Houston, 2030: The Year Zero

by Mike McKay

  Chapter 14

  Mark woke up with a fundamental headache. At least, Arnold and Michael did not go to work this Monday. As for the Medical Board, to which the boys had to report at 10:45 and 11:00, respectively, the Army doctors would be surprised, if any draftees arrived for their medical check not intoxicated.

  Mark's breakfast consisted of half a mug of acorn coffee. He rode straight to the Day-Pay. If I find Jasmine Hobson today, he thought, it would be a great deal, especially considering the hangover combined with the miserable weather! The latter began to deteriorate since the night. The sky was overcast with heavy clouds, and nasty drizzle at times stopped, then started again. Mark left his raincoat at home, and regretted half-way. Even so, he did not want to return: extra four miles, with the headache, looked more horrible than the drizzle. Thanks to his FBI badge, he was allowed to park for free at the guarded bicycle hold near the Day-Pay entrance.

  It very well may happen I become a frequent visitor here, suddenly clicked in Mark's head. He imagined himself, sitting in the row of Wanna-Any-Job workers, holding a day-pay tag. What would the middle-age man's rate be? Then, his imagination presented Mark with even more disturbing picture. Again, he was at the Day-Pay, but not alone. Pamela and Patrick accompanied him, both dressed in soiled rags, with conical straw hats, and with rubber gloves in their pockets. The day-pay read: $430. A fair price for two underage scavs, who can perform equal to one-and-a-half adults. No, he was not one of these lazy parents! After sending his kids to the 'Fill, Mark would do a full day of work in his carpenter shop! If all together they make seven hundred a day… He shook his head dispersing the nasty daydream.

  The landfill and its surroundings were patrolled by nine officers – the largest Police Beat under their Station. To help the FBI today, they assigned the local Sergeant Inspector, a fat smiling man named Rodrigo. For about an hour, the local cop and Mark walked through the Day-Pay rows, but Jasmine seemingly was not there.

  The party yesterday went as planned. Besides Fred's and Mark's families, they had fifteen or so external guests, mainly Mike's and Arne's friends from the 'Fill. The barbecue was set at the backyard. Mr. Stolz allowed the guests to refresh in the swimming pool, never mind it was only knee-deep. Now, the main purpose of the pool was to collect rain from the roof. Because the wet season had not fully started, and the water was used for veggies, nothing could be done about the pool level. The official part had ended at half-past nine, – the majority had to work on the Monday morning, besides, a light rain started suddenly.

  After the guests left, both families sat at the deck and moved from the beer to sugar cane liqueur, but it was not enough, so Frederick brought a large bottle of chemically-pure ethanol. “I appropriated this in our lab,” he admitted to Mark, “when 'Burton filed bankruptcy, I went to my boss and asked, can I take the lab chemicals home? All the same, they will smash them or pour in the wrong drain. He just waved: who cares? While my less entrepreneurial colleagues were queuing at the HR, I made three trips and relocated all the stuff into my basement. The other fellows were given their severance checks one day ahead, but I was left with all the goodies.”

  Samantha was dispatched to the neighbors to buy ice, and Elvira began preparing vodka. Strictly by the lab code: in a chemical measuring beaker, two volumes of alcohol into three volumes of ice-cold water, stirring the tincture with a glass rod. As the chemical bottle slowly lost its precious content, the mood at the table became more cheerful. William demonstrated the audience how to drink vodka with no hands. The performer was asked for an encore. Mark described how in 2009 he participated in the arrest of an alleged terrorist, reported to the FBI by his vigilant neighbors. The SWAT was called for nothing: the terrorist turned a mere Chemistry student, who produced Mephedrone and other equally pleasing substances for his friends. The mention of Chemistry led Frederick to a story about his work in the oilfield R&D.

  “Did I tell you, guys, I have four US patents?” he boasted. “The coolest one… eek! …was on safe detonators. Well, making a safe deto is easy. Basically, you need a resistor… Or a Zener diode! But then – you need high voltage to set it off. And we wanted a deto to be set off from regular AA batteries. But at the same time – to be totally safe. What would you do for such a predicament, Arne?”

  “Dad, you've told me already. I know the answer.”

  “Oh, right! But Mark – he surely doesn't know! What would you do, Mark?”

  “No idea, Fred. All my detonator knowledge is limited to three hours of boring FBI lectures. Besides, it was twenty years ago… And the last-but-not-least, – I was asleep!”

  “OK. I-got-the-picture… Eek! OK, I'll tell ya'll.” When Frederick was drunk, he loved showing off the perfect Texan accent, acquired from his ancestors. The modern science had not established how the accent disappeared if he was sober. “We invented a ternary deto! Not a binary, but a three-state! Yes! While it's not activated, you can bang it with a sledgehammer. Or throw it into a campfire. Or shoot a bullet through it! And even high voltage. Several thousand volts – no problem! The detonator will burn, naturally, but won't detonate.”

  “And how to set it off, exactly?” Mike asked.

  “Ha! It was the invention. First, you send positive voltage. The reaction is…” Frederick dipped his index finger into his water glass and tried to draw a formula on the table: “Never mind the formulas. The firing sequence is like one, two, three. One! A positive pulse: three volts, three seconds or more. Two! A negative pulse: also three volts and at least three seconds. At this point, the deto is ‘ready’ – activated. Three! The next positive pulse leads to a detonation in under five milliseconds. Yes, only five! This is a darn good spec for a safe deto! Moreover, if the deto is not fired, it deactivates by itself in under one hour. You may sledgehammer it again! So we filed a patent, Frederick R. Stolz et al. Our Marketing came up with a commercial name: TriSafe.”

  “A TriSafe deto? I didn't know it's your invention!” William said. “In the Engineers, we worked with these detos almost every day.”

  “My little invention is very popular! Not only in the US Army. If all the Muslim extremists, the South American guerillas, and the Asian freedom fighters paid me fifty dollars for each booby trap they set with my TriSafe, I would live a goddamn Saudi Sheikh! I can bet you anything, Billy, you lost your arms thanks to my deto!”

  William laughed and moved his truncated shoulders up and down, “Excellent job, Mister Stolz. I owe you. Fifty bucks tomorrow – after my Loop, OK?”

  “Sorry, William, I didn't mean to…” Frederick's face looked nothing like smiling, his Texan accent suddenly gone.

  “Never mind. I trade you a very funny story about your TriSafe and the South American freedom fighters. Venezuela! In case you have not guessed.”

  “But we have. Where else can you meet a South American freedom fighter? At the corner, in front of your Salvation Center?” Mike said.

  “Shut up, Mickey! So, the second day of my deployment. A Mil-Int Corporal… The Mil-Int for you, damn civilians, stands for Military Intelligence.”

  “Bullshit! Such a thing does not exist. ‘Military Intelligence’ is like ‘dry water.’ An oxymoron!”

  “I said: shut up, Mickey! You are an oxymoron yourself, but with all the oxy substituted with H2S farts! So the Corporal comes to us and asks: bros, have any Primacord left? Can we borrow? Our Sarge says: no probs, which type? And the Corporal: the thicker the merrier. Our Sergeant gave him half a roll. RDX-ten, yellow jacket. Never asked why he needed the stuff. Who cares what the Spooks want to blow?”

  “Wait, can you speak plain English?” Arnold interrupted. “What are all these: ‘RDX,’ ‘Primacord,’ ‘yellow jacket’?”

  “Primacord is a detonating cord,” Frederick translated: “Like a rope, but with explosives inside. RDX is the type of secondary explosive. Good, but expensive stuff, only the Army
can afford. If I remember correctly, the number ten in the yellow jacket is fifty grains per foot, the fattest variety.”

  “Spot on, the yellow number ten – is fifty G.P.F.!” William confirmed, “well, the Mil-Int Corporal thanks and takes off. Our Sarge suddenly says: and why the heck did he go towards the river? We're bloody idiots! The Spooks just went bloody fishing with our Primacord! They have fish for dinner, and we have nothing, but a butt-hurt for a non-combat use of our explosives. OK, he tells me: you're the most junior here, follow this damn Corporal. The butt-hurt we will have anyhow, but I prefer to have it after my fish. In case any officer asks, you're helping these bozos with their basic explosives training. Understood? Understood! So here I am, chasing this Mil-Int Corporal. We come to the river, and I see this: the Spooks captured a boat, and with it – two locals. Guerillas, no sweat. Or freedom fighters, whatever.”

  “Wait! How did you know they were guerillas?” Arnold asked.

  “For starters, they had an AK-47.”

  “What if they were just hunting?”

  “With an AK-47? Hunting, sure! And the second weapon was a Chinese-made surface-to-surface guided missile. Not quite handheld, but portable. Nice design, better than what we had. Easy to use. Accurate. I'm telling you, Arne, if these guys were out hunting on the river, they were hunting our gun-boats…”

  Mark nodded. “I just met one vet, from a river monitor. She was shot with a Chinese missile.”

  “She? His boat, you mean?” Clarice asked.

  “Nope, I meant: both. The boat and the female vet. The girl was a volunteer, with the Navy.”

  “In Venezuela, all our gun-boats have female crews,” William said. “Anyway, the guerillas. One – just a kid, about thirteen, the second is my age. Naturally, both are covered in blood. The Spooks diligently extracted all the intel. The Sergeant, that's not ours, but the one from the Mil-Int – noticed me. He says: you must be new, Private? Interested? OK, watch this. Operation Titanic is on the way. One Spook told these guerrillas in Spanish they would go to a POW camp… Or something like.”

  “Something like?”

  “My spoken Spanish is not too good: because of the war, all the Mexos had been deported, who to practice with? The Spooks set these two guys in their boat and tied them up with our Primacord. The guerillas did not resist. The Primacord – it really looks like a clothes line. The Spooks attached a radio detonator box. Your TriSafe, Mister Stolz, is inside, along with a battery and electronics, so I was told… Right! The boat was pushed off the river bank. The guerrillas, finally, realized they're not going to the POW camp, but rather to the place far more distant. Started yelling: no, por favor, no…”

  “Well?”

  “That's all! The boat drifted seventy yards. The Sergeant shouted, all by the rules: ‘Fire in the hole!’ Pulled out his tactical radio, punched in the code… Ka-boom! All gone: no boat and no guerrillas. The Primacord, it has this interesting effect. The explosion is not too strong, but all shredded. In teeny-tiny pieces… I was that close to throw up…” He wiggled his shoulders. It looked like he wanted to show how close he was to throwing up, but his arms were invisible.

  “Do you call it a funny story? What's so freaking funny about blowing people up?” Arnold asked. He too was ready to throw up.

  “Good question,” William admitted, “in Venezuela, it was somehow very funny. Somebody says: Operation Titanic! And everybody: boo-ha-ha-ha! Maybe, by the contrast with all the rest. The rest was, in fact, far worse. After the explosion, the Mil-Ints ran downstream and collected fish for dinner. Here, private: a compensation for your Primacord! Only after seeing how the Spooks dispatched those two guys, I couldn't eat fish at all! All my deployment time – till the Dumpster… OK, forget it! Probably I should not tell this story first place… Ris, baby, can you check if I have vodka in my glass?”

  Despite being drunk, Mark woke up around three in the morning, in cold sweat and breathing heavily. He had a nightmare, so realistic that finding himself back in the bedroom darkness felt like he escaped death.

  In the dream, he walked through the cargo section of the Houston Hobby Airport. Mark was there few times before the Meltdown and once – soon after, meeting the FBI brass. He knew he must hurry, as the plane had already landed. Indeed, the transport was already in front of a hangar, being off-loaded. Bright midday sun and a bit of fog, – how these could be together, Mark wondered, – obscured his vision. The plane was the slum Hercules derelict, complete with the broken wing and protruding aluminum ribs. About a dozen of Air Force personnel ran back and forth with medical stretchers, placing on the concrete a long line of military duffel bags.

  Mark came closer and observed these were not duffel bags, but people, dressed in faded field uniforms. Quad amputees, entirely without arms or legs. In the head, Mark knew his airport visit was because of the vets, but did not quite remember why. Of course! Mr. Todd, from Salvation Way! He asked Mark to help with forty-four new collectors in Change for Vets program. Favor for favor, for the funerals of Nick Hobson and Amelia Khan. Right!

  Even closer, and Mark realized that the first vet in the line was his son Mike. The fog concentrated into figures: the Senior Officer himself, accompanied by the sharply dressed Salvation Way lady from the window poster who had a pencil and a notepad. Mr. Todd unpinned Mike's Purple Heart and dropped the medal into the red donation bucket.

  “You don't need it, Mickey,” he explained, “the medal is for those who cannot show the battle scars!” Then, he dictated the donation bucket's serial number to the impeccable lady and set the bucket on the tarmac, between Mike's leg stumps. Mike smiled.

  “A bit hot today, isn't it?” Mr. Todd asked Mark, “Mister Pendergrass, would you be so kind to help this vet out of his jacket?”

  “No probs, Mister Todd. Always happy to help,” Mark replied, crouched down, and proceeded unbuttoning Mike's uniform. He discovered that Mike's arm stumps had jagged scars, as if the surgeon operated in a great hurry.

  Mr. Todd was already setting a donation bucket next to the second amputee in the line. I must undress this vet too, Mark decided. Ninety five degrees! Too hot for full uniforms… He removed the vet's jacket, and finally recognized the face: Arnold Stolz. Arne gave Mark a polite nod. Oh, right, he can't talk now. Arnold always lifts his fingers before talking. Will he learn how to insert his opinions without permission, the same as Mike does?

  Meanwhile, Mr. Todd and the Salvation Way lady, as one well-oiled machine, continued distributing their red buckets. Tup! A medal drops into a plastic bucket. Serial number, such and such. Did you get it right, Miss Johnson? Thank you. Tup! The bucket is placed on the tarmac. Mark proceeded from Arnold to the third vet in the line and crouched down. It was a girl. Mark hesitated: what if she had no T-shirt under her jacket? The camo, threadbare and faded from few hundred laundry cycles, looked like the uniforms in his daughters' school.

  “Hi, Dad!” the vet in front of him said.

  Dad? Dad? He looked at the vet's face: sure enough, it was his Samantha. Mark felt angry. Why the hell did she volunteer for the Army?

  “I did not volunteer, Dad,” she said. Her lips did not move, and the voice magically appeared in Mark's head. “I was drafted, remember?”

  Suddenly, Mark remembered. The girls were drafted now! They had no choice!

  “Take her jacket off,” a voice from above said.

  Mark looked up. A military surgeon, with red eyes from the continuous sleep deprivation, his surgical scrubs had Barney and Friends dinosaurs all over it. Like six years after the Meltdown, when little Sammy had a twisted ankle, and the doctor explained Mark that the locally-made anesthetics were not as safe as the real stuff, and better be avoided. Only, back then the surgeon had an X-ray in his hand, and now – a neat, shiny chainsaw.

  “It's all-right,” the surgeon said in Mark's head.

  Mark unbuttoned
Samantha's jacket and felt relieved to see she had her favorite swimsuit under it. Her arm stumps were also uneven and jagged, the same as Mike's and William's. A real pity. Girls, unlike boys, need no scars.

  “We call it: radical procedure,” the surgeon's voice said. “These new chainsaws are so cool! I can make a Quad in six minutes! Stitches out in one week, and Sammy is good to go. None of my amputees had complained!”

  No, the surgeon with a shiny chainsaw was no maniac, Mark decided. Twenty surgeries a day; what else could he do? Then, Mark felt he had missed something important! He had it in his head before entering the Airport, but now it was gone. Pamela and Patrick! He ran along the line of the quad amputees, looking into each face. All faces appeared familiar: those he interviewed for the Butcher case, but he could not associate the names. The line was endless. Few vets recognized Mark, nodded, or said something polite without opening their lips.

  Suddenly, Mark stopped on his tracks. The next two amputees in the line were Patrick and Pamela, sitting on the scorching tarmac in their second-hand Army (or school?) uniforms, with Salvation Way buckets between their useless leg stumps.

  “Hi, Dad,” Pamela said – directly in Mark's head, “look, how funny: me and Ricky haven't no arms – no legs…”

  “How many times I told you to drop these double negatives, Pamela? Only beggars and street gangs talk like this! Proper English, you promised me, remember?”

  “OK, OK, Dad. Patrick and I have neither arms nor legs. Better?”

  So stupid, Mark thought. Like back then, I was teaching the kids supermarkets, banks, credit, stocks, bonds, and hedge funds, as if they ever need it… My daughter is reduced to a living torso, only good for sitting with a stupid donation bucket, yelling ‘Change for Vets!’, and saying thanks to any passerby who drops a dollar or two. In her new state, it was perfectly OK to use double, and quad, and whatever-multiple negatives. Only beggars and street gangs talked like this? So what? This was their new language, targeted to the specific new audience. Now, she didn't need no goddamn proper English!

  “And who says: ‘Three out of each five,’ Mister Pendergrass?” Mr. Todd's voice boomed from behind. Mark turned. Surprisingly, Mr. Todd was talking as normal, with his lips moving. “Who says: ‘Three out of each five?’ You can get much luckier than that! Right, Miss Johnson?”

  The poster-perfect Salvation Way lady nodded. “Absolutely right, Mister Todd. Absolutely right! Take Mister Pendergrass, for instance. He had five kids in the Army, and all five will be our collectors now. Sadly, Billy is not a Quad. What a waste.”

  “Positively, Miss Johnson, our Billy is unlucky to have his legs. Armless vets are not effective anymore. Not any better than those legless dudes. Just think all this spot-holding going on, despite my direct orders! But: never mind, never mind. Our new collectors will turn an outstanding revenue next month, what do you reckon?”

  “You are absolutely right, Mister Todd. These new guys will be an excellent addition to our charity campaign. Forty-four new Chunks! Perfectly! Stumped!”

  Like a gust of wind, all the quad amputees picked maniacal laughter. “Boo-ha-ha-ha! Perfectly! Stumped!” Now their mouths were opening and closing with gaping black holes. Pamela, and Patrick, and few others could not sit straight and rolled on tarmac choking in convulsions. “Oh, so funny, Miss Johnson! So wonderful! Chunks! Chunks! We are – chunks! Perfectly! Stumped! Boo-ha-ha-ha!”

  Mark woke up, and it took him few minutes to calm down. Mary moaned in her drunken slumber. Mark wondered if she had nightmares too. Good it was just a dream. Nothing was lost. Mike and Arnold may fail their medical tomorrow. Or if they pass, they're not deployed. Or deployed, but not to a crappy place, like Venezuela, or Colombia, or Iran, or Norway. Or just get wounded, not killed. Perfectly OK if Mike comes back on crutches. No big deal, can get a prosthetic leg… Only please, please, please, Mark suddenly started praying: please come back alive…