“Being funny, funnyman.”
“Good. I got a call from HBO; they think I can get my own show. I am pretty psyched.”
She let it go and gave him the last word for once as they ate the gumbo is peace. At least he thought so until she cleared her throat.
“This really isn’t bad. Amazing what a difference some shrimp make.”
Billy nodded and did not rise to defend his profession from the jab. The charter men and their boats caught just as much as the shrimpers did, just not as efficiently.
“Yup, the shrimpers are settling in pretty good. They are sending their two most efficient boats out with volunteer crews every other day. One of the boats fishes for them, the other for the town.”
“Well everyone needs to look after themselves. You always kept the best fillets when you went fishing, too,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t hear any objections when you were eating that yellow fin the other day.”
“I was just saying.”
“I have to admit you worked out a good deal with them with George. They got fifty condominiums blocked off and fortified just off Beach Boulevard. Everyone is already calling it
Little Saigon.
”
“Good for them. I talked to Mr. Trung yesterday. Did you know the last time he saw his father was through the fence of a prison camp before when he was 11? He had to take his family 20-days at sea out of Vietnam back in 1977 to get away. After the outbreak the poor guy was right back in the same situation until last week.”
Billy kept eating. He did not mention to her that his original plan during the outbreak was to load the kids on the
Fooly Involved
and head for sea until everything quieted down. It was only when he could not find Wyatt that he decided to stay.
They finished the gumbo at the same time and Billy retreated from the station, gathering empty mason jars all the way out.
“Be careful going back out later,” Mack slipped as he left the studio.
He turned and smiled, “I always am.”
As he walked outside to the truck and set the cardboard box of now-empty jars back into the bed, he noticed Doug looking to the sky, peering intently at the clouds.
“What is it? Rain?” Billy asked, looking up and only seeing a few puffy grey-white whips floating around.
Doug pointed at something high into the sky. Billy squinted against the midday sunlight and saw a tiny twinkle for just a moment far above the clouds. Just a momentary glint of light, like catching a reflection off a watch face, and it was gone.
“Birds don’t glint,” Doug looked at him and said.
— | — | —
ChapteR 38
October 30th, 0800
“So are we officially canceling Halloween, or what?” George asked the group gathered around the city council table. The fluorescent lights blinked and glowed dim and then bright in the uneven power of the wind turbine offshore, but they glowed all the same.
Reynolds shook her head. “That isn’t the case. We can still have a gathering at the Community Center, just no masks or makeup and
no one
acting infected,” she looked odd dressed in the uniform of an MP without any namestrips or patches. Everyone was so used to her flight suit they almost did not recognize her.
“Do we even have any candy to give out if kids show up?” Stone asked.
“We have a bunch of candy bars at the school that they had gotten last month for a fund raiser that we can give out. I think it will be a good mood changer. Show that things are getting back to normal,” George said.
“Speaking of school, when are the kids starting back?” Reynolds asked.
“I’ve been working on that. The elementary school is a mess and arsonists burned the remains down during the outbreak. Several of the teachers are missing and the principal of the elementary school died of a heart attack but we are planning to consolidate the schools into one building and start back in a week. We may need some more security there so that the parents feel safe enough to send their kids,” George said.
“I don’t know how many I can spare, but I will put something together,” Stone said, pushing back in the chair and looking off in the distance.
“How is the motorcycle recon team coming along, Captain?” Reynolds asked.
“Sending the first riders out past the bridge tomorrow. I’ll give you a full report when they get back.”
“Have there been any more airplane sightings?” George asked the group, looking from person to person.
No one said anything. A number of people had seen the glint two days ago over Gulf Shores but nothing had been reported since then. No one was even sure it was an airplane. Some theorized it was a Mylar helium party balloon that had worked its way over the island. After all, no responses came on the radio, no engines were heard, or contrails seen.
“Regardless, I just want to take a second to congratulate Mackenzie and her team at the radio station. I listened to your first broadcast last night, as did most everyone else. Other than the power coming back on, I think that the radio is the most welcome thing to happen in a while,” George said and the group all seconded.
“Thank you,” Mack replied. “We had people already come by the station bringing CDs and offering to help. We’ll be working on the format moving forward so to speak.”
“The Military Council wants this announced every fifteen minutes so that people outside of the island know what to expect if they come this way,” Reynolds pushed a handwritten notice to Mack and a copy to Stone. “And, Captain, if you can post a copy of this at the bridge roadblock as well.”
Mack picked up the paper, read over it, then frowned and put it back on the table. “I suppose this
is
needed, but can we play it every thirty minutes instead? It’s awfully depressing.”
Reynolds shook her head, “Every fifteen. Alternatively, four times an hour if you prefer. Minimum,” she said, sarcasm oozing through.
George intercepted the conversation and turned it around. “Do you think you can make an announcement on the radio about the Halloween party tomorrow afternoon, Mack?”
She turned her gaze from Reynolds and brightened, “I’m sure. I will put something together when I get back to the station, and announce it. What time is the party and is there anything in particular you want me to mention or…”
Her question was interrupted as Doug burst into the door of the council room, Wyatt in tow. The short technician took his scratched glasses off and began to clean them with the end of his shirt before announcing dramatically:
“I found a television signal.”
««—»»
Doug’s house was a pack rat’s dream with stacks of books higher than the furniture, old newspapers, electronics parts scattered and nesting in every corner, and a general moth-eaten smell. The books became furniture of their own and hundreds of textbooks and thick leather bound encyclopedia Britannica’s, stacks of outdated phone books with names of cities hundreds of miles apart, what looked to be a cow’s jawbone, and a Steinway piano filled the dining room. Something that appeared to be a chiropractor’s table, even more bundles of newspapers, a pair of sawhorses, Vargas pinup girl posters, plaster busts, and small animals pickled in jars made up the living room. A windmill erected over the garage, augmented by an array of solar panels across the roof fed power into the house.
The chassis of what looked like an old 1960s Corvette disassembled into no less than a hundred components occupied what should be a bedroom in the house. An old gramophone and stack of records, more bundles of newspapers and a century’s subscription of
National Geographic
magazines occupied what had once been a kitchen.
They all sat in what passed for his living room, waiting for something good to come on television for the first time in a month. Doug paced the room in front of an old stand-alone big screen projection television with a briefcase-sized receiver on top. Mack stood next to Doug anxiously chewing on her lips.
Stone stood propped in the open door frame with an M4 slung but ready on his shoulder, alternating between watching the yard for stray zombies and casting an eye at the snowy picture screen. The Major sat alone on a barstool in the corner. Wyatt and George parked on the moldy couch, like a grandpa and grandson waiting for the super bowl pre-game show.
“It’s a KU-band big dish receiver. I have been searching every station azimuth and elevation and just letting it sit for a few minutes on each one. You see all these new mini-dishes work off transponder repeaters, which are actually just big antennas. They do not pick up directly from satellites, in other words. Only these big old dishes actually pick up signals from outer space,” Doug explained as they waited for the snow to turn into something else.
The house seemed to never have been maintained. There were large water stains from multiple leaks in the ceiling, doors that hung open long after losing their level, and walls that undulated like a washboard from years of being wet and humid. Scattered around the house were circuit boards, capodes, vacuum tubes, soldering irons, and a bank of a dozen deep-cycle marine batteries hooked up to what looked like a small fan motor. In ceiling rafters fifteen feet off the ground, somehow, was a Geo Metro along with a balloon basket.
Major Reynolds had been twenty questions about Doug’s ballooning equipment and he talked about it in detail before George convinced him to return to the subject of the television signal.
“I have found several dozen signals from television satellites but there is no programming. The satellites are there but nobody back here on good old planet-E is uploading anything anymore. Well, except for one,” Doug rattled on.
The technician continued, “That’s actually surprising because I am sure the living dead would still want to watch home shopping, or at least
Glee
. I have been watching this for the past two days because it comes and goes. I did not want to come get you and bring you back home only to have nothing but snow and static to show off. As near as I can figure it, this satellite is on an elliptical orbit that passes overhead every six hours or so.”
“So, you are getting this four times a day?” interjected Stone.
“Now I only have the signal for about twenty minutes as it fades in and out with the passing of the satellite. The picture comes in first, then the sound comes and goes and finally the picture fades back into snow,” said Doug.
“So what have you seen on this?” asked Reynolds.
“How are you even sure that it’s not just something that was uploaded months ago and is just now playing?” intoned Stone.
“Well, they show the
Sopranos
on the first pass, and some sort of weather program on the last but on the middle two passes of the day they have—” getting closer to the group and whispering, “—the news,” Doug said as the snow turned to an image on the screen.
The picture came in strong but the soundtrack was scattered and scratchy. It was a young female newscaster well-dressed in a smart business jacket. She had short-cropped blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and fresh makeup. As she spoke, the first thing that was clear was that you could not understand a single word she said.
“She sounds like she is underwater.”
“Is this from overseas?”
“Quiet.”
George looked at the desk and the woman for clues as to where in the world she was coming from. Behind the newscaster was a symbol that looked like a blue globe with two balls in it and the word
Sjonvarpid
. She had manicured fingernails, was reading from a manila sheet of paper, and wore a small watch with a metal band. The screen flashed to a series of what looked like phone numbers and addresses.
“What language is that?”
The picture switched from the screen of numbers being read by the monotone newscaster, to a shot of a grey-skinned infected on a gurney. The infected was under guard by a man dressed in what looked like a black wind suit. Windsuitman was armed with a small black submachine gun. A yellow-suited and gas masked biohazard technician was taking notes on a metal clipboard.
Stone, who had moved across the room to the back of the couch muttered, “Well, at least you know this isn’t just some old TV show.”
As the screen switched again to the newscaster the soundtrack, which was never fully clear, was fading back into static.
“That was an MP5,” said the Major thrusting her chin forward. “The guard had a German Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun.”
“So they are German?” George asked.
The Major frowned. “Well, the thing is with that, I was stationed at Spangdahlem for two years, and I promise you, what she was speaking wasn’t German. Antiterrorism teams and special ops people all over the world use the MP5. Hell, I even carried one at one time as a PDW before we switched to the M4.”
Stone chimed in, “I agree, it didn’t sound like any German I have ever heard, sounded more Scandinavian, maybe Swedish or something.”
“Well, no matter what it is, until we know more about this, just like the radio station, what happens here stays here. We don’t want to cause more rumor and panic than what we have already,” Reynolds announced, standing up from her barstool.