The Big Bang (5 page)

The other two men exchanged glances. This was apparently not the response they had been expecting.

Lightning spoke up. “Lonesome George told us the way it would go.” She spoke like a teacher, but she held the rifle like the killer she was. “We don't live like it's the Dark Ages. We don't live like the Caliban. Nobody takes the Law into their own hands.”

“The Law!” Red made it sound like a dirty word.

Gunny cut in, “You and Whistler think you're the Law here?”

Now it was Lightning who was ready to flare. “You don't know anything about the Law. It keeps us from turning into animals.”

There were a lot of things Whistler would rather have been doing on a beautiful morning than standing over a dead man, smelling the chemical stink of the ethanol fumes, and talking to these two dim bulbs who were too important to join the fight full-time, but somehow had managed to find the time to accost an unarmed grocer and drag him for miles behind their pickup truck. He squatted down by the trailer hitch, unhooked the chain and dropped it in the dirt. “Go home,” he said flatly. “And remember what I said. You two morons don't come out to the ranch anymore.”

“That chain cost me five gallons of eth,” Gunny protested.

“Shoulda thought about that before you dragged Lopez to death with it,” Whistler said from the ground. “You boys are getting on my last nerve. Get out of here.”

Whistler and Lightning watched the two men climb sulkily into the truck and edge it around. To punctuate the beauty of a morning gone to hell, when Gunny backed the truck to the second part of the three-point turn, it bogged in the loose dirt at the edge. Whistler and Lightning had to push the stupid bastards back onto the firmer ground of the road just to get them out of their sight.

As he stood on that dirt road, covered with more dust, Lightning beside him and the dead grocer at his feet, watching the truck bounce away over the ruts, Whistler wondered how much longer they would have to keep fighting. He wondered how much longer he could keep fighting.

“So, we're gonna take him home,” Lightning said unnecessarily.

“Yep.”

It had been three years since the Big Bang.

Karen, 2008

Karen, as usual, woke well before her alarm clock had a chance to earn its keep. Awake, not sleepy yet far from refreshed, she lay for a moment in the pre-dawn darkness of her bedroom. With the only light coming from her silent alarm clock, she could be in any room, anywhere. Anywhere relatively warm, at least.

In her mind, she began to review the day ahead. As the list of tasks and activities and phone calls ran through her head, her heart began to take on a labored pounding. That was normal. This morning, however, it was harder than usual. It felt like someone was hitting the back of her sternum with the heel of their hand. Thud, thud, thud.

She was getting light-headed just lying there. She flipped the duvet and sheets off her bare legs, and sat up in bed, leaned over; put her head between her knees.
Come on, you whiny bitch
, she thought fiercely, willing herself to breath slowly and deeply.

After a few minutes, the light-headed feeling passed. Karen stood. There was a bad taste in her mouth, a leftover from last night's excess. She shivered. She'd been cold ever since she'd come to Washington. People told her how hot it was in DC during the summer, but not for Karen. She found a pair of sweats, slipped into them, and drew some thick socks over her feet.

Karen paused at the bedroom door, then unlocked it. Ever since she'd moved here, she'd slept with the bedroom door closed and locked. She never felt safe with an open door when she slept. She'd been that way since she was a girl. She would even begin to feel anxious when sleeping in a too-large room.

She stepped into the hallway. Rentals in DC were tough to come by. Her small one-bedroom could charitably be called Spartan. A single hallway connected the rooms: bedroom, bath, phone-booth-sized kitchen and living room.

Karen had to pass the bathroom on her way to the kitchen. Even though she told herself she wasn't stopping, her feet turned into the bathroom and she found herself stepping onto the scale.

She quailed. That much?
Of course
, the voice answered.
You ate like a pig at the fundraiser
. No, she replied. I'm wearing sweats and socks. That's what's making me so heavy.
Sure
, the voice told her nastily.

In a minute, her clothes were on the floor, and she stood naked and shivering on the scale. She stared down past her jutting hip bones to the shocking number flashing at her from the digital readout.
Like a pig
, she heard again.

“I haven't gone to the bathroom yet,” she said aloud.

A minute later, the sound of swirling water still filling the room, she was on the scale again. After a moment, she stepped off gingerly, like climbing clear of a land mine. She looked at herself in the mirror. Oh, my god, she was hideous! Look at the pouchy fat on her tummy. Her ass, it was as wide as a Volkswagen. The backs of her arms…were those hers? They jiggled like an old lady's.

Scooping her clothes off the floor, Karen dressed quickly, planning her day in her mind, planning what she needed to do to get back on track. Just coffee for breakfast. Black coffee. No calories there. And a vitamin, she wasn't going to be stupid. She could skip lunch, probably wouldn't have time anyway.

In the kitchen, she started the water boiling, still thinking. She'd have time to get to the gym after work. It would be good for her. Reaching for a cup in the mostly empty cupboard, she stopped.
She couldn't do the gym tonight
. There was a reception for The Congresswoman.

A reception. There would be crowds: lobbyists, aides, media, and suckups (although she was having a harder and harder time telling the suckups from the regular media, the longer she was in official Washington). And food. Always food. Tables of shrimp platters, veggie trays, hand-wrapped appetizers, chafing dishes of wings or dim sum. And every one of them would be there, grasping at the food, shoveling it onto a plate or plates, elbowing in like swine at a trough.

Another wave of dizziness rolled through her. So there was a reception. She could control herself. She'd have to work the room, listening, smiling, flirting, always on, always looking out for The Congresswoman's interest. She'd put a couple of carrots and a dab of fat-free sour cream on a plate. Whenever she was asked a question she didn't want to answer, or could not answer, she could lift a carrot to her mouth like a shield.

There. She had her plan. She was going to be okay. Coffee in hand, she hurried back for a shower. In spite of herself, she looked in the mirror. Her hair was a fright, dull and lifeless. She'd put extra conditioner on after her shampoo.

She dressed in her room, standing between the TV and her computer, flipping through the morning news channels with the remote, and skimming websites with the mouse in her other hand. No television coverage of yesterday's reception. Just as well, The Congresswoman hadn't been at the top of her game. She had seen a famously conservative black columnist holding hands with a white woman. Karen had slipped in between the tall, well-muscled wall of other staff to remind The Congresswoman that she might want to keep her verbal expression more moderate in tone. There were a lot of UJ (unidentified journalists) around. Some of them might be AB (asshole bloggers). UJ had editors to go through and could generally be counted on to elide The Congresswoman's more pointed pronouncements. The AB answered to no one but their own egos (they self-published their writing, how sad was that?) and they were eager to capture any statement they could post out of context to make a respected liberal like The Congresswoman look like a fool, or worse. Karen's quiet advice had been received, but The Congresswoman had spent the remainder of the evening in a venomous funk about the columnist. Karen hadn't been able to tell if it was because the columnist was conservative, or because the woman was white.

Thinking about the AB, Karen swiveled her head from the TV to the computer screen. Another wave of light-headedness. Just vertigo, she told herself, standing very still with her eyes closed, breathing deeply. Maybe she needed more than coffee this morning.

She skimmed the usual web pages. It was good to check the cheerleading sites that provided support for the base. Karen had to make sure The Congresswoman was getting regular play, to keep her name recognition high. Assured that The Congresswoman's efforts were being noticed, Karen skimmed other less understanding sites. She didn't see anything about the party last night; good. Later, from the office, she'd tweak her Google Alerts settings to make sure she was getting everything about The Congresswoman. If Karen wasn't seeing enough hits, she'd commission a new poll; find out what was on people's minds.

She glanced at the clock. 5:30 already! She had to get moving. It was a ten-minute drive to the Metro, then a quick twenty-minute subway ride to the office. She sat on the side of her bed, dressed in a demure (okay, boring) gray suit with modest calf-length skirt. This was one of her fat outfits. She didn't look like so much of a cow in this, she thought. As she bent over to slip into her flats, her vision narrowed and opaque spots drifted across her vision.

Okay, she
would
need more than coffee this morning. Just a little something.

Unsteadily, unwillingly, she walked out into the kitchen. The water in the kettle should still be hot. She could have some instant oatmeal. She tore open the small packet, sprinkled it into a bowl and poured the water over it. The scent of the cinnamon wafted up to her with almost physical force. With trembling hands, she found a spoon, stirred the mushy stuff once or twice, and began shoveling it in. In less than five bites, the bowl was empty. She poured two more packets into the bowl, added lukewarm water from the tap, and gulped them down.

There was fruit in the refrigerator. She grabbed a peach, ate it standing in front of the open door of the refrigerator, juice running down the side of her mouth. She ripped the top off a low-fat yogurt, scooped it out with her fingers, and licked the inside of the container. Tossing the empty yogurt cup in the sink behind her, she opened the meat bin. Week-old deli turkey was resting quietly in a bag. She rolled the thinly sliced meat into a cylinder and snapped it up.

God, it was good. She was dizzy now. Not light-headed, but dizzy as the blood rushed to her stomach, anxious to begin digesting…

All that food!!

She stepped back from the refrigerator, slamming the door. Revolted by her lack of control, she turned away. All the evidence was on the counter: open packets of oatmeal, the yogurt cup, a peach pit in the sink, even the slightly greasy cellophane bag that had held the turkey.

Dammit, she thought. She slipped off her jacket as she hurried to the bathroom.

In the lobby, she ran into one of her neighbors, a polite older man dressed in coveralls. She had known his name at one time, but since they never met anywhere other than the lobby, and that rarely, she had no reason to remember it. She thought he did something with the traffic signals for the city. He smiled when he saw her.

“Morning,” he said, noticing the trash bag in her hand. “Let me get that for you. You look like you're in a hurry.”

Karen pulled the bag closer to her side. “No, thanks, I've got it.”

“'Kay,” he said with a shrug. As she hurried to the exit stairs, she felt his eyes on her. She knew what he was thinking. Knew he was looking at her with disgust. He probably even knew what was in the bag. All the evidence of her weakness. The oatmeal packets, the yogurt cup, the empty laxative box.

Around the side of the building, she flipped open the top of the Dumpster and shoved the bag deep under the other garbage, then she walked swiftly toward the Metro station.

Even though she was about thirty minutes late, she was the first in the office, as usual. After passing through the lobby with barely a nod from the contract security guard, she picked up the copies of the
Times
and the
Post
lying in the hall, unlocked the office doors, and let herself in.

Karen didn't bother turning on the lights. She switched on a lamp at her desk, dropped her purse in a bottom drawer, and powered up her PC. While it was booting up, she went to the small canteen to start the day's first pot of coffee.

Steaming cup in hand, she checked the master calendar, a smudged, messy dry-erase board over a filing cabinet in the back (non-public) hallway. Karen had tried to get everyone to use the online calendar available through their shared email program, but she had encountered a curious resistance from the others. Finally, she'd given up, printing events in a neat hand on the dry-erase board, and then notating them in her own email calendar.

Nothing for The Congresswoman until the afternoon, only a House vote on the revised Immigration Bill. Just as well. While the other staffers would be here between 8 and 8:30, The Congresswoman would show up about 11, at the earliest. As a single mother in her twenties, she'd had to rise early and take a bus to work five or more days a week. Once she entered politics at the tender age of thirty-two, she had taken to sleeping late. She found it allowed her to think more clearly and look fresher at the end of the day than her more traditional nose-to-the-grindstone colleagues. Karen had to admit it was a canny and so-far successful strategy, but it did seem to put a lot of responsibility for initial research and review on the staff.

Sitting at her desk, Karen quickly typed a note to herself:
Immg. Bill Rvw
. Then she opened her email to verify the House Vote was on her own calendar. Her junk filter had already deleted the cranks and repeaters, the poor deluded souls who kept writing over and over, on all kinds of subjects, from the need to repent to calls for getting the Panama Canal back. Later in the day, she'd skim the deleted emails for any threats; those would go to the Secret Service.