Setting Things Right, Part 5: a bit about me - the colonel's strategy - our next big contract - the refinery (346 hits)
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Submitted by X54 (View user info) at 2008-10-21 14:48:46 EDT
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/118878 I meet Colonel Barnes - a standoff - their mission and mine
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119080 I depart with the convoy - a burned down house - waiting for Mr. Robbins - reflections on surviving the pandemic
Part 3: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119174 meet the Robbins family - kids in the attic - a hero - an impromptu cesarean - thin ice
Part 4: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119299 Grumpy collects - escape attempt - disinfecting the house - the colonel's pet
Part 5:
I rode in the Suburban's passenger seat. Grumpy drove. Colonel Barnes sat in back. "Tell me about yourself," he said.
This had me stumped. I wasn't sure what he wanted to hear. The most natural response, the one most people would have given had they been asked, included only things that happened since the pandemic.
"I was in the 82nd when the pandemic broke out. Fighting in Pakistan. We were one of the last units to pull out." The supply chain collapsed, leaving thousands of troops stranded along the Paki-Afghan border. The virus hadn't yet made it to that corner of the world. Maybe it never did. "I got infected at Ft. Bragg." The pandemic was peaking by then. Corpses filled the hospitals. Doctors, desperate to try anything, killed thousands testing potential cures or vaccines. They had no shortage of human guinea pigs. Finally they found something that worked just one tenth of one percent of the time. They kept searching, but they never did find anything better. It put you into a coma. If you survived that, you were immune.
By the time I came out of my coma, they'd discovered the problems with earlier survivors. "After I recovered, they sent me to Leavenworth as a precaution." At that point, all survivors were being sent to the federal penitentiary there. There were about a dozen of us when I first arrived. That number climbed to a hundred over the next few months. They volunteered us for quarantine duty, which was extremely hazardous for anyone not immune. It mostly consisted of mass cremations. I lost track of all the cities we visited. Everywhere we went, we left columns of stinking smoke.
"I was on quarantine duty in San Diego when there was some kind of transportation or commo snafu. About a dozen of us were stranded with no supplies. The guards finally told us they had to let us go because they couldn't feed us." Actually, we murdered them. "I hitchhiked up to L.A. and eventually found Mr. Umeda's house. Then you showed up."
"Where did you get your shotgun?" said the colonel.
"A guard gave it to me."
"He gave it to you?"
I paused.
"Don't lie to me."
"No Sir."
"You don't have to lie to me. I'm not going to judge you. I don't care about that. Do you understand?"
"Yes Sir."
"I saw what you did to that woman. The Robbins woman. Why did you do that?"
I twisted around in my seat. The colonel looked feverish in the dim glow of the reading lamp, eyes wide and skin glistening. "Turn around!" he said, switching off the light.
I caught Grumpy smirking as I turned away.
"Why did you do that to the Robbins woman?"
"I don't know, Sir."
"Don't lie to me! Do you remember what I said?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"That I don't have to lie because you don't care about judging me."
"Yes. Now tell me why you did that to the Robbins woman."
"It was a bet."
"A bet?"
"About what sex her baby would be."
"That's not what I mean."
We drove in silence for while, until we reached the freeway. "Grumpy," said the colonel. "Why did you shoot those children?"
Grumpy laughed. "I didn't just shoot them. I scared the shit out of them first. Gave them the fright of their little lives."
"How?" The colonel sounded breathless.
"I chased them around with the baby's head. You should have seen them."
The colonel smacked my shoulder. "Why did you slice that woman?"
"Because," I said. "I wanted to see the baby born and I wanted to see her expression."
"Yes. Go on!"
"So I cut her open."
"And? What was her expression?"
"I don't know. I forgot to look. I got distracted by the baby and the umbilical cord."
The colonel laughed. Grumpy looked sideways at me. I had a mild epiphany and continued, relating how Junior hadn't seemed quite right so I chopped off his head. Then I went back to when Grumpy shot Dennis and I knocked out Eric Robbins and made his wife faint with my shotgun. I embellished the details and exaggerated the gore. The colonel sat in rapt silence behind me. Suddenly I stopped. "Why do you want to know all this? If you don't care about judging me for any of it?"
He lit a cigarette and cracked the window. Cool air rushed in, filling the cabin with the smell of tobacco smoke, which I hate. The Suburban rolled down the empty freeway through a headlight tunnel. "Tell me about the Umedas."
"They were already dead when I got there."
He rubbed his face with his hand and flicked his cigarette out the window in an exaggerated display of exasperation.
"Where are we going?" I said.
Grumpy answered. "To the refinery in Oxnard. That's where we're staying for now."
"Guard duty?"
"Basically. We also do contract work."
"For who?"
"Whoever pays us."
"You won't be pulling any guard duty," said the colonel. "I have plenty of contract work for you."
"How do I get paid?"
"Room and board. That's all anyone's getting now."
"Including you?"
"We're getting weapons and ammunition and equipment. We're reinvesting all our proceeds back into the organization. Building it up. Making it stronger."
"Who's in charge?"
"General Wade. He's nominally in charge of all National Guard and paramilitary units in California. As long as we give him his cut, we can pretty much do whatever we want. I have his tacit approval on my survivor project."
"What's your survivor project?"
"Sacramento has a bounty out on survivors now. You didn't know that, did you. We're supposed to be hunting you all down and turning you in, dead or alive. But I persuaded General Wade you might be useful for certain contracts."
"I don't want to do any more quarantine duty."
"You'll be doing quarantine duty, all right. But not like before. The areas we're going into aren't really infected. And the people aren't dead. Not yet."
"Who are they? More lawyers?"
"Illegal aliens. There's a shitload of them around here. Someone with resources wants them gone."
I balanced the pro of mass murder with the con of cremation duty. Dragging all those stinking corpses to the doors or windows and flinging them down into the street so the loaders could get to them. The constant smell of burning bodies and death. "How many?" My voice must have betrayed my ambivalence.
"Not that many. Not like during the pandemic."
"What if I want to use my machete?"
"No. No machetes. It slows things down too much. You'll have an MP5SD, just like Grumpy."
I looked at Grumpy. "It should be fun," he said.
"It's a lot of work," I said. "Dragging all those bodies out. Believe me."
"You won't have to drag them anywhere," said the colonel. "You can march them to the trenches."
"And then just shoot them and push them in? What's the fun of that?"
"You're not doing it for fun. You're doing it because we have a contract."
It sounded pointlessly circular: doing something you didn't enjoy and investing the proceeds back into the business so you could do even more of it in the future. On the other hand, I didn't care for that bit about the bounty on survivors. This seemed like a safe place to be until I sorted out what was what.
We reached the refinery near dawn. A spooky collection of giant storage tanks loomed out of pea soup fog. The smell of oil hung thick and heavy in the clammy air. Pipes of all sizes ran everywhere over the dirt ground. The surrounding area had been agricultural or vacant; brown weeds now covered the adjacent fields. Our billets were located inside a couple of warehouses, corrugated metal buildings with high, open ceilings. Triple strand concertina wire surrounded them and the motor pool around back. An old chain link fence ran around the perimeter of the refinery itself. Newer, higher fencing topped with barbed wire surrounded the most critical parts of the refinery. Colonel Barnes gave me a quick rundown as we approached the guard shack.
"This place used to be owned by Tenby Corporation. I don't know who runs it now, but they contract with General Wade for security. The crude comes down from the Central Valley in trucks. Our mission includes providing convoy support for the trucks as well as security for one of the oil fields near Coalinga. We have a detachment stationed there. This is one of the smallest refineries in California, which is good because it's easier and more efficient to run with the limited quantities of oil available. They auction the final product off for goods or services in trade."
I wasn't really paying attention. I was thinking about Mrs. Robbins's baby slipping through the gaping hole in her womb and a line of people standing at the edge of a trench and the suppressor on my new MP5 too hot to touch.
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