South Village (Ash McKenna) (24 page)

“Aesop and I aren’t hiding anything,” I tell him. “We drive around, pick up chicks, trade beard-grooming tips. Guys doing guy stuff. Like Vikings.”

He squints, not thinking my Viking joke is funny. “What’s with the sudden interest in books, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“The trip out to the bookstore yesterday. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Motherfucker. They’re tracking the car, or my cell.

“I’ve got a thing for the Hardy Boys and the library here didn’t have
The Secret of the Old Mill
,” I tell him.

“Bullshit,” he says. “You’re looking for the key to the cipher. And I think you have it. You can end this whole thing by handing it over.”

Okay. He can’t be the one who rushed me in the woods. His asshole buddies took the cipher off me back at the black site, so if he did have the book, he wouldn’t need me. Which means it probably was Marx who has the book.

Maybe this is me being petulant, but I’d rather bring this to Ford, rather than the FBI. Ford will have our backs. At least, I think he will. I don’t trust the FBI to not tear this place to the ground, or assume we’re all conspirators just because we’re in close proximity to what’s happening.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him.

“If you could be reasonable here, I can protect you,” he says, dropping the tough guy act, thinking he’ll reach me another way. “I promise.”

“Protect me? You’re going to protect me? I’m supposed to trust you, after you and your friends dragged us out to the middle of nowhere for an interrogation that shit on, what, two or three constitutional amendments?”

“That wasn’t my idea,” he says.

“Why even do that? What did you hope to achieve? All it seemed to do was piss off Marx even more.”

“That was kinda the point, yeah,” he says. “The Japanese thing, we thought it was a good idea. Help me keep a low profile. But I wasn’t getting the intel I needed fast enough. Someone got the bright idea that if we made some noise it’d move things along. And it did.”

“You assholes. You thought the best way to handle a powder keg was to put a match to it?”

He shrugs. “Like I said, not my idea.”

“If you were following me and Aesop, how did you miss the beach meeting?”

“We got there after everyone left.”

“God, you suck at your job.”

“Listen. You don’t understand what we’re up against, okay?”

“Enlighten me.”

“How much do you know about industrial farming?”

“Are you kidding? Nothing.”

He points to my bed as he sits in the chair in the corner. I want to stay standing, because I don’t want him to feel comfortable, but my whole body aches.

“Here’s the thing about farming pigs,” Katashi says. “Pigs shit. A lot. Tons and tons of it. And it all has to go somewhere. So you’ve got these things called concentrated animal feeding operations. CAFOs. So at CAFOs, they pump the pig shit into lagoons. They’re pretty frightening to look at. Because they turn bright pink. It has something to do with the interaction of bacteria and antibiotics. So there was one up in North Carolina, people in a nearby town start getting sick. Seems it was seeping into the groundwater.”

“That sounds bad.”

“So you know what the Soldiers of Gaia did? These people you’re protecting? They marched the guy in charge to the edge of the lagoon and pushed him in. He drowned in toxic pig shit. Then they tried to burn the place down, but ended up killing half the pigs in the process.”

“So… some asshole was doing some shitty thing to the environment and they killed him. Look, I’m not going to say he deserved to die for that. But you have to acknowledge that this whole thing is a little more complicated than the way you’re presenting it.”

“Bullshit. We know they’re hitting something soon. We just don’t know where, or when. There are a dozen potential targets within a hundred miles of here. We don’t have enough to move on. These are not good people, Ash. Why are you protecting them?”

“So you’re the
good
guys?”

“Yes, we’re the good guys,” he says, smiling, thinking he’s reached me.

“You don’t act like it.”

“Now isn’t the time to debate tactics. This is about saving lives.”

I know the responsible thing to do here would be to help them.

I know that.

But Tibo’s words are ringing in my head. Marx’s, too, for as much as I hate that.

The Soldiers of Gaia are terrorists. And I don’t give a damn about color or creed or geography or end goal. Terrorism is the thing that took my dad. Just thinking about it lights a blue flame at the center of me that unless I hold it in check, threatens to consume me.

But the game is rigged. The more of these stories I hear, the more I realize that the winner is always going to be the guy with the gun, or the guy with the money, or the guy with the badge.

No one’s doing this for the guy who ends up sick from toxic pig shit.

Or the guy who’s sink catches fire.

I’m going to figure this out and take it to Sheriff Ford. He strikes me as an honorable guy. He’s given us and this place far more credit and respect than these assholes, who thought the best way to achieve their goals was through shock, awe, and liberal doses of pepper spray.

“You can fuck yourself,” I tell him. “I don’t know about any book. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

Katashi nods, like he’s weighing his options. I don’t know what those options are, so I turn to leave. Figure at this point, what do I have to lose?

“Hey,” he calls after me. “About your passport application.”

That stops me cold at the door.

“You think we haven’t run checks on every single person who’s come through here?” he asks. “I know you applied. Fleeing the country?”

“Taking a vacation.”

“Either way, all it’ll take is a phone call and the application gets held up. I imagine you’re leaving soon, given the expedited processing. So I’ll make you a deal.”

Bastard. “Go ahead.”

“Whether you have the book or you don’t, that’s irrelevant. You’re going to get it for me. I’m going to knock on this door first thing tomorrow morning, and you better have it. If not, the passport goes bye-bye.”

He stands up and takes a couple of steps toward me, gets in my face, his nose nearly touching mine.

“That’s not all, either,” he says. “I can make your life very hard. I’m talking full weight of the FBI hard. If you have so much as a speck of bone dust in your closet, we will find it, and use it, and exploit it until you never see natural sunlight again. So it’s in your best interest to keep this conversation between us, and get that fucking book for me. You got me?”

A year ago that threat wouldn’t have worked.

Now I have a literal skeleton in my closet.

By closet, I mean at the base of a tree off a hiking trail in Portland.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought. I’m going to give you a chance to come around. Think real hard about where you’re going to land on this. Because you’re with us, or you’re with them. You have to choose. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’m not much for team sports,” I tell him, exiting the bus.

There’s nothing on it for me to protect. Whatever he wants to have seen, he’ll have dug up. He has my name and my address back home and everything. I consider going back for the book and the cipher, but he could follow, so I head back to camp. Make sure he sees me do it.

I need to have a talk with Tibo, anyway.

As I climb onto the boardwalk I cross a plank of wood that says:
If we all had a bong we’d all get along.

T
he Swedish couple that’s been visiting for the past couple of days come out the back of the main dome, carrying roller cases behind them, heading toward the front of camp. They were supposed to be here another week. But with two people dead and the FBI sniffing around, it was only a matter of time before people began to clear out.

Tibo comes out of the main dome, sees me, and runs up to me, Zorg keeping pace next to him.

“There you are,” Tibo says. “What the hell happened? And where’s Aesop?”

As soon as I stop jogging, it hits. The nausea. That fuzzy, exhausted feeling. I need food. I need caffeine. I need more of that tea.

“Can we talk in the kitchen?” I ask Tibo. “Alone?”

“First, is Aesop okay?”

“He accidently ingested poisonous mushrooms. But we went straight to the hospital. They transferred him. He should be fine.”

Tibo shakes his head. I climb into the kitchen and open the coffee maker, dump in some grounds and some water, feel a bug crawling up my arm, so I stop and itch and the itching won’t stop so I really dig in. I mutter curses under my breath.

“Fucking monster fucking bugs in this stupid fucking forest,” I say. “I fucking hate it.”

Tibo gets closer. “Ash, what bugs?”

The frustration that’s been pending all day explodes at the base of my spine. I swing my foot out and kick a cupboard, splitting the wood.

My brain feels like it’s trying to crawl out my ear.

A moment’s peace. That’s all I want.

I sit on the floor of the kitchen, put my head in my hands.

Breathe deep. Concentrate on where I am. Filter out the noise and the bad feelings.

Tibo sits next to me.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“Detoxing.”

“Shit man. DTs?”

“Yeah.”

“Ash… what the fuck is going on? You’ve been on your own planet the last few days. More than usual.”

I drop my head back against the cabinet, stare at the point where the dome meets its apex. At the dark, heavy wood keeping it aloft over us. Stained and darker than the rest, from smoke and heat and moisture.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Tibo says.

“Turn on the radio,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“Just turn it on.”

He stands and goes to the ancient stereo and clicks it on. Rage Against the Machine again. I stand, pour myself a mug of coffee, drop in a little cool water to even it out, and put the kettle on so I can whip up some valerian tea. I grab a handful of granola out of the stash and wash it down with the coffee. Get to where I feel a little bit settled.

And I tell Tibo everything.

About not trusting him. About the cipher, and the book, and someone stealing it from me. About the trip with Aesop, and how he made me stop drinking. About who I saw at the bonfire, and my suspicions about the fracking site, and about Katashi, because fuck that fucking asshole.

I tell him about all of it and he listens silently, nodding at points, his face never changing. Serene and calm. He pours himself a cup of coffee halfway through, keeping an eye on the door, making sure no one is close enough to hear.

He takes this all very well.

“Magda, Gideon,” Tibo says. “That sucks. I would have thought better of them. Well, Magda definitely.”

“They’re playing for the Soldiers. And they’re planning something.”

“This place is nearly empty,” Tibo says. “So whatever is happening, it’s probably happening soon. What happens tomorrow when you don’t give Katashi the book?”

“How do you know I’m not going to give it to him?”

“Because it’s you. You are incapable of doing things the easy way.”

“I don’t know. He’s going to fuck shit up for me and for the camp. I need to buy some time. He can’t hold the passport up once it hits the mail. If I can squeak out another day or two, I might be okay.”

“Well, you know what the answer to that is,” Tibo says, like it’s obvious.

“What?”

“How could you not realize that?”

“My brain feels like pulped newspaper. Fucking tell me.”

“Give him a different book. Make one up. How would he know the difference?”

“And maybe they realize I’m fucking with them.”

“You want time? That’s time.”

“Okay, that makes some sense. So that’s step one. Step two is, what do we do about the Soldiers?”

Tibo opens a cupboard and takes out a bag of pecans, shakes some out into his hand, chews them, staring out the window, at the green expanse of the forest. I take this contemplative moment to pull the kettle off the stove, dose out some water into a mug, and load up the tea strainer with some valerian root, my hands shaking and spilling chopped brown stems onto the counter.

“Here, let me do that,” Tibo says.

He places the stems in the filter, tamps them down, closes it, and places it in the mug. Turns to me.

“I’m happy to see that you’re not drinking anymore.”

“Well, it was an expensive habit.”

“Don’t joke. I know you were doing it to cover something up. That’s not good. I didn’t say anything because I figured you’d tire yourself on it and come around. You fall into funks and come out of them. But this one was bad. And, honestly, I was getting a little frustrated with you.”

“Let’s call it even,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I kept all this from you. I should have come straight to you.”

He nods.

“So all of this, you investigating this—is it because you thought I might be responsible for Crusty Pete’s death?” he asks.

“No, I don’t think you’re capable of that.”

“Why?”

“You’re not a killer.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

The level of his voice doesn’t change. “Ash. I cut the rope. I killed Pete.”