Brendan DuBois - Dead of Night

‘You bastard,’ I said.

‘Nope, my birth certificate’s all in order,’ he said. ‘Can you say the same?’

I think I would have taken another few steps forward and started strangling him had it not been for the sharp-eyed militia guards who were keeping watch on me, and the equally sharp-eyed Polish troops keeping watch on the guards.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I can say the same. You son of a bitch, you were a plant, weren’t you? A plant to get information from me.’

Gary’s eyes were bright and shiny. ‘Very good, Samuel. Boy, you must be a smart one to have figured that out right now, with me standing right in front of you. Tell me, you still make a list each year for Santa Claus? You didn’t have a clue, did you, young fella, all those hours in the school bus. I had to put up with a cold mattress and bad food, all to see if I could plumb that eager young idealistic—and eventually empty—mind. The things I do for my people as head of intelligence.’

My fists were clenched. ‘Like killing their neighbors?’

‘Like protecting them, that’s what, when the feds and the state couldn’t do a damn thing when the hordes started streaming in,’ Gary said, looking around him. ‘Our real neighbors were protected. We took care of the trespassers. Nobody else could do it so we stepped up to the plate and got the job done. Boy, look at all the angry faces out there. You’d think they lived here or something.’

‘What do you mean?’

He smirked, and even with the armed men keeping an eye on us I wanted to punch out his lights so bad I could taste it. Gary said, ‘Look at all of them, parading around. Foreigners. Like they belong here. Get a good look, Samuel, ‘cause by this time tomorrow this group will be heading out.’

‘Some of those people are Americans, working for the UN,’ I said.

‘Then they’re not true Americans, are they?’

‘Jesus, you jerk, what the hell was that all about, back at the school bus?’ I demanded, stepping closer to him, even getting a whiff of cologne from him.

‘What do you think?’ he shot back. ‘Intelligence gathering, that’s what.’

‘From me?’

‘Sure,’ Gary said. ‘What do you think, anybody’s going to believe your story, that you were just a lost, innocent UN worker, wandering around the landscape? Do you?’

‘That was the truth, and you know it.’

Another laugh, another urge from me to punch him out. ‘Sure you were, and I was convinced you were something else. You did pretty good with Colonel Saunders and his boys, but let me tell you, if you’d stayed there one more day, then it would have gotten real rough. Think you would have been able to maintain a cover story if they brought out the knives and broken glass?’

I remembered what Peter had done, looking for me, and I said, ‘I imagine Colonel Saunders and his boys had more important things to worry about. Like a NATO air strike coming down their throats.’

Gary laughed. ‘So your little cover story continues, eh? Not half-bad. Here’s a newsflash for you, supposed ex-reporter Samuel. Colonel Saunders and his crew are fine, just fine.’

Something acidy burned at the back of my throat. Peter. Had he been lying all along? Even now? But Gary went on and said, ‘After you bailed out the whole camp was moved. We knew you were there to gather intelligence. Maybe you even had a GPS device up your ass, for all we knew. So after you broke out, Samuel, the base camp did the same, before your brave pilots came in at ten thousand feet to kill men and women and children armed with rifles. Still, I have to admire you for keeping to your cover story for so long.’

‘And everything about you was a cover story too, right? Schoolteacher with a conscience.’

‘Oh, that part was true,’ Gary said proudly. ‘I was a schoolteacher with a conscience, one of the very few in my school who resisted the brainwashing of the teachers’ unions and all the little special-interest groups who wanted to teach the latest fad. Oh, they were so smug and arrogant, thought they had everything under their thumb. They made jokes about me, you know. About having done better teaching in caves during the Stone Age. Teaching about a woman’s proper place in the home. About America’s proper place in the world. All that old-fashioned stuff. So when Manhattan was bombed and the balloon strikes happened and the power went out and outsiders started stripping our supermarkets and Wal-Marts, guess who stopped laughing? Guess who came to me and others and asked for help? So nice to be a liberal softy when you’ve got three squares a day. But when you and your kids get hungry you want help, even if you do drive a Volvo. You want your neighbors with guns to do something. So we did. Where’s the crime in that?’

‘And the cover story about your fiancée? That was true?’

Gary’s face was no longer so merry. ‘No, part of that was true,’ he said. ‘But her name wasn’t Carol Ramirez. Like I’d go out with a spic. Nope, her name was Carol Rockford. A beautiful white Christian woman. She was in a convoy all right, just like I said. She was helping take care of some foster children from some of our county agencies. Not from away. They were our own. Like we’d try to help those refugees, just like those people streaming out after Katrina. Some misguided idiots were trying to save a bunch of thieves and druggies and welfare cheats then. Why? We looked after our own, that’s what we did, and we took care of them.’

‘Took care of them, or escorted them to be dumped at the Canadian border?’

It was like he didn’t hear me. ‘So there she was, traveling at night. Some militia units—not with our county, that’s for sure—were escorting them, to make sure they could go through any state-police roadblocks without problem, when the bombing started. So that part is true.’

‘I’m not sure if I can believe you about anything, Gary,’ I said. ‘I don’t even think you butchers are ready for an armistice.’

The woman militia member called over to him, and he waved a hand back in acknowledgement. ‘Who says anything about us being ready? The Europeans and such, they’re starting to scream about the cost in money, the cost in seeing coffins come home with UN flags draped across them. They’re looking for any excuse to declare victory and go home. Because they know we’d never give up, not ever. Here’s a little secret that you can take back to your masters in Geneva or wherever.’

I moved to step back but Gary was quicker, grabbing my upper arm, leaning forward to whisper harshly in my ear. ‘The secret is, it’s nobody business what we do behind our borders. Understand? Killing niggers or fags or liberals or city people, it’s our business, and always will be. No matter the body count. No matter what you folks think or do. No matter how long and hard you look for your mysterious Site A.’

I broke free of his grasp. ‘Asshole.’

‘Sorry, Samuel,’ he said. ‘Time for us to declare victory. Site A? Here’s another secret, young one. I was there, right from the beginning.’

I said not a word.

Gary’s voice got low, dreamy. ‘It was a wonderful thing -a beautiful thing. All those people, trucked in, scared, angry, not knowing what was going on. So many loud voices, so many opinions, so many voices demanding that we let them go, threatening to sue us, threatening to call whatever cops might still be out there. What a laugh… and the shooting started, and we shot them, and we shot them, we lined them up and we shot them…and after a while if was just so quiet and clean… It was wonderful, Samuel, the most wonderful thing I have ever seen…’

I tried to keep my voice even. ‘You’re so fucking proud of yourself, why don’t you tell me where it is?’