by Ginger Booth
“Shit!” Adam yelled. I trotted the rest of the way up to his bedroom door, and peered around him in the doorway. A young black man was in Adam’s bed, naked above the blankets except for a bloody Ace bandage on his arm. He sat up, the covers rucked up around his waist, his arms up. He didn’t reach for the assault rifle next to him. More ammo was dumped on the floor, with wet boots and clothing. The room didn’t seem molested other than the bed being used. A drawer hung open in the master bathroom, probably the source of the Ace bandage.
“I didn’t hurt your place, man,” the intruder said, hands still up and open. “I just needed shelter from the storm. I’m alone. I didn’t take nothing but a little food, and a bandage.”
Adam walked over to take the gun, both of them making a few jerky movements along the way. But the intruder’s hands kept returning to surrender position. Adam passed the gun and ammo to me. I hadn’t realized how heavy ammo was before.
“Is this the,” bang, “safety.”
“Shit, woman!” our guest exclaimed. He hugged his blanketed knees to his chest. Adam’s perfectly unmolested bathroom now had a shattered vanity mirror where I’d just shot it by accident.
Adam took the gun back and set the safety on. We looked at each other, and he started laughing, in a stressed-out, creaky sort of way. I tried a grin. “Well, it broke the ice, right?”
Adam looked back at his guest without favor. “I’m Adam Lacey. This is my bedroom. She’s Dee. Who are you?”
“Trey Cowan.”
“They shoot looters here, Trey Cowan.”
“Man, I’m not one of them. I mean, yeah, I wanted to get out of New Haven. But then, I couldn’t escape those guys. Guy tries to leave, they shoot him in the back. They’re nuts. I just used the storm to get the fuck away from them. I don’t want to hurt nobody.”
I heard a truck arriving out back. I peered out the bathroom window. The flatbed already had another body on it. A guy stood at the front of the truck with a rifle, while two others headed under the house. They looked like Adam’s paid ‘security’, not looters. Sadly, I reflected that I had no basis for that except the color of their skin. Two of them looked Italian, the other fair.
“What do you do in New Haven, Trey?” I asked.
“Christmas break with my family, but they were gone when I got home. I got no idea where they went. I’m a student at Eastern in Willimantic. Studying earth science. Was. They closed the school. It’s hell on the Hill in New Haven. I just want to get out.”
“You know how to use a gun,” Adam prodded.
“Yeah, even she could make a gun go bang,” Trey countered, with a sour glance at me. I returned his glower.
“Would you be willing to fight looters, instead of be one?” Adam asked.
“Man, I just want to get out of here alive. Whatever.”
Adam sighed. “You think Zack would want him?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “Up to Zack. If we took Trey here to the barricade, worst that’d happen is that they put him out on the East Haven side and tell him to run away. Unless he does something stupid. He doesn’t seem stupid.”
Adam nodded thoughtfully, and frowned at Trey. “Alright, Trey, here’s how this goes. You’re going to do some work with us. Nothing illegal. Just help me move my stuff from my house. As long as you cooperate, you’ve got a shot at a job over in Totoket. You try to run, or try anything against us, local security will kill you. They’re downstairs right now, picking up the body of one of your looter buddies. They do not like the color of your skin.”
“Man… And Totoket?” Trey asked. Helpless fury blazed in his eyes. I couldn’t blame him.
“Not a problem in Totoket. Much.” I shrugged. “The guy who runs the barricades, Zack, he’ll give you a fair hearing. If he thinks he can use you, you’re in. How well you get along with people once you’re there, is up to you.”
Trey swallowed. “Yeah. OK. I can do that.”
Adam toed the soggy pile of gangland attire with his toe. “You look about my size. Here, put these on.” He pulled out underwear, socks, a blue on white tattersall button-down Oxford, snug Levi’s jeans without holes, and a Coast Guard Academy sweatshirt, and threw them on the bed.
“Wow, that’s preppy, man,” commented Trey.
“I did attend prep school, yes,” replied Adam coolly. “And the Coast Guard Academy.”
“Oh, that’s cool, man,” Trey assured him. “I don’t want to take your alma mater sweatshirt. How about that Brown hoodie instead?”
“No hoodie.” Adam threw a navy blue Yale sweatshirt at his head. “Just get dressed, alright? Make it march, or I’ll have to ask security to stick around. And I don’t control these guys.”
At Adam’s urging, I headed back downstairs with the gun and ammo. Adam stayed upstairs to supervise Trey and grab some more clothes and personal effects for himself.
I wrapped the gun in a towel and stowed it under the suitcase. A quick ray of sun caught on the beautiful bronze telescope, sitting in front of the shutters Adam had cranked open. Irresistibly drawn, I peered out through it. With the tide so low, plenty of the reef was visible, with the seals lying blotto. I bet their night was even more harrowing than mine. The sea still heaved around them in angry grey pyramids of surging water.
I broke off my reverie at the telescope to find Adam and Trey leaning on the walls by the staircase, staring at me. Trey bore a pile of clothes and overnight toiletry bag, piled high. Adam had a small fireproof safe, the kind you stash your passport, car title, and other key papers in. Trey did indeed look preppy, and so neatly put together that I wondered if he were gay.
“The seals are taking a break,” I reported to Adam, smiling.
“I’d like you to have that telescope. If you want it,” offered Adam, smiling too. “And the binoculars.”
“I’d love them. Thank you! Trey, do you want a look, before I move it?”
“Yeah!” He eagerly peered at the heaving gray sea, and the prone seals. Hostility and fear seemed to melt from him. Nature can do that.
I took the bundle he’d been carrying, and stashed it in the other suitcase over the paper safe Adam had placed there. I added the binoculars in with the booze bottles in ‘my’ suitcase, and added most of Adam’s spices and baking staples. Adam wandered through the main floor. Occasionally he would pick up an item, consider it, and put it back. When his circuit brought him back to the kitchen, he placed a hand on the small of my back. I turned and gave him a hug, for as long as he wanted it. After a couple minutes he placed a kiss on my forehead and broke away.
“You’re not taking anything else?” I asked quietly.
He fished some coral bits out of his jeans pocket to show me, then returned them to the pocket. “Got those diving in the Caribbean with my father and brother, just before I started boarding school. We rented a 33-foot boat and sailed around the Virgin Islands for a month.” He smiled softly. “Best vacation ever. I have all my photos digitally, and my memories. I’m all set, whenever you’re ready. But there’s more stuff than we could possibly get into the Tesla. Especially if you want my boats.”
I’d seen several kayaks and a Sunfish type sailboard stashed in the garage. “I’d love your boats. The security guys have a truck. Do you think they’d help?”
“I don’t know that your Zack would appreciate that.”
“He’s not my Zack.” Though, he did have a truck, and gas, and might really want the boats.
“Short-hand, for lack of a better term. Your border captain. In any event, I’ve got a trailer buried underneath all that crap. We can bring it all. Hey, Trey – time to work off your keep.”
Trey and I headed down first, while Adam closed the shutter and took a minute to say good-bye to his home.
It was a lot of work getting all that stuff to the car.
“That’s all well and good,” Zack said to Trey. He’d agreed to meet us at the Route 1 barricade to deal with Trey and look over the boats. “But how do I know you’re not a plan
t from the looter gang? It’d be a lot easier to break through here with someone on the inside.”
“Look, man, those guys are crazy. Some of them are with Global Jihad. I had no idea what I was getting into with them,” pleaded Trey. “And they already got a plant on you. Guy named Jamal, I think.”
“Jamal!” Zack called. “Get over here!”
When Jamal arrived, Zack started to explain Trey’s accusation. Jamal denied it vehemently, though Zack kept their voices low.
“That ain’t him,” Trey interrupted. “This other guy has some kind of African accent. I heard them talking over a walkie-talkie. He said – tonight? Maybe tonight. He’d be in charge of some smaller bridge, and he’d let the looters through.”
Zack and innocent-Jamal raised eyebrows at each other. “Jermar!” Zack yelled. “Get over here!”
Jermar broke off a conversation on the other side of Route 1, picked up his weapon and took a few steps toward us. Then he broke to his right at a run, through the barricade into East Haven, angling down toward the reservoir for cover. Innocent-Jamal proved to be an excellent shot, and got Jermar in the leg. Jermar took up his rifle to aim back at the barricade. Several more bullets stopped him from getting a shot off.
I stared at the bloody body. I guess it’s called shock, when you feel nothing. Or perhaps I just didn’t know what to feel.
“If he’s still alive, I want to question him,” Zack told Jamal, who went off to organize that. “Alright, Trey, we’ll give you a chance. Betray our trust, and you will die. Consider this your last and only warning.”
Watching all this, seeing Zack’s face set in calm but firm lines around his mouth, for the first time I could picture him as an officer in Estonia or Turkey, Iran or Afghanistan. This was a man who knew how to make a car bomb, and what to do with it.
Zack turned back to us. “Adam, Dee, you’re free to go. Dee, I might want to borrow the kayaks, if you don’t mind.”
“Any time,” I agreed, and started for Adam’s car.
But Adam said, “Have you got a minute to speak privately, Zack? Wait in the car, Dee. Please.” They walked up Route 1 about a hundred feet towards the reservoir puddle. They spoke quietly, side by side, looking away toward the water.
I never did get either of them to tell me what they discussed. I asked as soon as Adam was back in the car, but he shook his head and started driving.
“You’re sure you can’t spend the night?” I asked. I tried to keep the tone light and playful. It came out sort of mournful instead. I sighed. It had taken several more hours to get the car unpacked, get rid of my helpful neighbors, and have a candle-lit dinner for two. It was nearly 9:00, and even darker than usual with the power still out.
“Sorry,” said Adam. He leaned against the kitchen wall and pulled me onto him for a long kiss, then hugged my head onto his shoulder. “This isn’t good-bye, Dee. I hope. I’m not in control of when my ark closes. But I meant it, about the shakedown cruise. Will you still come for that, if I can get you on board?”
“It’s a ship! Your ark is a ship?”
He laughed in surprise. He pushed me away just enough to look me in the eye. “Yeah. I thought you knew that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be that secretive. It’s moored in Groton. Well, it should be coming back into Groton by now, anyway. They headed out to sea last night to weather the hurricane, after I called them.”
“Into a hurricane?”
“Yeah, you don’t want to be in port during a storm like that. It was awfully late in the game to head out to deep water, by the time they knew it was a hurricane. But that’s what they did.” He sighed. “I need to work tonight to check for damage.”
“You’re in the Coast Guard?”
“Not any more. I retired to take this ark building job.”
He rummaged in his pocket and brought out a diamond ring. “My mother’s ring,” he said. “Kind of ill-fated. Dee… We’ve never talked about this. And we should. The truth is, I could bring you aboard my ark. If we were married. The captain could marry us. Someone else would get bumped from the ark, but I have priority.
“But we’ve been together, what, five weeks?” He looked at me searchingly. “So I’m not really asking you to marry me now. Just… hold onto the ring and think about it, OK?”
He lay the ring on my palm. We stared at it as though at a smelly and dubious bit of fish bait.
“Wow. Um,” I said.
“I could stay another half hour,” Adam offered, with a wry grin.
“Oh, I’m sure you could work a little harder than that,” I challenged.
“Slave-driver!’ He pulled me into the bedroom for another marital test-drive.
Around 10:00, I waved him off from the front lawn, hugging a chunky cardigan around myself. The perverse weather had suddenly decided to go clear and cold. It might dip below freezing overnight. I didn’t really expect to see Adam again, any more than I had the first time I handed him my business card. That was in another world, when we rode a magic pumpkin carriage to the glass towers of corporate power.
As Adam’s tail-lights vanished around the bend, I heard a buzzing, followed by a flash of white light towards the smaller bridge, and a huge whump. Orange fire continued, lighting a black column of smoke, the brightest light in the dark night.
I sighed. Global Jihad looters were almost as good as Ebola-bearing zombies for scaring the neighborhood into cooperation. Captain Zack had his proof of concept.
15
Interesting fact: Winter Storm Nemo was an ‘extra-tropical cyclone event’, or non-tropical hurricane. It formed around a low pressure of 968 mbar, and struck the Northeast and Maritime Provinces with winds up to 100 mph. Its maximum snowfall was 40 inches in Hamden, Connecticut, just north of New Haven. It was the fourth ‘100 year storm’ to hit Connecticut in only 2 years. Property insurance rates skyrocketed. That was back in 2013.
To call work ‘light’ during the holidays would be charitable. Santa tracking was a simple overlay on NORAD’s Santa-tracking. We just freshened the graphics. We’d supplied more than enough heartwarming puppy templates to UNC over the years. My team and Mangal’s hadn’t even pretended to accomplish anything since the Christmas party in mid-December. And with power outages wide-spread from the hurricane, paid vacation would continue until the first Tuesday in January, a week after New Year’s.
Dan sent an email inviting us all to a video-conference that Tuesday. He promised an update on the UNC ark. Mangal and I could hardly wait.
I had plenty of time to consider whether I wanted to marry Adam Lacey. And to wonder whether Adam Lacey had any more desire to be married than I did. We talked by phone or video chat nearly every night. Neither of us wanted to talk about that. So the only net effect in the short term was that I now figured our relationship had graduated to ‘serious.’ Sort of serious. The ring lived on my bed stand.
Anyway, we had a lot of time on our hands. Before Christmas, Mangal and I decided that what we really wanted was to publish some of this information, in a way that couldn’t be tracked or shut down by the censors. This was beyond our own hacker skills. We cautiously put out feelers, looking to hire someone.
Or rather, we sought to enlist someone in the cause, since the kind of hackers we wanted didn’t seek money. ‘Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, I gotta eat.’ Fortunately, we had hacker food to offer – information that sought to be free. But hacker enlistment was slow and awkward.
The day after Christmas, I told Mangal that Shelley wanted in. He sighed heavily, but agreed we didn’t have a lot of choice if she already knew about us. She had the skills and access by proximity to get at anything we had. So we could make an enemy of her and kick her out, or bring her in all the way. Keeping her in seemed safer. Mangal tried to argue that it was also more ethical. Neither of us ended the conversation convinced on that point.
So we invited her to join us for a ‘workday’ at my office. We started by watching the day’s Al Jazeera news summary, which gave fairly good sho
rt coverage of the day’s happenings in the Eastern Hemisphere. Global Jihad had such direct success via social media, that they didn’t feel any particular need to lean on Al Jazeera, leaving them free to be the moderate voice of educated Islam.
Shelley was impressed. That Christmas was a bad day in Europe, with European Muslims in a fever to prove that Europe was now theirs. They left the Jews alone for a change and targeted massive air strikes on cathedrals. Al Jazeera noted that the death tolls in the hundreds of thousands included some Muslims. Interviews with Parisian Muslims in the street seemed to agree that the collateral damage was worth it. Non-Muslim Parisians said there was no point in cooperation if they were going to get bombed anyway. But a peace with non-Muslims was not Global Jihad’s goal.
Al Jazeera also reported several wholesale slaughters of Muslims in the United States as order broke down in that country. And that a quarter of the population of the New York City area was now dead, mostly due to Ebola. Shelley was shocked. Mangal and I already knew that, and were confident both death tolls would climb. The contagion scenario in New York hadn’t had time to play out yet. And the vast majority wanted to stamp out Global Jihad in North America.
After the broadcast, we had Shelley read the summaries we’d written for our respective contacts. Mangal and I reviewed each other’s while we waited for her. We both already knew the raw material each other had drawn on, but wanted to get a feel for what our contacts knew. I kept Shelley with me as we broke for lunch.
After lunch, Shanti joined us for a goals discussion. She and Shelley thought it was paramount that we get the news out about what was going on in Europe and the Middle East. Mangal and I looked at each other.
I shrugged and started. “We’ve thought about that. The problem is, we don’t care. Americans don’t care, not much. I mean, it’s sad. But I’m not willing to risk my freedom for that. I can’t solve the Global Jihad problem, because it’s driven by overpopulation. Look at Iraq. In 1950, they had about 5 million people. Now they have 10 times that, and they’re suffering drought about 4 years out of 5. The climate is only getting worse. They can’t feed all those people. They talk about the Koran, but in the end, they’d stay home in peace if they could make a living and feed their families. But they can’t. Their young men have no prospects. Russia and China are willing to kill them. If Europe wants to survive, they need to kill more. And they’re becoming willing to do that. It isn’t nice, but I can’t help them. Any of them.”
