just like Emmett, don’t you?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I couldn’t write a master’s thesis. I’m the first person in my family to graduate high school. English is hard. I did a tour with media relations for NATO in Brussels, though. That’s where I met my wife. Then the Pentagon press office for a couple years.”

  “Carlos’ brother Manolo raised him, after their parents died,” Emmett said. “He dropped out, and kept Carlos in school. Good man.”

  Drat. Emmett knew any chance I had of continuing a grudge against Mora just bit the dust.

  Mora picked up his critique again. “Make those corrections, and get Pete’s blessing, and I’ll OK it. But Dee – why start with Pete? The man of the hour is Tom Aoyama.”

  I thought the man of the hour was Emmett MacLaren, but I was biased.

  “That’ll take some censoring,” Emmett said sourly. He had a low opinion of Tom Aoyama, the epidemiologist who just could not keep his mouth shut. In fact, Tom wasn’t even allowed to call him anymore. Emmett had hired a polite grad student to ‘expedite’ Tom’s communications.

  “So I’ll edit it,” Mora said. “Anyway, that’s where I’d start. Ordinary citizen defies the Calm Act, to prove it’s safe to save New York. You know the guy, Dee. Emmett, could she visit Long Island and interview him? Let him show off his work on video? And show the refugees.”

  I stared at him. “That would be incredible.” Interviewing Pete Hoffman was simply easy, the low-hanging fruit. It was something I could do quickly. But Tom Aoyama’s quarantine operation – that would put Project Reunion’s website on the map. Everyone would want to see that footage.

  Emmett grinned at my expression. “Carlos, I think she likes the idea. Can you find her a video crew?”

  “You mean, pros?” I said, astonished.

  “Why not pros?” Emmett replied. “You think camera crews in New England have something better to do this week?”

  “They’d kill for this gig,” agreed Mora. He looked at me apologetically. “Reporters, too.”

  I must have looked crestfallen.

  “This is your show, Dee,” Emmett said. “I don’t want a reporter. I want you.”

  Mora studied me critically, then nodded. “Yeah, she’s got the vision. For her series on personal stories only, though, Emmett. You need an experienced war correspondent on your end. I’ll hook you up.”

  “In time?”

  “Yeah, they’re all adrenaline junkies. I could get one here in two hours, if you needed it.”

  “Excellent. Why don’t you interview Cam, too, while you’re out on Long Island, darlin’,” Emmett suggested to me.

  “Cam! On Long Island?” Mora interjected. “I thought you liked him!”

  “His idea,” Emmett said sadly. “Couldn’t say no.”

  “Jesus,” Mora said, but nodded slowly. “He’s idealistic enough. So who’s taking Tolland and Windham?”

  I left them to divvy up Connecticut, and went back to my office. I had a censor, just what I’d never wanted. Mora was among the last people I’d have wanted, too. Yet here he was, already making my modest little project better than I’d ever dreamed. Life’s funny that way.

  ‘Advisor,’ not ‘military censor,’ I corrected to myself. Yes, I’d need that verbal whitewash for the Amenac team. They’d see right through it. But the UNC end of the team, at least, would be too busy salivating to mind, once they saw the professional footage and the surge in web traffic. And this footage would absolutely, positively throw HomeSec into convulsions with its Calm Act violations.

  Though as Emmett pointed out during my presentation, they’d be as glued to their screens as everyone else. Probably more so, in fact. I sighed. They had the tech to scrutinize video footage right down to its photons. They could probably identify every face reflected on a window by accident, if they wanted.

  Better Mora than me
, to deal with HomeSec.

  After Emmett showed Mora out, he sank into the couch and invited me to join him. “No, not on my lap. Still business, darlin’.”

  “Don’t Ms. Baker me,” I pleaded.

  He laughed out loud. “Promise. Not that kind of business. Thank you, darlin’, for giving Carlos a chance. I’m worried about him. But I can’t ask the other Rescos to keep an eye on him, and I’m spread too thin. He loves media and politics. Seems to me he’s good at it.”

  “He blew me away,” I agreed.

  “Well, don’t count yourself short, either. But you’ll keep an eye on him for me? Try to get him to have a little fun?”

  “Yeah. Promise,” I agreed. “Thank you. That…wow. This could be phenomenal, Emmett.”

  “None of that ‘could be’ or ‘try’ nonsense, Baker. ‘Phenomenal’ is a project requirement. You need to deliver me high public morale and enthusiasm for Project Reunion!” He grinned, then added more quietly. “You can do this. He can help. And I feel a lot better leaving you with him to watch your back. I trust Carlos, Dee.”

  “Leaving me?” I echoed.

  Emmett nodded slowly, eyes searching mine. “You didn’t really think I was going to command this operation from your living room. Did you, Dee?”

  “I thought the generals, and the admiral...”

  “I’m coordinating the civilian evacuation,” he said softly. “It takes a boat-load of officers to do this, Dee. Literally. Plus the train-load, truck-load, and helicopter. And a whole lot of Rescos, Cocos, and volunteers. And a beautiful and visionary PR lead.”

  I smiled dutifully, and looked down at my hands. “When are you leaving?”

  “Half past rooster.”

  He gave me time to process that, and didn’t speak again until I looked up. Even then, he gave me time to speak first, if I wanted to. Instead I attempted a brave smile. I bet it came out ghastly.

  “I invited the whole family to dinner tonight,” he said. “Trey and Shelley and Alex. To tell them. Didn’t want to blind-side you, though.”

  “Yeah. No. Thank you.”

  He smiled slightly at the Yeah-No. He used to make fun of Zack and me for sharing that verbal tick. Long ago. Several new normals ago. And here it was, time for another new normal. And he’d only just moved in.

  Emmett pulled me onto his lap after all. “Don’t fall back into being sad, Dee,” he whispered. “We wanted this, more than anything. I’m a soldier. Some days I go to work and can’t take you with me. It’s what I do.”

  “This time it’s months,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”

  “We’ll talk on the phone. And I’ll pop home now and then for a break.” At my eager glance, he cautioned, “Not for a few weeks, at least. Darlin’... I intend to have the time of my life, career-wise. I hope you do, too.”

  “It should be fun,” I said, nodding.

  He kissed me on the head. “I want to help Alex with the livestock before supper. See you in a bit.”

  Chapter 13

  Interesting fact: Studies attempted to explain what ‘special something’ the survivors of New York had, that the dead had lacked. None of their findings were especially convincing.

  The day Emmett and Adam invested Staten Island, I was on the far end of Long Island, oblivious.

  “Dee!” Grinning, Major Cameron grabbed me up into a big hug that caught me by surprise, when I climbed down from the Coast Guard boat. It’s not as though I knew Cameron well. Two weeks ago, I hadn’t known him at all. My video wrangler, Kyla, recorded every bit of our enthusiastic reunion.

  One of Cam’s old Cocos from Windham County had met us at the dock in New London with supplies to bring across. Here, skeletally thin men and women, dressed in fresh militia camouflage, stepped up to offload it all. They packed it into Cam’s waiting trucks.

  “Chicks,” Kyla prompted.

  “Oh, yeah!” I cried. “Careful with that one! Cam, that’s three dozen chicks.”

  “Oooh!” Cam crooned on cue. He stepped up to the cadaverous man holding the box, and opened it up to grin at the chicks. “Welcome to Long Island, my pretties!” He plucked up one of the little tan fuzzballs and cupped it in his hand to pet it. Kyla dove in for a close-up.

  “What’s with the chicks, Cam?” I asked. I thought it was obvious enough, but prompted him for the sake of the video footage.

  “It’s almost November,” he explained. “Not a lot we can do with crops right now. But we have all these lovely lawns on Long Island to support livestock. Some eggs and milk will make a huge difference to our food supply.” He looked straight into the camera, heartfelt. “Windham County, Connecticut – thank you for the chickens!”

  That was certainly the money shot, a buff and attractive blond man, earnestly saluting the folks back home with an adorable baby animal. Kyla nodded curtly, and moved off to record the people loading the trucks.

  Those chicks were only a month old, just beginning to look chicken-shaped. It would be another four months or so for any to lay eggs. I wished I’d thought to bring some rabbits for Cam to set loose. Alex wouldn’t have given up his pets for meat, though.

  Cam grinned at me. “Does she have a personality, or just an eye? Your camera woman.”

  “I’ll try to introduce you,” I replied. “But that’s how she is. I try to get to know her. We get a couple minutes into the conversation. Then the camera’s out again, and she tells me to repeat what I just said. She’s pretty intense. Kyla, is her name.”

  “Cool,” Cam said, sizing her up, then reviewing his team’s operation. “If Mora picked her, I’m sure she’s good.”

  “This is a drop in the bucket, isn’t it, Cam. How are you really doing out here? I know Emmett and Carlos were worried about you. And deeply impressed that you would tackle this. Carlos said to convey his respect.”

  “Really,” he replied thoughtfully. “Please convey mine to him.”

  The trucks were sparsely loaded, the militia climbing back on board. We were all packed up and ready to go. “That didn’t take long,” Cam commented. “Shall we?”

  “Ms. Baker!” The Coast Guard commander called down to me from the boat. Two crew were already casting off. “Noon, two days from now, right here. Correct?”

  “We’ll be here!” I called up. My smile ached. I realized a bit late in the game that I was terrified, to be stranded on Long Island. Hardly a tropical deserted island. Surely a devastated one. “Thanks for the ride!”

  The captain waved cheerfully. The closest crew member gave me a searching look, then a curt nod of respect. She hopped onto the boat to leave.

  -o-

  Long Island Sound is wide where I live, maybe 18 miles. Toward the city end, the salt water gap between Manhattan Island and Brooklyn is called a river, and not a particularly big one. At Orient Point, where the Coast Guard dropped me off, on the north fork of eastern Long Island, we were maybe 8 miles from the Connecticut coast, maybe a dozen southwest of New London. I’d taken the ferry across once, just for fun. It took over three hours each way, after the hour drive to New London. Fortunately, the Coast Guard ride only took about 45 minutes.

  I’d never taken the ferry again, because Orient Point isn’t very exciting. It’s a bucolic place, fairly flat, lots of green grass and trees, some farmland. In other words, it looks nearly identical to the Connecticut shore, clearly visible across the water. Which made for an awfully long trip to reach someplace that looked just like where I started, except with fewer people. There’s a lot of beautiful scenery within a 4-hour drive of New Haven. Orient Point is merely homey. The fabulously wealthy Hamptons, where elite New Yorkers escaped the heat for the summer party scene, were on Montauk, the other claw point to the south of us. It was nearly 30 miles west along now-deserted roads to reach Riverhead, where the Orient and Montauk forks met.

  Along the way, Cam explained to me that Tom Aoyama had started his quarantine working his way down Orient Point. Then they barricaded Orient off and started again from the end of Monta
uk, the more populous point. Now, six months into the project, they’d advanced to a few miles west of Riverhead.

  “So you’re nearly a third of the way to Manhattan?”

  “That’s misleading,” Cam said. “It’s a third of the distance, but nowhere near a third of the land. Maybe a twentieth of the people.”

  “Do you get a lot of refugees out here, from the city? You know, people who’ve heard the rumors and flock to safety?”

  “No, actually,” Cam replied. “Almost nobody heads back west to carry the tale. Once they’re here, they wait for their turn to go through quarantine. Power and long distance communications are all down. And who’d believe them if they went back? Would you walk 50 miles, on a rumor? When you can barely walk a block? When you’ve heard a thousand rumors that promised help, but never panned out? And most of them left you worse off.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. What are they like? The refugees. Off the record.” Kyla was in the other truck. Cam and I were alone in the cab, so he could grill me about Emmett’s operation. “What we publish will be for PR purposes. I’ll only publish truth, but... Constructive truth, I guess.”

  “Good way to put it,” Cam agreed. “They’re pretty shell-shocked. Vacant. Staring. They avoid touching, meeting anyone’s eye. The guilt...” Cam stopped speaking for a minute, his mouth drawn in a hard line. “They lived, Dee. A lot of them did terrible things to live. What they saw was horrific. And we’re on eastern Long Island. Off-season, it wasn’t much more crowded than home.”

  “What town?” I asked, to lighten the conversation. We chatted family for a while, and I looked out the window. Occasionally I saw gaunt people working in the fields, still harvesting the tall grass for hay, some with nothing more than a machete. It would take an eternity to mow a field that way. The fresh-cut grass smelled nice, over an underlying cloying smell of rot, that grew as we headed west.

  “You don’t burn the bodies,” I hazarded.

  “That’s a waste of fuel,” Cam agreed. “Better to bury them as fertilizer.”