Chapter 7
It was a crisp fifty-eight degrees in New York City. Thin clouds hung like kites in the blue sky and the sun snuck through the rows of skyscrapers and bathed the streets in its golden warmth.
Raimey couldn’t enjoy it. He was surrounded by chaos. The Great Migration—when suburban families migrated back to the cities after the oil ran out—had taken place over the last ten years and it had caused the already massive infrastructure of these cities to bloat like a tumor.
2020 population of New York City: 10,220,454. 2058: 55,873,200. 2020 footprint of New York City: three hundred and five square miles. 2058: six hundred square miles. Twice as large, five times the population. New York had become a sweatshop.
And they had come to complain. Five million frustrated souls surrounded the UN building. Even from his elevated position, Raimey could not see street. Down every avenue he scanned, the earth curved before the end of the protestors.
They carried empty gas canisters and signs: “Where’s the oil?” “The Coalition IS Terrorism.” “Cynthia should run it.”
Raimey didn’t know why they were here. The oil decline had been public for decades; did they choose not to see? They were shuttled into huge cities. They were given tax breaks for their useless cars.
When he and the team got to New York the night before, he had thought it would be a simple job. Babysit the perimeter. Watch the President. Look for anything suspicious. He was wrong.
Fifty-eight degrees was the temperature but it wasn’t the heat. The energy off the crowd made Raimey sweat. The noises coming from it didn’t sound human, it sounded like a mass of howling dogs.
“This is fucked up,” Janis said in Raimey’s earpiece. His team was placed throughout the building. Over the comm a few soldiers echoed the sentiment.
“No time for commentary, guys. Stay focused. The package is arriving in five minutes,” Raimey replied. The Chinese President and the EU Prime Minister had already entered the building.
He scanned the crowd. How could he possibly assess a threat? A platoon of soldiers in full camouflage could be ten people deep and he wouldn’t be able to spot them.
He heard the thump-thump of the President’s air convoy. Three Apache helicopters descended amongst the skyscrapers and formed an air perimeter over the crowd. The crowd’s hair blew back and their signs folded from the helicopter’s thrust. The sight of such powerful weapons turned their wrought panic into momentary awe.
Raimey watched the President’s helicopter hover down in between the Apaches.
“Secure the President,” Raimey said to his forward team that included Janis. Six of his guys were at the helipad, support to the Secret Service.
“The Package is out and secure. We are heading toward the entrance,” Janis said. Normally full of humor, he now sounded like a Speak-and-Spell. This was business.
Raimey turned back to the crowd. Their awe was over. The millions of voices built onto each other into a deafening crescendo.
“The Package is in the building. We’re peeling off,” Janis said.
“Okay. Let’s get inside. Ramirez and Tate—get down to the parking garage and work your way up.”
“That’s been cleared, sir,” Ramirez replied.
“By us?” Raimey responded.
“No sir, by the security detail.”
The UN building was under lockdown for the last three weeks. It had been swept by dogs and specialists for any potential threat. Since then nothing had gone in or out. Raimey nearly acquiesced.
“Check it out anyway,” Raimey said. “There’s too much at risk to get sloppy.”
“Yes, sir.”
= = =
Xan was not at the UN summit. He wasn’t even in New York. He was on the western fringe of Chicago on an unapproved tour of one of MindCorp’s largest Data Nodes.
Harold Renki walked behind him. Sixty years old and very tall—almost seven feet—he peered down at people like an ostrich. Harold was one of the original scientists that had worked on the Mindlink prototype. He had witnessed the now legendary beginning with Tom and Jerry, the apes. One of his patents helped make it happen.
A brilliant computer programmer, he specialized in software that dealt with efficient multi-threading: the act of a multi-processor computer prioritizing and parceling data to each individual CPU for maximum efficiency.
Each MindCorp server had over two thousand 1-terahertz cores. A Colossal Node, as they called the big ones, had over one thousand servers attached to the Data Core—the big blue “fuse.”
A bloated version of his patent made it possible for all this data to come through the Data Core reliably, efficiently, and—most importantly—with traceability.
The tour had gone longer than Harold had expected. For his information, he would get ten billion dollars—no small sum—but he thought it was for consulting and sending schematics, not chaperoning. When he got the call that Xan was coming over, his heart had skipped a beat. Suddenly what he was doing felt illegal, a cheat against his benefactors. Harold had excused the conscious staff from the Data Node so that they could watch the UN summit. Xan and he had walked through the beds of Sleepers and none of them even fluttered an eyelid.
“What is this?” Xan asked. They were now beneath the Data Core, a place that few people ever got to see. Above them, the electrical aqua blue stormed and crashed in its huge glass tube. It felt like they were staring up at an aquarium caught in a hurricane.
One hundred feet beneath the catwalk were the servers. Heavy air—at negative 50 degrees Celsius—constantly sprayed onto them and while the heavy molecule fought condensation, a light fog hung over the field of processors like a haunted graveyard. It felt ominous, dark and powerful. A hum filled all frequencies, but aside from the Data Core’s constant blue dance, Xan saw no moving parts.
“Those are the servers, memory, the man behind the curtain, so to speak,” Harold said. “There are two million processors here but this is a Colossal. What you want to do is a heck of a lot easier than this. You’re looking at two, three servers, tops. Six thousand processors total.”
Harold rarely looked down at his work anymore. It was beautiful, in a gothic sort of way.
“And that will get us in?” Xan asked. Xan made Harold uneasy. The little Asian spoke quietly and concisely, but something about him seemed unpredictable like a dog with its tail tucked down.
“Along with what I gave you . . . if you do the treatment to the hacker.”
“Forced Autism.”
Harold winced. He didn’t like the term. He had been there during the first experiments when they didn’t know the consequences and people willfully volunteered. The results were so inhumane that even the military balked. Plans for further tests were scuttled quickly.
“Forced Autism, Forced Savant, whatever you want to call it. With the right candidate, yes, definitely. They overload the system. Most people are using less than one percent of their brain when they’re connected. A Sleeper, like the ones we weaved between to get down here, they use four to five, and they can program real time. A Forced Savant uses 85% of their brain.”
“But they need a guide.”
“Yes, the procedure makes them erratic and distant. Most of them don’t live long either.”
“How long?” Xan asked. His voice made Harold sleepy.
“A month maybe. Except for the initial experiments it really hasn’t been explored because of the ethical considerations.”
Xan’s laugh was sharp and loud, in complete contrast to his voice. Xan peered over the rail to the servers that stuck out like tombstones amidst the rolling fog. “Ethical considerations are always the battle cry against breakthroughs. Birth control, nuclear power, stem cells. All things we take for granted. Now this . . .”
Harold shifted around in his white coat uncomfortably. He really just wanted the money.
Xan continued. “Tens of millions have bled on battlefields. Tens of thousands now, every year, and no one bats an eye. But y
ou try to evolve the human race and peer past the event horizon into God’s will, and the mysteries that make us, and suddenly it’s unethical. The edge of knowledge is always unethical. You can’t merit ethics on a few deaths. It puts the individual above the common good.”
Xan turned to Harold. “We’re up-to-date on your schematics. This last pass and the information you’ve given me today will put us back on schedule.”
“How long?” Harold asked. He really didn’t care. Something nagged at the back of his mind. Maybe it was his conscience.
“Four weeks, maybe less.”
Piggybacking the MindCorp servers, Harold thought. The stealth program he built for China that allowed this access was so discreet that it would take years or lottery luck for MindCorp to notice. It was possible that they would never know.
“Five up front, five on the back, per our arrangement,” Xan said. He put his hand out. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Harold shook it. Xan gripped quickly, and using his left hand, flashed a blade across Harold’s neck. It was so sharp, it took the neck a moment to realize it was time to bleed and then it poured out like the mouth of a river.
Harold passed out after two thoughts: He cut me! And, I just started World War III.
He died ten seconds later. Xan disappeared up the catwalk past the rows of a hundred Sleepers, up the elevator and out the door. No one saw him. The security cameras were off. All conscious staff were excused for the two hours. Per Harold Renki’s demands, fueled by his greed.
= = =
The UN summit was another opportunity for a bunch of politicians without business credentials, doctorates, or scientific backgrounds to pontificate to their electoral bodies.
Raimey let the drone of the slicksters fold into background noise. He was at the top of the conference room. It was shaped like a giant bowl tiered with desks and divided into quadrants by stairs that ran up the sides. At the bottom was the podium where the politicians said their peace. He and Janis were the only two soldiers present. Janis was across the chasm, mirroring Raimey’s movement. Everyone else had nice suits, perfect hair, and glowing white teeth.
“Can you believe these assholes?” Janis said in Raimey’s ear. Raimey looked across the cavernous room to his friend and couldn’t help but smile. They shouldn’t talk like this over the comm.
“Lot of talking,” Raimey replied.
The room was packed. Nearly the entire Coalition was present with the individual European Union countries taking up the bulk of the seating.
The Chinese representatives included President Jintau. He had about a dozen advisors and young, intense men that could only be his security.
The same went for the United States. President Michaels came with half his Cabinet and a security detail. He studied a sheet of talking points and occasionally glared at the Chinese President. Other countries sat in the cheap seats toward the top.
They were ten minutes into the Summit. The head of the UN thanked the first speaker, who had said nothing useful, and announced that President Michaels had something to say. This drew some murmurs, but Raimey had to do everything in his power to hold back a yawn.
= = =
President Joseph Michaels waited for his introduction. He was as disinterested in the other speakers’ point of view as Raimey. His focus was on the Chinese President and the betrayal of trust that had occurred.
No one expected President Michaels to speak. In fact, he was not known for being a great speaker. He was good one-on-one or in small groups. Town hall meetings, schools, any event that was intimate, where he could look a man or woman in the eye and tell them he cared. That was his wheelhouse. In front of a few hundred or more eager faces and his hands got a bit damp and a little shaky. His throat would tighten and his heart would double up like he was on his morning run.
It showed in debates, but the good thing—as his political advisor had pointed out—was that no one voted. The hardcore Republicans did, of course. The hardcore Democrats did, which was annoying. But no one else bothered. The hopeful and downtrodden had given up. They had heard the words without actions too many times. Unlike the politicians that wanted their votes, the masses understood history. They had seen the pattern. Fool me once. Nothing was going to change. There were too many lobbyists, too much big money, and jellyfish for leaders. Instead of a mass uprising, a revolution to take the country back, they acquiesced and anesthetized themselves online. Without the Mindlink, the earth would have been in cinders. It was medication against reality as much as a new way of life.
While three billion people were watching the conference live (and another two billion would watch it online in the next day or so), Joseph’s heart pounded, not because he was nervous, but because he was angry. He was angry with China, he was angry with the EU. He was angry with the Senate and the House and the legacy of politicians before him who had failed. So many crises that could have been avoided, not in hindsight, not after the twenty-four hour news coverage, but clearly, crisply from day one.
For the last fifty years the United States had stumbled and tripped over the tenets that had defined its greatness. The Constitution was warped and manipulated to protect the rich. Corporations were given the same rights as citizens. Super PACS fed politicians with unaccountable outside influence, guaranteeing the decay of the political system’s purpose to protect the people. Financial disasters and no one in Wall Street went to prison. Again and again, a cycle of corruption unaccounted, just entertainment on the tube while another fat fucking American gorged on mac and cheese.
He knew that he was at fault. He felt the guilt itch at his temples and the shame in his soul. But he inherited many of these problems. The previous administration, and the administration before that, and the one before that, left him holding the reins of a horse and buggy already barreling toward the cliff’s edge.
He looked up at the Chinese President and his anger grew when the man he had called a friend smiled and nodded at him.
Why did I want to be President? President Michaels asked himself. He couldn’t remember. He heard his name and he stood up and he gathered the papers that explained in great detail China’s new oil reserve and the steps they have taken to keep it secret. A part of him wondered, why? Why bother outing them? Shouldn’t the U.S. be accountable for its own problems? Is China the reason we are in this bind? We were terminal long before this.
But the politician took over and he stepped up to the podium. He thanked everyone that was in attendance and those at home watching. And then he cleared his throat and tore into China. WarDon had provided him with incredibly accurate data on the date of discovery, the location, production rate, and the expected life of the oil reserve. He listed dates and read detailed transcripts between President Jintau and his advisors on strategies to keep the oil reserve secret. The evidence was irrefutable and the delivery scathing. It was the best performance of President Michael’s career. He pandered to become President. He waffled to get votes. But here he listed facts and conclusions based on the aggregate of those facts. His old friend’s smile faded when his name was called out again and again as the betrayer of the civilized world. It turned out the civilized world was not so civil.
= = =
Ramirez and Tate were already moving when Raimey had given them orders to double check the parking garage. They bounded down the stairs, four steps at a time, hitting the landing and chugging down to the next floor. The UN auditorium was four floors above them. The garage had a total of eight levels, the vast majority of them unoccupied. Parking garages were a relic of another time.
They hit the P8 landing and threw the door open. It flung against the backstop and the sound echoed throughout the parking garage. Only a few LED bulbs lit this level.
“I can’t see shit,” Tate said. “You bring night vision?”
“Nope. But I got a torch.”
Ramirez flicked on his flashlight and scanned the structure. They quickly cleared the area. They picked up the pace to a jog as th
ey searched the walls and ceiling for anything suspicious.
“They cleared it earlier,” Tate said.
“Yep,” Ramirez said. He and Tate knew that didn’t matter to Raimey.
Except for a few rat turds, P8 was clear. They jogged up the ramp. In the empty garage, their footsteps multiplied into a platoon.
“It’s damp down here. More than you’d think,” Ramirez said. He could see water damage in the concrete. This building had a while to go before it was unsafe, but entropy had taken hold.
“Stinks a bit too.”
“Not as bad as your ass,” Ramirez said. Some recessive gene in Tate’s German/Norwegian heritage had created the perfect farting machine. Long hours in closed proximity to him amounted to chemical warfare.
“True.” Tate was a little too proud of his digestive tract. He once ripped one so foul that his bulldog Jasper gave him a disappointed look and left the room.
P7 was clear. Ramirez, Tate, and their ghost platoon went up to P6. More water, same thing as P7. A few places had cones creating a perimeter around especially slippery areas.
“How much leave do we have after this?” Tate inquired.
Ramirez threw his beam around, covering the floors. “Week, I heard,” Ramirez said. “Raimey?”
There was only fuzz from the comm.
“You see something?” Tate asked, instantly focused.
“No, just wondering if we had backup.”
“Not with all this ‘crete.”
“Hmph.”
P6 was clear. P5 was clear. The water was getting heavier. Maybe a pipe had ruptured. A green slime coated the center of the garage floor and water openly dripped down from above.
“R-mer-z, re-or,” their comm sputtered. It was Raimey.
“Shit,” Ramirez spoke slowly. “Nothing so far. Nothing so far.”
Up the ramp to P4 and they saw the source of the slip ‘n’ slide. A center portion of the garage was cordoned off with temporary hunter orange fencing. They could hear water splattering behind it. Signs were posted about an ongoing repair to the water main and the expected finish date.
“Well, there you go,” Ramirez said. P4 was lit much better than the other floors. This floor and up must be used to some extent.
“Clear all around,” Tate said into the comm. To Ramirez—“At least we got a workout.”
Ramirez turned off his flashlight and walked toward the orange perimeter. Tate followed behind.
“We should go fishing if we get a week off,” Tate said.
“I don’t think Trish wants you fishing for a week.” Ramirez pushed the orange flap to the side like a shower curtain. Seven large blue drums were wired together. Ramirez saw the timer as it wound down to zero. He screamed into his comm.
“BOMB!! WE GOT A B—”
They felt no pain. They heard no noise. For Ramirez and Tate, one second they were there and the next they were nothing.
= = =
From the outside, it looked like the UN building jumped. The massive crowd, waving around like cilia, stopped when the building let out a groan and a shockwave rolled down the road, knocking people down and bursting fire hydrants.
All of the windows of the UN building blew out, showering the police force outside with glass, severing the head of one unlucky officer.
Already tense, the crowd turned to madness. The old and the young got trampled under foot as the millions in the street stampeded away from the explosion, their mouths bent open, spit flying, their eyes rolling like cattle on their way to slaughter.
Inside the UN building, President Michaels vanished in fire, metal and cement. The floor shot up like a champagne cork taking two thirds of the world’s leaders with it. The spine of the Chinese President pushed up through the base of his skull when his seat instantly accelerated from zero to six hundred miles per hour.
Raimey heard an indecipherable scream in his comm before the explosion. Bomb, Raimey thought, before the shockwave ripped through his body and turned his world to black.
= = =
Darkness to light, like he’s swimming to the surface from the depths of the sea.
I need air.
Raimey hears screams around him. They’re distant, muffled. He hears sirens and opens his eyes. In front of him, a dead man stares directly at him, his eyes wide in surprise.
He’s missing the top of his head.
Sure enough, Raimey’s right. The top of his head looks like a bowl. No mouth-to-mouth for this guy.
He’s got no body.
Another good observation. The head bowl is just that. A political advisor now better used to serve someone corn flakes.
Raimey breathes. It’s hot and gritty. He coughs and hacks. He tries to raise his hands, but they aren’t working. He feels them, but they won’t go in front of his face. He tries to stand, but his legs aren’t listening either.
Shock, he thinks. I’m in shock.
Screams and moans fill the air. The room is a giant sinkhole. Bodies are strewn about in weird places, pinned at odd angles. Across the chasm, one body hangs upside down, like it’s auditioning to be a chandelier.
Fire and black smoke.
He tries to get up again, but no go. This is the worst he’s gotten it. This is bad.
Tiffany.
Vanessa.
He sees them. They are hovering in the center of what is now a black hole, wavering back and forth from the heat and fire. Tiffany has her hand on Vanessa’s shoulder, comforting her.
I got to stay alive.
Dark spots pepper his eyes.
I got to live.
Like an old friend, the darkness embraces John Raimey and pulls him down.
= = =
Tiffany and Vanessa sat on a bullet train to New York. Tiffany still hadn’t wrapped her head around what had happened. Both she and Vanessa had been Mindlinked into the rally. They had watched the newscast, they had watched the Presidents and Prime Ministers show up. It almost felt like a pageant. At one point, Vanessa squealed when a camera swept past and they saw John looking out over the crowd.
Then the bomb went off. The cameras shuddered from the concussive blast. Some broke off their mounts and dangled over the crowd as the tops of heads stampeded past. Others turned to snow.
Five minutes later, they were out the door heading to the subway station that would get them to the interstate railway. Tiffany threw her and Vanessa’s clothes into a bag. Vanessa wanted to bring a stuffed doll—her woobie—and Tiffany made damn sure it came along. Now they had nine hours of silence.
Please God let him be ok. Please let him be fine.
She saw the building explode. She understood that men who get thrown from a bomb blast, just to dust themselves off for another battle, only existed in movies. That’s not the way it worked.
Her stomach was lead. There was no acid, no tightness, just a pit that squeezed like a hand around her heart.
John’s dead.
She saw a reflection in the window. Vanessa was playing with her doll. They were “walking” down the street talking about what was going on in each store. Tiffany burst into tears.
“Is it ok for me to play?” her daughter asked. Vanessa, so insightful and mature, even at ten.
“Yes, dear. Of course.”
“Dad’s okay.”
“You think?” Tiffany snorted back the tears.
“He’s the strongest dad in the world, isn’t he?”
Tiffany laughed and the tears came back. John never missed a chance to flex for them. He was such a knob. Such a beautiful, goofy, idiot.
“He’s pretty strong.”
“The strongest.” Vanessa paused. “Do you want to play with us?”
Tiffany didn’t. She was tired and she was sad and she was torn apart by her daughter’s innocence. But she played anyway. Vanessa took Tiffany to a land where the doll was a princess and they were on their way to a castle. She watched her daughter play and couldn’t help but see John.
I don’t want to b
e a widow.
Another tear, but the last for now. She watched her daughter create a world around her that didn’t exist. As she gave life to a piece of sewn cloth stuffed with foam. For a child, the world is what they make it. For an adult, the world becomes a lesson in contrition as each dream fails to pan out. John. Her family. Tiffany stared down the barrel of her new reality.
God, I miss him already.
= = =
WarDon was alone in the Oval Office. After the bomb, he had numbly made his way there past the sobbing advisors, screaming secretaries, and frantic Secret Service agents. He could still hear the chaos as the organization pitched and rolled in the aftershock of the bomb. But here it was almost peaceful. Except for his thoughts.
Pink Flamingo.
For over a decade now, WarDon recorded his meetings. For online meetings he used a simple program called “Mirror” that recorded the video and audio from his perspective. For in-person meetings he kept a digital recorder in his pocket that he used software to transcribe later. He had had the recorder in his pocket the day he and Evan were in the Oval Office three months prior.
Pink Flamingo.
He was afraid to say the words aloud. When he had listened back to the tape to make sure he understood exactly what Evan was saying, for a second he thought the memory card had corrupted.
But twice, Evan said ‘Pink’ and he—in a voice without inflection—responded ‘Flamingo.’ And he knew without any doubt, what had happened: the King Sleeper.
He used me.
Right after the bombing, Evan had answered the hard line in the Virginia based bunker.
“What the hell happened?! Is the President okay?” Evan had said. He was a bad actor.
“You brainwashed me,” WarDon replied.
“What are you talking about?”
“Pink Fla-!” WarDon stopped himself.
A chill came over the line.
“You can say it,” Evan said. “Now that you know the trigger, it won’t work. It only can affect you if you’re unaware and susceptible.” His fake shock was gone.
“How could you?” WarDon growled.
“You wouldn’t have gone through with it,” Evan said.
“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I WOULDN’T HAVE!” WarDon roared. “This is done! You are done! You got it? You’re going to be a prime candidate for butt fucking when you go to prison.”
WarDon heard Evan breathing hard on the other line. “Do you know your mom uses the Mindlink? So does your wife, she’s on right now. Your two sons average ten hours a day. Same with their wives and Billy.”
Billy was Donald’s grandson. WarDon’s face bent in horror. “What are you saying?”
“The Core is up, the King Sleeper is online. I’m just letting you know what your family is up to.”
“I’ll stop you,” WarDon said. “This is breach of national security, you have gone too far.”
“How?”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW? I’M THE SECRETARY OF GODDAMN DEFENSE!”
“Who would you tell?” Evan said. His voice was eerily calm. He was unafraid. “You saw what I can do. Who can you reach that I cannot? Who can you persuade that I can’t dissuade when they and their family’s lives are at stake? No one. There’s no one.” He let that sink in. “If you do anything that affects my operation, your family is gone. Do you believe that I can do that?”
The phone was barely on WarDon’s ear. His eyes were glazed in disbelief. “Yes.”
“Do you believe that I WOULD do that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I will kill everything you love to save the world, Donald. Don’t test me.”
Evan hung up. WarDon had stared at the phone, his mind devoid of any recourse. The line went dead and after a few minutes he set it down, missing the cradle, and headed to where he was now.
He had raided the President’s liquor cabinet. Wouldn’t need it now. He pulled out a very old bottle of scotch that the President brought out for special occasions, and filled a tumbler to the top.
A one-finger pour was to calm the nerves. Two fingers, you had a bad day. Three fingers, you got fucked over and you were stewing. Four fingers, you did the fucking and you wanted to forget.
This was his fifth four-finger pour. Five times four. What does twenty fingers mean? WarDon thought to himself. He swirled the glass and watched the caramel-colored viscous drug twirl around like a ball bearing. The ice had thinned, whitening the middle. For some reason it reminded him of a galaxy.
President Michaels is dead. Two thirds of the world’s leaders are dead.
He thought about his wife. He pictured her leaned back in the family room with a Mindlink on her head. She loved the news.
The lights were off and the sun was setting. Most of the room was in shadows. Except Abe. A sliver of light rested on his face. Another rested on Don’s, exposing one red, wet eye and casting the other in complete darkness.
WarDon raised the glass to the painting and then emptied its contents down his throat. He put the glass down gently on a side table that came with Harry S. Truman when he assumed office.
The atomic bomb. Who thought there’d be anything worse?
He went up to good ‘ol’ Abe. He put his left hand to the painting’s lips like he was shushing him, like he was telling the sixteenth President to keep what was about to be said between the two of them.
“Would you have guessed that the sheep was really a wolf? And it . . .” WarDon searched for the right words. “That not only did it want to eat the sheep, it wanted to eat the shepherd too?
“I put him in charge of a top secret online weapon that no one knows about and he runs a bionic division that has now perfected the implant needed to create a giant, invincible army. And if I tell anyone, my family dies.”
And Evan would do it, a scaly voice in the back of WarDon’s head said. He would do it.
“He had the boy’s parents killed without hesitation,” WarDon muttered. WarDon reached for the glass and then remembered it was empty.
Abe didn’t know what to say. He just stared at him. WarDon kept his left hand to Lincoln’s lips. WarDon didn’t need Abe’s insight. Let’s face it, just to get him up to speed on computers would take a year. WarDon saw the checkmate; he knew Evan’s end goal.
“This will end with no nations,” WarDon said quietly. WarDon took the pistol out of his right holster and pressed it to his temple.
When the gunshot went off, the chaos outside the Oval Office stopped and the Secret Service rushed in, guns drawn. They found WarDon slumped against the base of the Lincoln portrait. His knees buckled against the wall when the round went through his brain, but they kept him up like broken stilts. It wasn’t a clean shot. Blood pumped out of his head wound. The right side of his face was a bloody socket. The first Secret Service man got to him and looked at his good eye. That eye rolled toward him and kept going to white.
“Ihm srry,” the General said. “Ihm s srry.”
WarDon fell to the ground dead.
= = =
A milky light swung back and forth across John’s vision.
Where am I?
He heard a faraway voice. And then it was right in his ear. “John Raimey, can you hear me? Can you see me?”
The blurry man turned to people Raimey couldn’t see.
“His pupils are reacting!”
Another man leaned in and it looked like he was holding two scrub brushes.
Defibrillator.
The man with the light pushed the paddle man away.
“He’s up. His heart’s beating.”
Is this real? Raimey asked himself. He didn’t know where he was. His memories were like still photographs piled together in a box. A static photo of a friend. Him, he thinks it’s him, with two women, one his age, the other younger. Bloody anarchy in a building that had been blown apart.
The man above him, the man with the light, pulled his mask aside. Raimey saw worried eyes and a frown.
“John Raimey, can
you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said in his head, but it came out as a painful grunt.
“We are taking you into surgery right now. You have sustained heavy trauma to your limbs. We need to stop the bleeding. Do you understand?”
Raimey’s eyes quivered. He nodded.
“I’m putting an oxygen mask over your face now. It will put you to sleep. Do you understand?”
Raimey nodded again. Anything to stop the pain. His arms and legs were on fire.
“It’s good to have you alive, soldier.” The doctor put the mask over Raimey’s face and immediately he drifted away. The last thing Raimey thought before he went out was that the doctor’s words did not match his expression.
= = =
They got to New York. Tiffany pulled Vanessa off the train and they went to a kiosk with a digital map of the subway system. She searched for the hospital and it printed out the trains she had to take to get there.
More trains. More fucking trains. They got on the first subway.
The subway train rose to the surface momentarily and Tiffany saw a few electric cars whizzing around silently on the street. She wished she had one now. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a lack of energy that killed the electric car. It was the lack of petroleum to make plastics.
The subway cars were choked with people. She and Vanessa squeezed through the passengers, adding to the frustration of going train-to-train to get to the hospital. Everyone smelled like they hadn’t showered. It wasn’t full on body odor, more like fruit that was about to turn, sweet and pungent, perfume wafting over an undercurrent of funk. It made Tiffany want to gag.
The hospital was an angry beehive of scrubbed-in doctors and nurses. Ten hours after the bombing and it still sounded like a trading floor. Outside, ambulances inched forward in gridlock.
Tiffany shielded Vanessa’s eyes, but through the cracks in her fingers, she saw bodies without limbs and cuts in flesh that went well past the bone. They made it to the front desk.
“My husband, John Raimey, is he here?”
The receptionist wore a communication Mindlink—a phone—on her head. The young woman’s eyes were wide and glassy from stress. Tiffany clapped her hands in front of the girl’s face and the girl finally noticed her.
“I’m looking for my husband. This is where they’re bringing the UN victims, right?”
“Yes. If you could just take a seat.” The woman was on autopilot.
“I really need to know if he—” Tiffany said.
“If you’d sit down, we can . . .”
Tiffany slammed her fists on the desk. Vanessa was so startled that she dropped her doll. Doctors and nurses within twenty feet snapped out of their shell-shocked daze.
“I’M NOT SITTING AROUND WHILE HE DIES. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?! WHERE IS HE?! JOHN RAIMEY. HE WAS GUARDING THE PRESIDENT! WHERE IS HE?!”
“Ma’am?” a male voice said to Tiffany’s right. She turned to see a young doctor in blood-covered blue scrubs.
“I just got here from Chicago. I’m looking for—”
“John Raimey. I heard. I stabilized him when he came in. We stopped most of the bleeding. They took him up to surgery.”
Hope bloomed in Tiffany.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes, but he’s badly hurt. But I think he’ll make it.”
The doctor turned to the receptionist. “Get them visitor badges and send them to the fifth floor waiting room.”
The doctor looked at the war zone that was his floor. “I need to get back to this. He should still be in surgery but he’ll be out soon.”
“What’s your name?” Tiffany asked.
“Dr. Marshall,” he said and added a quick smile that contrasted with his exhausted eyes.
Tiffany hugged him, ignoring the meaty scrubs. “Thank you.”
= = =
They sat in the fifth floor waiting room. It had been two hours since Dr. Marshall had directed them to the surgery wing. The receptionist here had been professionally polite but a dearth of information. John was in surgery, that’s what the woman knew and that’s all she knew. The cafeteria was open till 11:00 p.m. and the vending machine was near the bathrooms around the corner.
Tiffany was out of fight. She was so tired she could barely walk. She dragged herself over to where Vanessa sat and collapsed into a chair. Vanessa schooched over into Tiffany’s arms and fell asleep instantly. Tiffany drifted off slowly, a mashup of the present and the past playing in her head.
= = =
Tiffany had met John in the cereal aisle of a Chicago supermarket fifteen years earlier. Tiffany was comparing Honey Nut Cheerios to Mueslix. It was late in the evening and the store was quiet. Not thinking, her cart was in the middle of the aisle while she weighed her decision. Her boyfriend at the time, a fuck buddy really, had bailed on her. So she had nothing to do and she was out of cereal, milk, and ice cream. Awesome Friday night.
“Excuse me, miss,” a deep voice said. She turned to a large black man. He had a scar that curled down the right side of his face in a fishhook, just skirting his eye. Shrapnel from an improvised explosive device, she later learned, but the scar added mystery. He had sharp eyes that were downcast, not quite looking directly at her, like most people do out of fear of rejection. Her cart was blocking his.
“Oh, sorry,” she said and pushed the cart over. He flashed a mouth full of braces and walked by.
“Thank you. Have a good night.” He went to the end of the aisle and turned the corner.
She found her eyes following his projected path as if she had x-ray vision. She shook her head, the goofiness of it all, threw the box with the bee on it into the cart and went the opposite way.
He caught her next with a box of tampons in her hand.
“Miss?” he said. He was behind her. She froze, horrified that she had a box of thirty heavy flow tampons in her hand.
Suddenly he laughed. “I’m sorry, this is so embarrassing,” he said. “I swear I’m not this awkward.”
She put the tampons in the cart and turned to him. His face was alight with humor. She laughed too.
“Please let me try this again. What’s next on your list?” he asked.
“Milk.”
“Which way is it?”
She pointed toward the back of the store.
“Okay, meet you there.” Raimey turned the cart and jogged the opposite way, leaving her to ponder what she had gotten herself into.
She could hear his cart chatter and squeal as he took the long route to the milk. She suddenly felt a youthful joy like the moment before a first kiss. She pushed toward the milk.
She could see that he was hiding out of view in the canned foods aisle. He playfully leaned over to see where she was. Finally, she picked up the milk. She heard his cart squeak toward her.
“Hi. John Raimey. Smooth operator,” he joked. He reached out his hand.
“Clearly. Tiffany Thompson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I don’t want to bother you, but the more I think about it the more I realize that we can’t rely on fate. We have to go after what we want.”
“You gotta just take it!” Tiffany said, snatching the air.
“Exactly!” Raimey smiled—she was flirting. He may not crash and burn. “I don’t live here, I’m actually on leave for a few weeks, and I decided to visit some buddies. If I don’t ask you out, I’ll never see you again and I’ll never get another opportunity to do so.”
“You don’t know me.”
“We have so much to talk about, don’t we?” he said. She laughed. “If you got a boyfriend, just take it as a compliment, but I’d like to at least take you out for coffee.”
“John?”
“You can call me John or Raimey.”
“You’re awkward.”
“I’m told that.”
“A bit forward.”
“It’s a new approach.”
“But all-in-all you did good.”
“B, B+?”
&nbs
p; They laughed. She gave him her number.
His smile lit up the dairy aisle and that memory lit up her mind. They went out for brunch that next day and the date lasted until midnight. They hung out the entire time he was on leave. When he went back, they e-mailed and spoke whenever they could. She thought of him as such a contradiction. He was loving and funny, he was fierce and unmoving. He was hers.
= = =
A surgeon walked into the room. He was covered in red.
“Mrs. Raimey?” the doctor asked. He pulled his mask off and it revealed a tired, pale man in his late fifties. Pale and tired seemed to be going around.
Tiffany pulled herself from Vanessa, who remained asleep, and walked over. She wrapped her arms around herself in defense of the news.
“Yes?”
“Your husband is going to make it,” he said without a smile.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She could tell there was more.
“He has sustained grievous injuries to his limbs. Parts of his body have sustained second and third degree burns. He isn’t paralyzed, his mind is fine from what we can tell, but his recovery is going to be long.”
“What do you mean by “grievous?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
“His limbs are gone. A blast like that, just to be alive is a miracle, but we had to amputate.”
Tiffany was quiet. Her ears beat with her pulse. She could hear a whistle in the doctor’s breathing. “He has no arms or legs?”
“He’ll need you more than he’s ever needed you before, Mrs. Raimey. He’s obviously very strong, but he’ll need your help and support.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” she said through clenched teeth.
The surgeon recommended that Vanessa stay in the waiting area and he took Tiffany to the recovery room. John was swaddled like a newborn baby. His face was bandaged and he had a breathing tube down his throat. There were cuts and burns on his face but they were superficial compared to the trauma the rest of his body experienced. It didn’t look like her husband. It looked like a doctored photograph. His large body and his head, all by themselves.
He was semi-conscious and his breathing was deep and strong.
“His vitals are very good,” the surgeon said.
“John? Honey?” Vanessa said. She put her hand lightly on his chest.
His eyes fluttered open. The fear in them made her burst into tears.
“I’m here. We’re going to get through this. We aren’t going anywhere.”
He blinked slowly to show he got it. One tear rolled down the side of his cheek and wet the pillow. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.