Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  He looked at me, smiling his toothy grin. “I’m not looking to cut into your business. I just need wire, and lots of it. Electricity doesn’t conduct itself.”

  “Actually, it kind of does. You just have to create a difference of potential.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So, you understand electronic theory?”

  “I’m not a complete dunce on the subject.”

  “That’s great. I could really use some help with-”

  I cut him off with an upraised hand. “I already have a job, thanks.”

  He looked genuinely disappointed. His gaze shifted back to the computer equipment, a slight frown forming at the edges of his chin. It was the first time I had seen him look anything but enthusiastic. “Sorry. It’s just…I have a big job to do, you know? I’m already behind schedule and it’s such a pain in the ass to find materials. You should let me come with you on your next salvage run. I bet there’s tons of stuff I could use out there.”

  “I don’t know, Jutaro. It’s pretty dangerous.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Really? You have combat training?”

  “Actually I…nice one, Gabe. You almost got me.”

  “What do you mean, almost? You just told me you have combat training.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Sure you did. I could tell by your reaction.”

  He shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

  “Really?”

  On a hunch, I threw a punch straight at his face. Not full strength, or full speed—and I fully intended to pull it a fraction of an inch before impact—but Jutaro didn’t know that.

  His arm shot up, the calloused edge of one palm catching me just under the wrist and deflecting the blow. I let my arm go limp, reversed the direction of my elbow, and caught his wrist. He struggled to pull away, surprisingly strong. He is not a big man, maybe five-foot nine, a hundred fifty pounds, but the muscles in his forearm were stringy and tough, much like Eric’s. I might have expected that from an athlete, or a soldier, or a lifelong martial artist, but not from a scientist.

  I let him go and stepped back, hands upraised. “All right, man, settle down. I was just testing you.”

  He looked angry. “Don’t do that again.”

  “That was a good block. And that callous on your palm, it looks like you’ve spent a lot of time in the dojo. You any good with a firearm?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” he said, disgustedly. “Why is everyone always asking me questions? I can’t talk about it, okay? I can’t tell you where I’m from, or-”

  “San Francisco.”

  He froze. “How did you know that?”

  “Your accent.”

  “I don’t have an accent.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair and let out an irritated sigh. “How much for all of it?”

  “Depends on what you’re trading.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I’m running short of .45 ACP.”

  He rubbed his chin. “I don’t have any of that.”

  “Can’t you requisition it from Central Command?”

  “No. I’m over budget as it is. Is there anything else you need? Tools? Fuel?”

  “Got more tools than I can sell, and no use for fuel.”

  “But you have a generator in your neighborhood, right?”

  “Had one. We donated it to the school so they can heat the classrooms.”

  Ishimura walked over to a stool, took a seat, and pressed his hands together, casting an avaricious glance at the computers. “I’m sorry, Gabe, but that’s all I have.”

  “Actually, it isn’t.”

  He looked up.

  “You have information.”

  I watched a range of emotions play over his face. First was obstinance, the instinctive urge to stonewall me. Secrecy, evidently, was an integral part of being a Facilitator. Then came frustration, the knowledge that he had been given a difficult mission and insufficient resources to get it done. And if he failed, he would be held accountable. Next was a pensive look, the inner bargaining, the questions. How much can I get away with telling him? Can I trust him? What could go wrong? Finally, there was resignation. The knowledge he had no other cards to play.

  If Jutaro had been a bad person, I would have smirked. But he wasn’t. I pitied the guy.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  I took a seat on a stool across from him, fingers steepled, debating where to start. “What are the Facilitators? Where do you come from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  I stood up and headed for the front of the store. “It was nice seeing you again, Jutaro. Good luck out there.”

  “Wait.”

  I stopped, not turning around.

  Jutaro let out a sigh. “I only know my part of it. It’s highly compartmentalized. No one knows the whole operation.”

  I walked back to the storeroom and sat down. “Go on.”

  “They approached me when I was an engineering student at UC Davis.”

  “Who did?”

  “Recruiters. Two of them. Typical government types. Dark glasses, suits, the whole thing. Homeland Security. Said they wanted to offer me a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Training. They wanted me to participate in a training program for what they called ‘disaster specialists’. Said it was a new project developed in the wake of Katrina. They wanted to train teams of engineers and scientists to go into disaster areas and restore infrastructure, render medical aid, repair critical facilities, that kind of thing.”

  “Didn’t they already have people for that?”

  “Yeah, but it was complicated. Involved a lot of civilian contractors and red tape. Very bureaucratic and inflexible. The recruiters said they were trying to create something leaner, more agile.”

  “Interesting. What did they offer you?”

  “Money. What else? They said if I completed the program, the government would pay off my student loans and pay for the rest of my education.”

  “I can see how that might entice a broke college student.”

  “You have no idea. I was eating ramen three meals a day, bumming rides to school because I couldn’t afford bus fare, even donated plasma. Anything I could do to scrape money…”

  He stopped and looked at me, realizing what he was doing. His smile returned. “You’re good, Gabe. Interrogation is a subtle art. What exactly did you do before the Outbreak?”

  “This isn’t quid pro quo. You want those computers or not?”

  “Point taken.”

  “Good. Next question. What kind of training did they give you?”

  He scrutinized me a moment longer before answering. “Highly specialized. They separated us into teams, each team focusing on something different. For me, it was electrical grids. How they work, how to repair them, what they’re made of, ways to generate electricity, that kind of thing. It was intense, man. The program was no joke. A lot of guys didn’t finish. Smart guys. I thought it was the hardest thing I would ever do.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh, and peered down at the cuts and callouses on his hands. “Little did I know.”

  “So when did you go from being a disaster specialist to a Facilitator? What was the transition? How does it all tie in with the Phoenix Initiative?”

  “Listen, I can talk about me, but I can’t talk about the Initiative.” His tone brooked no argument.

  “All right then, tell me about your part of it.”

  “After the program, we all just kind of went back to our lives. I finished school, got a job, met a girl. Went back for follow-on training once a year.”

  “Back where?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He shrugged, but said nothing more.

  “Fine. I’m going to assume something changed during the Outbreak.”

  “It did. Now, let me as
k you a question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How much have I earned so far? And just so you know, if it’s not enough, I can always submit a request to commandeer those computers. This town has an Army presence. They could just come and take it.”

  I thought about First Platoon, how much they owed me, and how the Army still required soldiers to pay their private debts, and chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

  He wisely decided not to press the issue. “So how much is it?”

  I pointed at the computers. “The bottom three racks. All yours.”

  “Very kind of you. How do I get the next two?”

  “Answer a couple more questions.”

  “I’ve about reached the limit of what I can tell you.”

  “Then how about I sweeten the deal?”

  “How so?”

  “You said you want to ride along on a salvage run. Were you serious?”

  A desperate hope sprang to life in his eyes. He swallowed a couple of times before answering. “As a heart attack.”

  “What happened to you during the Outbreak?”

  He let out a breath and rested his elbows on his knees. “They came for me. It was during the early days, just after Atlanta. A couple of cops showed up at my apartment, said I wasn’t under arrest, but the FBI wanted to see me. A matter of national security. Naturally, I was shocked. They gave me a few minutes to say goodbye to…anyway. The next thing I know, I’m at the San Francisco FBI office, then a Suburban with blacked out windows, then I’m on a military transport plane with a bunch of other people just as confused as me. We stopped twice, probably for fuel, and about sixteen hours later, I’m on an airstrip somewhere hot and tropical and I’m being hustled into an underground vault. That’s when things got weird.”

  “Define weird.”

  “The first thing was the elevator. No buttons, just a card reader. The ride down took forever. Then they took me to my quarters, which looked like your average hotel room, and told me to wait. I heard it when they locked the door from the outside. Made a little click. Such a small thing, really, but I’ll remember that sound for the rest of my life.”

  He stopped talking for a while and moved to one of the windows, eyes distant, staring out at the snow-covered town square. I had a feeling I knew what he was going through.

  It always strikes me as strange how even the most devastating memories are so often shuffled back, clustered, lumped in among other things. For years at a time, they can lay dormant, unremembered, boxed-up mementos in an abandoned mental attic. But then something triggers them, and suddenly they are back with stunning force, dredging up smells and sounds and textures, sharp as the day they happened. They are powerful things, those unbidden recollections. They can stop a man in his tracks.

  I went out front to give Jutaro some time alone.

  A customer came and bought the last roll of paracord. He paid with a dozen eggs, a gallon of homemade chicken broth, and a pre-Outbreak candle. I would have given him the cord for any one of those things, but he offered all three.

  Business. Not a charity.

  The next customer came in less than a minute later. He saw the candle, broth, and eggs on the counter, and offered to buy all of them along with a ream of paper. I said the paper and the candle were for sale, but the eggs and broth were not. He asked if I was sure about that. I said unless he had some .45 ACP ammo to trade, then yes, I was sure. He told me he would be back in five minutes. He was back in three minutes and thirty-seven seconds with fifty rounds, still in the box, unopened, asking if it was enough.

  In the interest of retaining his business in the future, lest he find out how much he had given away, I informed him I would have given him the paper, eggs, broth, candle, and half the inventory in the store for that much. I also informed him he should not show those cartridges to anyone, or tell anyone about them, and he should lock them up someplace safe when he got home.

  “Are they really that valuable?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “You’re an honest man, Mr. Garrett.”

  A disarming smile. Shrug of a shoulder. “Sometimes.”

  I would have settled for ten, but he insisted on paying fifteen. An idealist, that one. Concerned about rewarding honesty. So I relented and told him I would give him five rounds’ credit toward his next purchase. I also told him to hang on to that ammo, and if he needed anything else, to come see me first. He said he would be sure to do that. I checked out the window so see if anyone else was coming my way. There was no one, so I went back to the storeroom and resumed my seat on the stool.

  Jutaro continued his story without preamble. “Somebody brought me food a little while later. I tried to ask them what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Finally, after about four hours, a guy shows up and tells me to follow him. He leads me to an auditorium, a big one, the size of a small stadium. It had a big screen like a jumbotron hanging from the ceiling. I took a seat and waited. The place filled up in about half an hour, everybody asking each other if they knew where we were, why we were there, what was going on, did it have anything to do with the riots in Atlanta. Nobody knew anything, so we waited. Then they dim the lights and this face shows up on the jumbotron. I recognized him; it was the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

  Jutaro paused, going silent again. Impatiently, I asked, “What did he say?”

  “He told us what was happening. The infected, the Outbreak, all of it. He told us the world was in deep shit.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “I’m paraphrasing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, he says DHS agents would be meeting with us individually to help bring our families in. Warned us they could only take a few family members per person, no pets, so we should decide who our top priorities were. That fucked me up, man. Who should I save? Not a question you ever want to have to ask yourself. I told them about my parents, my wife, my daughter, my brothers. They said they could bring my wife and daughter, but that was it. I screamed at them, demanded they bring the rest of my family. One of them opened his jacket so I could see his taser and told me I should calm down. Said I could expect to see my wife and daughter in the next forty-eight hours. Until then, I was to remain in my quarters. They hooked a phone up to a wall outlet and told me if I needed anything, to pick it up and wait for someone to come on the line. Then they left.”

  “What happened next?”

  Jutaro pointed at the computers. “I think I’ve earned that fourth shelf. What about the fifth?”

  I sensed I was losing him, but I had been wrong before. “What about it?”

  “I just don’t see why any of this should be important to you. Nothing I’m telling you is worth what you’re paying for it.”

  “You want that fifth shelf or not?”

  “Fine. Ask away.”

  I thought for a moment, one hand idly scratching at my cheek. Jutaro was shutting down. I needed to loosen him up, rattle his cage a bit. I had hoped to shake out more information before reaching this point, but he was sharper than I expected. Time to show my trump card.

  “It’s hard to know what I should ask for next,” I said. “Some of the things you’ve told me are the truth, and some are outright lies.”

  Jutaro sat up straight, eyes narrowing, posture aggressive. “Hey, fuck you, man. I’ve told you way more than I’m supposed to. You think I’m lying, I’ll just take my shit right now and go.”

  “I don’t think you’re lying to me, Jutaro. I know you are. So stop with the theatrics. It’s a good performance, but this ain’t my first rodeo.”

  He glared for another moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, man. You’re good, Mr. Garrett. Really good. You almost had me going. Nice try. Seriously, though, ask your last question. I need those computers, and the day isn’t getting any younger.”

  I went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “When those agents put you on a plane, they didn’t take you anywhere tropical. But the Outbreak
started in April, so I’m guessing the part about it being warm was true. Nevada is pretty hot that time of year.”

  He froze, smile growing brittle, then vanishing. His mouth worked a few times, fractions of questions dropping to the floor. I stood up, moved within his personal space, and looked him in the eye. “And the training facility. Dahlgren Virginia. Right outside the Navy base. That’s a long flight from San Francisco. Must have cost Uncle Sam a pretty penny.”

  “How did you…are you with the Initiative?”

  “No. I’m just very good at what I do, Jutaro.”

  He began to recover a little. “And what is it you do, Gabe? I get the idea you’re not just a simple shopkeeper.”

  “It’s your wife and daughter, isn’t it?”

  No response. His mouth closed, eyes growing increasingly hostile.

  “They’re still there, aren’t they? In the vault with the others. That’s what they’re holding over your head. If you don’t finish this mission on time, what’s going to happen to them?”

  “What does it matter to you? Why do you care?”

  “I have my reasons. Now, if you want those computers, and if you want to go with my crew on our next salvage run, you’ll answer the question.”

  He threw his hands in the air, an exasperated hiss escaping his throat. “Yes! Yes, dammit, you’re right. Okay? They have my wife and daughter. And if I don’t finish this project on time, they’ll be relocated to Colorado Springs.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It’s not, really, but they’ve gotten used to the vault. They like it there, it’s safe. And if a war starts with the ROC, or the Alliance, they’ll be protected. I can’t let them get kicked out. I can’t put them at risk like that.”

  “Folks here in Hollow Rock don’t have that kind of protection. They get along just fine.”

  “Yes, but ask yourself this, Gabe. What about the people you care for the most? If you could move them somewhere safe, somewhere protected, where they could be happy, away from the undead, and marauders, and slavers, and war, and everything else in this fucked-up world, would you do it?”

  I put my hands in my pockets and took a step back, gaze lowering. Jutaro closed the distance, reached out, and grabbed the front of my jacket. “Don’t back down now, Gabe. Answer me. Would you do it?”