The Remaining: Trust: A Novella (9 page)

Abe brought the ration card out of his pocket. He read the number, deliberately refusing to look at the designations under it. The man’s wife and children. Who would be alone. Who would wonder tonight, and the next night, and the night after that, what had happened to their husband and father.

He brought it on himself
, Abe tried to tell himself.

But he failed to convince himself.

“Alright.” Nunez leaned forward, squinting at the screen. “Number comes back to Donahue, Blake. Family of four. Wife and two kids, it looks like.” Nunez shrugged. “But the number got terminated two weeks ago. It’s not even good anymore.”

Abe sucked on his teeth. Looked on with a stony expression. “Could they have been suspended for something? Hoarding diesel fuel or ration fraud?”

Nunez shrugged. “All this shit’s typed in by hand, so somebody could have made a mistake, but usually if that’s the case, it will show ‘suspended’ instead of ‘terminated,’ and it will have some comments in it. Such as the reason for the suspension and the time period until it’s reinstated.” Nunez looked up at the major. “I’ve only ever seen it say ‘terminated’ when the family is dead or if they decided to move out of the Green Zone for whatever reason.” He sniffed. “Chasing relatives in California or whatever.”

Abe stood, still and silent as a monolith. He stared at the screen but didn’t really see it. His arms had crossed over his chest as the corporal had given his explanation, and his right hand clutched his bearded chin tightly. Brow furrowed.

Nunez grew uncomfortable. “You mind if I ask where you found that card, sir?”

Abe’s eyes gained focus again. He directed them at Nunez. “I mind.” He put the ration card back into his pocket. “Don’t talk about this. With anyone. Don’t even bring it up with me again. Understood?”

Nunez nodded and went back to his computer screen. “Understood, sir.”

Abe turned away from the corporal, but not before noting the address on the screen. The address where the Donahues were supposed to live, according to the most recent census record. Then he grabbed his helmet and headed for the door.

A ringing telephone stopped him.

He stood there, facing the doors to the command center and gritting his teeth. Already knowing what the ringing phone was for. Who it was from. What it was about. You didn’t mess with a system like the Green Zone census and
not
get noticed. Computers were such treacherous things.

Corporal Nunez answered the phone.

A brief pause.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Abe closed his eyes, still not looking behind him. What did he feel in that moment? He wasn’t so sure. Anger. Betrayal. The sense of being used. Being lied to. Having one pulled over on him. But those were low-burning embers, buried under a thick crust of complacency. Of being tired. Of just wanting all of this to end. And those feelings…those were the ones that rooted his feet to the floor, that slouched his shoulders and sank his guts.

The creak of an office chair.

“Major,” Nunez called. “The president would like to see you.”

SIX

Abe found Briggs much in the same way he’d seen him when he’d left earlier that morning, in a rush to save Tyler and Fargo Group. In a rush to run headlong into problems that were not of his creation but that he was expected to deal with anyway.

President Briggs stood at the head of the table this time, rather than sat. He was alone. Some papers were spread out on the table, and it seemed to Abe that the table had become his preferred workspace. When Abe came through the door, he was still dirty, still stinking like smoke and exhaust, hair still matted from his helmet, face still locked—unyielding even to his own emotions. The face of a man deliberately “switching it off.”

President Briggs did not smile or greet Abe in his usual cordial manner. There was a tension in the air of the room that was immediately apparent to Abe. The president leaned on the table with one hand, the other planted firmly on his hip, and he looked up at Abe from underneath his brow. His usual stately expression was slightly pinched. His forthright eyes appeared now to be veiled and suspicious.

Abe stood still, just a single pace off of the doorstep.

The gap between the two men seemed ridiculously long.

What do you say? What do you say to fill all that empty space when you both know, but neither of you want to put it out there? To make it real by speaking it into the void. Words are such pesky things. How they can lift you up and crush you down and make grand ideas seem very small indeed. Why speak them when they can so easily be left unsaid?

Abe cleared his throat. “You called for me, sir?”

His helmet began to feel heavy in his hands. The sling of his rifle felt like it was digging into his skin. He was hungry, though he knew his appetite would be gone by the time he reached food. He could just feel the acid scraping at the bottom of his throat.

Briggs stood up from hunching over the table. Up to his full height, stretching backward a little bit, and then he regarded Abe with a frank look. “Major, I wanted to talk to you privately, because I’m having some concerns that we’re not on the same page anymore.”

“Not on the same page?”

“Do you trust me?” Briggs asked point-blank.

Abe didn’t immediately answer.

Briggs shook his head, just slightly. “Losing your trust was not my intention, Abe. You’re an integral part of everything we’re trying to do here, and if things were done without your knowledge, it was not because of any particular desire to hide them from you. Or Colonel Lineberger.”

Abe shifted slightly. “Colonel Lineberger doesn’t know?”

“No, of course not.” Briggs half smiled, but it was with a note of sadness. “I wouldn’t tell him something and not tell you. But sometimes…” He seemed to grow exasperated. “Sometimes there are things I do not want the military to be a part of. Because you soldiers are everything these people have. They don’t have homes or belongings or stock portfolios anymore. They have a military. They have fighting men and women such as yourself who are keeping them alive. That’s the only thing they can be proud of anymore. And if I were to make a decision that put that pride in jeopardy…well, that would be a terrible mistake.”

Abe’s thoughts were muddled.

There was logic to what the president was saying, but it seemed a pretty veneer on what was essentially manipulation. There was the sense that Abe’s ego was being subtly stroked. Abe had learned long ago that if someone was stroking your ego, chances were they were lying to your face or trying to get something out of you.

Briggs stared at his table. “Sometimes there are problems that I simply have to handle on my own, Abe. I firmly believe, with every fiber of my being, that I was meant to do the job that I am doing. I believe in the choices I am making. I believe that they are the right ones. That even though they are sometimes ugly, I am doing what needs to be done in order to rebuild this country—and not only rebuild it, but make it better than it was.”

The president looked up. His eyes were hard. “But some of these decisions are tough. Some of them are dirty. Some of them are bloody. And many of them I do not want to make.” He frowned, balled a fist, and tapped his knuckles on the table once. “But I simply cannot make my decisions based upon the popularity of their results. I cannot do it. I am bound by things more serious than
popular opinion
. I am bound by a duty to rebuild this place, to make it safe again, and before any of that happens, there is going to be goddamned hard times, just like there has been.”

Abe regarded the man standing before him, unsure of what to think.

Briggs met his gaze straight on. “I talk, but I’m not sure I’m making myself understood.”

Abe tapped the dome of his helmet against his leg. “Sir…I’m a simple, direct man. Perhaps you could speak simply and directly. It’s just us.”

Briggs nodded slowly, as though sizing up the situation. After a moment, he spoke, and his voice was flat, bereft of its usual sonorous qualities. “I cannot be beholden to the people,” he stated. “In order for us to survive and once again thrive, and for democracy to have a place here, we have to reestablish our civilization—our
civilized society
. But we can’t do that with a democratic system in place. Because the people are incapable of leading themselves out of this mess. We have to first make this country a place that is safe enough to harbor democracy again. And right now, it is not.” He leaned forward slightly. “So until it is, the people who speak out against me, the people who undermine my position as president, my right to hold this office…they have to be dealt with harshly. They cannot be allowed to continue speaking out. And the tools with which I can affect them are very limited.”

“So they starve,” Abe said quietly.

The president’s lips pursed slightly. “They’re deprived of the benefits of being a part of the Greeley Green Zone. If they refuse to be a cooperative member.”

Abe wanted to tell him that those “benefits” were not meant to be controlled by the president as leverage for cooperation. The “benefits” were not meant to feed the military and be rationed out to civilians only if they shared the same political views. Those “benefits” were food and water and medicine that had come from Abe’s bunkers and the bunkers of other Coordinators, and they were meant to help people survive. Not to keep them in line or to consolidate power.

But why would he say these things? Why would he alienate himself?

He had now dug himself into a hole from which there were very few options of escape. And shouting and cursing the man at the top of the hole, who was his only way out, was not the way to do it. It benefitted no one to continue this argument. Save for his own conscience.

“Do you understand why I had to keep this from you?” the president asked him.

The president.

The
acting president
.

But Abe only nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Briggs looked pained. “Do you trust me?” he asked. “Are we still friends?”

Friends?
Abe thought.
Still friends?

As though they had ever been friends to begin with? What did a man like Briggs know of friendship? What did
any
politician know about friendship? It was not something that could be bought. It did not pledge allegiance or devotion. It was not an arrangement of convenience. It was not something that was given or taken away based upon mutual beliefs.

Abe had never called an acquaintance a friend. He’d been friendly with many people, but only a spare few he had ever considered
friends
. And Briggs was not one of them. Lucas Wright was a friend. Tyler Bowden was a friend. Lee Harden was a friend.

But again, why would Abe say these things?

So he just nodded slowly. “I trust you.”

*  *  *

The next few days were strange for Abe Darabie.

He went through the motions. He woke up and he brushed his teeth with baking soda and he got coffee from the mess hall, and on the second day he actually took some eggs as well. Rehydrated eggs. An odd, almost grainy texture, though he barely noticed.

President Briggs did not request his usual morning brief. At least not from Abe, though a few times Abe saw Mr. Daniels and Colonel Lineberger heading up to the top floor, chatting together like old chums. Abe resented it. He resented it to his core, though he had a hard time explaining to himself why he felt that way. He only knew that he was beginning to hate this place. He was beginning to hate what he had become.

Just an armchair commando.

A slot machine for his superiors—
pull the handle and hope Major Darabie comes up with some goodies for us.

The day of his…enlightening conversation with Briggs, he’d sincerely tried to stomach it all. He’d tried to submit himself to it. To accept it. By the morning after that, it had all coagulated in his mind and left a bad taste in his mouth. Over the course of that second day, he’d picked through his feelings and discovered he did not have much warmth left in him for President Briggs.

And by the day after that, he felt that he hated the man.

On that day, Abe skipped his breakfast once again. After his usual morning meeting with Lucas—a lackluster three-minute conversation about how it was very quiet in the Greeley Green Zone—Abe went back to his room. He riffled through a dresser and found some old civilian clothes. A pair of jeans and a red fleece pullover. He put them on.

He snuck out of the hotel like he’d committed some crime and walked quietly and unassumingly out of The Strip and into the surrounding civilian area. He went to the address he’d taken from the census records and found three families crammed into the house. None of them was the Donahue family.

You know, the Donahues?
he thought.

A/M, A/F, J/M, J/M? Entitled to 3,200 calories a day?

The families who lived there stared at him suspiciously and claimed they did not know the Donahues. They claimed they had lived there the entire time and never knew a family by the name of Donahue. But he could see the truth in their eyes. And his civilian clothes were not fooling them. They knew he was military.