Zero day code, p.27
Zero Day Code, page 27
part #1 of End of Days Series
If she could find Holloway, of course.
Towering thunderheads rumbled in the distance as she stalked the halls of the Eisenhower Building, her progress slowed by multiple checkpoints guarded by Marines in full battle rattle. Her clearance level was not Triple A but it was close enough, giving her access to most areas. After twenty minutes of floor walking and door knocking, she’d determined that Holloway wasn’t even in DC anymore. He’d been evacuated to an alpha site and probably wouldn’t be back online until later in the evening. She did get a number for the site though. It was in Colorado.
She was heading back to O’Donnell when she heard a gruff, familiar voice calling her from the stairwell up to the executive level.
“Ms Nguyen, a word?”
It was Panozzo, released back into the wild from the briefing she’d taken James to earlier. He looked drawn but pleased to see her.
“General?” she said, “Can I help you?” Realising as she said it that he could help her.
“Your boy wonder back there, he dropped a real turd in the hot tub.”
“Yes, sir. He’s quite the performance artist in that way. Very transgressive.”
Panozzo snorted.
“Yeah, well, whatever Holloway’s paying him, you got your money’s worth. Turns out he had the Chinese plan totally fuckin’ nailed. It’s a damn shame he was too late. They hit us just like he said they would. Trashed our whole food supply chain.”
Michelle felt a cold, clammy wave roll down her back.
“Jesus, seriously?”
Panozzo nodded.
“Yeah. FEMA is looking at critical response using Army and the Guard, but it’s bad. Real bad. Just thought you’d wanna know. You should probably tell your boy he had a bright future in threat detection, if he’d been a bit quicker off the mark.”
Michelle bristled at that.
“Hey, James only came on board this morning, you know. And he figured out what was happening within an hour and that wasn’t even his job. It was a fucking side project for him.”
She came on more fiercely than intended, surprising both of them, and Panozzo threw up his hands in defence.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m not criticisin’. At least we know where to lay the cross hairs thanks to him. Chinese are gonna pay for this and the butcher’s bill is gonna be fuckin’ steep, I’ll tell you that.”
They had met on the landing between the second and third floors. Big picture windows afforded a view out over the gardens and across to the Renwick Gallery. The light outside was a sick, almost malarial yellow, washed through the filter of the storm clouds. Gusting winds picked up litter and fallen leaves, blowing them across the cut grass.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle said. “I was out of line, but I really believe James did good work for us.”
“He did great work,” Panozzo conceded. “Just, you know, too late.”
“I’d like him to do more,” she went on, seeing her chance and ignoring the jab. “Admiral Holloway’s got him preparing a briefing to Cabinet on trade talks. With Beijing. It’s really not the best use of his time.”
Panozzo actually laughed at that, but without any real humour.
“No,” he said. “I guess not.”
“I was wondering if we could re-task him?” Michelle asked, lowering her voice and checking that they could not be overheard. The hallways were busy with foot traffic, but nobody was close enough to listen in on them. “We should put him onto the Plan Jericho outcomes.”
Panozzo shook his head and Michelle got ready to argue her case, but the general’s demeanour was not dismissive as much as defeated.
“No point,” he said. “You haven’t heard?”
“No,” she said. “Heard what?”
“All non-essential federal staff are being stood down…”
“What!”
“On full pay. It’s not a shutdown, but the Whitehouse, on Homeland and FEMA’s say-so, wants everyone to sit tight while they sort out the food supply issue, and the transport grid, and, well, this whole stir-fried clusterfuck really. If you’re not essential to the immediate emergency response, you’re either stood down or being re-classed as a remote asset. You should have an email by now. You’ll be remote, for sure.”
“Jesus I’ve got like five thousand unread emails since this morning.”
Panozzo stared out at the storm in the distance.
“Bottom line is there’s no point bringing your new guy in. We’re all headed out for the duration. There’ll be curfews too. And they will be enforced, so I suggest that if you need to get to the grocer and stock up that you do so. Quickly. The President’s gonna do an address this evening and recommend the states and private employers follow our lead. Homeland thinks that the best way we get through this is to dig in and hunker down.”
“Jesus,” Michelle said quietly, and mostly to herself. “People are gonna lose their shit.”
She stared at him. He looked haunted.
“What do you think, General?”
Panozzo turned away from the storm but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look her in the eye.
After a long moment he said, “I think we already lost this one.”
27
Reminders of the Fall
“Jesus, Karl,” Ellie said, still not believing it. “You killed him.”
“Yep,” said Valentine. He came around the car and helped Jody to her feet. She was sobbing and trembling. Maxy stared at this new man in his life with eyes like dinner plates. Valentine leaned forward and held out a hand.
“I’m sorry to make your acquaintance like this, son,” he said. “My name is Karl. I hope I didn’t just shoot your old man.”
Maxy gaped at him, but slowly held out his own diminutive hand. He said nothing as they shook.
“That wasn’t Chad,” Ellie said shakily. “That was his roommate.”
The enormity of what just happened rolled over her. She had to turn away and take a couple of deep breaths to stop herself throwing up.
“Shit!” she breathed when she had her stomach under control again. “What are we going do?”
Karl spoke first to Max.
“Can you help your mom into the car, son? She’s hurting and she needs you to look after her.”
The young boy nodded, still seemingly unable to speak. He took his mother’s arm and pulled her toward the open door of the Honda Civic. Jody went without protest, checking Max all over for wounds and injuries.
Karl edged up to Ellie. He didn’t appear nervous, but he was subdued.
“It was self-defence, Ms Ellie,” he said. “Or close enough. Looked like he was gonna shoot you with that damned elephant gun. So, I shot him. That how you saw it?”
Ellie was shaking. Hot flushes and cold sweats raced up and down her body. She felt giddy and sick in the relentless heat. But she bobbed her head up and down.
“That was how I saw it, Karl. Troy was going to shoot me, and probably Jody and Max too. And Chad was running at us with his stupid sword…”
Her voice trailed off. It sounded flat and weird in her own ears.
“… But. But what are we…”?
She was lost for answers. This was so far removed from the stuff she normally dealt with. She had literally no idea where to even begin sorting this shit out. A low flying aircraft temporarily drowned out the constant blare of car horns. The airplane looked military, a fat grey transport of some sort.
“C-130” Karl said when it passed over. “Got a pencil, some paper?” The black clouds of flies that had been buzzing so loudly around the garbage on Chad’s front porch were now buzzing even more thickly around his dead roomie.
Ellie almost protested that she wasn’t a damn waitress, but she caught herself. She did have a notebook and a little pencil. She always carried one in the pocket of her chef’s pyjama pants. It helped her keep track of the dozens of things she had to stay on top of through a normal day at Fourth Edition. She fumbled it out and opened it to a new page.
She had scrawled the last entry earlier that day.
Talk to Natalie re table hopper!!
What the fuck was a table hopper? And why would Damo’s sommelier…
The scattered pieces of her former life clicked into place. She’d meant to find five minutes to talk to Natalie Ong about the fake French label wine story in Table Hopper magazine. But that was a fucking long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. She gave Karl the notebook. Her hand was shaking violently. So was his, she saw. Just a little. Otherwise, he seemed calm.
He took her hand in both of his. She let him. His hands were hard and calloused, but his grip was gentle.
“Still feel a pulse in here,” he smiled. Karl squeezed, but not hard, and let her hand go, taking the notebook and pencil with them.
“Your heart is still beating, Ms Ellie. You can still see the world. Feel it, because you’re in it.”
He turned toward the dead man.
“He can’t. But you can. That’s what matters.”
His voice was steady, reassuring.
“We’re not staying here,” he said. “And we’re not leaving the scene of a crime. This wasn’t a crime, and I’m writing out a statement for the cops, and details of how to contact me. I’m telling them we have a woman in need of medical attention, and her child, and we cannot stay here. I’d be grateful if you would add your own contacts.”
“Of course,” Ellie said quietly.
The pencil scratched on the notepaper as Karl went on.
“To be honest with you, Ms Ellie, I don’t think the police will be here any time soon, and I don’t imagine they will care much what happened if and when they do turn up. I think we’re a good way past that now.”
He stopped writing for a moment and raised his face to look past her, as though surveying the whole of the city.
“This reminds me of Iraq,” he said. “When everything was falling apart.”
He went back to scribbling for a moment before signing whatever he’d written with a flourish. He handed the notepad back to Ellie.
“Your name and address will be enough. But you can sign it if you like. Leave a phone number, place of work.”
She did. It felt important to do so.
Valentine’s statement ran over three pages. She carefully tore them out and gave them back to him. He folded the note over twice and tucked it into the waistband of the dead man’s shorts.
“Blood won’t get on it there,” Karl said. “Come on. We’ll get you home. After that, I don’t know.”
They were two hours getting back to Ellie and Jody’s place in Oceanview. Two hours of grinding, stop-start traffic to travel a couple of blocks that would normally have taken five or six minutes to drive. They could have walked, if Jody weren’t in such poor shape. Ellie sat up front this time, while Jody and Max slept in each other’s arms in back. Twice Karl had to pull over and let the boy take a piss by the side the road.
Ellie turned on the radio, keeping it low, and scanning the news stations.
“Why is this happening?” she asked at one point, as a panel discussion on NPR struggled to bring coherence to the shape of all the terrors that had escaped into the world. While they had been collecting Maxy and murdering Troy, it seemed that Europe had suffered attacks and weird collapses every bit as severe as the chaos in America. And Indian warplanes had attacked military bases all over Pakistan.
Karl shrugged.
“Why does anything happen? Not because people like you and me say so.”
“But Karl this is so stupid. Why would anyone do this? To us?”
“I don’t know, Ms Ellie. I’m just a driver. And they won’t even let me do that these days. Not that there’s much driving to be done right now.”
Outside the car, vast rivers of red and yellow taillights snaked away in every direction. They finally got back to their little bungalow in Oceanview at a quarter past eight. Ellie could see that many of her neighbours had either packed up and fled or were busy doing so. Minerva Street, usually filled with parked cars by this time, was half empty of vehicles, but busy with people looking as if they’d all decided to move out or take a road trip. Having just struggled through hours of hell traffic, she didn’t know why they bothered. Nobody was going anywhere. She saw Damo’s Lexus pulled over a little way up.
“Which one’s your place?” Karl asked.
“Pull up behind that big black SUV,” she said. “That’s my boss.”
“I remember him. Big shouty Australian guy.”
“Yeah, that’s Damo.”
Karl pulled over, careful to avoid the Guttierez family who were loading two mattresses into the back of a pick-up. Their youngest kids were running in circles as if this was the greatest adventure they would ever have. The older four, all teens and tweens, were merely resentful and sullen as they ferried suitcases and boxes out to the street. Raymon and Julia Guttierez looked haunted and exhausted.
“Karl,” Ellie said as he shut off the engine. “I don’t see how you can get home to Temescal tonight. I think you should crash at our place. It’s not much, but I can make up the couch for you. And I can promise to cook you something great.”
He smiled.
“That’s kind. Ms Ellie. And I won’t pretend I was looking forward to getting myself home through this mess. I will gladly take you up on that.”
Hard to believe he’d just blown a man’s brains out.
“Thank you,” Ellie said. “For everything.”
It was surreal.
Everything was weird and eerie.
She reached back and gently squeezed Jody’s leg.
“Hey babe. We’re home. Damo’s here. And Karl is gonna stay over.”
Jody came awake slowly, groggily.
She suddenly gasped.
She had remembered.
Maxy hugged her and Ellie rubbed a hand on her leg.
“It’s okay baby. It’s all good. We’re home. Let’s get you inside. Get some ice on your head.”
She turned to Karl.
“Can you help her in? Front door key’s on the ring there with the car key.”
“Sure.”
Ellie left him to help Jody out of the car and up the front path. Maxy carried his backpack over one shoulder and reached up to wrap his free arm around his mom’s waist. She heard Karl telling him what a good boy he was.
Julia Guttierez hurried over as soon as Ellie alighted from the car. Dark half-moons lay in the hollows under her eyes.
“Are you getting out, Elizeh?” she asked. “Is your Jody all right? Are you going too? You should go while you can. The Chinese are coming.”
Ellie smiled and squeezed her arm as she walked past, but she didn’t stop.
“Jody is okay, Mrs G,” she said. “She’s had a fall is all. She’ll be fine. Excuse me, I have to go. My boss is here.”
Ellie didn’t hear whatever the woman said next. She was already moving away. She found Damo sitting in the driver’s seat of his Lexus, listening to shitty old white guy music. It was very loud and she had to rap on the window to get his attention. Damo stabbed at a button and the music cut off. He opened the door and climbed out, looking thoroughly beaten down by the day.
“Sorry boss. You been here long?”
“Nah, mate,” he said, sounding as tired as he looked. “Only just got here. Took fucking hours, but. You mind if I come in? Have a drink? It’s been a cunt of day.”
“Sure,” Ellie said. “Come on, come in. You wanna get that stuff out the back?”
The luggage compartment of the Lexus was crammed full of boxes. She recognised them from the storeroom at the restaurant.
“They’ll keep,” he said.
Damo leaned back into the Lexus and took a buff-coloured envelope from the centre console. Then he took a small, black pistol from the cup holder and slid it into the envelope. He said nothing and neither did Ellie. Damo closed the door firmly and keyed the lock.
They stepped around the smallest Guttierez children, still running wild on the sidewalk, and trudged up the path to Ellie and Jody’s front door.
There was no power in the house.
Ellie cursed as she tried and failed to flick on the lights in the entry hall.
“Yeah. Power’s out all over the place,” Damo said. “I think that’s what’s fucking the traffic up. That and a bunch of fucking Teslas gone rogue.”
“What?”
He waved the question away.
“We can still drink. Don’t need a stove top for that.”
“We’re on the gas, Damo. I can cook you dinner. And I probably should if the power’s gonna be off for long. All the stuff in the fridge will go bad.”
She paused.
“And my phone is getting low on battery.”
It was dark inside, and they moved cautiously up the hallway, towards the kitchen at the back of the house where candles already burned with a soft, flickering glow. Ellie took the phone from her back pocket and used the flash as a torch.
She found Karl in the kitchen alone, sitting at the small table where they usually ate breakfast.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Ms Jody showed me where to find the candles. She and her boy are lying down. I wrapped a pack of frozen peas in a tea towel. For her swollen wrist. Got her some ibuprofen for the headaches and made her drink a glass of water. I think she’ll be fine. Reckon the shock was worse than the knock.”
Elle surprised him by bending over, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing hard.
“Thank you, thank you, Karl. I don’t know where she found you, but we’re not giving you back.”
He chuckled and awkwardly returned the embrace with one arm. Damo opened the fridge, cursed at the lack of a light and borrowed Ellie’s phone for a torch. He took three cans of beer, ripped off the tops and handed one to Karl Valentine.
