Project Reunion (16 page)

Beginning in the next few days:

• U.S. armed forces will take over the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
  
• Please vacate northeast Staten Island, north of Victory Blvd, east of Jersey St. This area to be used for Quarantine and Staging Operations.
  
• Quarantine graduates will relocate outside the epidemic border.
  
• We want to reunite family members where possible.
  
• We can’t take everyone. Please decide if you can stay and rebuild.
  

Stay tuned for more details. This is a huge operation. Please be patient! And hang in there.

You are not alone.

Chapter 12

Interesting fact: This year marked a low point in American entertainment. The television industry was decimated in California and New York. There was no money to fund high production values. Censorship on the Internet made it difficult to express anything with negative emotional content, yet audiences were in a solemn mood. Escapist fiction fell flat. Amenac bloggers like the Great Pumpkin, who combined dark acid wit with pragmatic hope, seemed to do well. But Bible commentary and weird apocalyptic rants drew the largest following after Amenac’s core offering – news you can use.

“You have a
logo,”
Carlos Mora said wonderingly, as he glanced over a sample leaflet he picked up from my dining table. He shook his head. “God, you’re an asshole, MacLaren.”

“Uh-huh,” returned Emmett. “Darlin’, Carlos and I’ll be out on the back deck,” he added to me.

I was in the kitchen, rummaging up beverage and snack service for them the following afternoon. “Ah, OK,” I agreed, contemplating this afternoon’s tropical downpour through the window. Two hurricane remnants had met and fallen in love off the coast of North Carolina. Their love-child puppies and kittens were falling upon us. A good month’s worth of rain was expected over 12 hours or so. Over the summer, Emmett added a scrap of roof over part of the back deck for me. I’d never noticed it to succeed at keeping me dry in a hard rain. Indeed, the chairs under it splintered raindrops in every direction. “I’ll...bring this out to you.” I smiled hopefully at Mora.

Mora’s face maintained its usual implacable expression, Native American impersonates Easter Island stone head. His hair was dripping on his face and neck from his 10-second sprint from the car to my front door. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“Dee and her team did the leaflet for me, Carlos,” Emmett explained cordially as he manhandled Mora out the back door. “You’re just jealous cuz you don’t have a logo. Leave the food on the table, darlin’. Thanks.”

I thunked their glasses and plate down on the table with unnecessary percussion, and retreated to my office. So much for helping Emmett make nice. I understood his reasoning for bringing Mora here to talk things out, after giving him a few days to cool off. That didn’t mean I liked having Colonel Stoneface in my house.

I tried to put them out of mind while I revised my first interview blog post. I’d caught Pete Hoffman in New Jersey by phone first thing that morning. I’d meant what I told him, about realizing South Jersey was in an isolated position. I hoped to sort of cement Jersey’s friendship with the northern states that they were so nearly cut off from, aside from their common interest in New York City.

The rain suddenly doubled down in intensity, making me flinch. I collected towels and a couple man-sized robes, to bring to the kitchen as a hint. By the time I made it there, Emmett and Carlos were already indoors and puddling on my kitchen floor. There didn’t appear to be any blood or contusions. They couldn’t have been any wetter if they’d jumped into a pool again, though. Other than looking like drowned rats, the pair seemed to have turned a more affable corner in their relationship.

“Thank you, darlin’,” Emmett said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Join us?”

“Sure...” I said. “Why don’t you change in here. Call me when you’re ready...”

Once the dryer was clonking away, I took a seat with them at the dining table. “So! How’s stuff at home, Carlos?” I inquired. “It must be tough, raising a ten-year-old single-handed. You’re welcome to bring him over, next time you come. Our foster teen, Alex, has a whole room of rabbits and guinea pigs next door. I bet your son would love it.”

Mora nodded slightly. “Probably. I don’t bring him around, though. Keith is autistic.” He turned his attention to Emmett. “We moved in with my brother and his wife, day before yesterday. Too many ghosts at home. And I just can’t handle Keith alone.”

Emmett looked alarmed. “Didn’t your brother suggest, um, oxycontin on Keith?”

My eyes widened.

“Yeah, I finally had that out with Manolo,” Mora said. “It’ll be alright. I think.”

“That’s...” I didn’t know what to say. And no, I shouldn’t open my mouth when that happens. “That’s a tough thing to get past. I’m not sure how I’d deal with it if my family, um...” I couldn’t imagine my family suggesting that I euthanize my own child.

Mora shrugged. “He said he was just testing, to make sure I knew what I was doing. He’s old school.” He shrugged again. “They have the room. Manolo wants to teach Keith to handle oxen. That’s useful.”

“Well, Keith is always welcome,” I reiterated. “I don’t have much experience with autism. But I know Alex does. He used to help his gym teacher with the special ed kids.”

“Oh, yeah? Cool.” Mora actually looked impressed at that.

“I’m glad you’re getting some help with him, Carlos,” Emmett said. “Hope you find some time for yourself, too. Not just make time for work.”

Mora looked unappreciative of the personal time management suggestion. I couldn’t blame him.

“Dee,” Emmett said. “Carlos is going to pitch in and act as censor for Project Reunion for me. I need to delegate that one.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Maybe you could show him your article? On Pete Hoffman.”

“Censor.” I sat frozen, gazing at Emmett in disbelief.

“To publish about a military operation, you need a military censor,” Mora explained. “Hoffman, huh? Let’s see it.” Emmett nodded, his face pleasantly neutral.

I pulled up the article on the tablet I kept at the table, and handed it to Mora. I looked daggers at Emmett as Mora tackled the article. But my attention quickly drew back to Mora, who stabbed his way through my article in nothing flat. I hadn’t realized the tablet program was capable of highlighting. But Mora annotated in three colors, just as quick at tech as lightning-fingered Emmett. After a half-second consult with Emmett, he beamed the results up onto my living room big screen.

“Pink is a no,” Mora explained, pointing his way through the highlighted parts. “That’s an operational detail. Never – ever – publish ops details. Could put soldiers’ lives at risk. Location, date, time, troop movements – those are ops details. Yellow is a caution. Pass it by Pete. I don’t think he’d want to go on record saying that. Green is feedback. I think the paragraph would read better without this sentence. I don’t know that word, or that phrase. Achilles heel?” He shook his head. “You want to reach a broad audience. So, dumb it down a bit. So people like me can understand.”

I stared at the screen. Mora was dead right on every comment. And he’d done it in minutes. “I think you’ve done this before, Carlos. You’re good,” I said slowly. “You have a master’s degree, just like Emmett, don’t you?”

“Nah,” he said. “I couldn’t write a master’s thesis. I’m the first person in my family to graduate high school. English is hard. I did a tour with media relations for NATO in Brussels, though. That’s where I met my wife. Then the Pentagon press office for a couple years.”

“Carlos’ brother Manolo raised him, after their parents died,” Emmett said. “He dropped out, and kept Carlos in school. Good man.”

Drat. Emmett knew any chance I had of continuing a grudge against Mora just bit the dust.

Mora picked up his critique again. “Make those corrections, and get Pete’s blessing, and I’ll OK it. But Dee – why start with Pete? The man of the hour is Tom Aoyama.”

I thought the man of the hour was Emmett MacLaren, but I was biased.

“That’ll take some censoring,” Emmett said sourly. He had a low opinion of Tom Aoyama, the epidemiologist who just could not keep his mouth shut. In fact, Tom wasn’t even allowed to call him anymore. Emmett had hired a polite grad student to ‘expedite’ Tom’s communications.

“So I’ll edit it,” Mora said. “Anyway, that’s where I’d start. Ordinary citizen defies the Calm Act, to prove it’s safe to save New York. You know the guy, Dee. Emmett, could she visit Long Island and interview him? Let him show off his work on video? And show the refugees.”

I stared at him. “That would be incredible.” Interviewing Pete Hoffman was simply easy, the low-hanging fruit. It was something I could do quickly. But Tom Aoyama’s quarantine operation – that would put Project Reunion’s website on the map.
Everyone
would want to see that footage.

Emmett grinned at my expression. “Carlos, I think she likes the idea. Can you find her a video crew?”

“You mean, pros?” I said, astonished.

“Why not pros?” Emmett replied. “You think camera crews in New England have something better to do this week?”

“They’d kill for this gig,” agreed Mora. He looked at me apologetically. “Reporters, too.”

I must have looked crestfallen.

“This is your show, Dee,” Emmett said. “I don’t want a reporter. I want you.”

Mora studied me critically, then nodded. “Yeah, she’s got the vision. For her series on personal stories only, though, Emmett. You need an experienced war correspondent on your end. I’ll hook you up.”

“In time?”

“Yeah, they’re all adrenaline junkies. I could get one here in two hours, if you needed it.”

“Excellent. Why don’t you interview Cam, too, while you’re out on Long Island, darlin’,” Emmett suggested to me.

“Cam! On Long Island?” Mora interjected. “I thought you liked him!”

“His idea,” Emmett said sadly. “Couldn’t say no.”

“Jesus,” Mora said, but nodded slowly. “He’s idealistic enough. So who’s taking Tolland and Windham?”

I left them to divvy up Connecticut, and went back to my office. I had a censor, just what I’d never wanted. Mora was among the last people I’d have wanted, too. Yet here he was, already making my modest little project better than I’d ever dreamed. Life’s funny that way.

‘Advisor,’ not ‘military censor,’ I corrected to myself. Yes, I’d need that verbal whitewash for the Amenac team. They’d see right through it. But the UNC end of the team, at least, would be too busy salivating to mind, once they saw the professional footage and the surge in web traffic. And this footage would absolutely, positively throw HomeSec into convulsions with its Calm Act violations.

Though as Emmett pointed out during my presentation, they’d be as glued to their screens as everyone else. Probably more so, in fact. I sighed. They had the tech to scrutinize video footage right down to its photons. They could probably identify every face reflected on a window by accident, if they wanted.

Better Mora than me, to deal with HomeSec.

After Emmett showed Mora out, he sank into the couch and invited me to join him. “No, not on my lap. Still business, darlin’.”

“Don’t Ms. Baker me,” I pleaded.

He laughed out loud. “Promise. Not that kind of business. Thank you, darlin’, for giving Carlos a chance. I’m worried about him. But I can’t ask the other Rescos to keep an eye on him, and I’m spread too thin. He loves media and politics. Seems to me he’s good at it.”

“He blew me away,” I agreed.

“Well, don’t count yourself short, either. But you’ll keep an eye on him for me? Try to get him to have a little fun?”

“Yeah. Promise,” I agreed. “Thank you. That…wow. This could be phenomenal, Emmett.”

“None of that ‘could be’ or ‘try’ nonsense, Baker. ‘Phenomenal’ is a project requirement. You need to deliver me high public morale and enthusiasm for Project Reunion!” He grinned, then added more quietly. “You can do this. He can help. And I feel a lot better leaving you with him to watch your back. I trust Carlos, Dee.”