Tsunami Wake: Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Calm Act Book 4)

by Ginger Booth

  He humbly apologized for making mistakes that cost lives and risked a nuclear meltdown.

  “I believe this transfer of authority is in the best interest of the people of New England,” Link concluded stoically, eyes directly into the camera. “And I will continue to serve New England as best I can, under Sean Cullen.”

  I was gob-smacked. And I kissed our chances good-bye of this group taking a night off from the tsunami and being Rescos.

  “Ash?” Emmett asked.

  “Didn’t know we were announcing tonight,” Ash returned. “Been negotiating for days.”

  Sean Cullen was on next. He said assorted reassuring things to the tune of ‘hang tight, nothing has changed until you learn otherwise through your Resco.’ He pointed out that Connecticut’s transfer to Hudson had been smooth and painless, only a month ago.

  “Our super-states, our military and civilians, have worked together from the beginning of the Calm. With Project Reunion, we worked a miracle together. I expect this change to make us even stronger. Welcome home to Hudson.”

  That almost-high note was rapidly dashed by an in-depth story from Jersey by Amiri Baz, on growing rage and insurgents. “Order has been restored here,” he concluded. “But it is the peace of an armed camp, and could easily break out into violence again.”

  “Uh-huh,” Emmett breathed in my ear.

  “You approved that story, Carlos?” I said, trying heroically to sound neutral. I sure wouldn’t have approved it. It was not on the headline list that I approved for tonight. None of this was.

  Carlos shook his head slowly. “Wasn’t flagged for me. Doesn’t technically violate the rules.”

  The broadcast followed up this report with one by Pam, interviewing angry citizens in Connecticut. Day laborers, they had shelter and enough to eat, barely. The tsunami waves hadn’t touched them. But they wanted their lives back. They wanted real jobs and opportunities and access to real health care. Their lives had turned upside-down, their quality of life degraded to barely getting by. Their kids had no schools, no prospects, except maybe to join the Army, and become ‘the jailers instead of the jailed,’ as one guy put it.

  “And now we’re part of Hudson? Hudson’s a Robin Hood racket. Steal from the suburbs to feed the apples in the city. Do they work? Huh?”

  Pam’s wrap-up addressed the camera alone. “Yes, the apples do work. They work harder for less pay than the man I was just speaking with. And they’re grateful for the work and the food. There’s this weird juxtaposition. People who’ve had it worse, are grateful. People who’ve never had it this bad, are angry. Even though they have about the same deal. Back to you, Jennifer.”

  “I would not have chosen that story for tonight,” I said to the group.

  “Uh-huh. I hope that editor flunked his audition,” Emmett growled.

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed sadly.

  The news strayed to safer topics for a few stories, updates on this and that, while we murmured about whether Sean would rearrange any Rescos for the New England merger.

  “And one more bit of interesting news out of Jersey,” Jennifer continued, catching my attention again. “Yesterday a crew from Connecticut, collecting marsh grass from the Jersey Meadowlands, unearthed a body. The remote site seems to show signs of a military burial.”

  In the corner of the screen, a video played, panning around to show where we’d buried a death angel in November.

  “Today the body has been identified as Major Canton Bertovich, a renegade Resco from Pennsylvania, suspected of directing the weaponized Ebola attack on New York City. So far it is unclear whether his death was suicide or execution. We’re all keenly interested to see how this story develops.

  “On a lighter note, we’d like to apologize to our viewers,” Jennifer continued. “PR News neglected to report on Groundhog Day this year!” The familiar rodent cam appeared in a corner of the screen, displaying a groundhog hole, minus the groundhog.

  “Unfortunately, it appears that Punxsutawney Phil, our oracle of spring, is missing. Officials in Punxsutawney PA regret to inform us that all of their groundhogs seem to have vanished. However, they report the weather was brutally bright and sunny on February 2. If there were a groundhog, he would have seen his shadow. So, six more weeks of winter.”

  Well. At least it wasn’t a puppy segment. In fact, I had to admit I was a little worried about what happened to the extended family of groundhogs, all named Phil, who provided Punxsutawney its tourist income. I’d have to be pretty desperate to eat a groundhog.

  “Sea level is now up 5.7 feet and still rising,” Jennifer continued. “No let up on the wind. Signing off from Totoket, Jennifer Alvarez, wishing a good night to all my fellow Hudsons, including the New Englanders. Welcome to Hudson.”

  I buried my face in Emmett’s shoulder. He clutched me back just as hard, silent, while the room around us erupted into angry discussion.

  “I’m glad Seabrook is alright,” I whispered in Emmett’s ear. “That’s important. And Hudson and New England merged. Sean is good.”

  “Uh-huh,” Emmett said.

  “What could happen to a whole town’s worth of groundhogs?”

  His chest heaved with silent laughter. “God, I love you, darlin’.”

  “Love you too. Your party was really nice, while it lasted. Happy Valentine’s.”

  “Uh-huh. Guess I ought to face the guests.” But instead he pulled my face around for a long deep kiss. “You with me?”

  I met his eye and nodded slowly, searchingly. “Absolutely.”

  Reluctantly, we untangled and stood. Emmett looked at Cam and Ash. They looked back with narrowed eyes. Dwayne looked worriedly back and forth. Deborah and Gladys had already fled to the kitchen, and Carlos was on the phone in the office.

  “I’m, uh, sorry about that broadcast,” I attempted, into the standoff. “New editor. I don’t like his work.”

  This sally failed to divert attention from Emmett to me. Ash said, “Did you know this guy, Emmett? Berkovich?”

  Emmett nodded slightly, eyes shifting unconsciously to the wall. “Bertovich. He was on the Calm Act vetting team at Leavenworth. In my class for ILE, too, the year before. Environmentalist. Doctor. R&D.” He scratched his neck on that last.

  “Military medical R&D?” Cam blurted, aghast.

  Emmett shrugged. “Didn’t talk to me about it. Classified. Not my field.”

  I noted he didn’t volunteer how well he’d known Canber. Hanging together to commiserate over failed marriages. Back to nature weekends, backpacking and exploring the beauty of national parks. Or that I’d known Canber all too well, albeit briefly. Unfortunately, Ash and Cam hadn’t missed that part.

  “Bertovich was the guy who kidnapped and raped Dee in Pittsburgh, wasn’t he?” Ash pressed.

  Emmett nodded, swallowed, and pulled me under his arm. “Uh-huh. Look, Ash, could we not go there? For Dee’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry, Dee,” Ash agreed. “Maybe you could excuse us –”

  “No,” Carlos butted in, returning from the office. “Need Dee.” He found the living room monitor control tablet and tapped his way into a video conference. “Pete would like to talk to us. Hey, Pete?”

  Carlos gestured for all of us to gather in for camera pickup, guided by the little picture-in-picture display of us, versus Colonel Pete Hoffman, commanding officer above us all. Carlos tapped around some more until the pictures of us and Pete both took up half the screen – a major improvement over having our commanding officer’s face several feet tall.

  To my surprise, Pete was out of uniform as we were. Not that I wore a uniform. He sat back, feet up, dressed in plaid flannel lined denim shirt, short grey hair tousled upward, a fit and solid man of about 50.

  “Hey, gang!” he greeted us with a slow smile. “Sorry I’ve been out of the loop.” He paused for a full-body stretch. “Finally caught fourteen hours sleep. God, I needed that. So I wanted to catch up. Quite a broadcast tonight, Dee.”

  “Yeah,�
� I said, face warming in shame. “I think today’s editor flunked his audition.”

  Pete shrugged. “As my mother used to say, all that’s true isn’t necessarily helpful. But, all in all, I thought it was a better show than usual.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. PR’s too pollyanna for my taste. Maybe it’s a guy thing.”

  I stepped forward from our lineup, arms crossed over my chest, frowning. “Really? Sir, could you explain that?”

  “Pete. I’m not in uniform,” Pete corrected on automatic. “Sure. This is going to be sexist, but. Nice women, earnestly doing their best, maybe want to hear that everybody is good, and things are looking up. You tell that to a guy who’s already pissed off, and he just stops listening. The trick, Dee, is meet that guy halfway. Life sucks, but what can you do. I mean, PR serves the nightly propaganda. But don’t be too obvious about it. I thought it was a good broadcast.”

  I stared at him on the screen, mouth probably hanging open a little. Maybe Emmett and the others found this obvious, but I was on the brink of revelation. I was also coming to the unhappy suspicion that I might hire Eddie York as my new editor. Though at present I wished to throttle him.

  Pete gave me a moment, then added, “Dee, I hear from Carlos that you’re trying to restructure PR–Amenac. I also need you to do a little rush project for me. But let’s talk one-on-one tomorrow morning, OK?”

  “Yes, sir.” I realized that I was literally out of line, and stepped back into the chorus between Emmett and Carlos.

  Pete smiled, but didn’t bother to correct me again on the ‘sir’. “Great news on Seabrook, yeah?” We all nodded energetically – New Hampshire’s nuclear plant avoiding meltdown was a vast relief. “But Tony won’t be coming back just yet. Sean is seconding him to help Carolina and Virginia contain the damage from the meltdowns. Hopefully he’ll stay out of the radiation. Tony says he has his kids already.” Pete pursed his lips, making clear he found that attitude idiotic.

  “No idea how long that’ll take,” Pete continued. “And I’m bogged down in Jersey for now. Although! We have successfully achieved lockdown! Finally. Yay. Why I finally got some sleep. So Ash? You’ve got Upstate. And the Apple.”

  Ash boggled, swallowed, and nodded in consternation.

  “Carlos, Emmett, we’re still discussing.” Pete paused, tapping a finger on his lip. “Yeah, let’s meet tomorrow morning on that, too, the three of us.” He made a note on a pad of paper resting on his elevated knees. “Cam, get better soon,” he added with a smile. “Dwayne? Outstanding. Truly impressed.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Dwayne bobbed his head nervously. Unlike the rest of us, Dwayne usually had a couple levels of boss shielding between him and Pete.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, too,” Pete promised, “but don’t let me hang you up. Feel free to get back to ELI in the morning. You’re doing great with Carlos supervising, yes? So no change there. Cam needs to stay in the city.”

  “I can help, s– Pete,” Cam attempted.

  “Light duty,” Pete pronounced with finality. “Cam, you’re flushed with fever. Dee sounds sick, too. People are dying from tsunami exposure, with less of a pounding than you took. Be good, get well. Stay put.

  “Was there anything else tonight, Carlos? I should let you get back to your party. Patty wants us to do some kind of Valentine’s thing tonight, too.” Pete yawned at the thought.

  “About the death angel responsible for New York, sir,” Carlos prompted.

  Pete’s casual pose took on a more studied air. “What about it?”

  “That burial was on your turf, right?” Carlos demanded. “The Meadowlands is down by Asbury Park.”

  Pete’s eyes flicked to Emmett and back to Carlos. Though as usual with video the eye-tracking was off. “One of them,” he agreed. “There are two Meadowlands in Jersey. Don’t see that it matters, though,” he added before Carlos could press further. “Old news, Carlos. We’ve known for months this Bertovich character directed the Ebola attack. Now he’s dead. Good. It’s not like we would have held a public trial.”

  “Sir, there’s evidence of a military burial –”

  “What I’d like, is for you to drop it, Carlos,” Pete cut him off.

  “That man killed my wife and –”

  “And millions of others, yes,” Pete overrode him. “Now he’s dead. There will be no witch-hunts, Carlos. You should not have aired that report. I understand you’re angry. But you will drop it. That’s an order.”

  Stone-faced, Carlos still looked like his temper was about to explode. “Sir, that is a very difficult order to obey,” he bit out.

  “Some orders are like that,” Pete agreed sadly. “Gentlemen, we’ve all followed orders that are a bit raw, in the Army.” He shrugged. “Need to find a way to let it go, Carlos. I know it’s not easy. For you, either, Cam. Though you don’t have as much excuse,” he suggested softly.

  Suppressed righteous wrath and a touch of fever drew high pink swaths across Cam’s cheekbones. “You know who did it, sir,” he accused.

  “Did what? Bury a brother officer?” Pete returned. “No. I do not know who did that. Nor do I care. Man was dead. They buried him.”

  “His associates,” Cam pressed.

  “Maybe,” Pete allowed. “Still not caring. Gentlemen, I don’t owe you an explanation. But, I offer one in the hope that it will help you put this behind you. There is nothing to fix here, about Bertovich. He’s dead. Period. His work continues. You know that. Your death angel markers are still good.” He paused to let that sink in.

  “What matters, to Hudson, is that we move forward. Not back. Bertovich’s only value to us now, is propaganda. We might trot him out as a scapegoat, a dead straw man who can’t talk back. Carlos, Cam, Ash? I don’t share your enthusiasm for doing that. I think the SOB was following orders. Raw ones.

  “And I don’t like witch-hunts,” Pete emphasized. “You think only the guilty will be harmed. That isn’t true. Sean ordered, there will be no witch-hunts. Clear?”

  “Not really,” Ash said.

  “Well, then there’s the fall-back,” Pete replied. “I gave you a direct order. Drop it. And Dee? There will be no followup on PR News.”

  “Agreed.”

  Pete allowed himself another luxurious stretch. “Well, hell. I was trying to talk you all down, and now you’re a bunch of hedgehogs. Three of you, anyway. Emmett, Dee, and Dwayne seem OK.”

  “The guy killed my mother, my sister, my home town, and New York City,” Dwayne quibbled. He was from Hoboken. He’d wanted Cam to take on rehabilitating what was now Jerseyborough. Long Island was a marital compromise, a challenge Cam found more to his taste, and winnable.

  Pete nodded. “And he’s dead.”

  Dwayne nodded acceptance. “May he rot in hell.”

  I recalled one of the more challenging spiritual claims I’d ever heard, that Hitler went to heaven. I didn’t feel comfortable with either concept, that Canber was rotting in hell, or in heaven. I hoped he was at peace, his soul dissipated into the marshes he loved. I loved marshes, too. The fact that we shared that didn’t make me love marshes any less. But it helped me hate Canber less.

  “Dee, why are you OK with this?” Carlos erupted. “The man raped you!”

  Emmett hugged me to him. “Out of line, Carlos.”

  “Out of line, Carlos,” Pete echoed. “I suggest you walk it off. Now. Well, Emmett, Dee, sorry I couldn’t be more help to salvage your party. Dee, Carlos, let’s talk at 9:00 a.m. Emmett, you swap in at 10:00. Cam, try to take it easy. Can’t promise anything, but I’ll try to chat with you tomorrow, too. Ash, whenever. I’ll let you catch up on Tony’s Rescos first. Call if you need me.” And Pete signed off. The monitor went to black.

  Emmett was still thinking. So I stepped in. “Who wants dessert?” Yes, hostess isn’t my strong suit. About the only entertaining I did before I met Emmett was to feed people now and then.

  But Emmett ran with it. “Dessert sounds good, darlin’. Gla
dys makes a great apple corn cobbler.” Emmett called her cobbler an abomination of Yankee cornbread. Apparently southerners don’t sweeten cornbread. “Could use a beer,” he added.

  I escaped toward the kitchen with my best smile, and Dwayne gratefully followed. Behind me, I heard Emmett’s next gambit, congratulating Ash on taking Resco lead on the lion’s share of old New York state.

  The kitchen was also tense, but we were willing to talk cobbler and groundhogs, and avoid the elephants in the room. A career lawyer, and nearly as competitive as her husband, I needed to nudge Deborah once back onto light social banter. But she was also the experienced army wife of the group, and took the hint.

  Dwayne’s reliable effervescence won out. He told us a cute story about the therapy dogs of Long Island. Most places, carnivorous pets had been put down due to food shortages. But Cam felt therapy dogs earned their keep by managing apple trauma. A few workplaces that relied heavily on day laborers even arranged dog visits during the workday to keep troubled employees on an even keel. The dogs were working overtime now after the tsunami, people’s fragile sense of security shattered yet again.

  We froze as yelling wafted from the living room. After a couple minutes, Carlos was the first to bolt, down the back stairs to Gladys’ apartment. Emmett was next, stomping up the main stairs.

  “If you ladies will excuse me,” Dwayne said. “Maybe it’s time I take my hubby up to bed.”

  I grabbed a beer, and ran upstairs ahead of him to comfort Emmett.

  23

  Interesting fact: A number of naval vessels rode out the tsunami safely in Chesapeake Bay. Tens of thousands of navy dependents and shore staff were evacuated from the onshore chaos, to safety with the fleet. Naval staff at the Pentagon sheltered in place, with their families.

  House and house-guests remained a hive of excruciating little buzzing dramas Sunday morning. And I’d had enough. Forget the house-guests. Forget the Army. I had an appointment to talk to my boss. In my worldview, that meant I wanted my head screwed on straight, right now.