Hugh Howey: Shift

The two arrangements spoke volumes: the uniform from the past and the coins from those currently deployed, bookends on a pair of wars. One that the Senator had fought in as a youth. The other, a war he had battled to prevent as an older and wiser man.

‘—yeah, it sounds crazy, I know, but do you know what rabies does to a dog? I mean, what it really does, the biological—’

Donald leaned in closer to study the decorative coins. The number and slogan on each one represented a deployed group. Or was it a battalion? He couldn’t remember. His sister Charlotte would know. She was over there somewhere, out in the field.

‘Hey, aren’t you even a little nervous about this?’

Donald realised the question had been aimed at him. He turned and faced the talkative congressman. He must’ve been in his mid-thirties, around Donald’s age. In him, Donald could see his own thinning hair, his own beginnings of a gut, that uncomfortable slide to middle age.

‘Am I nervous about zombies?’ Donald laughed. ‘No. Can’t say that I am.’

The congressman stepped up beside Donald, his eyes drifting towards the imposing uniform that stood propped up as if a warrior’s chest remained inside. ‘No,’ the man said. ‘About meeting him .’

The door to the reception area opened, bleeps from the phones on the other side leaking out.

‘Congressman Keene?’

An elderly receptionist stood in the doorway, her white blouse and black skirt highlighting a thin and athletic frame.

‘Senator Thurman will see you now,’ she said.

Donald patted the congressman from Atlanta on the shoulder as he stepped past.

‘Hey, good luck,’ the gentleman stammered after him.

Donald smiled. He fought the temptation to turn and tell the man that he knew the Senator well enough, that he had been bounced on his knee back when he was a child. Only — Donald was too busy hiding his own nerves to bother.

He stepped through the deeply panelled door of rich hardwoods and entered the Senator’s inner sanctum. This wasn’t like passing through a foyer to pick up a man’s daughter for a date. This was different. This was the pressure of meeting as colleagues when Donald still felt like that same young child.

‘Through here,’ the receptionist said. She guided Donald between pairs of wide and busy desks, a dozen phones chirping in short bursts. Young men and women in suits and crisp blouses double-fisted receivers. Their bored expressions suggested that this was a normal workload for a weekday morning.

Donald reached out a hand as he passed one of the desks, brushing the wood with his fingertips. Mahogany. The aides here had desks nicer than his own. And the decor: the plush carpet, the broad and ancient crown cornicing, the antique tile ceiling, the dangling light fixtures that may have been actual crystal.

At the end of the buzzing and bleeping room, a panelled door opened and disgorged Congressman Mick Webb, just finished with his meeting. Mick didn’t notice Donald, was too absorbed by the open folder he held in front of him.

Donald stopped and waited for his colleague and old college friend to approach. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘how did it go?’

Mick looked up and snapped the folder shut. He tucked it under his arm and nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah. It went great.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry if we ran long. The old man couldn’t get enough of me.’

Donald laughed. He believed that. Mick had swept into office with ease. He had the charisma and confidence that went along with being tall and handsome. Donald used to joke that if his friend wasn’t so shit with names, he’d be president someday. ‘No problem,’ Donald said. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I was making new friends.’

Mick grinned. ‘I bet.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ll see you back at the ranch.’

‘Sure thing.’ Mick slapped him on the arm with the folder and headed for the exit. Donald caught the glare from the Senator’s receptionist and hurried over. She waved him through to the dimly lit office and pulled the door shut behind him.

‘Congressman Keene.’

Senator Paul Thurman stood from behind his desk and stretched out a hand. He flashed a familiar smile, one Donald had come to recognise as much from photos and TV as from his childhood. Despite Thurman’s age — he had to be pushing seventy if he wasn’t already there — the Senator was trim and fit. His Oxford shirt hugged a military frame; a thick neck bulged out of his knotted tie; his white hair remained as crisp and orderly as an enlisted man’s.

Donald crossed the dark room and shook the Senator’s hand.

‘Good to see you, sir.’

‘Please, sit.’ Thurman released Donald’s hand and gestured to one of the chairs across from his desk. Donald lowered himself into the bright red leather, the gold grommets along the arm like sturdy rivets in a steel beam.

‘How’s Helen?’

‘Helen?’ Donald straightened his tie. ‘She’s great. She’s back in Savannah. She really enjoyed seeing you at the reception.’

‘She’s a beautiful woman, your wife.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Donald fought to relax, which didn’t help. The office had the pall of dusk, even with the overhead lights on. The clouds outside had turned nasty — low and dark. If it rained, he would have to take the underpass back to his office. He hated being down there. They could carpet it and hang those little chandeliers at intervals, but he could still tell he was below ground. The tunnels in Washington made him feel like a rat scurrying through a sewer. It always seemed as if the roof was about to cave in.

‘How’s the job treating you so far?’

‘The job’s good. Busy, but good.’

He started to ask the Senator how Anna was doing, but the door behind him opened before he could. The receptionist entered and delivered two bottles of water. Donald thanked her, twisted the cap on his and saw that it had been pre-opened.

‘I hope you’re not too busy to work on something for me.’ Senator Thurman raised an eyebrow. Donald took a sip of water and wondered if that was a skill one could master, that eyebrow lift. It made him want to jump to attention and salute.

‘I’m sure I can make the time,’ he said. ‘After all the stumping you did for me? I doubt I would’ve made it past the primaries.’ He fiddled with the water bottle in his lap.

‘You and Mick Webb go back, right? Both Bulldogs.’

It took Donald a moment to realise the Senator was referring to their college mascot. He hadn’t spent a lot of time at Georgia following sports. ‘Yessir. Go Dawgs.’

He hoped that was right.

The Senator smiled. He leaned forward so that his face caught the soft light raining down on his desk. Donald watched as shadows grew in wrinkles otherwise easy to miss. Thurman’s lean face and square chin made him look younger head-on than he did in profile. Here was a man who got places by approaching others directly rather than in ambush.

‘You studied architecture at Georgia.’

Donald nodded. It was easy to forget that he knew Thurman better than the Senator knew him. One of them grabbed far more newspaper headlines than the other.

‘That’s right. For my undergrad. I went into planning for my master’s. I figured I could do more good governing people than I could drawing boxes to put them in.’

He winced to hear himself deliver the line. It was a pat phrase from grad school, something he should have left behind with crushing beer cans on his forehead and ogling asses in skirts. He wondered for the dozenth time why he and the other congressional newcomers had been summoned. When he first got the invite, he thought it was a social visit. Then Mick had bragged about his own appointment, and Donald figured it was some kind of formality or tradition. But now he wondered if this was a power play, a chance to butter up the representatives from Georgia for those times when Thurman would need a particular vote in the lower and lesser house.