“Pretty bad,” Graham said. “The Gar had been growing for nearly three years. The slaughterhouse was bought by a new owner who summoned it and then fed it. He’d replaced most of the workers over time to keep it quiet. But it had been producing Hunters and Children for nearly two years. By a year ago, the company wasn’t actually producing meat. But they kept their trucks. And they were making deliveries.”
“Children,” Janea said.
“Hundreds,” the agent acknowledged. “Scattered all over the country. And then there are the ones in the mountains.”
“That’s a huge operation for one slaughterhouse,” Janea pointed out. “Where’d they get the funding?”
“We’re looking into that,” Graham said. “It wasn’t the owner. The slaughterhouse had been on the ropes until about two years ago when it was bought by an offshore company. That’s a nest of shell corporations. One did stand out, though.”
He pulled up a file on his phone and showed it to Barbara.
“Look familiar?” he asked.
Barbara blanched at the symbol.
“Trilobular?” she asked. “I thought that was shut down, hard, after the Osemi operation.”
“It was,” Graham said. “But it was involved in the purchase of the slaughterhouse. You can rest assured that there is going to be some high-level interest in the rest of these corporations.”
“So the fight isn’t over,” Barb said, shrugging. “No big surprise that there’s some sort of big corporate backing to the Other Side. We’ve got the same. Doesn’t matter. We know, now, that God is with us as we are with Him. His hand will protect and guide us. Compared to the trials that are coming, a few skru-gnon and corporate pirates are nothing. But we will prevail. God is by our side.”
“Amen,” Randell said. “You preach it, Miss Barbara. You go.”
“That sounded sincere,” Janea said, smiling.
“You know what they say,” Randell said, shrugging. “Comes a point when you just gotta give in. I’ve seen hell. Maybe there really is a heaven. Figure I’ll get me some of that Old Time religion.”
“Good enough for me,” Barb said.
Lazarus looked between the two of them and, for just a moment, appeared to shake his head.
“Mark?” Barbara asked as she came into the house. It was midafternoon and Mark’s car was in the garage. Unusual, to say the least.
She set her bags by the door and walked into the living room. No Mark. Kitchen. No Mark. No surprise.
She was halfway down the hallway when she knew, distinctly, where Mark was from the sounds from the bedroom. Just to make sure, she opened the door. And paused at the surprised expressions. Then quietly shut the door, walked to the dining room and sat down at the head of the table. Normally Mark’s spot. She steepled her fingers and waited. It took about three minutes for Mark to arrive.
“Barbara…” he said, in a choked voice. “You’re…home.”
“Yes,” Barbara replied, in a voice so totally mild it was slightly terrifying.
“Barb,” Mark said, carefully. “I…I just want to point out I have never cheated on you…with a woman.”
Author’s Afterword
Not a eulogy.
This novel has been a work in progress for a looong time. And during its writing real-life stuff has changed. Most of that relates to Dragon*Con which is, I assure my gentle readers, the most fun you can have with your clothes on. (And in some of the room parties, that’s optional.) During the day the con is aggressively PG-13 and I’ve been bringing my daughters since they were quite young. They’ve always loved the swirl of color and fantasy that goes on day and night. At this point the con has attracted so much attention that Disney World sends cast, mostly the various “Princesses” and the Dragon*Con Parade Sunday morning has become a feature of Atlanta’s Labor Day Weekend.
However, as the sun goes down the con’s tone slowly changes to become more Mardi Gras and less Disney. This is, in fact, specifically recognized with the event that has slowly been gaining notoriety, the Dragon*Con After Dark Costume Contest of which the author has had the privilege of being the co-master of ceremonies several times. For persons interested in being contestants, I will remind you that “no costume means no costume.” And Dragon*Con After Dark complies with relevant Atlanta and Georgia laws regarding nudity.
Barely.
(On a further note, my good friends Rogue and Jessica DuPont of Cruxshadows are usually among the judges.)
This has been my only attempt to describe Dragon*Con and I really could not do it justice. It is one of those things in life that truly has to be experienced to be believed.
However, it was not until I was doing research for “fiddly bits” of this story that I realized (or even in fact noted) the amazing architecture especially of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I’m not an architecture fan. It’s the sort of thing you throw into a book to lend authenticity. So when this novel was in its final draft I desperately asked my lovely and talented (and much more architecturally oriented) fiance Miriam to look up the architectural details and explain them to me. In small words.
Although Miriam had been involved with the design of the new walking bridge between the Hyatt and the Marriott (one detail that was left out since the Dragon*Con of Janea’s spiritual journey was from an earlier period) she had, surprisingly, never really paid much attention to the architecture of the Hyatt itself.
Prepare to be enlightened.
Built in 1967, the Hyatt Regency Atlanta is generally described as “the first contemporary hotel.” Designed by “visionary” (and I agree) architect John Portman, it incorporated several novel design features that remain subjects of study and use to this day. The “bubble” (glass open) elevators that Janea so casually dismissed were in fact the first of their kind in the world. All subsequent glass elevators simply drew on the Hyatt design. The “modern art sculpture” in the middle is anything but. The Flora Paris is, in fact, one of the most brilliant examples, ever, of a critical structural necessity being turned into pure art. The gold and silver plated steel tubes run in parallel from the foundation up to the lobby level then spread out into hundreds of separate tubes, twenty-two stories high, in the architect’s own words, “arms in praise of the sky and the sun.”
However, their purpose is purely structural. The top of the Hyatt is a (now closed) rotating restaurant. The basic structure of the building could not support its weight. The Flora Paris is what supports the entire weight of that massive and essentially separate building. It floats on beauty.
Brilliant.
There was no place to include those details in the story but the author thought that some people (including long-time attendees of Dragon*Con such as the author) might be interested.
See you in Atlanta at Labor Day.
John Ringo
