FBR chapter 4 scene 2

HI chicklets, suns out, wrote this scene just now - going out to work on the bow - it gets nocks today and gets it's first ride on the tillering stick. Doesn't that sound bad?
mcnalan

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 2

Patricia drummed her fingers on her desk, staring absently at the nearly bare office. She sat behind a scarred gray desk, two drawers lower right, two lower left, and a center thin drawer for all the office sundries required by office dwellers. Patricia's drawers were empty, no sundries, no pens, no paper clips. No pictures adorned the walls, save one. Hers was a small office in Washington DC, near the capital building. Homeland security had grew enormously after the financial collapse of 2008. Chasing terrorists had given way, in part, to securing the resources that the country needed to run.

Her laptop was in the center of the desk. She never used the local wireless network within the building for the same reason that there was nothing in her small office besides one picture, her father. Patricia used a encrypted Verizon service that had priority for high speed access through any cell tower. Her account level would even bump phone calls off the tower if it were busy, and she was running an encryption level that only the NSA snoops would be able to break, and even then, only with great determination. So she assumed they read everything on her laptop all the time.

She continued to wait for the call to be completed. There was moments of completely dead air as the signal sought a working line for Global security. She looked at her father's stern countenance on the wall. Stern, and yes, he believed in discipline but he had a special love for his daughter. Her mother had never understood that. Patricia, if she thought about it at all, thought her mother was something of a fool. Her father expected a lot and was quick to discipline. Her mother had not understood that his discipline was followed by expressions of love that made Patricia strong, sure and full. Most visitors to her office found the single small picture in a simple frame intimidating. Good, thought Patricia.

“Yo.”

“Finally. You understand the west coast problem?”

“Which one?” chucked Arthur. “You have so many.”

“So many opportunities for a bright boy,” she responded.

“Indeed, many. What do you want Patricia?” said Arthur, a bit curtly.

“No names. I want what I have always wanted, to do my job, and keep America from crumbling into anarchy. Call me back in ten minutes at this number, wait.”

Patricia reached into her cordura pocked bag and pulled out a disposable cell phone with card. She rattled off the number.

“Got it.”

“Yes sir, mam.”

Patricia clicked her phone shut. Arthur represented the peak of a security organization that while private, looked more and more like the old KGB that her father had talked about. It was not just a contracting company, it had become involved in policy, and Arthur had the ear of people higher than her in the political world. However, his attitude grated on her. There would come a time when she would deal with him. The thought made her squirm in her seat, clenching her thighs together. She tried to concentrate on the opportunities this bird flu breakout presented. Homeland Security had been planning for the bird flu outbreak. Christ thought Patricia, it was inevitable given the vast repository of the deadly virus. It was found on every continent by 2010, and it needed only one small recombination or one small mutation to set it loose. Apparently now it was.

Patricia checked the hall and returned to her desk. After the exchange with Arthur and thinking about her father she felt a pressure. She didn't do it often but she needed it now. She locked her door and pulled the blind down over the glass. She brought her bag up to the desktop, pushing the computer out of the way. She found the little leather pouch in a small side pocket. It was just an inch by an inch and one half, and she carefully folded the flap back exposing the obsidian small point beneath. She pulled it carefully from the leather, away that it's edges were so sharp that they were used in heart surgery. No scalpel was as sharp as this. She wiggled her hips as she pulled down her slacks, just enough. She could feel the moist heat, the pressure. She rocked to the left exposing the inside of her left thigh. Her hand shaking and her breath coming in short pants, she slowly made a small incision, about two inches long, parallel to the other faint scars found there. The beads of blood welled in the cut, the edges of the incision so perfect that the blood vessels seemed to need time to realize they were cut. She wiped her right index finger along the cut and brought the blood up to her lips. She stopped and stared at it as she thought "See daddy, see how good I am?"

She brought the blood to her lips and tasted it, quivering. Then she moved her hand lower, frantically, finally shuddering, and then relaxed.

#

Mark stopped at the door of the small cabin and peered in at the rough bed he had made for Ben. It was two days since they arrived. Ben had fallen into a troubled sleep on the leaf bags that mark had filled and tied for him, covered by Mark's sleeping bag. He had not really woken since then, but was running a burning hot fever.

Mark stood and watched Ben slowly moving his arms and legs as if running. Mark was comfortable here in this wet damp world of south western Oregon, in fact, Mark could say he was happy about anywhere except where there were too many people. That was a lot of places unfortunately. Everything made sense here in woods. Life flowed in streams that you could feel, animals moved, plants thrived and the falling water collected down the drainages washing the hillsides. The doug fir glistened when the light was bright enough to penetrate. It was peace. Mark knew that he and Ben were very different, but both sought the same thing, quiet peace in which to live. But he also knew that they had very different ways to achieve that. Ben looked to the outside world now, ever since that time with Bea, and looked to control how the world whipped him about as he held onto the tail. Mark avoided the world, the tail and had created a way of moving as a contractor, and sometimes a subcontractor to another subcontractor that simply allowed the world to forget all about him. Mark's needs were simply in the physical world, but like Ben, he also missed the odd emotional context that women brought him. He would never tell another guy, but the thing he like most was to lay with a woman after sex and talk about softball, past games, past glories. Mark didn't think too much about that, except to know not to talk too much about it. Ben was one of the few people he did share that with.

Mark realized as did many others that for some accident of psychology, whatever Ben's wound was, and Mark thought that wound came long before his affair with Bea, that wounded him and yet made him easy to talk to. At the most basic level, in a one to one conversation you realized two things about Ben. First he was needy and talked too much, much too much. The second thing, after you had that first figured out was that he was brilliant, inductive and fearless in following what he believed. Mark needed Ben's brilliance because he simply did not know what to do, except to lay low. Yet before he fell ill, Ben had been saying they should contact people, and he was urgent about it.

Mark shook his head. Ben had been under a lot of stress in the last two days. He needed to get him up and running now. While Ben was unconscious mark had repaired the old narrow cook stove that had fallen over in the corner. He used river rock to form a base for it. The legs had been broken off by vandals at some point, and a hole had been broken through the cast iron of the right side. Mark found the pieces and used clay from the stream bank to fashion a mud glue to put the stove back together. He found some old corrugated iron roofing crumpled down the hill from the cabin, and beat it somewhat straight, rolled it and fastened it together with strands of rusted fence wire. He ran that up through the roof, filled the rusted bottom of the stove with more clay and some crushed rock from the logging road. All that remained was to bring some dry fire and dried sap in and within minutes he had the cabin heated up.

He boiled water from the stream in an old coffee can that he found among the other trash that people had dumped, and had purified enough water to keep dripping it in Ben's mouth.

That done mark had left early in the morning while Ben seemed quieter, though still very hot. The previous afternoon at dusk Mark had set rabbit snares and he collected two good rabbits who had been caught, dispatching one that was still alive with a quick rock to the brain. He was careful not to waste the head though.

He had returned to the cabin and made a broth of the rabbit brains and the stomach contents of the rabbits. he didn't use any part of the intestines, but was careful to check the liver for white cysts. The rabbits where clean, no tulmeria.

The boiled broth contained fat from the brains and the partially digested greens and grains the rabbit had eaten. The boiling water killed the stomach bacteria and was already partially digested. Mark understood, without thinking much about it, that Ben needed food that was available without a great deal effort on the part of his body.

He had been slow dripping the cooled soup into Ben whenever he was awake enough to swallow.

Ben stirred, kicking off the covers. He was cooler to the touch now thought Mark as he felt Ben's forehead.

Ben stirred awake slowly. He looked around blinking the crust from his eyes. he could see that it was daylight but the dreams that had been torturing him seemed to have gone on for days.

“How long,” he croaked, swallowed and started again. “How long have I been here?

“It was two days ago when you fell asleep.” said Mark.

“Shit!” said Ben and tried to rise, only to find himself dizzy. He lay back quickly, puzzled at the plastic garbage bags filled with leaves that were supporting him. he fingered them and smiled.

“Nice bed. Wish I could say I enjoyed it. With that Ben got slowly up to a sitting position.

“Sorry to conk out on you.”

“Didn't much matter. I didn't know what to do after getting here anyway. I've been listening to the local radio, your shortwave, and the CB every hour or so. This bird flu thing is bad here and people are doing weird things because of it. Not only I-5 has been cut but the towns on the coast have pretty much barricaded themselves and Gold Beach seems to have blown up a hanging area and cut off route 101 altogether.” Mark waved his hands, not sure of what to say.

“What about the rest of the world?” Ben asked. Over the next half hour Mark filled him in on the snatches of conversation from the CB and on commercial shortwave broadcasts from China and Russia.

Ben had been able to get outside to use the cabin's makeshift outhouse, and had come back to fall into a more normal sleep that lasted about two hours. When he awoke he was aware that he was really hungry.

The smell of roasting rabbit, wild garlic and onion filled the cabin. As he cleaned the last bone he thought that it was about the best meal he could remember.

He talked for hours that night with Mark. Ben was aware that the country and the world were changed now, like cultural earthquake. The damage was ongoing and would never be fully reported. People would continue as long as they could as if things were going to get back to normal, help would come, the rule of law restored, just like after the financial collapse in 2008. Ben knew that this was different. He needed Mark to have time to get used to what they could expect now, and what they would have to be willing to do if they wanted themselves and the people close to them to survive.

It was a difficult conversation. Mark was not into what if, but rather worked on the here and now, the what is. Ben lived farther out in front. Slowly Mark understood that many people were going to die and that he had skills that Ben needed right now. Yet in a way Mark was a creature of the woods more than of this culture, Ben understood that. He also knew that Mark would have difficulty killing first. This was going to be very hard. The survivors of this collapse would be those that could step aside from the Walmart culture and the controls that society builds in every one of use that it can reach. Every story, every song, every TV show, every movie, every sermon, every advertisement reinforces the herd and civilizes us to coexist without killing each other. Now that civilization was breaking down and the very conditioning that made him a good coworker, helpful neighbor, a helping hand in the community was exactly the wrong thing to do. Ben knew the only real directive in the short term was to survive for at least nine months in any way that he and his close people must. That was the minimum time to a vaccine, if the society held together long enough to produce and distribute vaccine. The reports that Mark heard were not encouraging.