“Follow me toward the transportation that will transport you to the new provisional facilities,” Bullhorn Boy continued. “Obey all commands immediately.” That was so plain, it could only mean
Off they went, at a retarded shuffle, garbage sacks slung over their shoulders. Up ahead, people were slowly filing onto buses ancient enough to have carried kids back in the days when Southern schools were still segregated.
Vanessa made up her mind right there that she didn’t want to get transported to any provisional facility. Camp Constitution was bad. A half-assed version would only be worse. They said it couldn’t be done, but as often as not they didn’t know what they were talking about. This looked like one of those times.
Off to one side stood a much shorter row of newer, less decrepit buses. The people getting into those also seemed newer and less decrepit than the ones boarding the wrecks toward which Vanessa was heading. Pointing at the newer buses, she asked one of the Guardsmen, “What’s up with those?”
He was a squarely built, blocky fellow with beard stubble so dark and thick he probably had to shave twice a day. “Oh, those are for the reclamation parties,” he answered.
“Huh?” Vanessa said brilliantly.
“Reclamation parties,” the Guardsman repeated. “You know, to go into the country the eruption fucked over and scavenge stuff from it and start cleaning it up so it’s, like, worth something again.”
“How do I get on one of those buses?” Vanessa asked. If you were cleaning up the countryside, you weren’t living in a camp.
The guy looked at her. “You shoulda signed a volunteer sheet. They went around, like, weeks ago.”
“Sign one? I never even saw one!” Vanessa yipped. She wondered if that was so. All kinds of stupid administrative papers circulated through the tents and FEMA trailers. Like most of the other poor slobs stuck in Camp Constitution, she ignored them. If she’d ignored the wrong one, she’d just screwed herself to the wall. But even if saying she’d never seen one might not be true, it was definitely truthy. She sure hadn’t paid attention to one.
“If you didn’t sign up, you can’t go on those buses. You gotta get on these ones instead.” The Guardsman pointed in the direction she was already going with the muzzle of his assault rifle.
Full of helpless longing, Vanessa stared at the newer buses. Helpless? God helped those who helped themselves. “I’d do anything to get on one of
If she hadn’t taken care of Micah Husak that way, chances were she would have kept quiet. But after you’d done it once, the second time turned out to be a lot easier. She had a weapon, and she’d use it, the way the Guardsman would use the M16 if he needed to.
He understood what she was offering, all right. Well, he didn’t exactly need to be Phi Beta Kappa to figure it out. “Yeah?” he said, as people not so young, not so cute, and maybe not so desperate trudged past so they could go from a godawful camp to one that had to be even worse.
“Yeah,” Vanessa said. The fish had taken the bait.
“Joe-Bob, keep an eye on the parade,” her Guardsman said to the fellow next to him. Then he turned back to her. “C’mon in here.”
“Okay.” She got down in front of him. Blowing him was better than fucking him. She wouldn’t have to worry about dressing again-or about getting knocked up. He would have been better right after a shower, but he could have been worse, too.
And it would be quick. She could tell as soon as she started. “Yeah, babe,” he muttered, shoving his hips forward and thrusting deeper into her mouth. Coughing, she pulled away a little, then went back to what she was doing.
He was about to go off. Just when she was going to jerk away so he’d spurt on the ground, he grabbed her head and held her to him while he came in her mouth. It was as bad as she remembered. She gagged and choked and almost puked on his sand-colored Army boots.
“All
“You bet I am,” she said grimly. She spat again as she climbed to her feet and brushed dirt off the knees of her jeans. The Guardsman chuckled some more. He could afford to think it was funny. He hadn’t been on the receiving end.
She fled the tent and hustled toward the newer buses before she realized they hadn’t even found out each other’s names. That came closer to the famous zipless fuck than she’d ever dreamt she’d get. She hadn’t got fucked, though. She literally hadn’t even got kissed.
She spat one more time before she got into the boarding line. She wished for a jug of Scope, but wishing failed to produce one. The taste lingered. As she took her place, the woman in front of her-a gal about her own age-gave her a curious look, but didn’t say anything.
A man with a clipboard was making checkmarks on the paper it held. A roster sheet? Vanessa’s heart sank. If she’d sucked off that National Guard asshole for nothing. . “Ferguson,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
He frowned. “You aren’t on the list.”
“I’m supposed to be,” she declared-again, at least truthy if not true.
He inspected her. Was she going to have to do him, too? Pretty soon she’d be swimming out to meet troopships if she wasn’t careful. But all he said was “Well, get on. We’re a couple people short, and you look like you can do the work. Ferguson, your name was?”
“That’s right. Vanessa. Thank you.” She didn’t usually dole out gratitude so casually, but she made an exception here. As the man added her to the roster, she happily hopped into the bus. She didn’t care where it took her. She was out of Camp Constitution at last!
* * *
When Marshall Ferguson wasn’t babysitting his little half-brother, he had the family house pretty much to himself. His father went to the cop shop early every morning, and Kelly-Marshall couldn’t think of her as a stepmom, not when she was as close to his age as to his old man’s-headed for CSUDH not a whole lot later. Peace. Quiet. If he wanted to make like a writer, all he had to do was sit in front of the screen and let the words pour out.
In theory, anyhow. Theory was wonderful. Practice, he was discovering, was a little different. Yeah, just a little. Theory was all about inspiration and how to court it. As he was discovering, practice turned out to involve a lot more of figuring out what the hell you did after the fickle bitch upped and left you.
Because she damn well would. Inspiration had launched Marshall into a couple of stories that seemed like surefire winners. Inspiration took him 1,500 words into one of them, maybe 2,500 words into the other. Then he had to work out what happened next and what, if anything, it meant. And he had to work out how to put it across without being obvious or boring.
Somehow, neither of those masterpieces of Western literature ever got finished.
But Marshall did finish one piece he started with no inspiration whatsoever. Well, almost none. His father’s dubious stare at the dinner table every evening kept Marshall busy. Where art and brilliance failed to serve, stubbornness and craft got him to the end.
Then he had to put the story on the market. Being forced to submit by Professor Bolger at UCSB was one of the best things that ever happened to him: he’d started early on getting hardened to rejection. The prof said straight-out that some people would rather submit to a root canal than to an editor.
Marshall had never had a root canal, but he understood the feeling. He’d sold a story during that quarter, which freaked him and the prof almost equally. But you didn’t sell every time. And getting rejected sucked.
He tried to think of it like dating. If you didn’t hit on girls, you’d never get laid. Yeah, sometimes they shot you down. That didn’t mean you didn’t pick yourself up and ask somebody else out. It might not even mean you didn’t try again with the girl who’d told you no before.
Or with the market that told you no. Marshall’s stubborn story went out and came back five times before it
