11
Chapter Eleven
SIN
“Take me to her,”Sin says. “And Reese stays with me this time.”
“Your mother is on a call right now,” the patrol says.
I laugh, only because by now the thought of a phone working is humorous to me. Here I thought we were re-entering the dark ages. “Just takes us to the Queen, please. We’ll wait outside until she beckons for us.” Reese snickers from behind me, but it’s only because she doesn’t know how serious I am. I know I’m supposed to honor thy mother or some bullshit, but yeah…I decided against honoring my parents when Dad punched mom in the jaw for the first time and then of course when Mom left me at Chipley. Screw them both. They deserve each other. There was a long period where I felt bad for her—the poor abused woman. I only saw one side of things. Not that abuse is a solution or answer to a problem, but for all I know, Mom pushed Dad the same way she pushed me. It was all about her all the time. For God’s sake, she pulled me away from my life to bring us into the middle of a condemned town fit only for the criminally insane.
The patrol leads us down a hallway lined with doors, one every ten feet or so, until he stops in front of one and lifts his hand to check his watch. Reese and I lean up against the wall behind us, both staring at this man. I want to know his story. I want to know how he found his way here and what made him want to do what he’s doing. “Does that thing ever get hot? Like…are your balls sweating under that plastic armor?” I laugh silently to myself, testing him, wanting him to react.
And he does. He breaks eye contact, looking up toward the ceiling. “It gets pretty bad,” he mutters.
Reese is giving me a look, and while I’m not looking directly at her, I’m almost positive she’s rolling her eyes at me. “Are you serious right now?” she says.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” the man says to her. The unexpected conversation forces a loud rumble of laughter out of me. I bury my mouth in my shoulder, realizing I’ll probably get this poor idiot in trouble when that door opens.
“What’s your story?” I ask him, lowering my voice.
“Marines, ten years, combat veteran, came home from Afghanistan to orders I would never have imagined. I’ve been here from two weeks before the attack until now, working for her,” he nods his head toward the door behind him.
“For her,” Mom says as she opens the door. “Does ‘her’ have a name you should be referring to, Staff Sergeant Locke?”
The man turns towards Mom and salutes her. What is this fucking shit? Is he saluting her? She has no military background or training. This is unbelievable. “Ma’am, I apologize.”
“You are dismissed,” she shoos him off.
Locke disappears down the hall, tail between his legs, muttering something to himself beneath his breath.
“I see you two made it back in one piece.” Mom rolls her eyes and turns back, walking into her office. Since she didn’t close the door in our faces, I follow, taking Reese’s hand and squeezing it, before pulling her in along with me. Reese closes the door behind her, and we both take seats in front of my mother’s desk.
Mom sits down in her chair, immediately focusing her attention on her computer monitor while clicking the mouse several times. This gives me a minute to look around the room, and I notice a whiteboard I didn’t see the last time I was in here. There are several photos attached to the whiteboard—half of them are of me, mostly as a child. The other half are of her and JJ in a location that doesn’t resemble Chipley or any place I’ve ever seen. It looks like an island or something exotic.
“Geez, you should have told me I have a new daddy now. Isn’t that something a mother would normally discuss with her son?” I say this while holding my focus tightly on her left hand, wondering why there isn’t a ring on that finger. “JJ let himself go after you two got hitched, huh?”
“JJ isn’t who you think he is,” Mom says.
“He’s an undercover government agent,” I tell her, taking away the power of that secret.
Her eyes grow wide and her eyebrows rise with question.
“I met his brother. He was a pleasant man until he was eaten alive by another human being.”
Mom clears her throat and lifts the stack of papers off of her desk, shuffling them around in her hands as a distraction. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
“Let’s see,” I say, placing my elbows down on my knees. “Tell me how well I do here: The fucks outside of Chipley were infected by a terrorist act that contaminated all the U.S. bodies of natural water with a toxin. Drinking the contaminated water altered the chemical balance in the brain of everyone infected. Those, the fucks,” she hates when I cuss, “they’ve become a type of…zombies, flesh-eating creatures, who are actually still live human beings.”
“Sinon,” she interrupts.
“Nope, not done,” I continue. “So we have group A, those who cannot be controlled, so most of them, not all, have been imprisoned outside of Chipley in various prison-like environments across the country I assume. Then we come to group B, those who were protected from this terrorist attack, an attack the government was aware of ahead of time. Those people, the people of Chipley, will be your humanized form of weaponry. Your science research has been working diligently to alter the chemical balance of the uninfected fucks here in Chipley so you can have a good fight against everyone outside of Chipley. Group B wins, Group A is dead, the infected are gone, and you stop poisoning Group B, so all is right in the world once again. All of this, of course, will spark re-creation of the U.S. population, and you’re famous for playing God. Tell me, Mom, how close am I?” She doesn’t even have to respond. She doesn’t have to. I can see it all written across her face. Reese, however, she’s smiling, she’s proud.
“I haven’t given you enough credit, Sinon.” Mom drops the papers from her hand, letting them scatter across her desk. She leans back in her chair, the coils in the cushion whining in response. “You’re almost correct. Do you have a better solution?”
“Nope,” I say. “But if you want this to work, you need to earn the respect of everyone in Chipley. Making them all fight to the death for food, poisoning them without their knowledge, keeping them in sheds for shelter? You want these people to fight on your behalf? If you walked out there right now, they’d eat you alive—literally. Clearly, you’ve never had to lead anything more than your own son, which you failed miserably at,” I laugh, taking a quick break in my verbal assault. “See, Mom, there comes a time in every man or woman’s life where you have to sit back and realize that you might not be cut out for this job.” I pause for a minute, putting more pieces together in my head. “Why is everyone walking around in biohazard suits when the contaminant was spread through water? Surely you aren’t all that dumb, are you?”
She laughs more, but the laugh is at me, not at my words and questions. “Stop believing everything you hear, son.”
