The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Chapter 4

  “You seen anyone that doesn’t look like you?”

  “No sir, I have not,” Tommy Spade—that was his stage name—said to the man who was blatantly ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign at his establishment. His real name was Seth Johnson, but he hadn’t gone by that for a long time. Tommy Spade was his gambling name and his stripper name, not that it mattered much anymore. He was older, pudgier, and DeKalb had about five chicks tops who’d want his junk tick tocking over their nose like a clock’s pendulum. Nope, those days were done.

  He was the proprietor of the Paperback Grotto, an old style porno shop that had been in his family for seventy years. People laughed, but porn was his family’s business. Tommy never understood why it was viewed as a dirty trade. He thought it was a necessity, just like food and water. Sex was a part of who we were, why be so damn uptight about it?

  The Grotto had everything a customer needed for an old school spank or to liven up the bedroom with the better half.

  Business had been shit, of course. No one was around anymore. The only clients he had were farmers who, in general, didn’t use the Mindlink. As that technology had proliferated, the farmers had retreated from it almost out of principle. They were like the Amish now.

  But it didn’t matter. The Grotto was paid for and Tommy figured a few more years and that’d be it. The last porno shop on the planet. Tommy pictured himself like an old gunslinger, except he had dildos in his holster and tubes of lube on his bandolier. Maybe a disc of Horny Housewives 300 as a throwing star.

  That’s a ninja.

  Whatever.

  The young man waited patiently. He had pulled up in a car, which meant he was either police or military.

  “And you know everyone in town?” the man asked.

  “There isn’t anyone to know anymore.” Tommy had already given the names of the twenty or so farmers.

  “No one dark complected, different accent, that kind of thing?” Glass asked. He was thinking Middle Eastern.

  “Well, we got migrant workers that help with the harvest, of course,” Tommy said. “They come in a bit, like the traditional stuff, the arcades . . . ”

  “Arcades?” Glass raised an eyebrow: he was too young to get the reference.

  Tommy hitched a finger toward the back of the store. “The wank boxes. Put in some money, watch a movie.”

  The young man nodded.

  “How long have the migrant workers been here?” Glass asked.

  “A few weeks now. They move from farm to farm across the country.”

  “Who uses them?”

  “Everyone. We have no young population anymore and they’re cheap and reliable. A lot of them have been coming here for twenty years.”

  Glass pulled on his cigarette. His eyes bugged Tommy, they were a dark green, but they conveyed nothing, like they had been whittled into his head with a pocketknife.

  Glass took the list off the table.

  “I appreciate you giving me the lay of the land.”

  “Are you an officer?”

  The man gave a nod goodbye and left. Tommy Spade immediately regretted the names he gave this man. Those eyes showed no quarter. What was the military doing out here?

  = = =

  At the same time, Raimey and his team were dressed plain clothes in the alleys surrounding a dilapidated high-rise on the south side of Chicago. Cynthia’s Sleepers had cracked the program that originated the hack. The tail of the programmer who built the software led here.

  “It doesn’t look terroristy,” Janis said. The high rise was old and unkempt except for a garden that some elderly men and women were tending. Old people shuffled in and out. “It looks like an old folks home.”

  “Check on 176 Elk Street,” Raimey said into his comm. “We’re seeing a lot of . . . uh . . .”

  An ancient woman eked out of the door using a walker.

  “Geezers knocking on death’s door,” Janis finished.

  “. . . old people.”

  “It is a retirement home,” the operator confirmed. She sent the data to their comm. The home was called Adventurous Gardens. Two elderly people held each other closely on the front page. The guy was hugging the woman from behind.

  “Dude, are you reading this?” Janis’s eye scrolled up and down as he went through the site.

  “No.”

  “It’s a retirement home for elderly singles! Married couples aren’t allowed. Gross! The elderly are riddled with disease, you know. You read about that how gonorrhea gets passed around faster than their meds. So much loose skin . . .”

  “You have a weird thing with old people.”

  “They smell like graveyards.”

  Raimey to the comm, “Should we just go in? I don’t think this is what we think it is.”

  “It’s your call,” the operator said.

  Raimey ushered Janis out of the alley. A centenarian smiled at Eric showing one brown tooth and a lot of gum.

  “Seriously, man. Get me back to Iran,” Janis whispered.

  They went to the front desk. A kind looking women dressed in whites was there. Raimey showed her his ID. “We’re looking for Jared Stachowitz.”

  Eric scanned a nearby TV room and spotted a punchbowl of condoms that looked worked. “Ahmygod. I’m going to puke.”

  “It’s perfectly natural,” Raimey teased.

  “This way,” the nurse directed. She took them up to the second floor. It was filled with state-of-the-art Mindlink terminals.

  “Wow, I didn’t expect this,” Raimey said. “Are you seeing this?”

  “Yep,” the operator said.

  “Most of the seniors prefer to be online,” the nurse said. “It’s given them a much fuller life, especially for our residents who are ill or weak.”

  She pointed out a skinny bald man in a worn out robe two chairs down. An oxygen tank was by his side. His chest rose and fell in bursts. He was linked in.

  “That’s Mr. Stachowitz.”

  “We don’t want to kill the guy, waking him,” Janis said. The nurse gave him an ugly look. “Seriously.”

  She went up to the man and shook him gently awake. His eyes opened blearily and he blinked into awareness. He looked over and saw Raimey and Janis.

  “I thought you’d come,” he said in a weak voice.

  = = =

  Mike Glass enjoyed this assignment. The open land and sparse population reminded him of the backwoods of Kentucky where he was raised. He never knew his mother and Thomas Glass never explained what had happened. Mike had asked twice, got hit twice, and that had knocked the curiosity out of him. Thomas was a Marine ex-sniper, an avid hunter and a consummate drunk. Since he could walk, Mike and his father carpeted the hills and gullies hunting and trapping. Twice a year they would go in town to re-stock the cabin.

  Glass could read, but not especially well. He learned in bits and pieces until he was fourteen when Ms. Kragley, a retired teacher, cornered Thomas when they had come into town for their bi-annual supply trip.

  “Thomas, don’t you walk away. Your son has never been to school. What are you doing?” she said. Thomas had that southern characteristic where, even though he was hillbilly white trash, he was as polite as a politician to women. If a man had said that to him he would have curb stomped his face, but because it was Ms. Kragley—who at one point had taught him—his eyes were cast down like a kittens.

  “I’m teachin’ him at home,” Thomas replied.

  “You are!” Ms. Kragley said. The book section was near them. She pulled out a children’s book, flipped it open, and put it in Mike’s face.

  “Read this,” she said. Thomas stared at his boots.

  Mike knew some of the words, but not many. He didn’t utter a word. She snapped the book shut and put it on the shelf.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mike.”

  “Would you like to go to school?”

  “He ain’t going to school, I need him around the farm,” Thomas said.
The politeness had started to melt away.

  She studied Thomas. “I’m retired. Tutored then. Will that work for you?”

  Thomas grunted, “okay.”

  “You’re still up off 80?”

  Another grunt.

  “I’ll be there at nine a.m. tomorrow morning.”

  On the way home Thomas didn’t say anything about their encounter with Ms. Kragley. When they pulled up and Thomas threw the truck into park, he cracked the door open, paused, then said, “learning’s good. It’s a good thing for you.” And then he went to the back shed where he distilled bourbon. Mike didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

  Mike never had an imagination. He didn’t dream. He wasn’t inherently curious and he didn’t think about people’s emotions or motives. He was either all process: “to get to here, do A, B, and C,” or he was instinctually reactive like a venus flytrap clamping down on a bug.

  When he turned eighteen, Ms. Kragley—not his father—suggested he enlist. In Mike’s mind, the recommendation brought up two paths: ‘Yes’ and that would involve enrolling and going off to boot camp. ‘No’ and he would continue his study and his normal life.

  He chose ‘Yes’ because he had never been out of Kentucky and he knew he could only go so far where he was. He wasn’t educated and if his dad was any indication, nothing justified not enrolling.

  He excelled and he was recruited into Seal training. He was a gifted athlete and his calm under duress—not yet diagnosed as sociopathic—gave him a 100% success record in training. During his psych profile they administered a Rorschach test. He described the ink pattern. The psychologist corrected him.

  “You’re supposed to tell us what you see in the ink.”

  “All I see is ink, doctor.”

  The instructors had never seen someone so calm under live fire, interrogation technique, and combat training. As a curiosity, they put a heart monitor on him before a live exercise. The average heart rate of the other elite soldiers, the best of the best, rose well into the hundreds, even at rest. Mike’s hovered around fifty. One time sprinting for cover it rose to ninety-five. He was completely unaffected by the stresses of the real world.

  And now he was in DeKalb, Illinois on a cool day that hinted at autumn. He liked his job, he supposed. The migrant worker angle was interesting. Off the grid, nomadic, and most likely undocumented. If terrorists were using these channels, it was an innovative way to go about it.

  The owner of the porno shop said that two, Fernando and Margarito, had been in earlier, using the arcades. The owner had made a joke about Glass taking a DNA sample, but at that point the man’s voice had already been pushed into the background. He would start with them. There wasn’t a lot of ground to cover. Twenty farms and some dilapidated neighborhoods, most of which would not have any active data connection so they could be ruled out quickly. But you had to start somewhere and these two leads were as good as any.

  Mike saw the tall, rusty trellis the porno shop owner described. “McWilliams” was at the top in a calligraphy style font. He turned underneath it to a mile long driveway. On each side, tall crops bent and swayed in the wind. The sound of the breeze slipped through the corn like a million whispers.

  The house could have come from a painting. It was a white two-story set in a small yard bordered with a white fence. Smoke puffed out of the chimney. A barn was set back to the right and a small pack of dogs ran figure eights around the two buildings, playing.

  He saw a man watching him from the window as he pulled up. He got out and walked to the house. The man opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

  “A car, huh?” the man said. He had a smile on his face. Nothing to hide.

  “Yes, sir. My name is Mike Glass, I’m with the President’s office.” Glass showed him his ID. The man glanced at it.

  “Are you lost?”

  “No sir, I don’t believe so. Is this the McWilliams’s farm?”

  “I’m Frank McWilliams.”

  He reached out and Glass shook his hand.

  “What’s this about?” Frank asked. It was clear he still wasn’t concerned.

  “I’m looking for Fernando and Margarito. Are they here?”

  Frank looked surprised. He stepped out to the porch and spoke quietly.

  “They’re at the dinner table. Is there a problem?”

  “You’ve worked with them a long time?” Glass asked.

  “Since I was a kid. They worked for my father.”

  “Then I doubt it. But I would like to speak with them.”

  Frank stepped aside.

  “After you,” Glass said. He never gave his back.

  When Glass walked into the dining room, Fernando and Margarito were at the table with a woman—Glass assumed Frank McWilliams’s wife—and a young boy. Margarito was using his hands to reenact a story. The woman was laughing. The boy had a thin smile on his face. He seemed off.

  “. . . and THEN I took the drug lord’s head in my hands and,” Margarito made a quick motion with his hands. “SNAP! Dead!”

  “That’s a horrible story, Margarito,” Fernando said, but he was laughing too.

  Margarito took a slow slip from a glass of wine.

  “Well . . . most of it was true except the last part. I was in the Mexican army.”

  “You were a nurse,” Fernando said. This got the woman laughing again.

  “A medic,” Margarito corrected.

  They noticed the young man with Frank and quieted down.

  “Fernando, Margarito, this is Mike Glass, he would like to ask you a few questions.”

  Fernando and Margarito looked at each other confused. Fernando spoke up. “You are police?”

  “Military. I’m on special assignment with the President’s office,” Glass said. He turned to everyone else in the room. “This should be quick, just a couple of questions.”

  He asked if they had traveled with anyone. If they had seen or heard of any migrant workers that weren’t the norm. They answered both in the negative.

  “What happened?” the boy asked.

  “Justin, shh,” the woman said.

  “No, it’s alright. You heard about the Terror War?”

  The boy seemed to retreat.

  “First hand, unfortunately,” Frank said. He ruffled Justin’s hair. “We were stuck at MindCorp during the attack. The world’s turning to shit.” Charlene gave him a look. “Sorry, but it is.”

  “Well, it looks like they are trying to go online now,” Glass said.

  “Is that why the Internet went down yesterday?” Justin asked.

  Glass smiled. “Top secret.”

  “I told you it was peligroso,” Margarito said to Justin. “That two way stuff can’t be good for you.”

  Frank turned to Glass.

  “Justin just got on the Mindlink and then ka-put,” Frank made a face. “The damn thing broke.”

  “I was in a flight simul—” Justin started. Glass’s heartbeat rose to its max of ninety-five. No one knew. “-ator.”

  “I heard those are fun,” Glass said.

  “I didn’t need the plane,” Justin said.

  “Really?”

  “I program fast too,” the boy said proudly. He didn’t know what he was implying. “My friend Jared said I was the fastest he’d ever seen.”

  “Maybe someday you’ll work for MindCorp,” Glass said. Justin beamed at the thought. Glass couldn’t believe it. Was it possible? He had to speak to Evan. “Well, it should be up soon. We’re working directly with MindCorp to get things back on track.”

  Glass turned to Frank. “We’re done.” Back to the table. “Thanks everyone. Justin, keep it up.”

  The boy gave a weird, quick wave and the others nodded. Glass thanked Frank at the door and asked if there were any other workers currently on-premise he should speak with.

  “Nope, it’s just us,” Frank said. They shook hands and parted ways.

  Glass got in the car and headed down the dirt driveway. When he was
out of sight, Glass pulled over, turned off his headlights and called Evan. This was not in the contingency plan. Evan told him what another unit had learned at an elderly rest home.

  Fernando and Margarito slept in a lofted room in the barn. A long time ago the barn had been used to store hay, but the farm only handled crops now, so the barn had become a garage and living quarters for the workers that came to help.

  Both men were buzzing from the wine. Not drunk, but another glass would have sent them into that territory. They shambled toward the barn after saying goodnight.

  “I need some agua,” Fernando said and slapped his buddy on the back. “My head is already starting to hurt.”

  “Wine does that to me, too. We just had two glasses or so, no?” Margarito said. “Tequila doesn’t.”

  “That’s because you wake up two days later, Margo,” Fernando said. They laughed.

  The barn was one hundred yards away from the house, nestled up against a cornfield. One large spotlight hung over the double door entrance. The loft had two large beds, a bathroom and a kitchenette. On the ground floor were alcohol fueled ATV’s they used to go to the main barn a half-mile away which housed the combines and large equipment used for the farm. On the walls were various antiquated farm tools: sickles and scythes, shovels and spades, heirlooms of the McWilliams’s past.

  “Tomorrow’s going to be an early one, hermano,” Fernando said. Margo grunted acknowledgement.

  They slid one side of the door open and the rattling of the gate masked the already muted sound of a bullet leaving Glass’s silenced Heckler and Koch Mark 23. Glass was crouched inside the barn, kneeling against an ATV. The .45 caliber round hit beneath Margarito’s nose and lodged into the back of his brain. He slumped down to the ground.

  Fernando saw the muzzle flash, saw his friend collapse, but didn’t make the connection before another round hit him in the left temple and exited out the right side of his head, leaving a crater the size of a bloody orange. Glass moved like a cat and pulled them into the barn. He shut the door and went to the farmhouse.