The Best Part of Waking Up
MIKE MASSA
Billy Joe Destrehan liked to believe that he knew it all, but deep down he knew there were only two things that he could reliably do well. Make coffee and blow shit up.
Given the right equipment and supplies he could either always pull the perfect espresso shot or improvise the ideal explosive charge, from moving several tons of dirt to popping a door lock without disturbing the framed art on the adjacent wall. It was a question of attention to detail and the application of core principles. At the moment, however, Billy Joe was in spectator mode. He watched his brand new boss, a gaunt and visibly frustrated U.S. Navy senior chief, reread some handwritten notes lying on the laboratory table. Billy Joe suspected he knew what the problem was. Experience in handling eccentric managers kept his teeth together.
It required effort, because there were clues to the senior chief’s frustration scattered around the white-painted, ad-hoc lab that served as the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay Special Projects workshop. For starters, temperature-labeled beakers full of previous experiments were visible, and they suggested to Billy Joe the old guy was wasting his time. But Senior Chief Machinist’s Mate Lando (my daddy really liked the movies, see?) Washington had been crystal clear. When the armed trusty escorting a group of parolees had dropped Billy Joe off with his new minder not even half an hour earlier, Washington made it plain that the comfy job in Special Projects depended on staying quiet unless and until called upon. During introductions, the Senior, as he preferred to be called, shared his readiness “to blow your terrorist ass away for damn near any reason, up to and including putting artificial sweetener in my coffee.” Post-Fall, Billy Joe had accumulated considerable experience with crazy bosses and he recognized absolute sincerity when he heard it. Besides, Washington wore a Beretta 92F on his hip and all Billy Joe had was a note pad.
Billy Joe cleaved to his decision to leave his new boss strictly alone. However, a half hour of zero conversation and successive flopped experiments turned the experience of silently watching the bustling man in dark blue coveralls from mildly annoying to tiresome. Billy Joe nerved himself to speak.
“So, tell me about yourself, Fresh Meat,” Washington suddenly ordered, not bothering to look up. Billy Joe almost started in surprise. “How did you end up in Commodore Wolf’s lockup?”
“It wasn’t Wolf’s camp,” Billy Joe replied without thinking, but then considered the question. He wasn’t anxious to unpack that particular can of worms so he decided to share just the barest outline, as well as conceal his incipient resentment over this latest nickname. “I worked for the losing side in a little war in Tennessee. I got shot and missed the last big fight. Afterwards, they captured me in bed and once I was well enough, Mr. Smith, ah—Commodore Wolf’s brother—gave us the option of working or not eating. I like eating.”
“And that’s it?” Washington asked, and his unsmiling brown eyes punctuated the question before the man returned to his instruments. “Just the wrong place and the wrong time, eh? The paperwork they gave me yesterday says that your little group was particularly nasty. Right crazy fuckers. Slaves and shit? Way I heard it, Smith’s brother only left off killing you out of hand since he didn’t actually catch you doing anything.”
“The guy that was in charge needed my skills,” Billy Joe replied, recognizing that Washington already knew plenty. “I did what I had to do in order to stay alive. That meant being useful for engineering and chemical work.”
Washington made little “keep it going” gestures.
I wonder what else is in my file?
“I mostly did explosives.”
“The Gleaners’ bomb man, that’s right,” Washington stated, eyes still on his work.
Billy Joe decided that wasn’t a question. There was a pause, and Billy Joe watched the buzz-cutted Navy man fiddle around. Surrounded by Pyrex flasks, rows of test tubes and neatly racked laboratory tools, Senior Chief Washington checked the reading on the digital thermometer clipped to a graduated cylinder. Inside, a clear liquid danced, boiling merrily. Then he adjusted one of the empty beaker lined up just so on bench.
“A hundred and thirty-one ‘cee’ this time,” the senior added, nodding in a satisfied manner as he confirmed the temperature. Then he addressed Billy Joe again, his voice hardening. “And?”
“Yeah, the Gleaners’ bomb man,” Billy Joe agreed reluctantly. “But I also did some engineering—electrical, chemical, and so forth. Look, I wasn’t crazy about working for the Gleaners, but they offered a worse deal than Smith. Any failure to cooperate cost big. They turned you into a slave. Or worse.”
The less time he spent thinking about the Gleaners, the whole Watts Bar episode, and most especially about that devil Tom Smith, the happier Billy Joe was. Joining the Gleaners hadn’t exactly been his first choice, but he’d found a niche there. Unfortunately for the Gleaners, they’d underestimated the opposition. Some well-organized and, more importantly, better-led survivors from New York City, of all places, had kicked their teeth in. The story among the Gleaner survivors was that Smith the Younger had fed Harlan Greene, the leader of the losers and Billy Joe’s previous boss, into the intake of a hydroelectric dam. Not that Billy Joe missed that psycho Greene, but then Smith had detained anyone who’d been swept up with the Gleaners. The bank people got around to interrogating him and by a narrow margin, deferred outright execution, and instead set Billy Joe to forced labor, pending reevaluation. That meant clean-up work, mostly disposing of thousands of rotting zombie corpses while under armed guard. Lab work in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, looked like a tall, cool drink of water in comparison.
“Well, Fresh Meat, plenty of bad things have happened to lots and lots of good people,” Washington said. “Commodore Smith is the new Secretary of War under Vice President—sorry, make that President Staba. And she’s decided the Secretary of War’s existing policy of ‘what happened in the compartment stays in the compartment’ applies to detainees.”
“Sorry, Senior, I don’t know what that means,” Billy Joe replied, a little confused. He glanced around the converted hospital lab and shrugged to illustrate his confusion. “I’ve been on labor details since I left the hospital tent, and they didn’t tell us a lot. Then the guards loaded us in a bus, put us on the airplane and now I’m here.”
“I’ll give you the long explanation later,” Washington said flatly. “For now it means you get to prove you’re fit to rejoin the human race. And I’m the one marking your report card, got it?”
“Yessir!” That didn’t sound great, but it beat burying rotting corpses.
“Don’t call me Sir, sonny,” Washington growled. “I work for a living, and now you do too. Pass me that can.”
Billy Joe let his eyes track along Senior Chief Washington’s surprisingly skinny arm pointing towards a shelf labeled “Nuclear Chemistry.” A silver aluminum container, different from the one Washington had been using, shone in the fluorescent lighting. All identifying marks were covered in heavy, olive drab tape. Billy Joe lifted it down, noting in passing that the lid was also taped. Someone had used a black marker to label it “Contaminated Ferric Oxide.”
The internal foil cover parted with a nice hiss to reveal rusty-brown granules, which the grizzled submariner sniffed appreciatively. Billy Joe continued to observe as Washington ignored the open jar he’d used before, instead applying the white plastic sampler to scoop up a single measure of new material before meticulously scraping the excess back into the container. He emptied the scoop into one of the clean, empty beakers. After repeating the process, Washington resealed the can and passed it back to Billy Joe, who put it back where he’d found it.
These final steps confirmed what Billy Joe had suspected was the point of the apparatus and procedure he’d seen so far. He couldn’t fault Washington’s technique but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference to the outcome. In response to a grunt and gesture, Billy Joe passed an insulated glove to Washington. The senior put it on his left hand before carefully removing the thermometer from the cylinder. The bubbling liquid steamed as he poured it into the waiting beaker and the granules quickly dissolved, leaving a swirling dark brown, almost black liquid. The apparent chemist removed his glove, and set it aside so he could use both hands to turn the beaker this way and that, studying the color. Finally, Senior Chief Washington leaned over to sniff the result, and grimaced.
“God, I even hate the Italian instant.”
“I still can’t get over how clean everything is,” Billy Joe said, looking over as another parolee slid onto the old-style cafeteria bench. Jerome Knight had been another Gleaner, really not more than a foot soldier. The faded prison tattoos that peeked from his collar and wrist cuffs offered hints of even earlier history. “I’ll give the Marine neat freaks who tidied this base up that much. Smells a lot better than the last place, too.”
Before being relocated to Cuba, away from the now resolved conflict where many had died on both sides, the Gleaner detainees had been quartered in tents, not far from the mass burial pits filled with the results of the climactic battle of Watts Bar Dam. Early burials of the thousands of dead zombies had been hasty and shallow, and the smell of decomposition still lingered over the area. The wet, muddy Tennessee winter had exacerbated the already poor conditions. Billy Joe had nightmares about it. By contrast, this place was literally a tropical paradise. The Marines had even lined up decorative rocks in front of the red-tiled stucco buildings and painted them.
“Fucking Marines,” muttered Knight. “I’m glad most of them are gone, busting their asses to clear Washington, New York and all the other zombie shitholes. Maybe now I can take a shot at one of the hot mamas walking around with all babies . . . ”
There were a lot of babies around. The video the Navy had made the ex-Gleaners watch, documenting the first days of the Smith Family provided the answer. Billy Joe had to admit the visuals were soberingly effective, showing the brilliant night-time satellite view of the Earth rapidly dimming as one illuminated city after another was blotted from existence by the plague. The entire world went dark, except for a tiny, flickering point of light in the Caribbean, the evening lights of Wolf Squadron. As the survivors rescued everyone they could find, the light slowly grew, and the tally of the saved climbed into the thousands, the clip ended with a subtitle: “Welcome to Wolf Squadron. The hell with the darkness. Light a Candle.”
The now-dated video was used to orient new arrivals, talking up the urgency of rescuing all they could. Many of them were civilian women who’d all gotten pregnant more or less simultaneously, since they’d all been trapped at sea about the same time, at which point there presumably hadn’t been a lot else to do. Thousands had been successfully recovered, and with the passage of time, there were a lot of moms at Gitmo. Most of them seemed to be young, pretty and single. Billy Joe and the other probationers frequently saw them, a vision from the world they’d lost, smiling and pushing full tandem strollers around the housing on base, sharing babysitting duties so that others could work. They were utterly, unmistakably out-of-bounds to the likes of the probationers.
“Watch your mouth, Knight!” Billy Joe said urgently. “You know the women are off-limits!”
“Yeah, whatever,” his seatmate groused, his acne-scarred face screwed up in distaste as he stared at the unappetizing fish and rice curry, a staple at the Guantanamo dining facility. “I’m sick of the same food every day. We ate better when Greene was in charge, and we didn’t have to pay in stupid chits, neither!”
He loudly slammed his change down next to his metal tray. The chits were just color denominated poker chips with serial numbers melted into the plastic. They’d replaced the old cardboard counters that had been used by the government militia after the Chattanooga battle. Billy Joe fingered the “change” in the pants pocket of his lightweight khaki boilersuit; those suits served all the probationers as a uniform, distinct from the green camouflage utilities of the Marines, the incomprehensible blue digicam of the regular sailors, or the dark blue coveralls of the sub guys.
“Put a sock in it!” hissed another parolee, looking over his shoulder furtively as he joined the table. Even Smitty, no genius by any measure, knew it wouldn’t pay to be overheard speaking like that. Even though Billy Joe knew the Navy file listed this probationer as Edward Smith, he’d answered exclusively to Smitty for as long as Billy Joe had known him. And who would argue with him? Where Knight tended to get lost in his uniform, every motion Smitty made threatened the seams of his overalls. When the burly parolee tapped the bright white probationer’s patch on his chest, his biceps strained his suit’s fabric as through he was smuggling cantaloupes in his shirtsleeves. “See this? We’re all being judged, every second. Greene and the Gleaners are dead. I’m not spending the rest of my life on some shit detail because you’re tired of the menu. Until we get made, we all make nice. Then we cut this piece of shit off our clothes.”
“Sorry, Smitty!” Knight not-quite whined. “It’s just—”
“I said shut it,” Smitty bit off. For a moment, he seemed to radiate hostility and barely controlled rage, but a patently false smile quickly slid over his previously bared teeth. Billy Joe knew that the tall, slick-headed man had been selected as a Gleaner soldier for his intimidating strength, and his cunning had drawn his old boss’s approval. “Pick up your money and smile like you’re having a great time. Make like B.J. here. Nice and quiet, being useful. Getting in good with the man, right B.J.?”
“The name’s Billy Joe.”
“Sure, sure,” Smitty said silkily, smoothing over Billy Joe’s objection. “So what does your boss have you doing now? It’s got to be better than the scavenging they got me doing.”
“We spent a couple weeks trying to rebuild the main generators so the Navy could re-task the sub we’re using to power the base,” Billy Joe said, willing to go along with a show of amity. Smitty was right about the importance of not only working hard, but convincing the new management of the human race that the former Gleaners were treading the straight-and-narrow once and for all. “While we’re waiting on new parts, he has me working on some remote detonators. The plan is to demolish some of the damaged buildings in town.”
The Navy base lay at the mouth of a large salt-water bay in southeastern Cuba. Farther inland, across the fenced and chained harbor causeway that divided the base from Cuba proper, lay the actual city of Guantanamo. Fortunately, the number of zombies had radically fallen, thanks to some hush-hush experiments coordinated from the old Camp Delta where the Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners had met their end during the early days of the plague.
Security was tight on that part of the base and the parolees had been invited to not speculate. However, whatever they were doing there meant the orderly, centrally managed process of looting the former Cuban city could proceed much more easily than had been the case months previously.
“Why not just use the military stuff instead of building new electronics?” Sylvie James asked. “Don’t they have a base full of gear?”
The wiry, hard-eyed ex-Gleaner had taken advantage of the previous group’s focus on competence over sex. Billy Joe had seen her drop a drunk Gleaner foot soldier with a knee kick, and then cool him with an economical strike to the temple. Sylvie been one of the few women who’d stuck with soldiering, striving to become an officer in the Gleaner militia, taking after her old boss, Eva O’Shaughnessy.
Speaking of which, Billy Joe thought, I hope that scary bitch is rotting in hell.
“The plan is to save the good stuff for emergencies,” he replied, shrugging. “What I’m making isn’t much more powerful than really big fireworks set off by remote control. There’s plenty of old cell phone parts and other electronics. What I really could use is some genuine coffee. Actual beans, roasted and ground. My boss is crazy for the stuff, and I mean that literally. Developed some kind of obsession with it while he was trapped on his sub, probably. He’s been experimenting with everything he can find and he’s pretty influential with the Navy. Could help us get in good with management, if you see what I mean. Have any of you seen anything like that come in?”
“Nah,” Sylvie replied. “I’ve been working on sweep team inventory and the only coffee I’ve seen is freeze-dried and not much of that. Everyone wants coffee so it goes directly into restricted storage.”
“There’s some irony for you,” Billy Joe said, shaking his head. “This place was practically the birthplace of coffee in the Western Hemisphere. Used to export tens of thousands of tons of the stuff from plantations not even thirty miles away. Might as well be on the dark side of the moon until we clear out that way.”
“Look at you, college-boy!” Smitty exclaimed softly, smiling widely enough to be seen though not overhead. Billy Joe’s incomplete university education had been a source of amusement to the Gleaner rank and file, just as his proximity to the old boss had been a source of jealousy. “You’re practically a coffee genius now. Thing is, except for the hospital and managing people like us, the military is moving most of their stuff outta here to Florida. Coffee is a so-what compared to that.”
“Coffee was the second largest commodity in the entire world, right behind oil,” Billy Joe replied in a tight, controlled tone, omitting the words “you idiot.” “It was worth tens of billions of dollars before the Fall. Sooner or later we’re going to have an economy again, and it’s going to have to be based on something. Paper dollars aren’t worth shit. We can’t use chits forever. The economy has to be based on something and we’re right here where coffee started, practically. Wouldn’t hurt to get an early start on that, right? If everyone wants coffee and we have the solution, we’d be made for sure. We could lose these stupid probation uniforms. We could be somebody.”
“Hmm, that’s not a bad idea, B.J.,” Smitty said, rubbing his chin. It looked like he was actually giving it some thought and a shrewd expression slid across his face. Billy Joe watched Smitty glance around the other tables where other ex-Gleaners sat in their little cliques. “We’ll keep our eyes open. Sylvie, you’ll check to see if any of those Cuban survivors know anything about it, but on the down-low?”
“No problem, Smitty,” she answered.
“And keep your mouth shut, Jerry, right?” Smitty ordered. “Make nice, big smiles, right? You don’t tell any of the others till I say, right?”
“Right, Smitty.”
“Yeah, coffee’s not a bad idea at all, B.J.,” Smitty added, leaning over to steal a stale Twinkie from Billy Joe’s tray. “I like it.”
“My name’s Billy Joe.”
“Crack-Crack-Crack-CRACK!”
The plumes of dirty brown smoke that jetted from around the circumference of the concrete apartment block contrasted against the clean blue sky. Each report was delayed by a millisecond from the one preceding. Fully thirty explosions sounded, causing the smoke-blackened shell to shiver and then collapse inwards. Billy Joe reflexively shielded his eyes from the billowing smoke and dust that rushed outwards. Meanwhile, the excitable locals who’d been rescued and now served as a basic labor force, alongside a dozen or more probationers, yelled enthusiastically.
After several minutes, the cloud began to dissipate, whisked away by the persistent breeze and a lonely-looking zombie dazedly stumbled into view. Moments later a single shot from one of the security Marines dropped it almost a hundred meters from the nearest potential meal. Nothing else moved.
“Check fire, check fire!” an angry voice sounded to Billy Joe’s side, likely one of the Marine sergeants who oversaw the details of an operation like this. “Confirm targets as hostile before engaging!”
“Stupid git,” Senior Chief Washington said, squinting through the remaining dust to gauge how thoroughly the building had been demolished.
“Senior?” Billy Joe knew the military wasn’t crazy about the new orders to refrain from shooting zombies out of hand.
“Only supposed to shoot the aggressive zombies, the alphas,” Washington relied, sparing Billy Joe a glance. “Fresh Meat, weren’t you listening at the brief? The new intel is that the other kind of zombie, the ones that run away and hide, are different. We’re supposed to try to save them.”
“Saving zombies seems pretty crazy to me, Senior.”
“Well, the secretary of war and the commanding general here at Gitmo aren’t asking, they’re telling,” the older man said to Billy Joe, wiping dust from the rectangular tablet computer he held. “The shy ones, the betas, those are people. The studies in Florida show that most of them can be taught to do simple tasks, which is more than I can say about you. On the other hand, while I didn’t hire you for your opinion, this controller you whipped up worked pretty damn well. Nice job.”
As Billy Joe watched, Washington carefully tapped two buttons that had been blinking. Previously, “Master Arm” and “Detonate” had been limned in yellow and red. A few taps later both were grayed out and the overlay read “Safe.”
“Thanks, Senior.” Billy Joe meant it. His efforts to adapt dissimilar parts and write some software had resulted in the converted controller that Washington now held, as well as a backup. That didn’t count the scratch-built radio link or the fully assembled four dozen charges he’d estimated, well, over-estimated, that would be needed. Moreover, the work had required a high degree of precision. As far as he could tell, every single charge he’d placed had gone high order, leaving not a single squib behind to delay efforts to clear the wreckage. It was a new sensation to be appreciated. He hadn’t been asked to hurt anyone, well, except zombies, and even those casualties were incidental. His contribution was actually helping to make things better. Billy Joe was surprised at how good it felt. Even better, good results tended to put Senior Chief Washington in a receptive mood . . .
“Senior, I had a little help,” Billy said, deciding to take a risk. He waved at the short, dark-skinned man who’d remained inconspicuous by standing well back. “This is Julio Cabrillo. He’s a part-time cell phone salesman we rescued a week ago. Julio was a big help when I had to rewrite some code and update the firmware on the charge sequencers. Julio, this is Senior Chief Washington.”
“Senor, mucho gusto,” Cabrillo said, looking apprehensive.
“Fresh Meat, you let a Cuban handle explosives in my lab?” Washington growled. “Are you aching to go back to burying zombies? I can probably find some that aren’t dead yet and let you wrestle them all by your lonesome.”
“Negative, Senior!” Billy Joe replied decisively. He’d learned that unlike the Gleaners, Washington could be counted upon to react even more negatively if he cowered or tried to kiss ass. “I really needed the help with programming, and I never let him touch the controlled items, either the electrical caps or the C-4. Everything’s accounted for. Besides, I think he’s got some information that’s going to really interest you.”
“And that is?”
There was a pregnant pause and Cabrillo seemed to wilt under the Navy noncom’s steely gaze.
“Go on Julio, tell him!” Billy Joe said impatiently, tugging Cabrillo even closer.
“Jefe, me familia trabajan—my family work at Hacienda y Cafetal Gelaberto,” the slightly built Cuban said, doffing his wide brimmed hat. “I live there, my family work the crop for five generaciones, even before Castro.”
Cabrillo punctuated the last comment by spitting in the dust.
“What’s he talking about, Fresh Meat?” Washington asked, cutting his eyes towards Billy Joe. “You have precious few seconds left before you need to start getting used to the smell of dead bodies.”
“The Gelaberto Coffee plantation, Senior,” Billy Joe said, simply. “It was part museum and part working coffee plantation. Three hundred acres of mature Arabica and Robusta plants. Wash troughs, a big stone drying apron and what sounds like the better part of three tons of bagged coffee beans, in the green and ready to be roasted and ground.”
“Are you fucking shitting me, Destrehan?” Washington asked, apparently shocked enough to use Billy Joe’s last name. “Coffee? Real coffee?”
“Aye-firmative, Senior,” he answered happily. “And the best part is that it isn’t even an hour’s drive away!”
“You burned them,” Washington stated accusingly. “Be careful, I said. It’s a delicate job, I said. But you had to hurry. Hell, I can taste the scorched bits!”
“Senior, two months ago you didn’t have any coffee at all.” Billy Joe couldn’t hold back any longer, but he kept his tone light. His old barista job hadn’t involved roasting, but Julio had seen it done and this was the best batch so far. “Then, all you had was instant and you didn’t like that. You were changing the water temperature and trying to make it taste better, even the fancy Italian stuff you overpaid for. Thing is, the taste of instant coffee is locked-in the moment it’s packaged after roasting, brewing and drying. This is fresh-roasted coffee, and we only toasted it to the first crack. It has a perfectly mild flavor.”
Washington sniffed the coffee again and grudgingly took a sip before putting the mug down.
“You wrote the procedure, outlined the principle of the thing and we paid perfect attention to detail,” Billy Joe added for good measure, sounding a bit defensive, even to his own ears.
“Two months ago I was still on the WESTPAC cruise from hell,” the senior replied, giving Billy Joe a bit of side eye as he pushed the coffee aside to cool. Billy Joe watched him don a blue baseball cap whose gold embroidery spelled out “USS Columbus – SSN 762,” which the senior had already informed him was the best damn nuke in the entire fleet. “And you were still in that prison camp run by Commodore Wolf’s brother. Instead of enjoying air conditioning and fresh roasted coffee, you were burying corpses. So, if my bitching about coffee bothers you, say the word.”
“Sorry, Senior,” Billy Joe said, swallowing. “Just trying to help.”
“Ah, hell, it’s all right,” Washington said, waving away the disagreement. “You were right about the instant, you were mostly right about using Julio to get the detonators done on time and finding out about the Cafetal. Getting fresh coffee, burnt or not, is actually genius.”
“Thank you, Senior,” Billy answered quietly. Getting a compliment was a new experience. Sharing the credit was also a new thing, but it felt good too. “We really should thank Julio. He provided the info and did a lot of the work.”
“And where is Mr. Cabrillo?” Washington asked, theatrically looking around the mostly empty lab.
“He’s visiting his sister in the betas’ compound,” Billy Joe answered quickly. “The doctors say she’s going to be fine after some decent nutrition.”
“Damn lucky, finding her like that. What were the odds that a zombie would be smart enough to hide in a coffee warehouse and then get found by a member of her own family?”
“They were both from the Cafetal, but all he knew was she’d been infected and then fled in order to keep from getting anyone else sick. Or worse.”
“Still, damned lucky.” Washington eyed his steaming coffee longingly. “With a little more luck, she’ll be one of good ones and can have some kind of life again. Julio told me he thinks she even recognizes him.”
Both men sat and thought about that for a bit. For some reason the plantation had been almost empty of corpses and the presence of aggressive infected had been almost nil. The Gitmo Marines had been able to recover or rescue half a dozen betas during the coffee operation. Most had fought to get away, but all were being treated for their health problems and attended by a psychologist who’d been rescued from a boat months earlier. Billy had thought that the plan to try to train them to do basic chores was optimistic. Then he’d met Katerina Cabrillo, Julio’s sister. She’d calmed considerably after seeing her brother, who visited her for hours every day. She was even wearing clothes now, which was a good thing because as soon as she’d left decontamination, her original beauty had caught everyone’s eye. At least, those of the men. Billy Joe had felt vaguely ashamed for even noticing. Even more so for the fantasy of claiming rescuer’s rights that briefly occurred to him. Recalling that impulse refreshed the shame of even thinking such a thing. That was probably why he didn’t watch his mouth in the next breath. The shame led to anger, and predictably, the anger disconnected Billy Joe’s brain from his idiot mouth.
“Seems like a lot of effort to try to save them,” Billy Joe said, breaking the silence. “Especially when there are so many humans that need rescuing.”
“Boy,” Washington bit out and then visibly controlled himself. “Boy, just when I start liking you, you go and say some damned foolish thing. Remember what I told you a couple weeks ago about things that happened in the compartment staying in the compartment?”
“Yes, Senior,” Billy Joe answered as briefly as he could. It didn’t take an empath to note Washington was suddenly and genuinely furious.
“You said before you didn’t understand what it meant, so I’m going to spell it out for you, simple-like,” the Navy noncom said, his hard brown eyes pinning Billy Joe’s gaze. “What it means is that everyone, Gleaners included, gets the benefit of what amounts to a general amnesty for anything that anyone did to survive prior to rejoining the human race. People were trapped inside rooms, compartments really, on cruise ships and warships and every little kind of dinky yacht and fishing boat. We could hear them, thousands of them, you know, on the passive sonar systems on the sub.”
Billy Joe watched the senior chief’s eyes slide off to one side, staring through the wall opposite his bench.
“We’d creep really close, and the fancy sonar we have means you could hear a mouse fart in a hurricane at ten thousand yards. Sonar so good you could hear the moans and growls of zombies inside a ship, right through the hull. Sometimes, you’d hear the sobbing of an uninfected person talking to themselves, waiting to die. Starvation usually, sometimes thirst or just despair. You could hear uninfected humans preying on each other, desperate. They did things, terrible things to stay alive. All we could do was listen. Subs are based on the coast, and some of us had families that might have made it out. Those people we could hear, the zombies we could hear, they could have been our families for all we knew. Maybe the ones killing. Maybe the ones dying.”
Billy Joe kept still and didn’t say a word as Senior Chief Washington’s angry voice slowly dropped to a whisper.
“But we just listened. We couldn’t help anyone, not till we made contact with Commodore Wolf—Secretary Smith,” Washington continued, sitting up slightly at the memory of those days. “And he and his family were saving people, starting with little boats and working all the way up to the freaking Voyage Under the Stars, a thousand-foot-long ocean liner. Hell, Smith’s daughter personally cleared a sailboat belonging to the wife of the chief of the boat from the missile boat Florida, and wasn’t that a fucking shot in the arm? It was the Rebellion blowing up the Death Star, it was the charge of the Light fucking Brigade, and Wolf Squadron kept rescuing people and bringing back hope. And when Wolf got us the vaccine, we could finally get off the subs. But we needed, still need, people. Lots more than we have.”
Washington slowly reached for his coffee cup, but didn’t raise it. He kept talking and his eyes, shadowed by the overhead lights, remained fixed on the far wall.
“So, even if you did terrible things in order to survive inside your compartment, including killing zombies—who are humans by the way and don’t you fucking forget it—well, you get a pass.” Billy Joe listened carefully as Washington continued. “The President, get that sonny, the President of the United States, has decided that even possible criminals get a chance to rejoin society. So except in extreme cases like your old boss, you get a fresh start, dated to the day you rejoined the human race, see?”
“Yes, Senior.”
“Well, we aren’t in the compartment anymore.” Washington was still whispering, but he blinked and slowly turned his head to look at Billy Joe. The senior chief’s deep-set brown eyes were lined, haunted . . . and fierce. His dark face could have been carved from old mahogany. “Everyone’s responsible for all their actions. Everyone gets to contribute if they can. Even a zombie. Even a Gleaner piece of trash who might be an electronics expert. Even a broke-dick nuke sailor without a boat.”
Washington visibly shook himself and stared into his cup, suddenly silent.
“Well, I’m glad for Julio, Senior,” Billy Joe said carefully, trying to defuse the tense atmosphere by returning to the earlier conversation. “His family was from the Cafetal, and he knew she was infected and ran away. But I think he was as surprised as anyone else that she was still alive. With a little more luck, she’ll be one of good ones and can have some kind of life again.”
“Maybe,” Washington replied in a more normal tone of voice, sipping his coffee to see if it was the right temperature. “Goddammit, now it’s cold. Isn’t that always how it is? Coffee’s either too hot or too cold.”
Let’s not dwell on my slip of the tongue. It’s bad enough that I thought about Julio’s sister naked. Now I’m suggesting she’s not human. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Billy Joe took a deep breath and held it before slowly exhaling through his nose.
Time to change the subject.
“I made a little something that will help with that, Senior,” Billy Joe slid a slightly oversized insulated metal mug across the slick surface of the lab table. It stopped right in front of the senior chief. “The scroungers have been bringing in a lot of used cell phones and I’ve been trying to think what else we could make. The lithium-ion batteries have enough juice to run a hefty resistor coil for a couple hours and it’s preset to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just about sipping temperature. I adapted a traveling mug, so it already had the lid and insulation. If you want it hotter, I can tweak it, but I think this is the sweet spot.”
Washington raised his eyebrows.
“Keeps your fresh-roasted, just-brewed, authentic Cuba cafecito hot for hours, Senior,” Billy Joe said, trying to relax after the intimidating monologue the senior had just delivered. The prototype had been easy, but the work to miniaturize it and make the cup look decent had been hard and he was proud to finally show off the result.
“Keeps my coffee hot for real, Destrehan?” Washington asked, surprised. He opened the lid to see if it was filled, and then turned the cup over, examining the construction and weighing it in his hand. “Heavy. Nice, but heavy.”
“It’s the battery pack, needs to be big enough to power the resistors to keep the coffee warm,” Billy Joe answered, feeling the start of a shit-eating grin from spreading across his face. “This one’s only a prototype. With the right parts we could make some more, maybe give some to the big brass. Then sell the rest.”
“What’s this?” Washington asked, pointing at a small aperture. “Charging port?”
“Yep,” Billy Joe said, nodding happily. “Plug into a wall, into a car, into a computer and it recharges in about an hour. I call it a Chispa.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s the Spanish word for spark or ember,” Billy Joe answered. “Julio again.”
“Not bad, Destrehan,” Washington said, starting to carefully pour his coffee into the heated mug. “No bad at all. But for now, these belong to the base. You’re not to ‘sell’ them, copy?”
“Copy, Senior.”
“I got you the fucking spic, and you were supposed to use him to get the fucking coffee!” Knight growled at Billy Joe from close range, necessarily so since he had Billy Joe’s shirt front bunched in one grimy fist. “So how are we going to turn that into money now?”
“Back the fuck off, Knight!” Billy Joe yelled back, sweeping the other man’s hands away and making him stumble. “I’m not in charge and I can’t control everything. The Marines who did the clearance recovered the coffee and now it’s under lock and key.”
“But it’s your boss who has the key, right B.J.?” Smitty observed from his slouch in an ocher-colored easy chair. He had his feet up on a battered coffee table which was covered in old magazines. They’d borrowed some furniture from here and there and turned one of the many empty rooms in the old base hospital into a lounge. They even had a couch long enough to nap on. “Which means you have access to the key too.”
“No, I don’t,” Billy Joe replied, keeping an eye on Knight, who was standing just outside arm’s distance, his fists balled at his sides. Behind Knight, Sylvie watched them both, her smirk clearly visible over the other man’s shoulder. She seemed relaxed, one hip perched on an examination table while she used a looted nail file to smooth her manicure. “I wear the same probationer uniform you do, and I’m watched, just like you are.”
“So what do we do about getting a better gig, like the one you got?” Smitty asked, his tone artificially reasonable. “I went out of my way to get you the Cuban you needed in order to make the coffee thing happen. Now you’re sitting pretty, working indoors while we’re still sweating outside, and under the Marines’ guns, to boot.”
“We all have the same chance to start over,” Billy Joe replied, stepping a little farther away from Knight, whose tattoos seemed darker against still-flushed skin. Billy Joe moved to a chair opposite Smitty. “There aren’t enough people to do all the things that need doing. You could go into electronics, or power systems, or even try out for soldiering. I invented a coffee cup that stays hot—”
“So you think I should keep busting my ass?” Smitty cut him off, eyes slitted. “You brag about your lame Radio Shack project? That’s your answer? You thought you were all that when you were Greene’s pet bomber. Did you tell the new boss everything you did? Does the Navy know how you helped him do all that nasty shit? I bet not.”
“I did what I had to!”
“All the men said that,” Sylvie contributed from the back row. “Boo-hoo, I have to blow up that house full of kids, or Greene will kill me! Oh no, I have to participate in that gang rape, or they won’t respect me! But now you want to start over. Pretty convenient.”
“All of us did shit we didn’t want to,” Billy Joe answered, his voice climbing an octave. “And I sure as shit never raped anyone.”
“Oh?” Sylvie remarked, cuttingly. “All the women in the recreation hall were volunteers, were they?”
“I don’t know!” Billy Joe said, stung by the implications. He found his own weapon and raised his voice to deliver it. “Did you ask them when you visited? Were all your refugee girlfriends actually into other women or were they just tired of starving?”
“Enough,” Smitty ordered flatly, his hand forestalling Sylvie’s charge as she rose angrily from her spot. Smitty confirmed that the door was fully closed and that no one was looking in the little round observation window installed on all the hospital room entrances. “B.J., you have a smart, wiggly brain, I’ll give you that. I don’t know what your plan is, but I expect you to figure out how we all get ahead on this scheme. Keep your mind on the job—and the job is helping all of us get off the working details and into a nice, cushy jobs where we can get made. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Billy Joe replied. “But . . . ”
“I noticed that you’ve gotten pretty buddy-buddy with that spic we got for you,” Knight interrupted. “Him and his pretty retard sister. I know what you’re after. If you can’t get me a better job, maybe you can set me up, eh? I don’t mind seconds.”
“Fuck. You,” Billy Joe said distinctly, turning his head to stare at Knight. He fell his pulse begin to pound, but remained icy calm. “Fuck you twice.”
“You better wake up, dumb-ass!” Knight replied, closing the distance, his armed cocked back. “You better remember where you come from!”
“Shut it, both of you.” Smitty raised his voice just a bit, cutting across Sylvie’s sudden high pitched giggle. “Sit your ass down, Jerry.”
Knight grudgingly moved away again, sitting on a rusty folding chair.
“Sure, a little tail would be nice,” Smitty went on, as soon as he seemed confident that calm had returned. “But no man ever died from not getting any, right Sylvie?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she replied tartly. “I’m not a man. But I am getting tired of this probationer status bullshit.”
“You and me both,” groused Knight, his eyes now as feral as any zombie Billy Joe had seen.
“I’ll have a look around, Smitty,” he said evenly, keeping his eyes just unfocused enough to take in the whole room. “I’ll think about it.”
“Uh-huh,” answered Smitty. “Why don’t you go do that. Now would be good.”
Billy Joe turned and walked out of the room. As the door swung shut, he couldn’t stop himself from one quick glance over his shoulder. The quiet smile on Smitty’s face told him that the ex-Gleaner noticed.
“Wake up!” an insistent voice rang in Billy Joe’s ear. “Wake up, Destrehan. Now!”
“Wazzama?” Billy Joe managed. A bright yellow light flicked on, blinding him. “Wuhssa?”
“You awake?” Washington’s voice penetrated Billy Joe’s fog. “All the way? Bad news, Cabrillo’s dead. One of the betas beat him to death and assaulted his sister.”
“What!” Billy Joe was suddenly and awfully awake. “That’s impossible!”
“The dead guy and the traumatized girl seem to disagree,” Washington said, standing fully upright. The lines on his face were grim. “The react team heard the screams and tazed the beta. Big male. He must have gotten aggressive; maybe thought he was in a dominance fight. Maybe got scared. Security came to me because Cabrillo was one of ours.”
“Betas run, Senior.” As he spoke, Billy Joe had already swung his legs out of bed and was pulling on his boilersuit. “It’s what they do. They never fight if they can run. Where’s Katerina?”
“The corpsmen took her to Urgent Care,” Washington replied, stepping back as Billy Joe stomped his feet into his boots.
“I’ll meet you there, Senior,” Billy said, brusquely passing the man and heading out the door. He had a feeling that if he wanted to be sure, he had to talk to Smitty right then, not wait for morning.
“Wait, where are you going?”
Billy Joe heard him, but didn’t pause. He ran, not to Urgent Care, or the betas’ detention wing. A uniformed Gleaner parolee wouldn’t be allowed into either location, even one that worked for Senior Chief Washington. Instead, Billy Joe ran to the lounge that Smitty and the rest had created. A terrible feeling of responsibility began to fall, but he fought it off.
You don’t know that Smitty or Knight did it. You don’t know. Could be coincidence.
It was only a few minutes’ run, but his heart sank as he saw the electric light leaking from under the door. There wasn’t any practical reason for the other ex-Gleaners to be up at this hour. Billy Joe blew through the swinging door, taking in the scene.
Three faces, variously surprised, angry and scared, gaped in mid-argument. The bright examination lights overhead laid bare their collective guilt.
“Close the door, you fool!” Smitty said, his voice taut with control. “And you two, shut up!”
“What’s going on?” Billy Joe asked, but he knew. He knew the moment he was Knight in an unfamiliar gray coverall. The sense of blame finished cloaking him with guilt, an icy touch that kissed the back of his neck, making his skin ripple. His stomach roiled and when he swallowed, the bitter taste of bile burned on the back of his tongue. “Knight, you sonavabitch, what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Knight answered, his face somehow empty and scared at the same time. A swollen lower lip distorted his sneer. “I just wanted to see, that’s all, just look! She’d been naked for months; she didn’t even care!”
“Such an asshole,” Sylvie said. “Now all of us are going to hang, hang, hang, all because you wanted to see some tits.”
“Both of you shut up, I said.” Smitty stood from where he’d been sitting next to Knight. He faced Billy Joe. “Does anyone know where you are?”
“No, I just heard Julio is dead, killed by a beta . . . ?”
“Good!” Smitty said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Real good. That’s exactly the plan.”
“What fucking plan?” Billy Joe shouted, causing Smitty to rise and close the distance in an eye blink.
“Keep your goddamn voice down or I’ll fix it so you can’t talk above a whisper, college-boy,” Smitty said, breathing heavily as he loomed over Billy Joe. “You understand?”
“I just want to know what happened to Julio,” Billy Joe replied, taking a step back, raising his hands placatingly. “What happened to Katrina?”
Smitty looked at him and then strode two steps back to Knight.
“Tell him.”
“They’re not really human, you know,” Knight offered from his chair. He raised his head, which moved his collar enough to reveal deep parallel scratches gouging the amateur tattoo on his neck. “It shouldn’t even count.”
SLAP.
Knight spilled onto the floor, stunned.
“I said to tell him, not make excuses,” Smitty ordered, keeping his hand raised for another strike. “Now get your ass in that chair and repeat what you told us.”
Billy watched the erstwhile ex-Gleaner clamber back into his seat, holding one hand to the palm print that reddened his cheek. The miserable man outlined a simple tale. After his shift he’d taken a few drinks. He saw Julio and his sister walking outside and he followed them back to the rooms reserved for the betas. After waiting for the man to leave, he approached the woman with some candy he’d filched. She’d not objected when he’d begun to remove her clothes, but the brother had returned. The fight was short. The erstwhile cell-phone repairman had been no match for an angry and scared ex-con. Knight had struck Cabrillo’s throat, fracturing his windpipe and suffocating him. Panicked, Knight had opened the doors to the other betas’ rooms and fled.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he pleaded, finishing his account. “And I never meant to rape her, I swear. I just wanted to look.”
During the account, Billy Joe experienced an odd shift in his perception. It was as though his vision narrowed gradually, focusing ever more closely on Knight until he was looking through a narrow straw, only able to see Knight’s face and the dirty hands he was nervously twisting in his lap.
“You pig,” Billy Joe heard himself say, almost conversationally. “You piece of shit. I hope they do hang you. I’ll pull on your fucking legs when—”
Billy Joe didn’t finish. Instead, a sharp pain bloomed in his jaw and he too was knocked to the floor. He blearily shook his head and when his eyes focused, he was staring at the khaki pant legs of Smitty’s boilersuit. Partially stunned, he scrabbled backwards until his back met the wall, and Smitty addressed him.
“Why am I the only one doing the thinking, B.J.?” the burly man said, squatting in front of Billy Joe. He continued in a low, menacing tone. “That’s supposed to be your job. No one wanted to hurt anyone, but accidents happen. Damn shame about the Cuban, but nothing we can do now. No point in fighting about it or confessing. Won’t bring him back. It would be a black mark against all of us, including you. Nod if you understand.”
Billy Joe stretched his jaw and nodded. He could taste a little blood in his mouth.
“What happened is that you didn’t see anything and you didn’t hear anything,” Smith explained, his voice gravelly with the promise of violence. “If anyone asks, Knight’s trying to be righteous, same as you. He’s never said a thing about women or betas. All of us are just trying to be better citizens, grateful for a second chance. Nod if you understand.”
Billy Joe ducked his head a second time. He’d always been a technical guy, leaving the hands-on stuff to Gleaner rank-and-file. But even dazed, the anger he’d felt towards Knight still roiled his stomach.
I’ll say whatever they want and leave. Then I’ll report these assholes.
“And if you think that you can run away, report what you think you know, and walk away afterwards . . . ” Smitty stood as Knight and Sylvie flanked him. All three looked down at their fellow probationer, disdain plain in their eyes. “ . . . remember this: even if the military thinks we’re all the same, the days of the Wild West are over. Every crisis has a cycle, and it’s come around again. Now they need things like proof and reasonable doubt. Maybe you don’t care ’bout that. Did you fall for that ‘light a candle against the darkness’ bullshit video? I hope not. Even if you tried to talk, it would be three of us and one of you. It should be all of us against everyone else, including the system. The courts and ‘justice’ are back. There’s the suckers who believe that crap and there’s those that understand and work outside the system. That’s us. As long as you remember that, you get to benefit with us, same as us. Nod. If. You. Understand.”
Billy Joe nodded, even as Smitty kept talking. But I’ll still tell, you shitheel.
“All right then. You and I had a fight over a card game, Jerry. Sylvie walked in and broke it up, which is how you got those scratches, B.J., and talked to you the next morning about calming down, maybe playing cards less often. Simple story, no need to be fancy. Now, everyone go to bed. Tomorrow’s a new day and everyone, including B.J., is going to be a team player.”
“There’s nothing I can do right now, son,” Senior Chief Washington said, holding his hands palm outwards. Billy Joe thought the gesture was pretty close to the gesture for surrender. “You gave a deposition on what you heard. I corroborated with what I knew and what I think. I also fought like hell to talk about your contribution.”
“They’re walking?” Billy Joe said disbelievingly. “I wrecked my reputation, destroyed every relationship I have with any probationer and then waited for two weeks just for this? Julio is dead and his sister is curled up in a cell, alternating between catatonic fear and being batshit crazy whenever she sees a man! And the person responsible walks?”
“He doesn’t get to walk,” Washington rebutted. “Knight’s going to be watched every day. All three of them, for that matter.”
“So am I,” Billy Joe replied dejectedly. He plucked at the mustard-colored fabric of the boilersuit. “So is every person that wears one of these. Some of them are really trying. I was really trying.”
“I know you are,” Washington replied doggedly. Billy Joe watched his mentor’s face. Washington had a slightly hangdog look and the reason wasn’t long in coming. “But I’ve got more bad news. You can’t doss down here anymore. The investigation turned up that the probationers were sleeping all over the place and the base C.O. is cracking down. You have to go back to the dorm.”
“What?” Billy Joe almost yelled. “I can’t go there; they all hate me! I didn’t do anything wrong—I did everything right!”
“I know,” the Senior Chief said regretfully, and turned his office chair to one side, looking out the window. A couple of larger Wolf Squadron yachts were entering the bay, likely to refuel from the fuel coaster that one of the submarines had towed in. The sparkling blue water was at odds with the dark emotions in this compartment. “And I’m sorry. It’s exactly what I said when the executive officer told me that the investigation had closed. But there was no physical evidence. The advocate general took statements from everyone and in the end it came down to a classic ‘he said, they said’ case. Since I didn’t witness anything, my opinions were taken as just that. I tried to explain that you were anything but a regular probationer, but in the end that’s all they could see. And all the probationers are going to be watched more closely for a while. But not forever.”
Both men sat for a while, alone with their thoughts. Billy Joe continued to rethink his decisions at every step, much as he’d done daily since he’d tried to turn Knight in.
Which step could I have taken to keep Julio alive? What if Smitty is right? The cycle repeats and we’re stuck in it.
“But not forever,” Billy Joe murmured. “I’m an idiot.”
“What’s that?” Washington asked, tapping his fingers on his desk. “Who’s an idiot?”
“I’m the idiot,” Billy Joe replied, more loudly this time. “Smitty was right. It all went exactly as he said it would. The old system is back. It’s easy to manipulate. Either you manipulate it or it manipulates you and you end up on the bottom.”
“That’s pretty dark, Destrehan.”
“I’m sorry, Senior,” Billy Joe said, apologizing politely. He had work to do and he couldn’t do it here. He decided to imitate the military people he saw all over the place and be formally polite. “You’re right, of course. I better get my stuff out of the lab and over to the dorm until this blows over. Permission to get started, Senior?”
“Sure thing, kid,” Washington answered, looking a little puzzled at the sudden shift in Billy Joe’s tone. “See you later.”
Billy Joe’s hands were full, so he used his elbow to swing the annex door open.
“Look who came crawling back!” Knight smugly crowed as the door squeaked shut. Feet up and arms crossed behind his head, the man gave off an air of irritating self-assurance. “I guess you want to celebrate with the winners.”
Sylvie looked up from a small mirror, her dark eyes flashing with anger and contempt, before returning to admire the earrings she was holding up to the side of her head. That brief glimpse told Billy Joe where things stood between him and the most reasonable of his group. He moved to the table to set down his box.
“Come to your senses, boyo?” Smitty’s voice boomed from behind the couch, and a moment later the man sat up, twisting around to face the door. “The little inquiry went just the way I expected. We’re not trusted, but we’re not in jail either. I just love the phrase ‘reasonable doubt,’ don’t you?”
“I was scared, Smitty,” Billy Joe said. It was true, because he was scared and he remained scared. The fear threatened a stutter badly enough that he had to think about enunciating each word. It was a tense coiled spring, poised to unleash something awful. Billy Joe knew that all the ex-Gleaner probationers were going to be labeled as untrustworthy, possible rapists and murderers. He knew that these three would make sure that none of the other probationers ever trusted him. Worse, he wondered if Washington could afford to still work with him, might even disown him. “I don’t have your experience.”
“You tried to drop the dime on Jerry, here,” Smitty replied, swinging his legs to the ground and standing up. “That means you tried to rat all of us out.”
“No!” Billy Joe answered, desperate. “I liked Cabrillo. We worked together. I understand it was an accident, but I was scared we’d get found out. I didn’t want to lose what I had. Everything’s been dark for so long and Cabrillo was the first friend I’d made . . . ”
“Fucking whiner,” Sylvie said, pushing a backing onto the little glittering silver skull and crossbones earring. “And now what, you want to beg forgiveness?”
“Fuck that,” Knight offered. “What was that you said before? Yeah, fuck you twice.”
“We could still try the coffee thing,” Billy Joe said, practically begging. “Look, I made you all your own Chispas so you could try them out.” He set out three insulated mugs, each uniquely colored and labeled with their names. Then he withdrew a thermos of hot coffee and filled each one.
“That actually smells nice, B.J.,” Smitty said, strolling over to the table. He looked over the mugs. He picked up the orange one and tried a sip. “Tastes good, too.”
“The coffee never gets cold, see?” Billy Joe explained eagerly. “There’s a charging port so you can run it on your desk, or recharge it if you take it somewhere. Coffee is the first consumer good that we might be able to produce. Remember how coffee chains were big business? Everyone wants coffee.”
“Gimme that, asshole.” Knight roughly shouldered Billy Joe aside. He selected the sickly green mug and poured his own coffee. Knight plucked a stainless steel flask from his boilersuit pocket and waved it. “Sylvie, you in? I’ve got a little flavoring.”
“Sure,” Sylvie said, uncoiling from her perch. “But I don’t drink with stool pigeons.”
“That’s your cue, college-boy,” Smitty said, with exaggerated kindness. “We’ll think about this. But you shouldn’t expect us to trust you right away. You’re going to have to show us that you understand how the world works. Idealism is out. Practicality is in.”
“Sure, sure thing, Smitty,” Billy Joe said, collecting the box but leaving the coffee makings where they sat. “I appreciate it. Really, I . . . ”
“Yeah, bye-bye asshole,” Knight said, splashing liquor into his mug. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. And check on the retard chick for me, eh?”
“What were you doing with those assholes, Destrehan?” Washington stopped him just a few steps from the door. “I went looking for you but you weren’t at the dorm or the lab. Why did you run off to see these pricks?”
“They did it, Senior,” Billy Joe said, sliding a tablet PC out of the cardboard box and dropping the empty container to the stained linoleum corridor floor. “I can’t prove it, but that prick Knight murdered Julio and let the remaining infected out of their rooms. The others covered it up. Smitty bragged about how the so-called law was impotent and he was right! You know it and I know it. And the system still failed. There won’t be justice for Julio or his sister.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Washington’s eyes widened as he recognized the tablet screen of the duplicate explosives controller light up. Before the older man could move, Billy Joe tapped the “Master Arm” button. The “Detonate” control began to blink a bright blood red. “Where did you get the backup controller? Give that over.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Senior,” Billy Joe answered sadly, taking a half-step back, keeping outside the senior chief’s lunging distance. “Those people are a cancer left over from the old world. We can’t begin again with that kind of sickness waiting to create the next problem. The evil just persists. It’s up to us to work around the system, catch the stuff that gets by.”
“What did you do, boy?” his mentored demanded. “Where are the charges?”
“There’s too many bad people out there, Senior,” Billy Joe answered defiantly, hovering one finger over the pulsing “Detonate” button. “I can’t beat them hand-to-hand. I wasn’t able to persuade them. But I can use the tools I do have. The coffee mugs have a battery to warm the coffee, but each of the ones in that room is also sitting on a microcap, forty grams of C-4 and the same in notched wire. Right now the cancer is drinking coffee, planning how it’s gonna move on from this little victory, and be part of the future. I can’t allow it.”
“You don’t want to do this, son,” Washington said, softening his tone. “There’s no going back from this. It’s the principle of the thing.”
Billy Joe took a deep, shuddering breath. He looked back towards the room. The three ex-Gleaners were holding their mugs together, making a toast.
What if he’s right? Am I screwing this up again?
“You’re right, there’s too many bad men out there, Destrehan,” Washington said gently, extending his hand again. “But at the core of it, we need good people to hold the line. Don’t do it. You’re a good man.”
Billy Joe couldn’t meet Washington’s eyes. He kept looking at the window. Knight was taking a big swallow from his new mug. Billy Joe could see a happy glint in the Gleaner’s eye.
“If I’m a good man, Senior, then why do I want so much to do bad things?”
He mashed the button.