“She wants to come.” I gestured with my right hand vaguely at everything. “She has no purpose here other than to be your go and fetch it. I think she wants a purpose. I for one would like to see if I can’t help her snap out of it.”
“There’s no snapping out of what she’s seen,” Black Johnson said. He was the camp counselor and I’d known for some time that Suzie had opened up to him. We called him Black Johnson because he insisted on it. There was a White Johnson, but we called him Scott.
“Bad choice of words, but you know what I mean. Suzie and I have history. We were a thing before the invasion.”
“And why was it you broke up?” Black Johnson asked as if to make a point.
“Too many deployments. I couldn’t be there for her emotionally or physically.”
“And now you can be there for her. Emotionally? Do you know what she believes?” he pressed.
“There’s no reason two broken people can’t come together and figure out a way to fix themselves. Think of us like puzzle pieces, all edges and curves and stuff. Maybe, given enough time, we can figure out how to go together, and in the figuring out, become something better, different.”
“That sounds like a fantasy I once heard in a movie,” Black Johnson said.
I turned to him. In his fifties. Bald head. Thin as a rake. “I wasn’t talking to you, BJ.”
He smiled triumphantly and sat back, crossing his arms. He beamed as if he’d just won a bet.
“Easy, Benji,” Mother said — the only person on the planet allowed to call me that. “He’s just concerned like we all are.”
I lowered my voice. “Listen, she’s fit. She runs around the compound all the goddamn time.”
Mother looked at me and frowned.
“I mean all the time,” I corrected. “She’s fit. She even wants to go. I can get us into the Malibu Hills and back out in no time at all.”
“But her arm,” BJ began.
“What about it? You going to tell her she can’t go because she has missing pieces? That she’s less of a person?” Now it was my turn to beam. “She needs to figure out the hard way that she can find ways around what’s missing and use what she has.”
When Mother nodded, I knew I had her and there wasn’t a single thing BJ could do. He saw it as well, and his triumph dimmed a bit. She called out to Franklin who stood at the door to the room. “Bring Junebug in. I want Benji to talk to her.”
A moment later, a young woman about my age joined us. Dressed in a summer dress, bare feet, windblown blonde hair, freckles dotting her nose, she said everything she knew, which was virtually nothing.
When she was done, I asked, “Who told you?”
When she spoke, it was with a bright drawl. “Fredericks of Hollywood. He’s a peddler. Rims the radioactive zone and grabs things he thinks might be of value. Entertainment goods mostly. DVDs. Books. That sort of thing.”
“Why did he tell you? Are you a couple?”
She glanced shyly at Mother.
That was the answer I’d expected.
“Does he have any reason to lie to you?” I asked.
She shook her head and toed the carpet with her left foot. “I mean, I know he has girls everywhere, but he’s sweet on me and he’s always nice to me.”
“Is that where you got that dress? Fredericks of Hollywood?”
She nodded.
“And how did it come up? I mean, it’s not something one would normally share.”
“I was talking about the beach and how I missed it. How I missed the feel of those little rocks in the sand between my toes, cold and slippery with water. He then warned me and said to stay away from the Malibu Hills. He said even he doesn’t go up there because there’s some sort of new alien that a bunch of people are talking about.”
I nodded, then turned to Mother. “I got what I needed. We’ll leave tonight.”
I moved to leave, but she stopped me by lifting her hand an inch from her lap.
“Benji?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Be careful.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said, then I stepped out of the building to where Suzi waited. I nodded as I passed her. “You can come,” I said.
Had I not been looking for it, I would have missed it, but her right hand made a fist and moved ever so gently into what could have only been the world’s smallest fist pump.
“We leave at ten tonight,” I called after her. I had no idea if she’d heard me. I supposed I’d find that out if she showed up and was ready.
The camp was better organized than many forward operating bases I’d seen. There was a place for everything — from the armory, to the barracks, to the garage, to the command and control building. The garrison was run by a retired sergeant major named Scott Marshall, who made everything run as smoothly as could be expected at the end of the world. They’d assigned me to recon, because it let me be alone most of the time and it was something I was good at. Being an eleven bang bang in the Army was my own charm school. Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq were my finishing schools. The invasion was my master’s thesis.
There were six of us recon specialists. There were also the scroungers who were always out searching for items we could use, usually carrying long lists of things for which we were desperate. The welcomers handled new personnel. The wrenchies took care of our sparse motor pool. We even had a police department run by a former highway patrolman named Venditto.
“Hey, wait up,” came a voice from behind me.
I turned, already recognizing the voice, dreading what he was about to say.
Crefloe Johnson skittered to a stop. All bone and gristle he couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty. He’d been a crack addict in recovery when the invasion happened. That his recovery unit had been in Palm Springs was why he’d never died. Like all crack addicts with street cred, he’d kept his ears and eyes open, watching as some folks were helped and others weren’t. He’d eventually found his way to Mother where he’d promised her he’d long ago gone straight and would excel at being a scrounger. Which he was, but I didn’t believe for a second that he didn’t use his time away from the Family to lay up somewhere stoned out of his mind. He also had the strangest of appearances. He had vitiligo, which can throw a person off when they first see him. The skin across his eyes had lost its pigmentation making him look like a reverse raccoon. Other white spots dotted his chin and neck. Most of his arms and fingers were white with streaks and dots of his original pigmentation. Overall, he had more of a spotted-man appearance.
“Black Johnson sent me,” he said, speaking addict fast.
Which is what I’d figured. Although not related, BJ used Crefloe as his eyes and ears. I had no doubt my every move from here on out would be reported back.
“Is that supposed to impress me?” I made it clear I wasn’t happy.
“Whoa there, Nelly. Cref ain’t your enemy. I’m just doing what I’m told, just same as you. His majesty wants me to help and I think I can. I’ve been to that area scrounging and know some of the back ways in.”
“Did you ever see any strange aliens when you were there?” I asked.
“No sir,” he shook his head fast and hard. “No sir. Not even a little alien. No aliens for Cref. Just the homes of the rich and famous.” He leaned in like we were on a street corner. “Know whose house I scrounged? Barbara Streisand’s. Do you know how much gold she had in that place? Gold tub. Gold shower. Fucking gold refrigerator door. Gave me a work out opening and closing it. It’s a crying shame that gold ain’t worth nothing any more. Was a time I could get rich off something like that.” His words had tumbled out so fast, it took a second after he finished for my mind to catch up.