Taking the Next Steps
JODY LYNN NYE
“Just take a look!” Tee Figueroa exclaimed. She wound her arm around her boyfriend Billy Marx’s waist and gazed out over the broad, flat Columbus River Valley, the last rays of twilight throwing shadows across the darkened buildings of the distant city.
“Today, Nashville. Tomorrow, the world!”
Billy laughed and gathered her into his arms. Her slight figure hardly made an impression against his sturdier bulk.
“You’re setting a lot of store by a shack, an antenna, and a chain link fence.”
Since a few months into the lockdown began, Billy had been communicating with fellow ham radio operators worldwide and turned his own reminiscences and stories from those friends into a popular radio show piped over the public address system in the Foresight Genetics compound. He just saw it as a way for survivors of the plague to hear news and realize they weren’t alone in the big, wide world. His friends that lived at Foresight, down the hill a few minutes’ drive from the new studio building and transmitter tower called him a lifesaver for keeping their spirits up during the dark times. Tee, and many others, thought he should build a real broadcast studio and transmit programs of all kinds over as many frequencies as possible. They had all the fancy gear, now, instead of a digital ham radio attached to a makeshift antenna. The electric and water hadn’t been run up the hill to the new facility yet, but they were on the roster waiting for their turn to have the barn-raising crew, as everyone called it.
The U.S. government, now based in Jacksonville, Florida, instead of the Hole in Oklahoma, backed his efforts absolutely. He could legally possess any equipment that he could locate. The idea was to start out as radio and branch into video when they could. The morale boost that a regular entertainment and news channel would provide was worth more than the value of electronics that no one now would ever seek to reclaim. The original owners were all dead or had fled. That didn’t stop Billy from leaving IOUs whenever he took something. You never knew. But he must have written ten thousand notes by now. If he and Tee couldn’t make a success of their new station, he wouldn’t ever be able to pay back the debts he was incurring. Nor was he sure he could collect together enough people to produce programs that filled all the needs of the community. Hardly anyone was left from the entertainment industry, and those who survived felt uneasy about traveling cross-country to a virtually empty city that might still have infecteds hiding out around. His many concerns must have shown on his face. Tee hugged him hard.
Once again, he felt a deep wave of love for her. She was the most amazing woman. Not only was she beautiful, in a kind of slender, wild-haired wood-elf way, but her sheer brilliance dazzled him. Whenever they hit a snag in their plans, she always found a way to keep the project moving forward, all the while keeping him from feeling like an idiot lagging along behind her. Her technical knowledge was far above his own, and she was street-smart on top of it. He kept wondering why she was interested in an awkward small-town boy five years her junior who was nobody’s version of handsome. Tee had had plenty of offers from other men in the compound but showed no interest in any of them. If there was any treasure at the end of the rainbow of the nightmare that sprang from the virus, Tee was his.
“This just the beginning,” she said, as she always did. “We will do fine. We will make this work. We’re together! That’s what counts.” She gestured behind her at the frame for the structure going up at the rear of the small metal hut. Soon, it would be their home, big enough, as Tee said, for them, and Cindy, Billy’s first girlfriend.
Just before the virus had started up, long before he ever met Tee, Cindy and her parents had taken the trip of a lifetime to central Asia. She had sent photographs of soaring, white-topped mountains, and towns and villages thriving at the top of the world. When all communication shut down, he had lost touch with her and feared her lost forever, along with the millions and billions who had succumbed to the virus or become victims of those who caught it. Then, a faint and crackling message over ham radio told them she was all right.
Cindy’s mother had died because of the virus, but she and her father had taken shelter in a monastery in Tibet. To Billy’s surprise, Tee made friends with her over ham radio, chatting after-hours through bursts of static and unstable power from Cindy’s end. Once Cindy would return home again, they said they had plans for Billy, which made him tingle with delight and terror at the same time. They’d be a family, even if it seemed a faint hope for the time being. How Cindy and her dad would get back was still up in the air. So much of the infrastructure that had existed before the plague was gone or nonfunctional. Travel was one of the industries that had little hope of rising again anytime soon. It seemed like decades since the plague broke out, even if it was only two years.
Two years! It had only been two years since he and his mother and sister had fled to the Foresight Genetics facility with anything that they could throw into their small car. The blue Honda Fit had run out of gas for the last time running reconnaissance trips into the nearby communities, then had a load of scavenged batteries installed under the hood by the five remaining plant engineers so it could live again. Maybe like the betas. Maybe like Billy himself. He was looking forward to a new life, one not constrained by the electrified chain link fence that protected the research grounds.
With the disease halted, and the few pockets of infecteds disappearing, everyone was looking outward. Beyond the walls of the compound, a neighborhood had grown up downslope. As time went by, houses on the streets below were being cleaned up and renovated, wiping away any trace that they had ever been broken into and soiled by waves of infecteds and wild animals. Billy spent most free evenings fixing up a little house for his mother. His sister Reena had acquired a boyfriend, Scott, the son of one of his mom’s fellow chemists, and moved in with him on the top floor of an abandoned apartment building just on the other side of the river. They had no power or running water, and what lights they had ran on LEDs supplied by solar panels, too, but it was all theirs. Mom and Reena had urged Billy to move on and get his life going, too.
He was working on it. His show got a wider and wider listener base every week. As people around the world were able to go out and about, the reports from his radio friends grew more interesting, but fewer, as they, too, were building new lives with less time to sit huddled over a ham or shortwave radio. His friend Geraint in Wales had taken over the grounds of an old castle and was fixing it up it with the hands of his new wife, Mairi, along with a road engineer, an Anglican vicar, and a handful of people from a medievalist society. A ship had set up deliveries of desperately needed supplies to Dr. Park in Antarctica, and evacuated the scientists who wanted to leave, now that they could. All this was getting broadcast on the increasingly sophisticated equipment that he and Tee had been able to bring back from abandoned radio and television studios and recording facilities all over Nashville. Tee had a dream of booting up the Internet, but that was years away from becoming possible. She had plenty more ideas, each more complicated than the last. He tried to keep up with her aspirations, but he guessed his brain didn’t work the same way as hers.
“Who do you think is going to win the election?” Billy asked, packing their tools into the rear of the borrowed pickup truck. Now that things were stabilizing, the government encouraged what populations existed to organize themselves with an eye toward more normal life. That meant figuring out who could do what, and who would be in charge. The people who had taken shelter in the Foresight Genetics compound had pretty much gone with the company chain of command until then. As the population grew, in ones and twos as survivors were located and taken in, the newcomers fell into the established channels, but that couldn’t last. Foresight’s mission was too important to the United States and the world for the managers to look after such things as construction, road repair, and education. Jacksonville had empowered the folks at Foresight to elect a new governor for the state of Tennessee. Everyone who wanted to run had put their names on a clipboard in the main hallway.
“I’m voting for Melanie,” Tee said. “She’s the most organized person I know.”
“I think I will, too,” Billy said. Ms. Melanie Trimble, the general manager of Foresight, had kept everyone from panicking, then killing each other, for the whole duration of the epidemic. “But who will run the lab if she wins?”
“What about your mom?” Tee asked. “She told me she was up for a promotion before—”
The unmistakable sound of a rifle report cracked somewhere far off in the darkness. They both jumped.
“I hope that wasn’t an infected trying to break into someone’s house,” Billy said. Everybody, including the two of them, was armed with tranq guns in case they ran across an infected, but they carried weapons with stopping power, too. Tee’s dark eyes had widened, and she froze in place. He knew what she was afraid of. He and some of the scavengers had pulled her out of the place she had been hiding for weeks all alone, staving off infected attacks and near starvation. This was one of the first times the two of them had been out of the compound without a bunch of others to back them up.
He took her hand. “Come on, it’s okay!”
She shook her head. He put his arm around her and led her toward the passenger seat.
“Let’s go down, or there will be nothing left from dinner.”
* * *
Ms. Sharon Tompkinson, the wife of the founder of Foresight, caught them as they drove into the parking lot. For all her long years of marriage to Mr. Jud and six children, she still looked like thirty was a ways ahead of her, still slim, her tan skin smooth and black eyes bright and unlined. She and Lani Sanders were trying to herd the five betas toward the outbuilding that served as their dormitory.
“You’re just in time! I need a couple of extra hands,” she said. “Olivia, stop chewing on that. It’s not good for you.” Olivia, a slack-jawed, gaunt female who could have been any age between twenty and sixty, gaped at her as Ms. Sharon stuck a finger into the woman’s mouth and dislodged a wad of greenery. Sharon threw it on the ground and wiped her hand on the side of her jeans. “Just when I thought we were making progress with her.”
“Good girl, Elsie,” Lani said, in a perky voice, the kind usually reserved for training puppies. The slim young woman, a former preschool teacher, smoothed back her chestnut curls, and fixed a beaming smile of approval on her protégé. Elsie held out a handful of bent stems. “See? She’s picking weeds and not seedlings. She’ll be a real help to me if we can keep this up.”
More than one experiment was going on in the facility. Seeds from dozens of farms and packets gleaned from stores all over Nashville as well as minor farm equipment had been put to use in fields and yards in the new neighborhood downhill from Foresight. Anyone who had room to plant had tilled up the soil and were growing “victory gardens” just like in World War II. Billy had interviewed Lani about the greenhouse at the rear of the main laboratory building, where anyone with time and even a faintly green thumb was forcing seedlings. Tomatoes, greens, beans of every kind, potatoes, corn, and numerous herbs had been making the canned and dried food a lot more interesting in the last few months.
The second was causing a lot more controversy, although that was wearing off as time went by. Most of the infecteds in the area had died of the disease or exposure, or killed each other, or starved to death, or been shot when they tried to attack normal people. Fresh infections were fewer, though they still happened once in a while, and everyone at Foresight had been double, triple, and quintuple vaccinated. Of the infecteds remaining alive, a few were betas, who had a modicum of intelligence left, but only a modicum. Ms. Sharon had championed a program to rehabilitate what betas they could that the females—Billy couldn’t bring himself to call them women any longer—would have been classified as Trainable Mentally Handicapped.
So far, no one had located any betas with higher brain function remaining, such as Educable Mentally Handicapped. The disease had robbed the victims of all but the basest levels of intelligence. It also rendered their body temperature, or maybe their perception of it, too high for them to tolerate clothing. Despite the chilly spring weather, the five betas stood there as naked as the day they were born. At first, Billy had done the same as all the other men and a few of the women, sneaking furtive and lustful peeks at them. Naked women! On show all the time! Just watching those bare boobies swaying had set his hormones on fire. But after a time, he realized there was nothing special about the betas being unclothed. They weren’t sexy or alluring, just sad. He felt he was violating them by staring.
None of the betas could even be relied on to wear safety equipment, so hauling garbage or assisting with the growing construction outside the electrified fence were out of the question. They could barely be relied on to stand still for a shower and howled like wounded dogs when their teeth and hair were brushed. Still, everyone needed to eat, and gardening was one place where the betas could do the least harm. Ms. Sharon thought it was important to help them learn to pull a little of their own weight. Their jerky way of moving and their vacant expressions set Billy on edge. They looked wrong, no longer quite human anymore.
One of his ham radio friends had used a term that made sense to him: the uncanny valley. It was why no matter how much they might be made to look like people, animated characters or robots were never something he felt comfortable with. Betas, for all that they used to be normal, had crossed to the other side forever. He had to keep reminding himself they were real people, but like his Great-Aunt Lizzy, had lost their senses through no fault of their own. He had never been trapped by them, unlike Tee, who did her best to cope with the constant presence of the betas inside the compound. She wasn’t alone in thinking that one day the former infected would flip out and start attacking others.
So, it was hard to find sponsors to work with the betas. Billy completely understood the reluctance. He didn’t trust them, even if he was beginning to think of them as unfortunate victims, a little unluckier than the uninfected survivors. He knew Foresight approached the beta question differently than most places. In some places, the normals maintained a shoot-on-sight policy. Others just ignored them unless they tried to attack or steal food. Mr. Jud’s feeling was that they were still human beings, and he would give an honest try to rehabilitate them if he could. He didn’t discount the uncanny valley but hoped everyone would do their best to work with it.
Elsie grunted, and her nearly toothless mouth writhed as it tried to create a smile at Lani’s praise. Tee shuddered. Billy put his arm around her.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Sharon. We’ve been working uphill all afternoon.”
Sharon nodded. “I understand, honey. How’s the build coming?”
Tee forced herself to perk up at the question. “It’s going to be awesome,” she said. “We’ve laid out two studios and got all the soundproofing up. We ran wires to the control room. The LEDs are in place, so we’ve got emergency lights. All we need is power, and we can go on the air from there.”
“That’s fantastic,” Lani said, her eyes dancing. “I hope you’ll let us all take a snoop through there.”
“Of course, ma’am!”
“You’re gonna have a story for your show later,” Ms. Sharon said. “Angel Velasquez found a pocket of survivors down near Rock City. Seven people!”
“Wow!” Billy said. He reached for the pad of paper and pencil always in his jeans pocket. “Where are they? Can I talk with them?”
“They’re getting examined by Doc Butterman. I’m sure they’ll be around later.”
One of the betas began to moan and claw at her rounded belly. Billy had thought a few months back that Gardenia was just bloated from hunger and parasites, but the women in the compound just shook their heads at him as if he was as simpleminded as the betas.
“Gardenia, are you all right?” Ms. Sharon asked. The female lifted muddy eyes full of pain just as a gush of liquid splashed from between her legs. Everyone jumped back except Ms. Sharon. She’d had six children of her own. “Bless her soul, she’s in labor! Help me get her to the infirmary!”
People came running out of the big double glass doors. One of the National Guards looped back inside and came out with a wheelchair. They bundled Gardenia into it and pushed her into the building. The beta fought to get out of the chair. The others talked soothingly but held onto her tightly. Billy gawked after them until Ms. Lani’s voice broke the spell.
“Billy, Tee, I need your help right this minute,” she said, firmly. “We still got to get these ladies into their rooms right away. Just follow my lead.” She took Olivia by the upper arm and steered her toward the dormitory.
“All right,” Billy said, though he wasn’t happy about it. Though the betas were clean, except for garden soil on their knees and hands, he felt uneasy touching them. He took the arms of two of them and urged them to follow. They stumbled along, as if their bodies and limbs didn’t belong to them. Tee bravely escorted Edith, the most docile of the betas.
“Hey, Ms. Lani, have you met the newcomers yet? What are they like?”
The teacher laughed. “Well, Angel Velasquez got word from one of the scouts that they saw fresh garbage on a roadside down in Rock City, and went in to investigate. They’ve been hiding out in the caves all this time. Can you believe it? It took them several days to get up here. Dieter had to round up enough horses so they didn’t have to make the trek on foot.” The few vehicles that now ran on alternate fuels or battery packs had become supplemented by feral horses that people caught and re-civilized.
Billy felt excitement rise in his chest. “I’ve got to talk with them,” he said. “Everyone will want to know their story.” Interviewing them over the ham radio channel would give all the survivors around the world a lift and give them more hope.
Ms. Lani shook her head. “You better meet them before you decide to let them loose on the rest of humanity.”
“You mean they’re still in shock?” Tee asked, sympathetically. Like herself, any of the normal humans the scavenging teams brought back to Foresight needed time to adjust. It took them a while to realize they were safe. The mental stress often brought on symptoms like post-traumatic stress disorder, which the few counselors among them did their best to treat.
“I mean they’re pains in the you-know-what,” Ms. Lani said, her lips thinning with disapproval. She unlocked the door and swung it wide. The narrow room beyond had been a small storage closet, one of several on this floor, and had been cleared and furnished with a mattress with an old blanket, and a heavy metal tub for a toilet. The betas didn’t always use those, and the caretakers had to hose out the dormitories every few days. “Come on, Olivia, right in here. We’ll bring you supper in a little while.”
Olivia grunted. She crouched down on the mattress, ignoring the blanket. Tee guided Elsie to the next small dormitory.
“I don’t really like that their rooms are dark all the time,” she said.
Miss Lani sighed. “Y’all know we tried leaving lamps in there, but they smashed them up. Same goes for any furniture we let them have. It actually turns out they are calmer in the dark. No matter what you think of them, honey, they’re less trouble than our new neighbors are going to be.”
* * *
Billy didn’t have long to wait before encountering the survivors from Rock City. Seven of them, four men and three women, sat at a table by themselves in the cafeteria, as far away from any other diners as they could go. For all that they had been hiding out for almost two years and looked as old as his grandparents, they looked reasonably well-fed and healthy. As he and Tee picked up trays and helped themselves to food, he heard them whispering to one another.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s introduce ourselves. Maybe if they’re willing to talk about how they got by, we can put them on the show tonight.”
Tee glanced at the clock. Although she and Billy checked in on the ham frequency a couple of times during the day, 8:00 P.M.was the usual main broadcast, carried over the airwaves as well as the public address system.
“Mind if we sit down with you?” Billy asked, holding his tray forward. “My name’s Billy Marx. This is Tee Figueroa.”
Six of the newcomers glanced toward the seventh. He sat at the end of the table. He flattened his hands on the surface and spread out his long fingers as though drawing strength from it.
“You . . . may,” the man intoned. Billy estimated that he wasn’t much taller than Tee, and at least a decade younger than the rest of the newcomers, probably fifty-something. He had a longish fringe of reddish hair surrounding a domed skull, and prominent eyebrow ridges, under which a pair of surprisingly sharp green eyes lurked. Billy, inclined to be charitable, thought his hesitant way of talking was because he and his group had been holed up so long with only themselves that they were uncomfortable interacting with strangers. They had all seen it before with others that had been rescued. Separation and fear had tamped down civilized responses and, once safe, they had to grow into being people again. He was surprised at the behavior of this contingent because they didn’t jump on the food on their trays, though Billy could tell they wanted to. He held back a moment himself, wondering if the leader wanted to say grace.
Instead, their attention turned back to their leader. He waited a moment until all their eyes were on him, then he nodded. Immediately, they started stuffing food into their mouths, fork in one hand, bread in the other. The leader ate at his leisure, keeping an eye on them. Billy understood right away why Ms. Lani felt uneasy about him. He acted like a really stern teacher, or maybe a drill sergeant. No, it went deeper than that. He liked to control things, and they were too shell-shocked to rebel against him.
Maybe it was because of the way they had had to live over the last couple of years. He felt sorry for them. Billy could tell by the look on Tee’s face that she understood, too. Well, living in the Foresight compound for a while was going to show them they could take their own initiative.
“How’d you end up in Rock City?” Billy asked. “Were you tourists? Are you from the Chattanooga area?”
“Is that . . . any of . . . your business?” the leader asked, his eyes flashing with unexpected hostility.
“Not really,” Tee said, her face blank. She stood up and took her tray. “Let’s go over there, Billy. We’ve got a show in twenty minutes.”
Billy scrambled up to follow her.
“Who does he think he is?” Tee hissed as they sat down at a table clear across the lunchroom from the newcomers.
“Well, he might feel kind of out of kilter,” Billy said. “We’ve all been together since the beginning. They’ve had to make their way in a lot harder place.”
Tee shook her head. “There’s more going on than that.”
“I think you’re right, but we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“My abuela had a saying, Billy. No good deed goes unpunished.”
“So, the creature gave birth?” Dr. Park asked from her lab in Antarctica.
“She’s still a woman,” Tee said, frowning over the big carbon-button microphone. Her indignant voice echoed faintly from the speakers in the hallway behind the storeroom that had become the “show’s” studio. Since the ham broadcast was such an important morale booster, not only was it played over the public address system and worldwide by ham radio and shortwave, but the racks of equipment and supplies had been moved out to make way for about thirty chairs. Ten or so were occupied by listeners at any time.
“Yes. It’s a boy, and he’s perfectly normal. The doctors have been over him and tested him for infection.” Tee sighed and exchanged glances with Billy. “One of the mothers is caring for him along with her toddler. I think she’ll adopt him. Gardenia isn’t showing any interest in him at all. As soon as she felt better, she kept trying to get off the gurney. She’s back to picking weeds as though it never happened. I’m not sure she even gets that she had a baby.”
“Who’s the father?” asked Genevieve. She was the girlfriend of Francois, a ham operator in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and a family court attorney. “Is he willing to help raise up the bebe?”
Billy cleared his throat. “No one is stepping up,” he said.
“No one is willing to admit that they took advantage of a woman who cannot think for herself!” Genevieve said, her rich, rolling voice filled with frustration. “It happens here, too. We do not do as you do, taking them in and trying to give them jobs. They live like animals. Some of us put food out on tables in places where they will find it. We try to track the ones who are with child. Sometimes we find the infants . . . ” Her voice trailed off. Billy knew what that meant.
“They are less than animals,” Dr. Park said. “They have no normal instincts remaining.”
“They are unfortunate victims,” argued Father Davies, the vicar in Geraint’s new castle. He raised his plummy voice as though he were in the pulpit. “God would want you to accept them as brothers and sisters.”
“They’re only sisters,” Genevieve snapped. “It’s your brothers who see them as easy conquests!” Other voices joined in, raising an angry hubbub.
“A lotta men haven’t seen a woman in a while,” said Kent, call sign Xray Alpha Five Tango Tango Tango, from Idaho.
“And that makes it all right to rape helpless women?” Genevieve demanded.
“Well, ma’am, it’s kind of understandable . . . ”
Beside Billy, Tee sat up straight. He could tell she was about to dive into the growing argument.
“We’ve got some new residents,” Billy said, cutting her off before she could speak. “They were holed up in a cave near Chattanooga all this time. Seven people, all uninfected.” The look on Tee’s face said the debate wasn’t over. He agreed, but he wanted it to unfold during the late-night conversation, when most people only wanted happy information. “I hear from Ms. Melanie that they’re getting a couple of rooms near the showers. It’s been a long time since they got to enjoy hot water.”
“That’s good news-eh,” Geraint exclaimed, his soft tones a calming influence. “I will bet they were glad to see you!”
“I dunno,” Billy said. “I think they kind of resent us.”
He glanced up then and saw the leader of the newcomers standing in the doorway. The man’s intense eyes bored into him. He felt his heart sink. He shouldn’t have said anything. Tee looked smug, as though she felt the man had it coming.
“With all of the blessings that your group has had during these trying times, someone who has had none could not help but feel envy in his heart,” the vicar said, but Billy hardly heard him. He felt ashamed of himself.
* * *
The leader stood in the Foresight Cafeteria, refusing to sit down until all of his people were alone at one table right in the center of the room. He’d openly chased off Miss Nora and Mr. Lou, something that wouldn’t have been polite under almost any circumstances, but the Foresight people were giving them a little time to get acclimated to their new surroundings. He called himself Mr. Seraphim. It was highly doubtful that was actually his name, but everyone let that go for the time being, too. They certainly weren’t making too many friends. Seraphim was the only one who talked to anybody else, even accompanying the women into private medical examinations. And he only spoke to others outside his little group to make demands.
Billy and Tee sat with their friend Orin Feldman near the serving line. Orin and Billy were responsible for wiring the houses downhill as they were renovated enough to become occupied. They marked off each completed building on an unofficial plaque mounted near the entrance to the laboratory compound. The waiting list, though it was kept on a clipboard in the administration office, was also set in stone, but in a different way. Expanding outward was taking time, and there was no way around that. Mr. Jud, usually the calmest of people, had been heard shouting when Seraphim tried to get his request for housing moved up on the roster.
“I bet they’re gonna want a place big enough for all of them,” Orin said in a low voice, wiping his large nose with a paper napkin. “And some farmland. Did you talk with Angel? They had taken over the whole concessions area in Rock City, except they were sleeping in the Fairyland Caverns with two cows and a bull. They must have been in the Grandview for a long time, too. It was a disaster area! Garbage and dung piled up everywhere!”
“They probably had to move in case the infected came looking for them,” Billy said. He did his best to see the others’ point of view. “The Fairyland Caverns are far enough in that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”
“It’d be cold and damp a lot,” Orin said. “All caves are like sixty degrees or so year round, which is great in the winter.” He sniffed again. “I’d probably get pneumonia going in and out in the summer. My granddad took us there when I was about six. Did you hear? They threw a whole fit when the beta came into the infirmary to have her baby.”
“Not much of a surprise,” Billy said. “Lots of people feel that way.”
“I mean, a massive throwing-things shit fit! That guy”—Orin tilted his head toward the leader—“said they weren’t fit to live, and if the doctors didn’t kill the ‘spawn of Satan,’ he would. They had to lock the door between the wards. They started pounding on the walls.”
“That’s wrong,” Tee said. “The betas are harmless!”
“They’re not,” Billy said. “Mr. Ellis pinched one of them on the butt, and she went for him like a vampire.”
“That was hilarious!” Orin said, his eyes dreamy with the memory. “I mean, they had to bandage his cheek after, and he had to get vaccinated all over again, but it was worth it.” He looked at Tee, who wore an expression of outrage. “I mean, she had to defend herself. I get that.”
“Did they bring the cattle up here?” Tee asked, burying the hatchet gracefully. “I miss fresh milk.”
“They will. It’s gonna take a few days because they’ll have to recharge the truck a couple of times each way.” Orin grinned. “This gives a whole new meaning to ‘cattle drive.’”
“I am stealing that joke, Orin.” Billy looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s almost noon. We’re airing an hour each for the candidates for governor every day until the election. You want to come and listen?”
“Hell, no! I’d rather shock myself silly on a live wire. I’ll just vote in two weeks. I know everybody on the clipboard already. You think there’s even a question as to how it’ll go?”
“I . . . I can’t say,” Billy said, squirming a little. Tee knew what he thought, but he wasn’t talking about it to anyone else. “As the press, I’m supposed to stay neutral.”
“That’s great as a theory,” Orin said, waving a hand. “What’d Mr. Phillips say in History class? ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’?”
“So, Mr. Myron, what will you do if you are elected?” Billy asked, as the second hand on the big clock on the wall swept up to noon. Out of habit, he started to push the microphone toward his guest, then pulled it back. They had microphones and other equipment galore. He could host a whole roomful of people with all the gear they had.
Myron Levy, an architect who had also been a public relations agent in the time before the virus, adjusted the Sennheiser headphones over his ears. He was a short man, about Tee’s height, with a round head, a round body, a shock of dark brown hair going gray, and big, round, brown eyes. He looked as though he had been constructed to define the word “jolly.” He’d been a big help on the home-raisings that they had done already, especially showing talent for painting and caulking.
“Well, Billy, I can put it into just one word: infrastructure,” he said, with an emphatic gesture that no one in his greater audience could see. The leading candidate, Ms. Melanie Trimble, in the front row, grinned. She appreciated the theater. “That’s the main thing everyone wants right now. Homes. Running water. Electricity. Insulation. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sharing a dorm with three of the loudest schnorrers—I mean, snorers—in the county!” That got a laugh, even from Billy, who wasn’t sure what “schnorrer” meant, but it sounded funny. “I gotta have my own place. Even a one-room shack with an outhouse behind would be better than listening to a baritone opera every night. But I’m not the priority. People with children should get homes first. What we need is to analyze the places that can be rehabbed, that can be set up for utilities. The government has given the OK to take what we need. And we gotta be practical. Sure, there are mansions that are empty, apartment buildings with lots and lots of room, but they’re in bad shape, and we can’t run power to them, maybe not for ages. All we’ve got going right now is the TVA plant down below, and that’s limited. It sounds great to live in a big fancy house, sure. I’d like that myself. Maybe one day.
“Right now, let’s get this state going forward again. We’ll help each other, work together, like people did in the pioneer days. Infrastructure. A man who was a lot better with words than me, Sir Winston Churchill, said, ‘We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.’ Let’s build good, and make it good for the people who come after us. All of you guys—and ladies,” he added, with a nod to Tee, “have been doing a great job, but the organization is haphazard. We’ve done our best during the crisis, but that’s winding down. I’ve got an outline of all the departments that we’ll need over the coming years, and I want to put a plan in place for the governors who’ll come after me. I’ve got copies of documents from the state house library. I’ll be following in a long line of wise people, but I know I’m up for the job.”
A row of chairs near the rear of the room was occupied by Seraphim and his people. During each of the candidates’ talks, they made disparaging noises. Mr. Myron didn’t give a damn about them. He just kept talking. Seraphim cleared his throat noisily, drowning out the speaker. The level on Billy’s VU meter pinned in the red zone.
Billy stopped the chess clock on the table and looked out to his audience. “I’m sorry, folks. The candidates are allowed to talk for a whole twenty minutes. You can’t interrupt him now. He’ll take questions when he’s done.”
“I don’t agree with what he said,” Seraphim said. He crossed his arms high on his chest and looked at Billy with his eyebrows lowered. Tee nudged Billy with an elbow. Ignore him, her eyes said. Billy nodded.
“Well, sir, he has a right to his say. I’m running this interview. Please don’t talk until we’re done.”
Seraphim frowned, but many of the other listeners turned to glare at him. The rest of the leader’s flock looked shocked.
Billy went back to his list of questions. Mr. Myron was a good talker, that was for sure, and he was prepared. The short man waved his hands around a lot, building a new government in the air, sketching his infrastructure all over the place, but in a thoughtful way. He didn’t act like the last two years hadn’t happened, which a couple of the previous speakers had. That was refreshing. Another old saying, “the elephant in the room” couldn’t really be ignored.
Mr. Myron was so dynamic that hands began to climb into the air before his speech had ended. Billy began to call on each of the questioners. A couple of them, like Jensen Pike, just wanted to start an argument.
“What are you gonna do about settling differences?” Mr. Pike demanded, stepping up to a microphone set on a stand in the aisle. “I gotta man who’s trying to divert water off the property I claimed. Who’s gonna stop him? I gotta couple of cows to care for.”
“We’ll have a court system,” Mr. Myron said. “In accordance with the Constitution of the United States. We’re under martial law right now, so if you have a dispute, take it up with Jacksonville or with the managers right here in Foresight, who are the interim government. We’re gonna have to be a little informal for a while. Talk to Jud Tomkinson if you want a mediator.”
“I want justice!”
“You’ll have to find a way to work it out, my friend,” Levy said with a shrug. “We’re all in this together. If you want to be part of the solution, come help us.”
Pike grumbled and subsided. A woman stood up next.
“I have grade-school kids. How are they going to get an education?”
“We’re starting all over with that, ma’am,” Mr. Myron said. “We’ve got more than a few educators here. We’ll work with children at their level as best we can.”
The woman nodded and retreated hastily. Seraphim hauled himself to his feet as though he carried tons of unseen weight.
“Mr. Levy, what makes you think that you can be a good leader? You’ve had it easy all this time, supported by this community. Some of us have held our lives together against monsters with only our wits to save our lives.”
“True, I’ve been lucky,” Mr. Myron said, eyeing the newcomer, but keeping his voice level. “I didn’t start out up here, though. These good people pulled me out of an office building, where I was living on coffee and vending machine candy bars, maybe one a day after a while. You didn’t know that? I’ll tell you why I’d be a good leader. I listen to people. I find out about them, and ask them what they need, what they want their lives to look like later on. You should try it.”
“What about individual property rights?”
Myron shrugged. “We’re the biggest population center in Tennessee right now. You wanna take over a whole county for yourselves? Go right ahead. But if you want to stay here, you have to think of more people than just you.”
Seraphim lowered his brows, an expression that threw terror into his followers. Murmurs ran through the audience, and from the speakers beside Billy, most of them approving.
Billy noticed with relief that the clock had moved to the hour mark.
“That’s about it, folks,” he said. “Thanks for listening. This was Mr. Myron Levy, candidate for governor of Tennessee and surrounding territories. The election is in fourteen days, so come back every day to hear more candidates. Thanks!”
Seraphim led his newcomers out of the room, pushing past everyone.
“Thanks, kids, that was great!” The short man shook hands with both of them and rose. He removed the headphones and set them on the desk. Tee shut off the transmitter. She sighed. Billy sighed.
Ms. Melanie rose from her chair and made her way over to them. Billy stood up at once. She took both of them by the hand. “I know it’s hard to deal with someone so prickly. Find sympathy in your heart. They’ve lost everything that made them the people they were before.”
Billy dropped his gaze to the baggy knees of his jeans. Before the plague, he had been kind of pear-shaped, with most of his weight in his belly and rear end, but that all was whittled down by scanty meals and a lot of hard work, so his clothes didn’t fit that well.
“I’m trying, Miss Melanie. It’s just not easy when they’re so rude.”
The plant manager wrapped him in a big hug, enveloping him in her comforting curves. “They’ve suffered, too.” She set him back and shook her head. “Billy, you know the war cry of the South!”
“Uh, ma’am?” Billy felt heat rising in his cheeks. He couldn’t think of anything except, “The South will rise again,” but that had never been his family’s creed. Nor could he believe that Ms. Melanie Trimble, an African-American whose own grandparents had been enslaved or impoverished sharecroppers would espouse a return to the time of the Confederacy! “Uh, no, ma’am, I guess I don’t.”
Her soft brown eyes turned mischievous. “Sure you do. It’s ‘Bless their hearts.’”
Tee started laughing. “That’s what Lou Cook used to say when one of his techs did something really stupid.” The late Mr. Cook was the music producer in whose house Billy and the scavenging committee they had found Tee hiding out against the infecteds.
“Exactly,” Miss Melanie said. She raised her hands, palms to the sky. “And ‘Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ So, bless them, and forgive them for being people who need your help. They’re no better and no worse than the betas. I believe in you. Do you need me here earlier tomorrow than noon for my talk? I hope I can come across as well as Mr. Myron. He ought to be a preacher!”
“A few minutes would be enough, ma’am,” Billy said.
“I’ll be here.” She gave them one more luminous smile and departed. Billy felt better.
“Let’s go check Myron off the list,” Tee said. “After hearing him, I think he’ll be a great lieutenant governor.”
“We gotta stay neutral,” Billy reminded her. He shut down the rest of the equipment and turned off the lights before he locked the door.
He felt bad having to secure things, but a lot of people had joined the group over the intervening months. Stuff had begun to go missing, a thing that almost never happened in the early days. Having a common enemy meant that every bite of food, every bullet, every scrap of clothing was a weapon against being wiped out. Nobody stole then. All resources went to the survival of everyone. Money was useless. Sweat equity and trade goods were all the currency that meant anything.
Once the situation began to ease up, people’s better angels seemed to desert them. Mr. Jud had quietly dealt with the first couple of cases of hoarding. Vigilance had increased even more as the compound collected stray farm animals to supplement the flocks of chickens and herd of goats that already lived there. Instead of waiting for eggs, some hungry people decided they wanted chicken dinners instead. That had to be nipped in the bud hard. The perpetrators, never named, had to undergo counseling, under threat of being tossed out of the compound. Billy didn’t want to have to go scavenging for more equipment to replace what they had amassed, both there and up the hill in the new studio.
The clipboard hung where it had been for the last few weeks, on the bulletin board just outside the management office. Tee brandished a pen and clicked its top. Two names had been crossed off the list of candidates. She drew a line through Myron Levy’s name. “Only five to go—no, six! Oh, my God, no!”
She handed him the clipboard and pointed.
“Benedict Seraphim?” Billy said in disbelief, looking at the last name on the list. “Hey, he’ll never get elected. No one likes him.”
“Never say never,” Tee reminded him. “Would you have believed three years ago that humanity would nearly be wiped out by a plague?”
Billy had to admit she was right.
* * *
“All right, let’s see it!” Ms. Lani said, clapping her hands together. A large group stood gathered outside the chain link fence of the new broadcast facility in the chilly autumn air. “This is the best thing to happen to us in ages!”
“Aw, come on, Ms. Lani!” Billy said, feeling shy all over again. But he had to admit he was proud. With the help of dozens of others, the studio had come together almost completely over the course of a weekend. Even the betas had been brought up to help clear weeds around the two buildings. “We’ve constructed dozens of houses in the last few months.”
“This is special,” Ms. Nora said. The half-Choctaw woman didn’t talk much, so people listened when she did. “This is the first new community facility since the plague started. It’s like we’re coming back from a long way down.”
Billy exchanged a glance with Tee. Everyone had suffered losses, but Ms. Nora’s was especially brutal. She had watched the murder of her first husband and son on her own security camera. He handed her the big shears.
“Will you do the honor of cutting the ribbon, then?” he asked, gesturing at the swathe of crime-scene tape holding the gate shut. She looked surprised. Her husband, Mr. Lou Hammond, smiled at her.
“All right, but don’t expect anything neat!” She opened the scissors’ jaws and gnawed at the tape a few times. It fluttered away in strips, and everyone cheered. Ms. Nora made a face and handed the shears back.
The visitors oohed and aahed as Billy and Tee showed them all the features of the small studio building. Most of the lights were clusters of LEDs, with one big battery-packed security light over the heavy exit door.
In the first big room, recording equipment stood out from against the walls with cables coiled up on top of each unit.
“Only the ham radio and the shortwave will go operational tomorrow,” Tee explained. “All the rest of the broadcast equipment is waiting for more power, and for the government to give us a frequency to tune to. As soon as we can source more solar panels, we’ll be able to put more programming on line. Meera will be offering a daily world music show starting next month.” She gestured to a slim woman who worked as a microscopist for Foresight. “We’re taking proposals on other shows, so if you have ideas, write them up for us.”
“I . . . wish to offer . . . my services,” Mr. Seraphim said. His beautiful tones carried and echoed off the painted cinderblock walls. “My program was syndicated nationwide. On Sundays.”
“Televangelist,” Tee whispered to him. “You can tell by his voice.”
“Uh, let me think about it,” Billy said. Maybe including him would help get the newcomers to calm down and become part of the community, but he was afraid that Seraphim might preach death and destruction to be rained down on the betas. It was already hard enough to incorporate them into the community. Whatever he thought of them, they were still human beings, and if truth be told, he liked them a lot better than the newcomers. “If you’ll just make a note for us on your format, and what you need, we’ll discuss it.”
Seraphim looked smug, as though it was a done deal. He interrupted Billy most of the way through the tour.
“I will . . . require this room as . . . my personal office,” he said, even though Tee had just pointed out the cozy room with the wide window was her office. “I will record all public service announcements from here,” he said about the small studio to the right of the control room. “Refreshments for me and my flock should be served here, exclusively,” was his comment on the tiny kitchenette with one of the few low-power microwave ovens that Billy had been able to source. By now, the rest of the folk touring the facility had clearly had enough of Seraphim’s pronouncements.
“Why didn’t Angel leave them down in Chattanooga?” Dieter Vance muttered. Tee shot Billy a sharp glance. He resolved then and there that Seraphim should never have a show on their network.
They gathered again in the middle of the big studio, and Tee lit up the house lights. They were powered by the big diesel generator to the rear of the building. That fuel resource wasn’t infinite, but it ought to last them years of judicious use. Everyone let out a sigh of pleasure.
“This looks amazing, Billy and Tee,” Ms. Melanie said, beaming at them. “How you managed to pull together such a professional-looking facility is just a wonder!”
“It took us months of searching,” Tee said, grinning. “I think we checked out every radio station and television station in all of Nashville and brought back what we thought we would need for the next few years.”
“Oh, yeah,” Micky Rollins said, with a broad smile on his face. “We know Billy and his endless IOUs.”
“IOUs?” Seraphim asked, raising a shaggy eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah,” Micky said, ignoring Billy’s reddening cheeks. “Every time we took something from a house, he left a note promising to pay the owner. Not that anyone is coming back. Most of it came from Lou Cook’s studio, where we found Tee holed up.”
“Right,” Angel Velasquez said. “It’s a little goofy. But he’s honorable.” She tousled Billy’s flyaway brown hair into even more of a mess than it usually would. Billy swatted her hand away.
“So, that’s everything in here,” he said, uncomfortably. “Our house isn’t really set up yet, but we’ll have a housewarming when it is.”
“When are you two getting married?” Ms. Nora asked, and Billy felt his cheeks burn again.
“Not until Cindy can be in on the ceremony,” Tee said, firmly. “She’s part of our family, too.”
That earned shocked looks from Seraphim and his flock, but this time, Billy refused to let the arrogant bastard get under his skin.
One last touch remained. Billy and Tee brought out a rolling cart that had a white cloth draped over it. In a plastic pail were three bottles of champagne that they had found under a pile of fallen shelves in an abandoned store, a pitcher of grape Kool-Aid for the kids, and a stack of plastic wine cups. Very carefully, he eased the cork out of the first bottle to cheers from the assembled guests. He poured out small servings, with the first one going to his mother. She beamed and lifted it high.
“To better days!”
“To better days!” everyone echoed, and drank.
Billy felt triumphant, as he led everyone out of the studio and locked the door. There were too many guests to ride in what few vehicles they had, so he joined the flock going down the hill toward the compound. Tee got caught up in the crowd, answering questions.
“Young . . . man.” The voice caught him by surprise. Billy glanced to his left. Seraphim and his coterie seemed to loom up out of the darkness.
“Yes, sir?”
“I didn’t want to . . . embarrass you in front of . . . the others,” the shorter man said, his voice carrying a hint of menace. “Those recorders and amplifiers . . . and much else . . . that you took . . . from Lou Cook’s studio . . . are mine. I . . . paid for them.”
Billy peered at him. “Yours? How’s that possible?”
“He . . . did some recordings for me. The equipment was . . . payment for episodes . . . never produced. I will . . . take them . . . tomorrow.”
Billy felt his heart sink. “But we need them! They’re the best ones we found.”
Shaking his head, Seraphim frowned. “Then . . . you must pay me back. You left . . . an IOU for them?”
“I always do,” Billy said.
“Then . . . I believe you owe me . . . forty-six thousand dollars. That is . . . less than I paid . . . but I will allow for depreciation.”
The nightmare Billy always feared had come to pass. “Look, sir, I haven’t got the money now. I will pay you back, I swear it. We’re about to go on the air! Can I arrange a plan with you to pay overtime?”
“A . . . plan?” Seraphim appeared to consider it. The rest of their neighbors had moved far down the slope, their voices receding in the darkness. Billy had never felt so alone. The smaller man moved closer. “What can you offer . . . of that value?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Billy said, helpless in his despair. “I don’t have much. What do you want?”
He could almost hear the other’s smile in the dark. “Let’s begin . . . with my show.”
* * *
“Why?” Tee demanded, when they returned to their small room in the compound. “He’s awful!”
“Well, we want variety,” Billy said, hating himself for even saying such a thing. “We’ve got a lot of God-fearing people who haven’t had a lot of solace for their souls over the last few years.”
“And you think he’ll make them feel better?” Tee demanded. She stopped when she saw the misery on his face. “This isn’t like you. What happened?”
Billy plumped down on the double bed they shared and clenched his hands between his knees. “I owe him.”
“You owe him? For what?”
“For a bunch of the equipment we scavenged. Mostly the stuff we took out of your old boss’s place. He said he gave it to Mr. Cook to do some work for him. Work that wasn’t finished when the plague hit. So it wasn’t paid for. It belongs to Mr. Seraphim.”
Tee frowned and sat down next to him. “That’s bullshit. I don’t remember him ever coming to the studio, let alone having recording gear delivered.”
“Are you sure? It could have been before you started working for him. Do you think we can find the tapes Mr. Cook made of him?”
Tee grimaced. “I doubt it. I used most of Lou’s tapes in the net I knitted. They’re ruined. I’m sorry.”
Billy put his arm around her shoulders. “Never apologize. You made that net to save your life. Hardly anything from before is worth the same as it was then. Mr. Cook is gone, so he won’t care.”
“And he can’t tell us the truth,” Tee said. She sighed. “I’m sure that man is lying, but how do we prove it?”
“Right,” Billy said, feeling even more miserable.
“So, we’ll put him on the air. What will it matter? Who’s out there listening?”
* * *
Ms. Sheila Parker, a woman in her nineties whom the scavengers had found sheltering in the back of a grocery store a month into the plague, came to visit them after the first broadcast Seraphim made on a Sunday morning. Her wrinkled face was stretched tight in a smile. Her skinny shanks stuck out from the bottom of a pair of tight, white cotton capri pants. She fastened her bony hands onto Tee’s arm.
“God bless you for bringing us such a guide in the wilderness!” she said. “That man is an inspiration! Only he has been brave enough to say what so many of us have been thinking.” She reached up and patted Billy on the cheek. “You’re a good boy.”
Ms. Sheila’s feelings weren’t universal, to say the least. Ms. Melanie Trimble stopped Billy in the hallway that afternoon. She wore her Sunday best yellow dress, but her kindly face seemed wreathed with worry.
“Honey, can I talk with you a moment?” she asked.
“Sure, ma’am,” Billy said, with a warm smile. He really liked Ms. Melanie. “Is this about your interview tomorrow?”
“No. No, it isn’t. It’s about that man.” Billy didn’t have to ask which one. “His campaign interview for governor held a lot of veiled threats, but this is open prejudice! I know he hates the infecteds, but they are our burden to bear. It doesn’t help our constituents, who are already dealing with so many other concerns. Too many of them are listening to him. At least twenty I know of agree with him. I’m getting pushback on some of the social programs I’m trying to institute. Mr. Myron is dealing with the same kind of responses. I’m downright terrified that what little cooperation we have been fostering will disappear into the maelstrom of anger I’m seeing. I have prayed whether to get involved with this, but his kind of racist, ableist hatred is not something that I want spewing out of our facility!”
Billy felt his cheeks grow hot. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I talked with him a little after his show this morning. He said he would tone it down, but he really hates the betas. His flock’s experiences down south sound a lot worse than we had up here. They didn’t have our resources or our defenses.”
“Oh, I understand that! But if he’s preaching a message of God’s love, I didn’t hear a lot of that today.”
“I know,” Billy said. “I’ll keep working on him.”
* * *
But his efforts at diplomacy seemed to bounce off the preacher’s solid brass exterior. No matter how many times he tried to bring it up, Seraphim managed to turn Billy’s words around on him.
“So . . . you say that I should . . . offer acceptance . . . to these terrible animals? Have your . . . fellows not suffered . . . as we have?”
“Well, yes,” Billy said, feeling he was losing the initiative. “But they aren’t evil on purpose. I mean, there’s hardly any of them left. These people deserve some sympathy, too. We’re trying to give them a new life.”
The watery hazel eyes fixed on him. “Do they . . . deserve it?”
Billy had just about had it with the man. He straightened himself up, knowing he didn’t make a very impressive figure. “Yes, sir, they do. If I was one of them, I’d be grateful for a second chance. At the bottom of their souls, I’m sure they are. They’re willing to work. There aren’t too many people left in the world, so we need all the help we can get to start civilization all over!”
Seraphim glared at him. “Just remember . . . the debt is due.”
Billy sagged a little bit inwardly but held himself upright. “Yes, sir, I know it.”
“Then you won’t interfere with my show. You won’t edit a word out of it.”
It wasn’t until the man strode off down the hall with his entourage in tow that he realized Seraphim hadn’t fallen into his usual ponderous way of talking. It was a hoax, like the man himself. But his IOU was real, and Billy knew he had to keep cooperating with the leader to make it good.
The next day, he left the compound after their daily show to help his mother and her new boyfriend move into their new home. The fall air had a snap in it, and he felt refreshed even though he ended up carrying dozens of heavy boxes back and forth. Despite his troubles with Mr. Seraphim, he felt optimistic about the coming election, only five days away. From the scuttlebutt going around the lunchroom and elsewhere that despite a small but vocal minority that agreed with Seraphim, it was a walkaway for Ms. Melanie.
But the mood back in the compound was dark. When he returned in the green Honda Fit, Tee was waiting inside the entrance with her arms folded and an expression that would have dissolved metal.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t something he’d done.
“That man!” Tee all but snarled. “He threw me out of the studio while I was on with Cindy! His people took over the building and locked it! I can’t even get back in!”
“That’s not right,” Billy said, walking back to the small car. There ought to be enough power left in the batteries for the ride up the slope. “Get in.”
Tee simmered in silence all the way up to the studio.
“Is Cindy all right?” Billy asked, glancing at her. She was mad as hell. He hoped none of it was at him. “Her transmissions have been pretty muddy for a long while. I’m getting worried about her and her dad.”
“She’s fine,” Tee said, curtly. When they reached the gravel pad in front of the studio, she barely waited until the car had stopped before she bounced out and started pounding on the door. Billy followed her. A number of the betas were in the garden, pulling weeds under the supervision of Ms. Sharon. She came over as Billy began rattling the handle.
“I saw what he did,” she said. “Isn’t there another way in?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said, feeling in his jeans pocket for keys. “There’s a small security door at the back.”
“I tried it,” Tee said. “He blocked that one, too!” Billy rattled the handle.
“Mr. Seraphim!” he shouted. “This wasn’t part of the deal! Let me in!”
The ponderous voice echoed out from the public address speaker above the main door.
“This is my . . . headquarters now, boy. You have . . . proved yourself an . . . unworthy steward . . . and are banished! When I am . . . elected governor, I will nationalize . . . this station. In the meantime . . . leave this place!”
“Look, you have a nice place in the compound,” Billy wheedled.
“No! Those . . . things . . . infiltrate every inch there. We will . . . not go back! When I . . . am elected, they will . . . be banned!” They heard squeals of overmodulation, which meant that he was pulling a live mic too close to the PA. “This is . . . Benedict Seraphim. Normals have . . . joined forces with . . . the zombies that threaten . . . all good people!” He launched into a rant that surpassed anything that he had said in his previous broadcasts. Billy cringed. Those words were being heard all over the world, and it was his fault!
“He’s unhinged,” Tee said. “He’s going to take over our frequency. Ruin everything we worked for!”
“No, he isn’t,” Billy said, making his decision. In his mind, he saw Ms. Melanie’s sad face. Debt or not, he had to fix this problem, right now. “He’s exceeding the time limit on political broadcast. We can’t let him do that. Did he take all the tools out of the house?”
Tee’s eyes danced. “It hasn’t been touched, as far as I could tell.”
“Good.” Billy marched into their partially finished home and dug through a pile of construction waste until he located the heavy metal toolbox. He hoisted it and marched toward the back of the studio. “Tee, get in the car and get it running.”
“Right,” Tee said. She retreated around the corner.
“What are you gonna do?” Ms. Sharon asked, shooing the betas away from the building. The naked females huddled together at the edge of the gravel. “And can I help?”
“Stay out of the way of the doors,” Billy said. “I think it’s gonna get loud in a minute.”
Donning heavy gloves, he took out an insulated wrench and disconnected the power lines from the solar panels on the roof as well as the line that led to the main lines down to the TSA generator. Shouting erupted from the studio building as the interior lights blacked out and the emergency lights came on. He didn’t have long before they’d undo the locks and come out after him. As quickly as he could, he took a wire cutter and snipped the connectors off the cables. He shouldered the toolbox and ran for it.
The rear door slammed open behind him, and Seraphim erupted out of it.
“Come back here, boy!” he bellowed.
Billy rounded the building and hopped into the open passenger door. Tee tweaked the electric vehicle and steered it down the bumpy slope. Seraphim and the least elderly of his flock followed, but the car soon outdistanced them.
“Aren’t you afraid that he’s going to attack Sharon and the betas?” Tee asked.
“Nope,” Billy said, hauling in deep breaths. “She’s got a shotgun in case of zombies. I mean, alphas.” He sat back against the upholstery. What have I done? he asked himself. It’s all going to fall apart now.
Tee glanced over at him, then fixed her eyes on the slope. “How much do you owe him?” she asked. “I mean, how much does he say you owe?”
“Forty-six thousand dollars,” Billy said, misery coloring every syllable. “I’ve never had a thousand dollars in my life! He’s going to go to the others and say I’ve been favoring him because of it. And I kind of have. I wrote those IOUs.”
Tee shook her head. “He’s lying. Tell him to stuff it!”
“I can’t. I gave him my word.” Billy fixed his eyes on the road, a knot of misery in his belly.
“We’ll see about that.”
As soon as they got back to the compound, they went looking for Mr. Jud. They found him in the cafeteria with Ms. Melanie, Mr. Myron, and the rest of the candidates for governor. It looked, from the number of coffee cups scattered around, that a bigger conference had been going on in their absence.
“We heard all that!” Mr. Jud said, his face like thunder. “This is a serious matter! The election is tomorrow! Seraphim’s partisans have already been calling the voting a sham. He’s convincing them that the governor will be elected under false pretenses. The more his voice gets out there, the worse things get. Our people don’t know what to do. Jacksonville is wondering if they have to step in to run the balloting for us, which will delay getting things done.”
“He can’t broadcast anymore,” Billy said. “The federal broadcast license is in my name. He will never get another chance.”
“I hate to ask you, buddy, but why did you put him on the air in the first place?” Mr. Myron asked, his sharp brown eyes boring into him. Billy started to open his mouth, but Tee shook her head slightly.
“It was a mistake, sir,” Billy admitted, ashamed.
“The power of the press has to be neutral,” Ms. Melanie said. “This election has to be seen to be honest and aboveboard, run according to the constitution and the laws of this state, no matter what condition we’ve fallen into. We must rise! What everyone hears from now on has to be free from bias and contamination. We can’t let people think they’re going to fall into the hands of a raving lunatic, not when they’ve all been through so much.”
“Now, now, Melanie,” Mr. Jud said. “He’ll get the votes he’s going to get. If he wins, he got more votes than any of us did. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“I don’t want him riling anyone up the way he has been on Sundays!”
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” Billy said, thinking hard. “I’m pretty sure he is on his way down here now. I’m not going to let him anywhere near a microphone.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“We’ll lock ourselves in the storeroom,” he said. “We’ll use the old ham radio. You can put someone in with us to gather the votes from the outlying areas, but we’re not letting anyone else in with us. The only voices going out will be ours. You can tell me who won when it’s over, and we’ll tell the truth to the state of Tennessee.”
Mr. Jud smiled.
“That will do, son.” He scanned the others’ faces. “Everyone on board with that?”
“What do we do about Seraphim?” Ms. Melanie asked. “His fans are pretty focused on seeing him win.”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” Tee said, suddenly. Billy glanced at her in surprise. “You go and get supplies for us for the night,” she told him. “Hurry up! We don’t know how long we’ve got until he gets down here.”
“All right,” Billy said, puzzled. He gathered up packages of food and filtered water bottles on a tray and headed for the storeroom.
Tee joined him a little while later. The two of them went over the ham equipment. All the nice microphones and headsets were at the top of the hill—Billy suspected Seraphim might have trashed the place when the electricity had cut, but he couldn’t help that—but the old stuff still worked pretty well. Within a half hour, a soft tapping came at the door. Billy grabbed for a piece of metal shelf support, but Tee waved him down.
“That’ll be Lou Hammond,” she said. “He’s the election judge for the over-the-air votes.”
“Hey, kids,” the big man said, grinning at them. He had a trio of sleeping bags and a big canvas bag over one shoulder. He raised a growler of beer in the other hand. “I brought supplies.”
He could hardly sleep that night. Billy felt like drinking the whole keg of beer once the pounding started about one in the morning. He sat up in his sleeping bag at the sound of the first blow.
“Let me in here, boy!” Seraphim shouted, his resonant voice seeming to fill the room even if he wasn’t inside it. Fists, multiple fists, beat a tattoo on the painted metal door. “You won’t steal my platform on the eve of my triumph!”
“Go away!” Tee shouted. “You had your shot. No one gets any more airtime until after the polls close. If you’re that sure you’re going to be elected, what’s your problem?”
“Billy Marx, I’m going to tell everyone what you did,” Seraphim said, his voice filled with menace. “They’ll have to throw out the election results and start all over! Once I am running things, I’ll see to it that you are exiled from here! They’ll know that you favored me and gave me an edge.”
Billy started to get to his feet. Tee grabbed his arm and dragged him down again.
“They already know,” she shouted back. “I told them.”
“You . . . you told them?” Billy asked, shocked.
Tee gave him a fond glance. “You’re too innocent,” she said. “Nobody thinks you did anything underhanded. Now, get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day. Maybe the biggest of our lives!”
Billy stared at the metal door. Seraphim and his people were still pounding.
“Ignore him, son,” Lou Hammond said. “He’s not getting in.” From his canvas bag, he withdrew his favorite shotgun and broke it to look in the chamber. He nodded. “I promise.”
Within an hour, the pounding and shouting stopped. Billy fell into an uneasy sleep.
* * *
At six the next morning, he and Tee were at the console. He felt his unshaven chin, wishing he could clean up, but that didn’t matter. Mr. Lou, armed with a clipboard and a headset, sat down across from them.
“Good morning, everyone!” Billy announced as soon as Tee signed that they were warmed up and on the air. “It’s Election Day! The State of Tennessee will choose its first governor and lieutenant governor since the outbreak and everything went to pieces. This is a major step in bringing us all back together. We’re proud to announce that the polls will be opening at 7:00 A.M.Anyone over the age of eighteen can cast a ballot. If you’re hearing this, you’re already at one of the ham radio locations where you can vote. If you’re close to us here, you can come up and vote in person. We’ll be glad to see you. Cast your vote for governor of Tennessee and the greater mid-south region! The candidates are Ms. Melanie Trimble, Mr. Jud Tompkinson, Mr. Benedict Seraphim . . . ” He reeled off all seven names and fell back in his chair, smiling. Tee squeezed his forearm.
“ . . . Um, can I vote?” a soft female voice asked. “It’s my first election.”
Mr. Lou leaned close to his microphone and clicked his pen. “Yes, ma’am! Give me your name, your address, and your choices for governor and lieutenant governor.”
Billy and Tee listened with delight as more than a dozen people clamored to be next. Mr. Lou jotted down the votes on separate documents for each voter. Then he glanced up at them.
“You two, get out there and cast your votes.”
Billy frowned. “Can’t we register ours with you?”
“No, sir, you can’t. I’m taking remote voters only. You are here on site, so you have to go into the cafeteria.” Mr. Lou laughed his big hearty guffaw. He winked at Tee. “It’ll be a show worth seeing. Now, go on and git!”
* * *
In the cafeteria, it looked as though all three or four hundred people who lived in the compound or the region around it were jammed inside. Even the betas huddled in one corner near the door with Ms. Sharon between them and the rest. It was their state, too.
The candidates sat behind a long table on a dais at one end of the room, looking dignified and nervous. Handmade posters with their names hung on the wall behind them. Everyone was dressed in their best. Ms. Melanie had on her yellow dress and a matching picture hat with a blue band. Mr. Myron had on his usual polo shirt and glad-handed everybody who got close. Somewhere, Mr. Seraphim had scared up a white suit and brushed his thinning red hair into a pompadour. He wore an expression of beatitude. Billy hated him with every fiber of his body. From the cold gaze in the televangelist’s eyes, the feeling was mutual. He wondered if he could jump on Mr. Seraphim and knock him unconscious, and if anyone would stop him.
“The polls are open!” Ms. Nora announced, beckoning toward a box with a lock on it that sat on a table next to the candidates. “Y’all got your ballots and pencils?”
Little Ms. Sheila stood at Mr. Seraphim’s table. He held one of her scrawny hands in both of his. Her free hand held a paper ballot.
“Yes, ma’am!” she croaked. She beamed at Seraphim, who smirked back. Billy felt sick.
The crowd started to move toward the balloting station.
“One minute!” Tee said, running in front of them and holding up both her hands. The mass of people halted, puzzled. “I’ve got some information for everyone!”
“What’s up, little lady?” Roger Marshall, one of the best of the zombie hunters, inquired.
Tee cleared her throat. “You need to know that one of the candidates is guilty of a number of crimes. Bernard Seraphim—if that is his real name, which I doubt—has been blackmailing Billy Marx! I know, that wouldn’t be a crime that would stop an election, but Seraphim has been using the debt to get more airtime and more publicity than any of the other candidates! That would be against election law anytime in the past, and it still ought to be today!”
Murmuring swept through the crowd. A bunch of Seraphim’s supporters crowded around the candidates’ table. Ms. Melanie looked alarmed.
“What’s this debt?” Corporal Chaz Miller asked.
“You all know Billy and his IOUs,” Tee continued. Most of the crowd nodded. “Seraphim claims that he owns some of the equipment Billy and I scrounged up around Nashville. But he doesn’t! I can prove it. But Billy is too decent to tell the creep off to his face.”
“Mr. Seraphim’s a good man!” Ms. Sheila shrilled. “He tells us the truth!”
“No, he doesn’t,” Tee said.
“Now, listen, young lady . . . ” Seraphim began.
“Let her talk!” Miller said, holding up a hand. “She can have her say and you can have yours after.”
Tee appealed to the crowd. “I haven’t lived here long, but I know Billy, and so do all of you. He’s as honest as they come. He would pay any debt if he could. He believes he owed this extortionist,” Tee punctuated her words with sharp jabs of her finger at the goggling candidate, “forty-six thousand dollars! So, here it is!”
At her word, Angel Velasquez and Dieter Vance came in with big baskets on their shoulders and big grins plastered on their faces.
“One thing you have to realize,” Tee continued, “is how different things are now. What matters isn’t money—in fact, no one has used legal tender for years! But Mr. Seraphim demands cash, so we’re going to give it to him. Right?”
“Right!” Angel said. The tall National Guard sergeant unlimbered the big basket and shook it over the candidate’s head. “Here you go!” Dollar bills, in every denomination from singles to hundreds, cascaded down over him. Seraphim let go of Ms. Sheila to protect his face.
“And here’s the rest!” Dieter said, adding his burden to the cascade. “You better count it. It’s forty-six thousand, plus we calculated interest going back to the beginning of the plague.”
The room fell into shocked silence. Then, Billy heard the sound of ripping paper. He turned to see Ms. Sheila Parker tear her ballot across.
“Ms. Nora, I wonder if you will favor me with a new paper.” Ms. Sheila wore an innocent expression. “I believe I have spoiled mine.”
“Dear Ms. Sheila, reconsider!” Mr. Seraphim protested, while still trying to gather the money off the table. His flock stooped, picking up every fallen bill. “I have the . . . best interests of . . . everyone in mind!”
“Liar!” The little woman turned her nose up.
“You cheated one of the nicest guys in the world!” a man said, shaking his fist under Seraphim’s nose.
“Now, now, folks, it isn’t what you think!” Seraphim said, holding up his hands. He was showered by a cascade of torn paper. He stood up and retreated off the dais. His flock followed him.
The betas milled around near the door, staring open-eyed at the activity. Seraphim headed directly for them.
“Get out of my way, monsters!” he bellowed, and tried to shoulder them aside.
The betas might have been fairly placid when being cooed at by their volunteers, but their remaining brain cells rebelled at loud noises or violence. Before Seraphim could escape, the five females sprang at him, biting and scratching. He yelled and shoved, but they were too strong for him. Olivia bit him on the ear. Gardenia went into an especial froth of fury and leaped on him, battering him with both fists. It took a dozen or more strong helpers to pull the betas away and calm them down. By the time they were subdued and tucked back into their corner, Seraphim’s white suit was covered in smudges and blood. He puffed himself up with what was left of his dignity and strode out of the cafeteria. Billy laughed out loud.
“Fold up your ballots and put them in the box!” Ms. Nora called, grinning. Billy found a paper and pencil thrust into his hand. He checked off his choices and tucked his ballot through the slot.
* * *
“I had hoped we had left people like Seraphim behind in the past,” Mr. Jud said. Most of the voters had remained all day, waiting through the counting. To the surprise of few, Ms. Melanie was elected governor, and Mr. Jud was her lieutenant. They insisted on making Mr. Myron a department chair. Tee was congratulated over and over again for her clever handling of the intruders. No one knew where they and a handful of their supporters had gone. Or cared.
He lounged in one of a host of folding chairs in front of Foresight’s front door. Mr. Lou had a barbecue going with donations of meat from numerous neighbors, and the last of the sweet corn from the fields out behind the compound. Everyone milled around, eating and drinking and congratulating the two winners on their success. Billy, sitting nearby next to Tee, felt happy for the first time in weeks. He hadn’t realized what kind of strain he had been living under. He’d worry later about what kind of a wreck Seraphim and his people had left up in the studio. He took one of Tee’s hands and kissed it.
“That was a big surprise,” he said. “Thank you.”
She grinned. “Seraphim totally deserved everything that happened to him. My favorite part was when the betas gave him a smackdown.”
“I feel responsible,” Billy said, shaking his head. “I should have asked for help as soon as he started pushing me around. But I never thought about what would happen when someone actually called in my IOUs. I didn’t know what to do with a blackmailer.”
“You’re so straightforward,” Tee said, with an indulgent smile. “You never see what’s going on right under your nose.” She looked down the slope, and her eyes brightened. “Like that! My other surprise. They’re too late to vote, but who cares! They’re here!” She got to her feet and dragged Billy with her. Mr. Jud and the others near them also stood up. Four riders on horseback were making their way up to the Foresight gates.
“Damn!” said Mr. Jud, peering into the twilight. “Is that Calvin Borstead?”
Calvin Borstead? Cindy’s dad? That must mean . . .
“Cindy!” Billy shouted, and ran down the hill.
It was Cindy. She dropped the reins and waved wildly at him. Her father, a rangy man in his middle fifties, grinned at him. The two small women in long robes wearing weird, hornlike hats of yellow silk over shaved heads smiled at him.
Cindy swung off the horse and rushed toward Billy. He almost laughed at her awkward gait. She must have been in the saddle for hours. Her sun-bleached hair was long and braided in a complicated fashion he couldn’t begin to describe, and her skin was tanned and crinkled slightly around her brilliant blue eyes. She couldn’t look more beautiful. He caught her up and swung her in a circle.
“How . . . ?” he began, hardly able to get words out. “When . . . ?”
“About a year ago,” Cindy said, laughing as he set her down. “The monastery thought it was safe to move. We’ve been making our way home ever since. The abbot sent Zhang Min and Jiao Chu with us,” she indicated the two women. “They’re bhikkhuni, Buddhist monastics. Without them, we would never have gotten here. Tee and I wanted to surprise you, so we made it sound like I was still in Tibet all this time.” Cindy turned as Tee approached. The two women fell into each other’s arms. “I’m so glad to meet you in real life!”
“Same, sister! You missed all the fun!” Tee said. “I can’t wait to tell you all about it!” She gave Cindy a peck on the cheek and kept her arm around the other woman’s waist. She turned to Billy, beaming. “What do you think?”
Billy goggled, but no words came out. He’d been thinking about what to say ever since Tee and Cindy had declared they wanted to be a family with him. It wasn’t going to come out right, but he was going to say it anyhow. His heart pounded hard as he dropped to his knees in front of his two girlfriends. “Only I’m not worthy of either of you. Will you both marry me?”
“Yes!” Tee and Cindy chorused. They exchanged glances.
“I owe you ten dollars,” Cindy said, slapping Tee’s palm. “I thought he’d wait a while.”
Tee laughed. “Your money’s no good here. No one’s is.”
The voters cheered. Billy knew he was miles behind Tee and Cindy. He’d never catch up, and he was all right with that.