In The Falling Light (22 page)

“Mr. President,” said Sherwood, “Z-71
represents our best choice scenario. We all concur.” The Joint
Chiefs nodded.

The president scanned the folder’s contents.
“Dear God, you actually have scenarios for this?” He gestured
towards the screen.

“We have multiple scenarios, sir.”

The president read. It was brief and to the
point. “Those are our people up there, General. We should try to
bring them home.”

“They’re not people anymore,” said Sherwood.
“You saw what happened in the earlier video.”

Something had become lodged outside near the
shuttle’s tail, out of view of the exterior cameras. Mission
Specialist King went out on a space-walk to clear the debris, and
minutes later there was a scream over the intercom. When the crew
hauled King back inside, they discovered his suit had been ripped
open, and a large piece of his abdomen torn away. Loss of oxygen,
pressure and the deep cold of space had killed the man almost
instantly. But he came back minutes later, and started biting. The
entire crew of seven was lost inside thirty minutes, and now they
floated up there, dead but somehow not as their craft traced a lazy
orbit around the planet.

“We can see they’re highly infectious and
aggressive, Mr. President. Some have suggested they could be
contained and studied, but the overall consensus is that we cannot
risk allowing even one of them to get down here. If it got out, our
government, our country, would cease to exist.”

The president reread the scenario, then
closed the folder. “Are we ready for the questions?”

The general nodded. “We have scenarios to
handle that as well, sir.”

“Do it,” the president said, pushing the
folder away and walking out.

A phone call was made. In Houston, a shuttle
pilot entered a highly restricted room which looked like a flight
simulator. Using a satellite link, he tapped into the Explorer and
flew it by remote, lining up its glide path around the planet, then
guiding it through its descent into the atmosphere. At a
predetermined point, another general inserted a red aluminum key
into a panel and turned it.

Shuttle Explorer burned up at high altitude,
raining small bits of debris across Texas. The blast was captured
on video and replayed repeatedly for the world. The president
addressed the nation to mourn the loss of their heroes, and
investigations were begun. Carefully fabricated video and flight
recordings blamed a structural malfunction which the crew could not
have detected, and no hint was ever given of how close mankind had
come to extinction.

Twelve years later, a Boy Scout hiking with
his troop outside San Antonio discovered a charred, round object
wedged between a rock and a cactus. When he pulled it out and
turned it over in his hands, Commander Markham’s blackened and
sightless head moaned, and bit the boy in the palm.

Cornelius LaBauve was eighty-seven and
missing somewhere in the Louisiana bayou. The passenger in the big
pickup was worried that the old man had run into a local myth, but
the driver had his money on liquor-induced drowning or gators.

Cole Doucet arrived at the LaBauve place
around eleven in the morning, carefully navigating the black Dodge
2500 down a long, muddy lane crowded by blackgum trees and green
ash on either side, trying not to clip one of the side mirrors.
Low-hanging branches scraped across the light bar on the roof, and
curtains of Spanish moss trailed over the windshield as he drove
down what was little more than a pair of parallel ruts. Even in
daylight and over the noise from the bouncing truck he could hear
the calls of bullfrogs in the rushes, his window open and his elbow
cocked outside. The air conditioner was on low simply to keep the
heavy, humid air in the cab circulating.

Southwest of the towns of Bayou Cane and the
adjacent county seat of Houma, this area was part of Terrebone
Parish, an expansive wilderness of swamp, wetlands and forest
punctuated by small communities. It was the kind of place where the
waterways ran alongside the roads, where you could see the boats of
shrimpers and oystermen lined up at the banks, or in wider
sections, graveyards of submerged vessels, masts and the tops of
cabins peeking above the surface. Here on the southern tip of
Louisiana, it was a place which had been ravaged by Katrina not so
very long ago. Ten percent of the population spoke French, and the
people of the parish were a mix of Cajun, Choctaw and Creole,
fishermen and trappers and hunters who lived well below the poverty
line.

The LaBauves were these people. Cole passed
between a pair of wooden posts which at one time supported a chain
between them, but the wood was past rotted and now it just lay in
the mud, rusting and sinking into the lane. The Dodge went slowly
around a long curve, and then the road ended at a wide, open area
of packed clay and black mud, choked with junk. No less than half a
dozen cars, stripped, without glass and sinking on their rims,
rusted away along one edge of the space. Several washing machines
sat jumbled in high grass next to a dented refrigerator, and a
shopping cart without wheels was filled with bottles and cans. A
low, tin-roof shack with a sagging covered porch was at the far
end, and to the right, up against the tree line, a 60’s era school
bus sat with its once-yellow paint now faded nearly white and
streaked with trails of black mold. Fishing gear and frog gigs
leaned up against it. As Cole put the truck in park, a
broad-chested, black pit bull wiggled out from under the bus and
started forward stiff-legged, its flat head low and its lips peeled
back from yellow teeth.

He ran up his window and draped an arm
across the seat, looking at the dog. It stopped ten feet from the
truck and just stood there, menacing. Cole scanned the rest of the
area. There were some rusty oil drums, rows of muddy Coleman
coolers, a wash line with a few flannel shirts and some shorts
hanging from it, bullet-pocked highway signs leaning against the
shack’s porch, and a battered outdoor grill with a dozen old
propane bottles scattered in the weeds nearby. Near the shack,
several lines had been strung between the trees. One held gutted
catfish, another had four gator skulls dangling from it, the teeth
removed.

Cole tapped on the horn and waited. He
didn’t want to try getting out with the pit in the yard, because
he’d probably have to shoot it and that would start a whole new
kind of trouble. Louisianans, and southerners in general, had a
strong relationship with their dogs – sometimes more than they had
with their own wives – and had been known on occasion to seek
vengeance for the killing of their four-legged companions. He
tapped the horn again.

Brick LaBauve appeared from the interior of
the school bus and eased down onto the steps, slouching against the
frame with his hands in his pockets and staring with open contempt
at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries truck in his
yard. He spit and folded his arms. Brick was shirtless, wearing
cut-off camouflage shorts and muddy work boots. His head was shaved
in a close crew-cut, and his muscled upper body was covered in
tats, including a big piece across his chest depicting a
voluptuous, naked she-devil with wings which stretched back up to
his shoulders. At twenty five, he and Cole were the same age.

Cole buzzed down the passenger window.
“Brick, need you to chain your dog, son.”

Brick chewed whatever he had in his mouth,
probably tobacco, and spit again but didn’t move from the bus
doorway. “He ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“C’mon, now, put him on a chain. I’m not
going away.”

“Ain’t nothing here for you today, warden.
Wasting your time.”

“Glad to hear it. Means this won’t take
long.”

The Cajun sighed deeply, and then called to
his dog. “Cephus! Over hear, now.” The pit bull reacted
immediately, trotting to its master and pushing its big head
against his leg until Brick scratched at his ear. Then it sat,
tongue lolling out and watching the truck while the man clipped a
heavy chain to its thick leather collar.

Cole got out and walked towards the dog’s
owner, a Sig .45, collapsible Asp nightstick and oversized can of
pepper spray all secured to his service belt. The LDWF Enforcement
Division had a federal commission, a six month training academy
said to rival Marine boot camp (though Cole knew personally it fell
short of the curriculum at Paris Island,) and had state-wide
jurisdiction not only over hunting, fishing and boating, but rural
law enforcement as well. Its agents were trained in tactical night
assault, drug interdiction, and could operate boats and quads and
even some aircraft. Yet swampers like Brick LaBauve insisted on
calling them Game Wardens. It was not a term of endearment.

Bayou people saw the agents as cops poking
their noses in a hard-working man’s business, telling him what and
where and when, in a place their families had called home since the
first white men appeared in the area. A nuisance. An infringement
on their personal liberties and right to live in and harvest what
they chose from the swamps. And of course, the agents were the
enemy when it came to the fact that sometimes a man out here had to
do a little more to take care of his kin when times were hard, like
hunt out of season or sell some guns or even cook a little meth.
Most didn’t, of course, but even the ones not involved in illicit
activity had no love for the LDWF.

Brick stepped down from the bus and met Cole
half way to the truck. They shook hands and nodded, young men who
had known each other on and off over the years, and had even
attended the regional high school together for a time until Brick
dropped out at sixteen. They had never actually been friends, but
there had been no bad blood between them. That changed somewhat as
they got older. Cole went into the LDWF right after a four year
tour in the Marines, eighteen months of it spent in Iraq, and it
didn’t take long before he was reunited with his old schoolmate
under different circumstances. Brick LaBauve was one of those who
saw the law as an obstruction, something to be considered and then
quickly dismissed. An original Crazy White Boy.

“What you want, Cole?”

“Just checking up. If I don’t, you won’t get
your licenses back.”

Brick shrugged. His gator tags and buck
permits had been pulled after Cole caught Brick spotlighting
gators. State law demanded that alligators could only be harvested
between sunup and sundown, and two satisfactory inspections by the
charging agent – validating that no additional laws were being
broken - was required before he could apply for reinstatement.

Cole walked towards the row of coolers and
began looking inside, Brick walking sullenly behind him. They held
mostly catfish, with a few frogs and a good-sized turtle. Nothing
to worry about.

“So what happened with that TV show?” Cole
asked, poking in another cooler.

“Shit,” Brick spat into the grass, “those
pansy-asses. Ain’t none of them a straight-shooter, scared of
everything, ya know?”

A month before Brick was caught
spotlighting, a popular reality show about colorful swampers
hunting alligators had come to Terrebone Parish, and after some
research the directors selected Brick LaBauve to participate. Brick
played it up for the cameras, enjoying the pay and basking in the
glow of instant celebrity for a short time. Before long, however,
what the show’s producers had originally thought to be a colorful
backwoods redneck turned into the Crazy White Boy the locals knew
him to be. He drove his boat too fast, wrecking it and hurting a
cameraman. He drove a quad too recklessly and totaled it, along
with another camera. He showed up for filming drunk or high or
both, slurring and pawing at the female crew members, picking
fights with sound technicians, arguing with the director and
blurting obscenities. He told impossible lies about himself and
even tried to light up a joint during filming. Most of this could
have been forgiven, as reality TV was constantly pushing the
envelope; over-the-top made solid ratings, and the truly
inappropriate stuff could always be edited or bleeped out. But
Brick was also an unapologetic racist, and loud about it, something
which didn’t sit well with the network’s executive producer, an
African-American who’d had his own life experiences with wild
southern boys. Most of the Brick LaBauve footage would turn out to
be useless, and the decision was made to cut him loose from the
show with a minimal contract payoff.

“Them Hollywood assholes just don’t know
what real fun is,” he said as Cole inspected the gator skulls on
the line. “And it ain’t right to promise a man all manner of
things, then take it all away over nothing. Left me piss
broke.”

Cole nodded, and decided the directors and
producers had gotten off cheaply. Brick was the kind of man who
might get liquored up and show up on set with a shotgun, hunting
for camera equipment and windshields and maybe a kneecap or
two.

“That’s a tough break,” Cole said.

“Yeah. Fun while it lasted, though. Had
myself a makeup girl.” He grinned.

“What about these gators?” Cole asked,
tapping one of the skulls.

“Those ain’t mine, they’s Pappy’s. His tags
are still good.”

“How’s Pappy doing these days?”

Brick’s eyes cut away and he started chewing
a thumbnail.

“He alright?”

A shrug. “Yeah, he’s good.”

Brick’s expression said something else.
Cornelius LaBauve (don’t call him Cornelius unless you wanted a
broken nose, Pappy will do just fine) was Brick’s grandfather, a
crotchety swamper in his upper eighties who had been the kind of
hell raiser in his younger days as to make Brick’s antics seem
tame. He liked his bourbon and his beer, and even at eighty-seven
could be found in the blues taverns, ready to square off over
something said which he didn’t like. He had even less regard for
the game restrictions of Louisiana than his grandson, and no one
was going to tell him how to live in
his
swamp. He was
crafty, and kept to the laws when folks were looking, but every
LDWF agent knew Pappy LaBauve was always working an angle
somewhere. At least that had been the case in the past. Pappy’s
name came up less and less often these days, and it was generally
agreed that age was finally slowing the old man down.