ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER. GILLETTE, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
When Zach had loaded every recycling cart he was supposed to, he had a good twenty seed bottles left; he was supposed to improvise until late afternoon, when a guy he was giving a ride to would be calling him.
For the moment, he was just enjoying pedaling along a deserted residential street—nice houses, suburban styles from the eighties and nineties, back when they really built for the family that only went out as a unit to Chuck E. Cheese’s, church, and youth activities, the way Zach remembered when he was a kid, when they’d understood that a Christian dad needed a home that was a fortress. You can’t bake a good cake if other people can throw in any old ingredients they want, and you can’t raise a good kid if you don’t make sure that everything he hears and sees is good, Zach thought. This was the kind of street where, after Daybreak, there’d be big, healthy families, with lots of healthy, clean kids and dogs, and moms to stay home and raise them, and dads with time to play ball and go fishing and just plain hang out. Maybe Zach could move Tiff and the boys here, once Christian families had a fighting chance, and help fill the town back up.
For now, though, what to do with twenty seed bottles? Empty houses had empty yards and empty garages, which attracted bums, kids looking for party spots, and the remaining neighbors’ heavy trash. All of that meant a lot of stray plastic in piles sitting out in the open, exposed to the wind. Watch them try to put that toothpaste back in the tube. By the third empty house, he had seeding a back yard down to a science.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. LAMONT, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
So far Jason had reveled in miles and miles of gorgeous scenery and great music, punctuated with the amusing challenge of putting a black egg somewhere vulnerable.
Lamont, Wyoming’s computer store had a going-out-of-business sign and a south-facing window. Jason walked in with faked-up questions to confuse the clerks; while they were in the back trying to figure out whether they could sell him anything, he slipped behind the counter. He left two black eggs on top of two old tower servers, right where they’d get a few hours of sunlight through the dusty front windows in the morning.
Judging by the dust on the servers, the clerks probably wouldn’t see the black eggs till it was far too late; meanwhile, probably people having computer troubles—there would be a lot of those by tomorrow—would bring them in here. Jason was happier than Typhoid Mary at an all-you-can-eat salad bar.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. GILLETTE, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
Howard and Isaac liked to say that trash was their life, and vice versa. Twin brothers, they liked driving the city trash truck, happily taking turns driving or loading, just as they took turns buying rounds at Mary’s Retreat, buying breakfast at Perkins, doing the driving on fishing trips, and in pretty much everything else. Their joint motto was, “Me too, on everything.”
Coworkers who knew the twins well often said that was why they’d reached forty years old unmarried; they couldn’t find a girl who wanted them to take turns. Those friends would have been very upset to know how close to the truth they were.
This morning, they were discussing the smell of some recycling carts; Howard thought it was more like a backed-up sewer line, and Isaac thought maybe more like a diaper pail—just something to talk about as an alternative to Game Seven of the Series.
As usual, their truck was the first to the holding bin. Isaac found the lock cut off and lying on the ground; then they discovered the too-neat array of bottles in the bottom of the bin. Howard called Davidson.
“So you’re calling me,” Davidson said, his voice slurred from his usual four beers at lunch, “because someone put plastic bottles in the bin where we keep plastic bottles, and they cut off the lock to do it.”
“Well, yeah,” Howard said. “And they put them in like a pattern, like they’re kind of evenly spaced over the floor of the bin, and that’s pretty weird. And I climbed down and looked at one bottle—”
“I don’t pay you to look at the bottles,” Davidson said. “I pay you to bring ’em in and get us all paid. Dump your load and clock out, like you’re supposed to. Don’t bother me with petty weird crap. I’ll put on a new lock in a few days; it’s just there ’cause the Feds say I have to lock my holding bin.”
“Okay, Mr. Davidson, sorry to bother you.”
As they went back to the truck, Isaac said, “Should we maybe take one or two bottles to the police?”
Howard considered. “Couldn’t hurt to take one or two of them and hang on to them, maybe, as evidence, in the back of the truck. Just for a couple weeks, till we knew it wasn’t going to mean nothing.”
“Sounds good,” Isaac said. He dropped down the ladder and retrieved two bottles. “Full of some black crud. And these smell terrible.”
“Yeah, it’s weird all right,” Howard agreed, swinging up into the cab of the recycling truck. “Let’s get this fella dumped so we can get to the Tokyo Spa.”
Howard backed the truck in (this week was his turn), and Isaac worked the hopper-gadget to send the load of plastic into the holding bin.
A moment later, he vomited, and when Howard came out to see what the strange sound was, he did too. They backed away, eyes streaming, miserable with retching and the vile smell.
“Like somebody shit a pile of strong cheese,” Isaac said. “That’s what it’s like. It got a lot worse while it was in the truck.”
Howard lit cigarettes for both of them to clear the smell, and after bracing themselves, they moved the truck to the washing barn.
From the upwind side, the piled plastic in the holding bin looked strangely dingy, smeared with gray and brown slime. They climbed into their own pickup; Isaac put the two mystery bottles they had saved into the back, among a tangle of old rope, tools, and fishing gear.
“Whether they offer it free or not,” Howard said, “at that Tokyo Spa, I think I want that full wash. Might stop off at home and pick up some clean clothes to change into, for after, too.”
“Me too,” Isaac said, “On everything. Might even want to shower and change before we go to the Toke. No reason those ladies should have to deal with guys that smell like we do.”
Howard nodded. “Me too, on everything.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. 2:50 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
“So,” Heather said, “before you take all this back to your home agencies, do—”
Graham walked in, looking over the three knots of diligently chattering bureaucrats with a wry little smile of approval, and shoving his wayward glasses back up his nose as always. “Heather. Something vital. Step into the hall a second.”
“Sure.”
Outside, he lowered his voice and said, “A limo is going to take you straight to a special meeting at Homeland Security. It will pull up outside the building in five minutes. They said to have your laptop and your current files with you. They told me what it’s about but I’m not supposed to tell you—they said they’ll tell you when you get there.”