Red sky at morning. Light like the cracked bedroom door. The day ignores it, rolls over. By the time the sun is up the clouds are low and suffocating and pissing and drizzling at moody intervals.
The wind tugs at the tarp with the tree branches matted all over it, the little camouflaged shelter a good ways back from the road. The woman sitting cross-legged therein sings to welcome the storm in “Hey ho, the wind and rain.” When there’s thunder she cackles and howls at it like a wild thing because she is a wild creature.
She eats a big handful of mushrooms, a fistful of ditch weed and then another. She takes a swig of cooking oil, one of moonshine and prepares to welcome the visions that come next. She rattles the deer antlers on the football helmet on her rather large head against the thin tree that half-holds up the tarp and rocks back and forth rhythmically to whatever she is singing to herself and no one. She runs the fingers of her left hand over the animal bones and teeth she wove into a necklace. With her right, she strokes the long white-grey-black stained beard taken from a Santa suit a long time ago–“her whimsy.”
The bearded lady puts on her spectacles. The old, cheap black-plastic Buddy Holly frames missing one lense. The other’s got a crack running down the middle. She waits a long time looking a long way down her nose, her beak, her schnoz. “Yes, oh yes. I see. Very clever.” To no one at all.
If she had a map-app she’d see that it will rain for some time, that she’s posted off the road a ways on Highway 40 in Illinois, and that she’s deep in a patch of yellow that’s uncomfortably close to a red drone exclusion zone that spans from the Mississippi to the Rockies. She wouldn’t much care, but she’d know.
When an old truck rumbles and grumbles by, slowly as one does in parts such as these. She sees the supplies crammed next to the big man in the poncho in the bed of the truck. She perceives it when the passenger tosses a cig or joint out the cracked window “Oh you got some precious on you, yes you do, yes you do.”
The bearded lady rises and gathers herself. She notices a lone crow perched in a tree near by, sheltering on a thick branch beneath a bough from wind and rain. “You a robot?” No response. “Drone? You gotta’ tell me if you’re a cop. Rules, man.” Nothing. Never taking her eyes off the bird she gathers her cart covered by a deer’s pelt, white tail at the rear. She begins pulling her cart, crouched, slowly. The crow cocks its head, croaks once. “Ahh yeah, you do care.” She scratches at the dirt with her boot. “Yeah just doin deer things. Don’t call in your friends to shoot at deer do you, no sir? Fuckin’ devil bird.” She shuffles on in the half-crouch as she does when there’s robots afoot. Her cart trails behind her like the back half of a horse costume or what drone targeting software (almost always) reads as the ass of a deer. She works her way toward the road, following that delicious smell.
*
Out on the ash dunes at the End of time, there’s a whimper from the thing, the angel. The demon pulls his head from the terra cotta pot, crawls–practically slithers–to his frienemy. “Hey. Hey.” He slaps him on the cheek a few times, hard. The baby faced thing whimpers. “Wake up or shut up.” Brimstone props the little dainty thing’s head on his knee, spoons a bit more of the strong, garlic-and-bone broth from the kettle over the fire into his stupid mouth. He thinks he hears the beginning of a ‘thank’ as he unceremoniously drops the angel’s head to the packed ash beneath them and skitters back to the terra cotta pot he’s watching like a telenovela.
“All hell’s about to break loose over here” and the demon crams his head back into the terra cotta pot to watch.
*
EARLIER AND ELSEWHERE
*
Sydney Sanders, union organizer. Law degree. Did some public defender and pro bono stuff. Think tank. Briefly. Unions, transportation and logistics, food service, education. Fuck, all of them it seems.. Charismatic. Smart. Suspicious by nature, unfortunately. Dangerous. Left wing radical with strong Marxist sympathies. Dangerous.
“She’s cute.” The FBI lady holding the photograph takes a long drag from a vape. “Very cute.”
“This is no time for jokes, Mal.” I’m not joking. “These are dangerous radicals”
“Who are exercising constitutionally protected rights in calling for the free and fair elections democracies have, the end to a state of emergency. We are one right?” The other fed says nothing. “A democracy? The war is over. Hopefully forever.” Mal takes another hit and blows it out her nose like a dragon.
“That shit will kill you.” I’m counting on it. “What do you want from me, Mal?”
“To be aimed at secessionist terrorists.” Christ. “He’s not among their number, no. Oh! You could let me go after a bunch of assholes trying to start a race war when half of what’s left of the country lives in refugee camps.” Mal stares at him. Keeps her poker face as the agent above her (who is stuck with her) becomes visibly uncomfortable.
“You’re veering dangerously close to expressing a personal political opinion.”
“Didn’t veer. Did the thing.” These are dangerous radicals that could shut the economy down.
“And that’s worse than people trying to start a worse war than the one we all just paused?” There are many assignments, agent. This one is yours.
“So I’m taking a run at, what’s her name?” Sydney Sanders. And I want to look at your bookshelves at home. “You can go fuck yourself.” You’re fired. “No I’m not, you don’t have anyone to replace me with. Fuck you.” Mal walks off still looking at the picture, smitten.
*
15 YEARS TOO EARLY. FAST-FORWARD: NIGHT BEFORE THE STORM, WASHINGTON DC.
*
“Madame President.” The fed with the vape entered the same way a certain pretty president had companionship brought to him in ages past.
“Whaddya got, Mal?” Syd lights a cigarette and gives the pack and lighter to the guard next to her. They’re in the bowels of the building, where discreet discussions are had in paranoid times.
“Lucius is building an Able-Killer, or trying to. We were right.” Syd chuckles dry and wry. “I know, but he may be on to something. We have a source and we are close to something actionable.” Hell of a word, that. ‘Actionable.’ “There’s a handsome young special agent about to buy a nervous little lab coat type a beer.”
“Tell him to work quickly. It should be whisky.”
*
The truck that smells like French fries stops at an abandoned motel. They pick a room from the portion of the one story no-tell-motel not yet fallen in on itself. The resting place is the roadside kind that sits between two cities and once had good water pressure. Dee kicks the door in and the three proceed to unload just enough to keep warm and dry while they plot the next leg of the journey.
Bedding, dry clothes (for Jonah at least), lanterns. The snacks and weed and smokes and the flask of “something” found in the truck.
Jonah’s in the bathroom that once had a door. He’s peeling off a poncho that did nothing. He peeks at Dolores in the mirror over his own shoulder. He forgets himself and watches her walk all the way out the door “Forgot the fuckin’ map.”
There’s the drip of the rain through the roof that’s well on the way to ruin. There’s something else though, a sound Jonah can almost place that calls him back from his crush-swoon. The sound of a tapping.
He’s imagining it. No. There it is again. Someone tapping. Old clumsy fingers slapping. Tapping and typing on the face of a cell phone. The large man brings him self up on the balls of his feet. Creeps out of the bathroom half-dressed in a half-crouch.
*
Dolores spots the cart with the deer-pelt-tarp. Freezes. She hears the clank and clatter and a woman muttering. She sidesteps and creeps, not closer to the truck but to an angle that reveals a figure with antlers rummaging, foraging, thieving.
“Hey.” Softly. Then louder. “Hey. There.” GAH! and Dee’s looking at the business end of a crossbow in the hands of a very twitchy woman. Poncho and cobbled clothing. Big fake beard and bone necklace. Broken glasses on a big nose and the helmet with the deer antlers above it all. “Okay. Hello.”
*
“What have you got!” Jonah picks Abbott up with one arm like he’s snatching up an unruly child, one arm under both the smaller mans’. “Is that a phone?” Fuck you! Put me down. Abbott plays ‘keep away.’
“Give it to me!” No. “You gimme that phone right now.”
“I am a supreme being! Enlightened and transcendent!”
Big man’s free arm reaches for the phone as Abbott struggles to finish the text. There’s the woosh when he hits send. “Ow! Don’t fucking bite me! What did you do? What did you send?”
Abbott crams the phone in his mouth. The man-tardigrade’s head goes half jelly, his jaw growing like a snake to fit the thing. Jonah is still grabbing at the phone. “Spit it out! Ow! Goddamnit, drop it!” Abbott chews faster. Swallows the cell phone.
“Fuck. You. Put me down!” Jonah takes the old man in two hands, as if he were an empty suit of clothes, effortlessly. Pins him to the wall, eye-to-eye with him, Abbott’s feet well off the ground. The old man chimes and shakes about the tummy. The text was received and replied to. “I said, put me down, mud person.”
“What did you just do?” Silence as the tardigrade meets the big man’s gaze. “If you do anything, anything at all, to hurt her? Whatever else happens to me, I will end you.” Ok, chunk head. THUMP against the wall. “Tell me you understand?” Ok. THUMP against the wall again. “Tell me. You understand?” I understand. “That’s very good for you.”
Eyes locked on Abbott’s, the large man walks toward the door still carrying the tardigrade in a cheap suit, hands under his armpits. “Put me down.” No. You owe Dee an explanation.
*
“Dee, we have a.” Dee, I can explain!
“We have a situation out here.” GAH!
The feral pops up like a prairie dog, spots the enormous man, tries to hop from the bed of the truck. The lip of the truck bed leaps up to catch her foot, she falls. The hiss of a tire gone flat, crossbow bolt stuck in it.
She tries to roll on her shoulder, almost does, almost gracefully. Might have without the helmet and antlers. The ‘pop’ of the helmet and antler-clatter as her head hits the pavement, hard.
“Oh god.” Jonah reflexively drops Abbot and moves to help. “Are you ok?”
She’s up in a flash with an enormous knife in her hand. She swipes at Jonah, almost catching him. Hey! “Come and get it, Big Boy!” She’s crouched, swiping at the air. She waves at Jonah with her free hand, inviting him to fight “I’ll cut a slice off! Take it home!” Easy, no one’s gonna hurt you. “Goddamn right. First sensible thing you’ve said all day my man.”
She’s still swiping at the air. Still crouched and feral ready to fight. She strokes the beard, fidgets at it with her free hand.
Dee, hands out palms up and empty, takes a step toward her. “How about we go inside, we have a bite. We have a puff.” She pulls the joint Abbott rolled her earlier from her pocket, it’s in a pack with actual, honest cigarettes.” Oh, that right there is some precious right there. “Very precious, and I would like to share it with you, just because. What can we call you?”
She lowers the knife, but doesn’t put it away. “Jack.” She strokes her beard, looks to Jonah, speaks to Dee. “You tell this one, though, he keeps looking at my whimsy” holding up her beard “I might have to cut him, or kiss him.” What? “I get the seat closest to the door.” Deal. The wild woman sheaths her knife.
*
THAT EVENING. SAN FRANCISCO, CA
*
Lab Coat, one among many, has a name but no one can seem to remember it at work. The lab. She is Rebecca. Becky. Karen. Kim. Lucy. Anne. Her fucking name is Anne, and none of those goddamn pricks can remember it for more than a day.
She’s waiting at the bar in San Francisco to meet a man. It’s dark, the lighting, the mood the vibe. That dark that is trying to be substantial and older than it is. You know the bar, whatever the ‘palette swap’ of decade or region says it looks like. “Tasteful and muted” is how the suit who brings people to this watering hole, his “discovery”, describes it. The bar nostalgic for Sinatra, whatever the year you find yourself in. It makes her feel classy.
Special Agent playing man candy sits at a table in a booth behind her, as of yet unseen. He is drinking whiskey. His first. He requires a drink to be in her presence and to play this role, to listen to a woman not much older than himself rationalize her actions. He must maintain a ‘sympathetic and conspiratorial air’ as she describes the Nuremberg-shit they pull in a basement lab like she’s a victim. She has a body count. A significant body count, and he has to fucking flirt with her. Work quickly Probably more. Some old guy is chatting her up, good.
He catches a waiter’s eye. Taps the table for another. “Thank you, Garcon. Put a little cyanide in my next one, please.” What’s that? “Nothing. Thanks.” He is not unfamiliar with the ways in which people, himself included, rationalize their intentions and otherwise justify their bullshit. He still hears his father’s voice in his head, something about the best intentions being “the preferred paving material of the path to perdition.” Overwrought, yes. But he never forgot it.
He doesn’t hate her so much as hate the “as in a mirror dimly” of it all–how he could have been her. What’s her fucking name? Anna. He hates that she’s like him gone wrong. He’s twenty-three, seven when the war ended. Full on bunker baby, just like her. Raised on the same stream of stories that all, very deliberately, added up to the big one: “You will change the world. Your generation. You are special.”
The agent watches Anna play coy and giggle and turn her nose up. Soon, she will reject the old guy and he will have to approach her. He will have to look that lizard in the eye. “You’re special.” He feels like no other bunch in history got beat about the head worse or harder or more urgently with that “stick” than the Bunker Babies whose parents like to infantilize them. You are special because your momma made you, but so is everyone else. And the Bunker Babies came out, “emerged” into a world where half the country had never had a bunker to hide in and half the whole goddamn world was a “no-no” zone thanks to our own drones.
Some of us, he thinks to himself, have the correct “Boxer” attitude. Some of us accept ourselves and “work harder” or maybe we accept that we were never special and just do what we can. Others, Anna, their “special” or “gifted” or whatever petrifies. When “special” ends up not-metastasizing into “chosen”, sometimes something else does–something else grows vile and out of control. Maybe their id eats everything else, every other part of them? They’ll do anything to be part of something “special” to prove they always were. And maybe I am buzzed enough. Special Agent downs the rest of his drink, slicks his hair, walks up to flirt with that blonde devil, “charming” as he can muster.
*
“Dee, I swear I can explain.” His daughter is standing, arms crossed, leaning against an old dresser.
“I’m sure you can, Dad. And you will.” Jonah is sitting next to Abbott, hand firmly gripping his shoulder as if he’s going to flee. Jack, still wearing her antlers and whimsy, sits in a chair by the door, smoking a joint and nodding along at the scene.
“Who were you texting?” I don’t know what he thinks he saw.
“Abbott, you bit me.” You manhandled me. “Why do you have a phone, when you know perfectly well we could be tracked? Are you helping them?”
“Look, it’s complicated. I did not call the people trying to snatch or perhaps kill you.” Dee doesn’t seem to buy it. “I did however let someone in Peoria know we’re coming.” Who? “Able.” What the fuck are you talking about?
“I too talk to God.” Dee, Jonah, and Abbott all look to the wild woman smoking by the door– nodding to herself as if she has dispensed great wisdom.
“The godlike super computer is buried beneath Peoria?”
*
Anna believes Special Agent works for one of Lucius’ competitors. She believes this is a ticket to a gig with a defense contractor of equal-or-less dubious morality in their biomedical research division. She believes this is corporate espionage wrapped in head-hunting. Work quickly. They’re back at the booth, and he watches her mouth while she’s talking something technical he wouldn’t understand anyway. She’s an expert on human brain interface. Something about “seizure states being a feature not a bug” and giggling.
He’s heard her giggle like that before, low-fi audio, bug in the lab. A body had just stroked-out and died with its brain gouged and what not, Subject #4, and “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”
Work quickly. He leans in to whisper, and her hand is on his thigh like she’s been contemplating the move, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Little early in the evening?”
“I promise it will be a long night, and the fun is just getting started.” It absolutely will be a long night, thinks the Special Agent, aiming for the sweet spot between ‘black-out drunk’ and ‘sober’ where he can convince himself to fuck the devil.
*
“A node in a network, so yes part of Able is there, but I’m there as well. The better part of me is there.” Abbott acts like its the simplest thing in the world he is explaining.
“You speak in riddles, little man, little half-truth stories.” Yes he does, Jonah.
“Much like god” Jack returns to rolling a joint.” This asshole is not god. “I know, god is in Peoria. I can take you there.” Jack is quite sincere.
“I’m fucking sick of it Dad, explain. Give me any reason to trust you. At all. I’d love to have one. Just one fucking reason.”
Jack cocks her head. “Hark.” Listens and leans dangling half out the hotel room door. Yells over the babbling argument brewing behind her. “Shut the fuck up I’m trying to hark!” Listen? “That too!”
Faint and growing by the hand of Doppler the sound of an engine. Two engines, belonging to two shot-to-shit Luxury SUVS.
“Get in the truck!” Dee, we’re not gonna outrun them. The truck window explodes. Clicks at a distance, a fashionista assassin leaning out the window of the vehicle and firing at their truck that smells like French fries. The clatter of rounds riddling the thing. “Inside!” Jack pulls Dee back in the motel room. Jonah bodies the door shut.
Everybody hugs the floor as the shooter riddles the room above their heads, cackling.
Dee looks Abbott in the eye, shouts “Yeah, you called Able, sure dad.” I swear to god! “Fuck! You! Dad!”
*
Special Agent wakes up in someone else’s house. It’s his as far as what’s-her-name knows. In reality, the Marshals seized it from someone who did something nasty and happened to also be quite wealthy, and here we are. She’s snoring loudly.
Anne is snoring loudly when he replaces her ID badge with the identical copy of her ID badge plus some tech that might-as-well-be magic. She believes she is placing a listening device in the lab, for him. And she is, an obsolete thing that makes a lot of noise and will most certainly be found, rather quickly. Meanwhile, the payload she carries in her badge will mix, mingle, and trigger the other deliveries she’s unwittingly made while being handled. As long as she goes to work, his superiors will have full and unfettered access to Lee Lucius quite secure network.
He writes her a little love note “had to get to work early.” Then some generic ad-copy shit about last night. He imagines writing the laundry list of felonies he hopes he gets to read to her. He wants to be the one who says “You work for us now.”
He kisses her on the forehead. “Love you.” I most certainly do not love her. Fuck her. Fucking butcher.
He locks the door to his place that’s not his home, certain she’ll snoop. That’s the point of bringing her here. It cements the cover identity. When she walks through the doors at that corporate hell hole, he’ll have no more need of that cover. At that thought, for the first time in months, the Special Agent can breathe.
*
END DOLORES (5)