Posted by Dell 01-27-24

Happy Friday! I could have said End of the Week, but I didn’t.,
so I should get an A for effort.

Low thirties here in New York. That feels good after the
deep freeze we’ve been in. All  of the snow is melting fast. Even, so I know winter is coming back, even my cat
reminds me; he is growing in that thick coat. He owns me, of course, I should
not have said my cat, I am his human, and he never lets me forget it. He
refuses to stay inside; he has made it his goal in his nine lives to get to
know every female cat in the village. I think he believes it is his duty to do
it. After year three of ruling the village, I never see any other male cats in
the village except my Houdini. He has had his share of battles, one ear missing
and the other chewed up; even so he refuses to retire and lay on the couch.

I saw a YouTube show I watch today, and the person said spring is right around the corner. What? Didn’t we just take the hard swing into winter a few weeks ago? Shut up! Don’t jinx us, because I can tell you that up here spring is months away.

Anyway, Houdini: Sometimes three or four days will go by before he shows up
at 1:00 AM demanding to be fed, so I decided to work on a treat system to get
him to come back a little sooner: Meat, he loves meat, and he doesn’t care what
kind it is as long as it didn’t come out of the cat food can. So now every time
he shows up, I put down dry food and cat food, and he looks from me to the
refrigerator as if to ask, ‘Where is the
meat?’.  Although he isn’t choosy,
chicken is favorite. So, now every time he shows up, he ignores the dry food, the Purina wet cat filets, all he cares about is the chicken (He has no clue what I’m feeding him, usually Oscar Meyer lunch meat cut into tiny strips, he thinks it’s all Chicken, even when it is Chicken.). When I do make chicken, I make an extra breast portion for him and serve it to him over a few nights. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I think he had more Turkey that I did.

Check out my America the Dead books below and enjoy this
beautiful mid-winter break from the weather, Dell…

Free Podcast at YouTube: America the Dead – A. L. Norton – YouTube

Get the Books @ Apple: 

https://books.apple.com/us/book-series/earths-survivors-america-the-dead/id1085849955

How about a free read to check out the story?

America the Dead: Survivors Stories
One

 Copyright © 2018 W. G. Sweet.
All rights foreign and domestic reserved in their entirety.

Cover Art © Copyright 2018 W.
G. Sweet

Some text copyright 2010,
2014, 2015 W. G. Sweet

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would
like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy
for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it
was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your bookseller and
purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

 

LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters,
places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely
coincidental.

Route
81 rest-stop

Watertown
New York

April 20^th

1:00 am

A black truck pulled into the rest stop
and two men climbed out; walking toward the rest rooms that sat in from the
road. Concrete bunker looking buildings that had been built back in the early
seventies. They had been closed for several years now. In fact the Open soon
sign was bolted to the front of the building; rust streaked the sign surface.
It seemed like some sort of joke to Mike Bliss who used the rest stop as a
place to do light duty drug deals. Nothing big, but still that depended on your
idea of big. Certainly nothing over a few thousand dollars. That was his break
off point. Any higher than that, he often joked, you would have to talk to
someone in Columbia… Or maybe Mexico, he told himself now as he sat waiting in
his Lexus, but it seemed that since Rich Dean had got himself dead the deals
just seemed to be getting larger and larger. And who knew how much longer that
might last. He watched the two men make a bee line for the old rest rooms.

“Idiots,” he muttered to himself. He
pushed the button, waited for the window to come down, leaned out the window
and yelled. “What are you, stupid? They’re closed.” He motioned with one hand.
“You can’t read the fuckin’ sign or what?”

Both men stopped and looked from him to
the sign.

“Yeah, closed. You can read right? Closed.
That’s what it says. Been closed for years. Go on into Watertown; buy a fuckin’
burger or something. Only way you’re getting a bathroom at this time of the
morning.” He had lowered his voice for the last as he pulled his head back into
the car and turned the heater up a notch. The electric motor whined as the
window climbed in its track. He looked down at his wrist for the time, 1:02
A.M., where the fuck was this dude. He was late, granted a few minutes, but late
was late.

A sharp rap on the glass startled him. He
had been about to dig out his own supply, a little pick-me-up. He looked up to
see the guys from the truck standing outside his window. “Oh… Fucking
lovely,” he muttered. He pushed the button and the window lowered into the
door, the motor whining loudly, the cold air blew in.

“And what can I do for you two gentlemen,”
He asked in his best smart-ass voice.

The one in back stepped forward into the
light. Military type, Mike told himself. Older, maybe a noncom. A little gray
at the edges of his buzz cut. With the military base so close there were
soldiers everywhere, after all Watertown was a military town. It was why he was
in the business he was in. It was also why he succeeded at it.

“Did you call me stupid,” The man asked in
a polite tone.

“Who, me? No. I didn’t call you stupid, I
asked, what are you, stupid? Different thing. The fuckin’ place is
closed… Just doing my good deed for the day… Helping you, really, so you
don’t waste no time,” Mike told him.

“Really?” The man asked.

Mike chuckled. “Yeah really, tough guy.
Really. Now, I did my good deed, why don’t you get the fuck out of here ’cause
you wore out your welcome.” He opened his coat slightly so they could see the
chrome 9 mm that sat in its holster.

“Really,” the first guy repeated.

“Okay, who are you guys, frick and frack?
A couple of fucking wannabees? Well I am the real deal, don’t make me stick
this gun in your fuckin’ face,” Mike told them. He didn’t like being a dick,
but sometimes you had to be.

“You know what my mother always said about
guns?” The second guy asked.

“Well, since I don’t know your mama it’s
hard to say,” Mike told him. He didn’t like the way these two were acting. They
weren’t cops, he knew all the locals. If it had been someone, he had to worry
about he would have handled this completely differently. These guys were
nobodies. At least nobodies to him, and that made them nobodies to Watertown.
If he had to put a bullet in… His thoughts broke off abruptly as the barrel
of what looked like a .45 was jammed into his nose. It came from nowhere. He
sucked in a deep breath. He could taste blood in his mouth where the gun had
smashed his upper lip against his teeth.

“She said don’t threaten to pull a gun,
never. Just pull it.”

“Mama had a point,” Mike allowed. His
voice was nasally due to the gun that was jammed hallway up to his brain.
“Smart lady.”

“Very,” the man allowed. “Kind of a hard
ass to grow up with, but she taught me well.” He looked down at Mike. “So, listen, this is what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna drive out of here right the
fuck now. And that’s going to stop me from pulling this trigger. Lucky day for
you, I think. Like getting a Get Out of Jail Free card, right.”

“This is my business spot… You don’t
understand,” Mike told them. “I… I’m waiting for someone.”

“Not tonight, Michael.”

“Yeah, but you don’t.” He stopped. “How do
you know my name?” he asked. There was more than a nasal quality to his voice,
now there was real fear. Maybe they were Feds. Maybe.

“Yeah, we know you. And we know you use
this spot as a place to do your business. And I’m saying we couldn’t care less,
but right now you gotta go, and I’m not going to tell you the deal again. You
can leave or stay, but you ain’t gonna like staying,” The guy told him.

“Listen… This is my town… If you
guys are Feds you can’t do shit like this… This is my town. You guys are
just…”

The guy pulled the trigger and Mike
jumped. He fell to the right, across the front seat. Both men stepped away from
the car, eyes scanning the lonely rest stop from end to end, but there was no
one anywhere. The silence returned with a ringing in their ears from the blast
as it had echoed back out of the closed car interior. The shooter worked his
jaw for a moment, swallowing until his ears popped. He lifted his wrist to his
mouth. “Guess you saw that,” he said quietly.

“Got a cleaner crew on the way up. You’ll
pass them in the elevators. The boss is waiting on you guys.“ The voice came
through the implant in his inner ear. No one heard what was said except him.

He nodded for the cameras that were
picking him up. “In case you didn’t hear it, someone is supposed to meet him
here so your cleaner crew could have company.”

“Got that too… We’ll handle it.” He
nodded once more, and then walked off toward the rest rooms as the other man
followed.

Once in back of the unit they used a key
in the old, rusted handset. It only looked old and rusty, it was actually an
interface for a state-of-the-art digital system that would read his body
chemistry, heat, and more. The key had dozens of micro pulse sensor implants
that made sure the user was human, transmitted heartbeat, body chemistry, it
could even tell male from female and match chemical profiles to known examples
in its database. Above and to the sides of them several scanners mapped their
bodies to those same known profiles. Bone composition, old fractures, density
and more. All unique in every man or women. The shooter removed the key and
slipped it into his pocket. A few seconds later a deep whining of machinery
reached their ears, the door shuddered in its frame, and then slipped down into
a pocket below the doorway.

A second later they stepped into the
gutted restroom. Stainless steel doors took up most of the room; the elevator
to the base below. They waited for the cleaner crew to come up, then took the
elevator back down into the depths.

~

The Bluechip facility stretched for more
than five miles underground. Most of that was not finished space, most of that
was connector tunnels, and storage space bored from the rock. The facility
itself was about three thousand feet under the city of Watertown in a section
of old caves that had been enlarged, concrete lined and reinforced. The rest
area was one of several entrances that led into the complex. An old farm on the
other side of Watertown, an abandoned factory in the industrial park west of
the city and a few other places, including direct connections from secure
buildings on the nearby base.

John Pauls and Sammy Black had Alpha
clearance. Both were ex-military, but most likely military clearance was no
longer a real matter of concern this late in the game, Sammy thought as they
made their way down the wide hallway. The word coming down from those in the
know was that in the next twenty-four hours the human race would come very
close to ceasing to exist at all. No confirmation from anyone official, but
regular programming was off air, the news stations were tracking a meteor that
may or may not hit the Earth. The best opinions said it didn’t matter if it hit
or not, it would be a close enough pass that there would be massive damage.
Maybe the human race would be facing extinction. The government was
strangely silent on the subject. And that had made him worry even more. The
pass was estimated to be right over the tip of south America. So maybe
formalities like Alpha clearance weren’t all that important any longer. If only
Mike Bliss had given that some thought before he had pissed him off.

The halls were silent, nearly empty. Gloss
white panels eight feet high framed it. It had always reminded Black of a maze
with its twists and turns. Here and there doors hung open. Empty now. Always
closed any other time he had been down here. So it had come this far too, Black
thought. He stopped at a door that looked like any other door and a split
second later the door rose into the ceiling and Major Weston waved them in.

Alice, he had never learned her last name,
sat at her desk, her eyes on them as they walked past her. One hand rested on
the butt of a matte black .45 caliber pistol in a webbed shoulder holster that
was far from Army issue, and Sammy had no doubt she would shoot them both
before they could even react. Alice was etched into one of those name pins that
the Army seemed to like so well, but oddly, just Alice, no last name, rank or
anything else. She wore no uniform, just a black coverall. The kind with the
elastic ankle and wrist cuffs. No insignia there either. He had noticed that
months before. Her eyes remained flat and expressionless as they passed her
desk.

“Alice,” Sammy said politely. She said
nothing at all, but she never did.

“Sit down, boys,” Major Weston told them.
He spoke around the cigar in his mouth: Dead, but they always were, and there
was never the smell of tobacco in the office. They took the two chairs that
fronted the desk.

The Major was looking over a large monitor
on the opposite wall that showed the north American continent. This map showed
small areas of red, including the northern section where they were. The rest of
the map was covered with green. “Where we are, and where we need to be,“ he
said as he pushed a button on his desk. The monitor went blank. He turned to
face the two.

“So here is where we are. You know, as
does most of the world, that we are expecting a near miss from DX2379R later on
tonight.” He held their eyes.

John shrugged. “I’ve been doing a little
job, must have missed that. It’s not gonna take us out is it?”

“Saw that on the news a few days back.
Guess we dodged a bad one,” Sammy said.

“Right… Right,” Weston said quietly.
“But that cover was nothing but bullshit.”

“It’s going to hit us?” John asked.

“Maybe… The fact is that we don’t know.
One group says this, another group says that, but it doesn’t matter because it
will probably kill us off anyway. Direct hit, near miss, it is going to tip
over an already bad situation with the Yellowstone Caldera.” He raised his
eyes, “Familiar with that?”

“Yellowstone Park?” Sammy said.

John nodded in agreement.

Weston laughed. “Put simply, yes.
Yellowstone has always been an anomaly to us. Back in 1930 the Army did an
exploratory survey of that area. What we came up with was that there was a
section of the Rocky Mountains missing. Looked at from the top of Mount
Washburn it was easy for the team to see that the largest crater of an extinct
volcano known to exist lay before them.”

“I guess that’s about what I thought,”
Sammy agreed.

“Yeah. We all think that. Except it is not
true at all because the Yellowstone caldera is not extinct, it is active.
Active and about to pop. There have been several warnings, but we took the
recording stations offline quite some time ago, so there has been no mention
of it in the news. Budget cuts,” he shrugged. “So everyone is focused on this
meteor that may or may not hit us and instead this volcanic event is going to
blow up and when that happens the rest won’t matter at all.” He clicked the
button on his desk and the monitor came to life. “All the red areas are spots
where the surface pressure has increased. There was, at one time, many active
volcanoes on the north American continent.” He clicked a button and the map
changed to a view of the European continent with many of the same red shaded
areas.

“All over the Earth… Higher pressures.
Up until a few days ago the brainiacs were still arguing over whether this
could even happen.” He laughed. “It is happening and they are arguing over
whether it can happen. Well, we had our little debates and then we realized
that history shows clearly that this has happened before. Several times. Call
it the Earth’s way of cleansing itself.”

“But it’s not an absolute, right?” Sammy
asked.

“Don’t start sounding like the
scientists.” He reached below his desk and came up with six small silver
cartridges. Each had a red button mounted on the top with a protective cap over
the button itself. He clicked a button on his desk, and a picture of
destruction appeared on the screens. It was obviously an aerial shot, looking
down at a chain of islands. Smoke hung over the chain, reaching as high as the
plane itself. As the plane dropped lower, rivers of red appeared. “That picture
is an hour old. That is… Was, the Hawaiian chain.”

Sammy twisted further to the side, staring
at the monitor. “How can that be… I mean everyone would know about it.” He
turned back to Weston.

Weston nodded. “And that would be true
except the satellites are out because of the asteroid. Shut down to avoid
damage. That is the official word.” He clicked the button on his desk and the
monitor went dead once more. “I started this out saying that none of it matters
and that is true. The Yellowstone caldera is going to erupt sometime in the
next few days. Not a maybe, not an educated guess: If the satellites were up, you would know that the park is closed. It has already started. We have had a
few small quakes, but the big stuff is on the way. He rolled the cartridges
across the desktop; Sammy and John caught them.

“Super volcanoes… Earthquakes that
modern civilization has never seen… The last super eruption was responsible
for killing off the human population some seventy-four thousand years ago.
Reduced it to a few thousand. And that is not the biggest one we have evidence
of.” He lifted his palms and spread them open, sighing as he did. “So, it is a
double whammy. If we survive the meteor the volcanoes get us, or the
earthquakes because of them, or we’ll die from injuries. And I think those of
us who die outright will be lucky. The rest of us will have a hard time of
it… Staying alive with nothing… We will probably all starve to death.” He
paused in the silence.

“Those cartridges are a compound developed
right here in this complex for the armed forces. Project Super Soldier. SS for
short. That kept people from looking too deep, they assumed it was something to
do with the Nazi youth movement here and abroad. We let that misconception
hold.” He waited a second for his words to sink in. “SS is designed to prolong
life past the normal point of termination. It allows a soldier to survive
longer without food and more importantly without water. Does something to the
cells of the host, I don’t pretend to know what. What I do know is that the
people above me made the decision to release this…” He picked up a mug of
coffee from the desk and sipped deeply. His eyes were red road maps, Sammy noticed
now. Like he hadn’t slept in a few days.

“So this is it for us. I guess you realize
that you probably won’t get paid for this. No money is going to show up in your
account. I will run it through before I pull the plug, but I truly believe the
machinery will be dead by the time payday rolls around. So this is something
I’m asking you to do.” He pointed to the cartridges that both men were looking
over. Sammy held his as though it might bite him.

“Those babies are really all we have to
hope with. Most people will die outright. They will never make it past the
quakes, eruptions, and the resulting ash clouds and gases. Up here we should be
okay as far as gases go, eruptions, but there are fault lines that crisscross
this area. This whole facility is bored from limestone caverns. Probably won’t
make it through the quakes, although it is a good eighty miles from the closest
line,” he shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. My point is there should be a good
chance for survivors here.”

“So we do what with these? Can they harm
us?” John asked.

“Harm you, kill you? No, but you will be
infected the minute you push that button. It will protect you the same as
anyone else. There is enough in a single cartridge to infect about five hundred
million people,” Weston said quietly.

“Whoa,” Sammy whistled. “Why infect… Why
not inoculate? And why six cartridges… Three Billion people?”

“Minimum, three billion. That is before
those infected pass it along themselves: After a while it won’t matter. As to
the question of infected, this is a designer virus. You catch it just like the
flu. We infected whole platoons by releasing it in the air over them. Eighty-Nine-point seven percent infection rate, but that doesn’t really matter
because it infects people close to you and those people will infect you…
Sneezing, waste, sex, water, food, it gets into and on everything. And once it
is in you, either orally or via bloodstream you will be infected. The human
body has nothing to fight it, no reason to be alarmed or believe it’s anything
more than a virus. And that same response will help to carry it to every area
of the body as your own defenses manufacture white blood cells to fight it. So
you may as well say a one hundred percent infection rate.” He paused and rubbed
at his temples.

“Be glad they decided on this. They have
some others that will kill everybody in the world in a matter of days.” Weston
nodded at the raised eyebrows that greeted his remarks. “I don’t doubt that the
merits of which way to go were hotly debated,” he finished gravely.

“The virus is designed to live within the
host, but it can live outside of the host. It can stay alive in a dead body for
days, even if the body is frozen. In fact that just freezes the virus too, once
the body is thawed it will infect any living person that comes along. So
those,” he pointed to the silver cartridges, “are overkill. Same stuff is being
released across the globe. Great Briton… Germany… Australia… West coast
just a few hours ago. Manhattan has already been done, all the East Coast in
fact. I want the two of you to head out from here. One vial here, then one of
you head west, the other south. Go for the bigger cities… Water supplies…
Reservoirs… Release it in the air or water, it doesn’t matter. There are men
heading out from the south, the west coast. The Air Force will be dispersing
the same stuff via cargo planes tomorrow or the next day… As long as they can
fly, if we can even make it that long, and that isn’t looking really good right
now…” He rose from the desk. “I’ll see you out.” He turned to Alice.
“Alice… Pack us up.” Alice nodded as Sammy and John got to their feet, but
her hand remained on the butt of the pistol. Rubber grips, Sammy noticed as he
passed her.

“Alice,” he said.

“Um hmm,” Alice murmured.

Sammy nearly stopped in his tracks but managed to hide his surprise as he passed by into the hallway. The Major fished
two sets of keys from his pocket. “Parked in the back lot. A couple of plain
Jane Dodge four-bys. Drive ’em like you stole ’em. Leave ’em where you finish
up. Hell, keep ’em if you want ’em. Nobody is going to care.”

The three stood in the hallway for a few
seconds longer. Sammy’s eyes locked with the Major’s own, and he nodded. The
major walked back into his office, and the door rose from its pocket behind
him. Quiet, except the slight buzzing from the fluorescent lights.

John shrugged as his eyes met Sammy’s,
waiting.

Sammy sighed. “You heard the man… West
or south?”

“Flip for it?” John asked. His mouth
seemed overly dry and he licked his lips nervously.

Sammy pulled a quarter from his pocket and
flipped it into the air. “Call it, Johnny.”

“Tails,” John said just before the quarter
hit the carpet.

Sammy bent forward. “Tails it is. You got
it, Johnny.”

John looked down at the carpet. “West, I
guess.” John said.

Sammy
nodded, looked down once more at the quarter and then both men turned and
walked away toward the elevator that would take them back to the surface.

Watertown Center New York

Shop and Save Convenience store:

Haley Mae

1:30 AM

“Last one,” Neil
said.

Neil was a detective
for the sheriffs’ department. It was closing in on 2:00 AM and he and his
partner Don had just come back from six hours of sleep to get a jump on the
day. Yesterday one of the checkout girls had disappeared between the Shop And
Save, a small mini mart on the western outskirts of the city, and home. Earlier
this morning she had turned up dead in a ditch just a quarter mile from the
front door. The techs were still processing the scene, but it was looking
personal. Stabbed to death, multiple wounds, no defense wounds, at least none
that he or Don had been able to see, and fully clothed. Her purse had been
found nearby, wallet and cash inside. No ID, but her store ID had still been
clipped to her shirt. They would know more in a few days once the coroner did
her magic. It all pointed to someone she knew, and they had no known boyfriend.
The trailer park where she lived had turned up nothing, they had questioned
some people at the convenience store, but some had been off shift, so here they
were back at the store questioning the other employees.

They had commandeered
the night manager’s office which was barely larger than a broom closet, but at
least it was a place to sit with enough space left over to call in the workers
and ask their questions. Free coffee via the same night manager, who had still
not gone home, was taking a little of the six hours of sleep sting off, but to
Neil free coffee in a convenience store was like a whore offering a free shot
of penicillin to the first twenty-five customers.

“Who’s next?” Don
asked.

The last half hour
they had been interviewing the people who worked the same shifts as Amber
Kneeland.

“Haley Mae,” Neil
said.

Don looked up and
stopped writing in his little notebook. 
“How do you,” spell her name,
he had meant to ask Neil, but she was right in front of him.

“EM. A. E,” she said
with a smile.

“Vietnamese?” Don
asked. She was obviously mixed race, African American and Asian, he questioned
himself.

“Japanese,” she told
him.

“Nice name,” Neil
said, “Haley.”

Beautiful girl, Don
thought. “Did you know Amber Kneeland? 
Sometimes works this shift?” he asked.

“Not really,” she
answered. “I mean, I met her, but only in passing… I just started here
myself.”

She really is
beautiful, Don thought. “You wouldn’t know if she had a boyfriend… Other
friends?” he asked.

Haley shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said… “What has she done?”

“Nothing,” Neil
supplied.

“She went missing
last night,” Don said. “Turned up dead this morning.”

Haley shook her head.
“Oh my God. That’s horrible. She was such a nice girl… Quiet.”

Neil nodded his head.
“So maybe you did know her a little better than you thought?”

“I just started here
a few weeks back, and like I said, I don’t really know her… But it might be a
girlfriend not a boyfriend.”

Don looked at her.
“You wouldn’t know who?”

“No. It’s just a
rumor. Someone said it to me… I don’t even remember who… But I’ve never
seen her with a guy, and I have seen her with other girls… Maybe also the way
she looked at me a few times…”

“Go out with her?”
Don asked.

“No… Never… I…”

“Don’t swing that
way?” Don added.

Haley frowned
slightly before she answered. “I work. I don’t swing any way. But if I did she wasn’t my type. She never asked me out, I
never asked her out.”

“Didn’t mean to
offend you,” Don said. He shrugged. “She’s dead.”

“She would probably
do the same for you,” Neil said.

Haley nodded. “That
really is all I know. I hope you find who did it though. She seemed like a nice
girl,” Haley said.

“You don’t seem the
type for this… Bagging groceries at 2:00 am,” Don said, changing the subject.
“You aren’t local or I’d know you… This city really is small despite the
base.”

Haley smiled. “Came
here a year back with a boyfriend, Army. He left, forgot all about me, I guess.
I had this idea of modeling… Tough to get a foot in a door though.”

“Wow, if he left you
behind he must be a fucking idiot… Any
good?” Neil asked.

Haley laughed.

“Excuse mister smooth
there,” Don told her. Neil feigned a hurt look and Haley laughed again. “He
meant, have you done anything? I know somebody… Might be interested.”

Haley arched her
eyebrows. “I can model. I did a You Jeans ad back in Georgia a few years
ago. I just need to prove it to the right person.”

“Escorting? Maybe
dancing. It’s strictly escorting or dancing, no funny stuff. Dance clubs…
Clothing modeling,” Neil said.

“Probably start out
escorting… Dance a little… Then if he likes you he’ll put you into the
modeling end of things. He owns a lot of shit… Several car dealerships across
the state… Some of the biggest dance clubs, clothing outlets, those bargain
places, but still, modeling is modeling, right? Not the big name stuff, but it
is a foot in the door,” Don added.

“I can do that,” she
said slowly.

Neil passed her a white
business card with his own name scrawled across the back. “Tell him I sent
you… That’s my name on the back.”

“Jimmy Vincioni,”
Haley asked.

“Just V… Jimmy V, good guy,” Neil said.

Haley nodded and
tucked the card into her front jean pocket. “I’ll call him… Thanks. Look…”
Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I’m pretty sure she had a girlfriend
here… I just don’t know who,” Haley added quietly.

Don finished writing
in his notebook, nodded once he met her eyes and then shook the hand she offered.
She walked away.

“Beautiful,” Neil
said.

“Absolutely,” Don
agreed. “You ain’t getting none of that though.”

“Yeah? But if Jimmy V
hires her? It’ll be the next best thing.”

Don shook his head,
but smiled. His eyes rose and watched as Haley walked away. “Guess I’ll have to
have a few drinks at the club if that happens.”

Neil
chuckled low. “You and me both,” he agreed.

ONE

March 1^st

Watertown New York

Off Factory Square: Joel Morrison

5:00 PM

Joel sat at the bar and watched football on one of the big screen
TV’s Mort had put in. It was a slow game, he was tired, and his mind kept
turning to other things. He couldn’t concentrate. Part of the allure of the
Rusty Nail was the quiet. After a 12 hour shift at the mill with the constant
noise from the huge machinery, the quiet had been nice. But that had all
changed once the bar had become popular with the nearby base. He needed to go
home. The crowd in the bar was starting to build and the noise was giving him
the beginnings of a headache. He caught Mort’s eye and went back to his
thoughts as he waited.

The Rusty Nail had always been a locals only bar up until a few
years back when the economy had taken a nose dive. The nail was wedged up a
side street off Factory square. Not exactly easy to find, and that had hurt
business too as the old people left and the new people came in.

Mort, Mortimer to anybody that felt like being tossed out on
their ass, had nearly lost the small bar and the building above it to the bank.
The building above it had six small apartments that Mort had purposely left
empty when he had bought the building fresh out of the service thirty years
back. Who wanted to deal with tenants, he had said then. But times changed, and
so he had sold his house, moved himself into one of the apartments, and then
sold the bank on remortgaging the whole building as well as renovating the
other five apartments. The bank had come up with a loan that took all of that
into account and added a second income source from the apartments that could
pay the monthly mortgage and put a good chunk of change into his pocket too.

He had signed on the x, taken their money, renovated the
building, moved in the tenants and then taken a hard look at the Rusty Nail. He
had decided to completely gut the bar and do it over. He had dumped far too
much into the renovations though, including being closed for nearly a full
month, and then opened it to find that the economy had taken an even deeper
nose dive during those nearly thirty days. The third month into the new
mortgage and he had found that he was maybe in a bad spot already.

Joel remembered now that he had sat right at the end of the bar
when Mort had talked it over with some others, Moon Calloway, Johnny Barnes,
Jim Tibbets, Joel had been welcome to include his two cents which he had
declined to do.

“Well, what you do is put the word out to those cab drivers.
Believe me, I’ve seen it. They will have them soldiers down here in no time,
even if you are off the beaten path,”
Jim had said. Jim was a school bus driver for the north side district and less
than a year away from a fatal car accident on the interstate. Jeff Brown, who
had been a local football star, was doing ten years up at Clinton Correctional
for hitting Jim’s car head on drunk and killing him. But that night Jim had still
been alive and had wanted to be a part of the New Rusty Nail that Mort had in
mind. Something a little more modern. Modern bought the soldiers, but more
importantly it also bought women.

“I’m not paying a cab driver to bring me G.I.’s,” Mort had
said. “And I know your game. You’re just hoping to get laid out of it.”

They had all laughed at that, except Jim who had turned red.
But after a few seconds he had laughed too, and the conversation had plodded
forward the way bar conversations do.

“Well, you ain’t got to pay them exactly, give them a couple
beers,” Moon threw in.

“Jesus Christ,” Mort exclaimed. “That’s why you boys ain’t in
business. You think the beer is free.”

“I know it ain’t free, Mort,” Jim said. “But it don’t cost you
that much. You get it wholesale.”

“Wholesale? I drive right out to that wholesale club and buy it
by the case most of the time just like everybody else. Cheaper than them beer
guys, except draft, of course. That ain’t free. You got to pay the yearly club
fee. You got to pay them taxes to the feds. You got a lot you got to pay for.
Some fuck crushes your can you’re fucked for that nickle. Jesus… wholesale my
ass. It ain’t no bargain.”

“Yeah? … Let’s see,” Moon starting writing in the air with
his finger. You get it for let’s say six bucks a case, I know that cause that’s
what I pay out there too. So six bucks divided by 24 is,” he drew in the air
for a few moments, erased it, and then started over. “How the fuck do you do
that, Joey… The six goes into the twenty-four? Or times the twenty-four?”
Moon asked.

“Uh, it’s a quarter a can,” I had supplied.

The argument had raged on from there. Once Moon found out he
was paying a buck fifty for a can of beer that only cost a quarter he was
pissed off.

In the end Mort had talked to a couple of cab drivers. Free
draft beer one night a week if they bought soldiers by all week long and told
as many others as possible about the place. Within two weeks Joel hadn’t
recognized the place when he had come by after shift to have a couple of beers.
The soldiers drank a lot of beer, the bank mortgage got paid, and life was
fine. Except for the fights, Joel thought, but you can’t load young guys up on
alcohol and not expect trouble. Especially when those young men were just
waiting on the word to go and maybe die in another battle that remained
undeclared as a war. High stress levels meant heavy duty unloading. The M.P.’s
got to know the place as well as the soldiers did.

“Joel, you ready?” Mort asked now.

Joel smiled. “I was thinking back…” He had to shout to be
heard. Tomorrow his voice would be hoarse. “This place was empty! … Yeah… One more then I gotta go,” Joel agreed.

Mort leaned closer. “Gov’ment tit. I know it, but screw it.
It’s all the Gov’ment tit. Road and Bridge projects. Job centers. One way or
the other it comes out the same. Even them subsidies so the paper mills can
still run. It’s all the Gov’ment tit, ain’t it, Joel?”

“Its is,” Joel shouted. He nodded. It was. This town would have
dried up years ago without it. Mort left and then came back a few moments later
with a fresh beer.

“Vacation?” Mort yelled.

Joel nodded. “Two weeks of silence,” He shook his head at the
irony and Mort’s laughing agreement was drowned out by the noise.

“If I don’t see you, have a good one,” Mort said leaning close.

Joel nodded. “I will.” He raised his glass and then tossed off
half of it. A few moments later he was outside on the relatively quiet sidewalk
punching numbers into his phone, calling for a cab. The night was cold, but the
cold sobered him up. It seemed nearly capable of washing away the smoke and
noise from inside the bar. He stood in the shadows beside the door waiting for
the phone to ring on the other end. The door bumped open and Johnny Barnes
stepped out.

“You ain’t calling for a cab, are you?” Johnny asked when he
spotted him.

Joel laughed and ended the still ringing call. “Not if I can
get a free ride from you.” Joel told him.

“Yeah, you were always a cheap prick,” Johnny agreed. “Hey, I
heard you’re heading into the southern tier tomorrow?”

“Two weeks,” Joel agreed as he levered the door handle on
Johnny’s truck and climbed inside. His breath came in clouds of steam. “Get
some heat in here, Johnny.”

“Coming,” Johnny agreed. “Man, I wish I was you.”

“Me too,” Joel agreed.

Johnny laughed. “Asshole, but seriously, man. Have a good time.
You gonna hunt?”

“Nothing in season… Maybe snare some rabbits. Not gonna be a
lot this time of year.” Joel said.

“Maybe deer,” Johnny offered. He dropped the truck in drive
just as the heat began to come from the vents.

“Probably, but they’ll be out of season. Rabbit, and I got
freeze dried stuff. Trucks packed, which is why I didn’t drive it down here.”

The truck drove slowly through
the darkening streets as the street lights began to pop on around the small city:
The two men laughing and exchanging small talk.