John Ringo - Cally's War

“Sure, Reefer, I’ll tell her you’ll be right back,” she said.

“Awesome. Thanks, man.” He walked off towards the pack of semis that had made up the front of the convoy from Charleston.

The clouds had turned to brilliant splashes of hot pink, vermilion, and orange by the time Reefer got back with his convoy slot number for the morning. His face fell slightly when he saw there was nobody but Cally at the truck.

“Bogus,” he muttered softly under his breath as he opened the driver’s side door and grabbed his backpack. “I guess I made us wait for nothing. Sorry, Marilyn. I didn’t mean to be a dweeb. Uh, let’s go, I guess.”

Cally grabbed her own pack without comment and followed him towards the door of the Urb. The parking lot was cracked and pot-holed in places and clearly needed resurfacing, but the freshly painted lines on the faded asphalt suggested it wasn’t on the schedule anytime soon. Even from a distance, she could see that the walls of the entry level of the Urb were covered with graffiti, some fresh, some of which had flaked and started to peel over time, along with the building’s own paint.

As they approached the door, a couple in faded jeans and artfully ripped black T-shirts came out and started walking towards them. Reefer seemed to recognize them and missed a step, recovering and starting forward easily. As they reached each other, Cally noted the strain in the smile on his face.

“Well, like, cool. More people. Hi, Janet. Janet, this is Marilyn. Marilyn, Janet.” His voice had a slightly desperate edge to it. Cally stepped to his side and put an arm easily around his waist. Least I can do. He gave me a lift and he didn’t do anything obnoxious on the way. Besides, Marilyn’s sensitive.

“Oh, pleased to meet you.” Janet tilted her head back to look up at the skinny boy next to her. “Thad, this is that guy I was telling you about, Reefer. He’s a really good guy. Reefer, this is Thad.”

The kid unwrapped his arm from around her waist to shake Reefer’s hand. “Oh, like, cool. Janet says you’re a pretty rad painter, dude. Good to meet you.”

“Yeah, sure.” He clutched the hand Cally had put around his waist and shot her a grateful look. There was an awkward silence as they looked each other up and down. Thad’s red goatee clashed wildly with the electric blue spikes in his black hair. One shoulder, bared where the sleeves had been ripped out of the shirt, sported a tattooed head of a Posleen God King, crest erect, snarling. His forehead tattoo was a bright, metallic gold lightning bolt. His skin had the clear complexion typical of a generation that viewed acne with the same skepticism their grandparents had held for tales of walking through the snow to school in the mornings.

Cally broke the stalemate by pinching Reefer’s butt soundly and grinning when he jumped. “Hey, babe, we gonna grab some eats, or what?”

“Hey, Marilyn, like, I appreciate the support but you don’t have to do this.” Reefer nuzzled her ear, whispering, as they walked down the residential corridors to Janet’s suite, staying three steps behind his ex-girlfriend and the new guy.

“Shhh,” she placed a finger over his lips, “it’s allright.”

“We can just go up and check into the hostel, separate rooms and all, and if I look like a dweeb, well, you got me through a real bummer of an evening…”

“Shhh.” She stopped him again and nipped his ear whispering, “I’m not offering to do the deed, but I need a place to crash, you need some moral support, just chill out and shut up, okay?” And not having to check in anywhere is good tradecraft.

“Hey, you two, get a room,” Janet called back over her shoulder.

“We are. Yours,” Cally grinned back. “Well, okay, your futon, anyway.”

Beyond the inevitable futon, the first thing Cally noticed about the apartment was that the smoke detector inlet had been covered with duct tape, and filters cobbled together over the air vents. The second thing was the portable air scrubber over in the corner, plugged into the wall. The small den was shrunken even further by the dark holographic posters of various musicians and groups that papered most of the wall area. The exception was the square meter on which the thin vidscreen was hung. Black, red, and silver “fantasy fish” with various motifs programmed into their scale patterns swam back and forth in the screensaver program. Cally spotted an ankh, an elder sign (complete with electric blue flame), a spider’s web, and a star of David in a circle before she shook herself slightly and resumed cataloging the details of the room.

The futon was set up in couch mode against the wall opposite the monitor. Two rooms led off from the den. One was clearly the bathroom, from the bare Galplas floor. The other had to be the bedroom. A small makeshift kitchen sat on and under a desk in the same corner as the air scrubber. Microwave, big bowl, and gallon jug of water on top, small refrigerator underneath. Various convenience foods were jammed in a mishmash in the shelves of the desk. A clutter of dirty laundry, empty food wrappers, empty cans and bottles, and cube cases covered the floor.

“Y’all like movies?” Their hostess strolled in with sublime indifference and brushed the clutter from one of the two fabric and steel lawn chairs onto the floor, picking up a scattered handful of cubes and sorting through them, looking up at Thad. “Whaddya think, luv, Lair of the White Worm , Evil Dead II , or Night of the God King: The Return ?”

“I dunno.” He walked over and opened the fridge and started passing out beer. “Maybe Lair , it’s pretty cool. Hey, Reefer, do you live up to your name, dude?”

The other man glanced at Cally nervously, but he must have decided it was okay, because he shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and pulled his clothes out onto the floor, pulling out a largish compressed pack vacuum-sealed in clear plastic. Janet perked up, pulling a small plastic scale out from under the futon and tossing the pack on it. “A whole kilo? For us? Damn, Reefer, you did score. Good shit?”

“Like, I shit you not, that is the most righteously awesome Jamaican Blue you will ever find coming up the pipeline,” he said.

“Not like I’d ever doubt you, dude, but I’ve heard that before.” The girl eyed the package speculatively. “All right, usual price up front, we try it, and if it really is good shit, and I mean seriously good shit, say, ten percent of the face over in dollars.”

“What, you mean you don’t trust me? Damn, Janet, haven’t I always brought you, like, the most truly fantabulous stuff on the whole route?” He clapped his hand to his chest in an air of injured innocence.

“Yeah, except for that shit cut with oregano,” she said.

“Okay, like, once , four years ago. And the truly heinous bastard who did it doesn’t, like, well, like, he’s gone . I mean, like totally gone, okay? And that was the last time I ever let somebody handle my shit out of my sight. And didn’t I make it right on the next trip? Didn’t I?”

“Well, yeah, Reef, I’ll give you that. Still, you didn’t have to listen to all the bitching I caught in the meantime. All right, twelve percent face over dollars, then.”

“Fifteen, FedCreds,” he countered.

“Reef, I gotta be able to sell at a price the customers can afford. You’re not the only guy on a convoy, you know. Ten in FedCreds is the absolute best I can do — eleven if you’ve got another kilo like it. And if it’s as good as you said,” she allowed.

He smiled slightly and pulled a second bag from the backpack, stacking it on top of the first on the scale. The buyer checked the weight and picked up a bag in each hand, comparing them carefully to make sure they looked the same, before setting them on the floor by the scale, nodding and going back to the bedroom. Cally heard a faint metallic click and the woman came back into the room with a large envelope, counting a mixed pile of dollars and FedCreds in front of her source, then another stack of FedCreds onto a milk crate with a plywood top that obviously served as an end table.