Victor Methos - Pestilence

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We still in LA, though, but we ain’t near no beach.”

Howie looked around. He was surrounded by trees, and a single guardsman sat at a table, with his feet up.

“What is this place?”

“Told you, man, we don’t know nothin’. They ain’t sayin’ shit.”

Howie rose to his feet. He was dizzy and touched his face, feeling the stickiness of dried blood. “My daughter,” he said. “I left my daughter at that place by herself.”

“Take it up with him,” he said, pointing with his chin to the guardsman. “But he ain’t in a talkin’ mood. That one there tried to talk to him, and the soldier damn near shot him. If I were you, I’d keep quiet right now. Everyone’s on edge.”

Howie shook his head. “This is America,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice. “This is fucking America. They can’t do this.”

“Hey, man, you preachin’ to the choir. I lived off the grid in Montana lotta years. Then I come here for work and ain’t here but six months, and now I’m in a cage. But shit, how’d people like you not see this comin’? All them phone records and e-mails the government was collectin’. Our passwords, bank info, what movies and books we liked. What did you think they was gonna use all that for? This is about control, man. That’s the only thing government can do. Control. Ain’t got no other purpose. It’s blind to everything else.”

Howie leaned back against the fence, putting his hands to his head. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but it didn’t help. “There’s gotta be a way out of here. I have to get back to my daughter.”

He shrugged. “Wish I could help, man. But the only door’s got a lock on it, and that muthafucker right there’s got the key. How you think we get it?”

Howie glanced at the guardsman and then back to the man with the tattoos. The chain-link fence was a military brand and the holes were much larger than standard. “Just do what I say, and follow my lead.” He shouted to the guardsman, “Hey, hey, please come here. Hey!”

The guardsman appeared annoyed. He was playing on a cell phone, which he put down, and stood up. Howie saw the outline of the rifle slung over his shoulder. The guardsman came to within a couple of feet of the fence.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I need my heart medication. I have heart disease, and if I don’t get my glycerin, I’ll have a heart attack.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Wait, don’t leave. Please. Look, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write down my address and the medications I need. Maybe you could give it to someone to get for me.” The guardsman didn’t move. “I will die in here. How do you think your superiors will feel when my family files a lawsuit against you and the army for refusing to give me my medication? And there’s money at my house. In a drawer in the kitchen. Cash. It’s yours if you get my medication.”

The guard watched him a moment and then walked closer. He took out his phone and opened his text messages. “I’ll send a text to someone that can maybe go pick it up. Where do you-”

Howie reached through the fence, tearing up his hand and wrist as it scraped through, and grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him to the fence. The man behind him, without even a hint from Howie, jumped up, took the guardsman’s fingers, and pulled his arm through up to the elbow, gluing him in place. The guardsman went for the pistol in his waistband, and Howie grabbed his wrist.

The barrel was pointed toward Howie’s stomach. He pushed with everything he had until the man with the tattoos bent down and bit into the guardsman’s hand bad enough to draw blood. The guardsman screamed, and Howie ripped the pistol away from him and stuck it into his ribs.

“Where’s the keys?” the man with the tattoos yelled.

“In my pocket. On my shirt. In the fucking shirt.”

The man reached through the fence, into the guard’s shirt, and pulled out the keys. He whistled and tossed them to another man by the door. The other man reached through the gate to the lock and inserted several keys before finding the right one. Then the lock clicked open.

“Kill him,” the man with the tattoos said.

Howie glared at him. “I’m not going to kill him.”

“Let me do it then.”

“No, he’s an American soldier.”

The man laughed. “In case you ain’t noticed, we at war now, man. Gimme the gun.”

Howie twisted the gun so that he could pull the grip in first and then angled it to pull it through.

“Give it to me.”

Howie felt the weight of the gun in his hands. He had never owned or even shot a gun before.

“No, we’re not killing him. He’s just doing his job.”

“Ain’t that the truth. And his job is lockin’ us in cages, man. Gimme the fuckin’ gun.”

“No.”

The man smiled. Before Howie could even blink, the other man struck him in the face with an elbow, making him see sparkling lights, before kicking Howie in the chest, throwing him back into the fence. The man grabbed him and proceeded to bash his fist into his face several times before flinging him to the ground and kicking him so hard in the face that Howie thought he’d shattered his cheekbones. He tasted blood that dribbled out of his mouth and onto his neck.

The man pointed the pistol at the guard, who tried to scream but was cut off by the round that entered his mouth and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed backward, and the man turned and placed the muzzle of the gun against Howie’s temple.

“Please,” Howie slurred through the blood, “Please. I have a daughter.”

The man smiled, tucking the gun away into his waistband. “She ain’t your daughter no more, man. She government property now.”

The men fled the cage, leaving Howie bleeding and in pain on the soft ground, the corpse of the guardsman next to him like a bad dream.

Ian glanced at her as she drove. She had calmed down a little, and he didn’t get the impression she was constantly searching for an escape, although that should have been her only thought. She had seen his face. She couldn’t expect to survive. Then again, for some reason, he kind of liked her.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“My name?”

“Yeah. You asked me my name. What’s your name?”

“Ian.”

“If I looked at your driver license, is that the name I’d see?” she said.

He grinned. “No. It’s not. But it might as well be.”

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“You drive me around, and you drive me around some more. Then I let you go.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He looked out the window at the commercial area they were in. Some of the office buildings bordered on being qualified as skyscrapers. “You see that building there? The tall one with the blue lighting?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop there.”

As the car pulled to a stop in front, he got out first and then waited for her by the hood of the car. She paused a moment in front of the open door. This is it, he thought. She was going to make a run for it. He slipped his hand into his suit coat. Her eyes went wide, then she shut the door and came to him.

He took her arm and led her into the building. The glass building was fifteen stories and had a nice atrium with a security guard. Gardenias and petunias in fanciful vases sat on glass and wood tables. He smiled at the security guard and squeezed Katherine’s arm, prompting her to smile and say hello. Smart girl, he thought.

He pushed the button on the elevator, and the security guard rose from his table and started over.

“Oh,” she said, “My uncle’s working late. We’re trying to convince him to come eat with us.”