Per 
"Doesn't Stand For Drone"
The units were always all sorts of different ways. This one was one of the worst. It had been a warehouse and the Foundation had filled it up with cages. It looked like they hadn’t even bought the cages but just had some welders zap together pipes. The cell doors were held shut with bicycle locks. It was the sort of place that would be loud as shit with guys yelling all the time except that it was empty; 1600 was the only D-class in the place. The thing 1600 liked about it, he could get his feet tucked into the top squares on the wall grid and do upside-down situps. There was never anything else to do in these places, between assignments, and he got bored easy, so he tried to get tired every day.
Over at the warehouse door, somebody turned a key.
1600 glanced over there to see a sergeant coming in with a thin black guy. The black guy was wearing jail baggies and flipflops. 1600 didn’t allow himself to be distracted, focused on his ab muscles, but smelled new fish. He didn’t stop the upside-down situps until the sergeant reached for the lock of his own cell, and then he had to flip over and land on his feet and turn around.
The sergeant held the door for the black guy. “1600,” he said, “meet your new cellmate.”
“The fuck out of here-“ 1600 gestured at the dozens of empty cages. “For real?”
“Until further notice.” The sergeant snapped the bicycle lock and went back out of the warehouse doors.
“Well,” 1600 said to the black guy, “welcome to my cell.” He spread his arms, then brought his hands to his chest. “Our cell.”
The black guy looked a little rabbity. He had gold-rimmed spectacles on and wasn’t carrying a duffel or anything else, not even a blanket. “This isn’t really a cell, though, right? This is just transit.”
“I hope it’s just transit,” 1600 agreed, “I been here six days.”
“They didn’t even issue me a blanket yet.” He looked around. “What is this bullshit?”
“Twice a day they bring me food and a bucket to shit in.”
“A bucket!“ The black guy’s hackles rose in indigence. “What the hell kind of bullshit fucking stir is this!”
He sat down on his bunk. “Where did you come from?”
“San Quentin.” Clearly expecting to get some respect for it.
“What’d you do?”
“You mean my charge?”
“I mean, why are you here?”
“Killed my cellmate.”
“What’d he do to piss you off?”
“Talked shit about my religion.”
“What’s your religion?”
“I’m a Muslim.”
“That’s a good religion,” 1600 said. “Definitely, one of the best.”
“Yeah, and I lay out my little prayer rug and say my prayers five times a day. I don’t appreciate any comments on the position I got to get in.”
“I won’t say a mumbling word,” 1600 told him. “I got great respect for the infinite. But what prayer rug are you talking about?”
“I got a prayer rug. It’s in Property.”
“They faked your death? Yeah, all your Property went to your heirs.”
He did a slow burn. “Grandad's wiping his feet on it I bet. This block hasn’t even got a TV? I be goddamned…” He sat down on the other bunk. “I never seen such bullshit in all my life. What are you called?”
“Sixteen Hundred.”
The black guy looked at the number on 1600’s denims, then down at the 1601 on his own baggies. “Okay, that right there- My NAME is James William Lester Shabazz, and I expect to be referred to as Mr. Shabazz by all government employees—you got me?”
“Oh, that’s fine for you,” 1600 said agreeably. “I left my own name behind years ago. Don’t ask me my charge, that was before. I just use the number.”
“You let them take your name.”
“I didn’t want the name.”
“You gonna live by a number, that they give to you?”
“The number changes every time you get moved.”
“You could go by a street name, you don’t have to take that government issue.”
“Let me make this clear,” 1600 said, “My decision to go by the number is my decision.”
Mr. Shabazz raised palms.
“You just got here. You came from San Quentin. You think you’re salty cause you came from a cell block. This is not no cell block. This is not no penitentiary. I came from Psychiatric, and I wasn’t ready. This is a whole new thing. You want a full briefing?”
The black man’s eyes focused in on him, tight and hard through the gold-rimmed spectacles. “Deal me in.”
“This shit kills people. Okay? People die all the fucking time.”
“They said hazardous.”
“Some of it’s hazardous. Some of it’s lethal. They will send you in to places that kill you, just to see what happens. They will test shit on you that they know will kill you, some of it in the most horrible ways. If you see too much and they don’t want you talking, maybe they dose you with amnestic chemicals so you forgot what you saw, but maybe OpSec drags out a Glock and busts a cap in your skull. That’s what the ‘D’ stands for. Okay?”
Mr. Shabazz raised a hand, ran fingers across lips. “They said, science.”
“Not science,” 1600 told him. “It’s the opposite of science. It’s shit science can’t explain.”
“Magic?”
“The supernatural. Look, it isn’t necessarily lethal. Just like everyplace, there’s guys mopping floors. If you got a special skill, you may get a duty using it. You got a special skill?”
“They asked me that. I said, I can speak and read Arabic.”
“Oh, that might be good for you,” 1600 agreed. “You may get stuck in an office translating scrolls all the time. My last job? I was mowing lawns, at this place in Nebraska used to be an Air Force base. The boss had been a landscaper, until he got mad and killed his wife. He knew how to fix lawnmowers, all the Latin names of the plants, everything. He had been doing that job for twenty years. Had a radio and a coffee machine in the lawnmower shop. Cushiest assignment I ever had.”
“So what happened,” Mr. Shabazz asked, “if you had that job? How’d you end up here?”
“Autumn came,” 1600 said. “The grass stopped growing.”
The warehouse door unlocked and the sergeant came in. He was whistling and jingling keys—the mark of an old hand, letting prisoners know he was coming. He unlocked their cell door and swung it back. “Ready for you,” he said, “both of you. Transfer to Transport.”
Mr. Shabazz and 1600 walked out of the building ahead of the sergeant. It was sometime midmorning. There was a rent-a-van idling right outside. 1600 stopped and looked at the van, which was yellow with the red name of the rental company. When the side door slid back he ducked down and looked inside. There were two guys in the back row—one a light-skinned black kid, not much older than 1600 had been on arrival, and the other a burnout biker with a lot of faded blue tattoos. Both were wearing jail baggies. The driver, young and muscular and rangy, was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. Mr. Verre was riding in the Shotgun seat. “Oh, shit,” 1600 cried, “It’s Fur!”
Fur was an old man, completely hairless, wearing prison greens. He didn’t even have eyebrows. “The name is Verre.”
“We call him Fur because he hasn’t got any.” 1600 slid into the middle seat and let the sergeant cuff him to the armrest. “It could be worse, you could be Fuzzy Wuzzy. Cause you know, Fuzzy Wuzzy, he hasn’t got any…”
Mr. Shabazz was getting in the van. “You two know each other?”
“He brought me the bucket,” 1600 said. To Fur: “But I thought you were long past processing—you had a bunk and a duty and everything?"
"The duty was in Intake,” Fur said, “I was mopping a cell and they only had four guys in holding and they needed five. So this one threw me into the mix.” He nodded at the driver.
1600 craned his neck around Mr. Shabazz, who was getting cuffed now. The driver was a young guy, nice tattoos. New jeans.
White boots.
Shit, 1600 thought.
The door slid shut. The van, already in gear, pulled out quick.
Fur said, “So you’re 1600 now?”
“That’s my name,” he agreed.
“Well I guess we’re all your children.” Fur half-turned pointed to his own chest, where a piece of white fabric tape covered his previous number. Somebody had written 1604 on the tape with a wide marker.
Mr. Shabazz whipped around, looking at the numbers in the back seat: 1602 and 1603. “I am James William Lester Shabazz,” he announced.
“I’m Calvin,” the light-skinned kid said.
“Everybody shut the fuck up,” the driver said. “No talking on the van.”
Fur asked the driver: “Oh, so you drive for Transport all the time? You been with them awhile? Cause you know I been in a lot of vans and busses since I started with the Foundation. Guys like to get caught up. I never heard that rule before.” The driver cocked an eyebrow but didn’t look up from the road. Fur asked: “They issuing CBRN boots to Transport now?” He didn’t get an answer.
Mr. Shabazz asked 1600, “What the fuck is up with the boots?”
“He’s MTF,” 1600 told him. “Mobile Task Force.”
“He’s MTF and he’s in disguise,” Fur agreed, “I can see why he didn’t want to get rid of the boots though. Those boots are hard to come by.” To the driver: “What MTF are you with?”
“Epsilon-7,” the driver said. “Superfund Superfriends.”
1600 turned slightly and saw that Mr. Shabazz was staring hard at the back of the driver’s neck. “Oh, don’t hate him,” 1600 said. “The MTF have the really dangerous jobs.” To the driver: “What’s your team's KIA ratio?”
“As of today,” the driver said, “Five out of seven.”
The van had reached the Interstate. It rushed down the onramp and into traffic, well in excess of the speed limit. In the back seat Calvin said: “This man here’s going to get us pulled over.” Right on schedule a patrol car pulled out and wove through traffic behind them, lights on. “See,” Calvin told the driver, “Now you gonna get a ticket.” But the police car pulled ahead of them, lights still on, clearing traffic ahead.
1600 looked at his palms. They were reflective with perspiration. The rental van meant somebody was improvising. The MTF in mufti meant something had gone wrong. Local law enforcement on escort duty meant the Foundation had downgraded operational security. This would be bad.
Worse than anything else he hated hurrying. The speed of the van was getting him upset. Partly it was just the speed; he didn’t know how to drive, and the mystery of how the tires stayed on the road made him paranoid, but mostly it was just a long history of experience that had taught him, speed meant death.
Maybe it was the way that Fur and he had suddenly shut the fuck up that caused everybody else in the van to take a note and not talk anymore. In any case 1600 took it as a blessing. The low-grade fear pushed him to a new alertness. He needed it to think, to look over the situation and study on moves.
He couldn’t tell how fast the van was going, since the driver was between him and the speedometer, and and the trickle of adrenaline telescoped the passage of time, but they must have traveled a couple of hundred miles when they left the Interstate and turned on to a beltway. The civilian cars got thicker, less long-haul trucks and more SUVs; exit signs were marked with chain restaurants and gas stations. Practically right away they were off the highway, turning left at a light, crossing an overpass. A state Trooper moved a sawhorse. 1600 got a look at a rural two-lane road:somebody’s muffler shop and an off-brand convenience store. He saw big shadows on the pavement: Foundation drones, probably handled by remote control from another state. Then they pulled into a gravel lot. Big sign: FLEA MARKET FRI SAT. There was a construction trailer, a couple of SUVs, a Prius.
“Wait here and I’ll tell them we’re here,” the driver said. He popped out of the door and was gone, leaving it open.
“’Wait here,’” Fur repeated. “Like we’re not cuffed up. What the hell.”
“’Five out of seven,’” 1600 repeated. “It’s a sure bet they lost everybody but the sniper and the guy with the radio.”
Mr. Shabazz asked, “What’s this ‘Superfund’ shit?”
“It means they were tasked to the EPA,” Fur told him. “Those boots were Chemical Biological Radiation Nuclear hazmat gear. Epsilon-7 went in someplace hot, and got burnt. You new fish picked a hell of a gig for your first day.”
“You think it’s a cleanup gig?” 1600 asked.
“It might be a cleanup gig,” Fur said. “If so, they ain’t going to have no CBRN for us.”
“A cleanup gig would still be safer.”
“It ain’t no cleanup gig,” Fur muttered. “Whatever it is, it’s still going on.”
“Gear,” 1600 said. “You hear me, Fur? Priority Fucking Alpha. We got to get gear.”
“I could use something to eat, too,” Calvin put in.
The driver came back out and slid the doors back. He uncuffed them awkwardly; he clearly had no training in handling prisoners, and bent over each of them with his strike zones uncovered. Nobody took the chance. When they were all standing beside the van he jangled the mess of handcuffs, maybe wondering what to do with it, and then tossed it back into the van. Throughout it all Mr. Shabazz scowled at the man like a millionaire with a drunken chauffeur.
“Okay,” the driver said, “In the trailer.” Nobody moved. 1600 asked, “What’s in the trailer?”
“The scientist.”
“Oh, okay.” He went up the stairs. Everybody followed him. The interior was a single open space, with a big table made of two-by-fours. Two guys were at the table: a birdy fellow with a Jewfro, and a MTF lieutenant with scrambled eggs on his black baseball cap. There was a blonde girl in a skirt, too, probably with Administration. The scientist asked: “This everybody?”
“This is everybody,” the driver agreed.
“Which one knows Arabic?”
Mr. Shabazz raised a hand.
“Okay, good.” The scientist spread out a map. “This road out there is R-13; it crosses the highway back there—well, you saw it. Frontage Road runs parallel to the highway over to, uh, Mulberry? Yes. So we’re not too far from where Frontage and R-13 intersect. A little ways up Frontage there’s a churchyard. That’s your destination. You will have to approach it from the four cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West. Now you-“ He pointed at Mr. Shabazz. “-you will come in from the south, with, I guess, him.” He pointed at 1600. “The others will come from the other three directions. We will have you on the radio, we’ll tell you when to move-“
“JUST A GODDAMN MINUTE,” 1600 screamed, and slammed his fist into the map. “My team needs gear, food, and a full briefing! There’s no goddamn way we’re going in like this!”
The MTF lieutenant suggested mildly: “You want to remember what the D stands for.”
“I know what the D stands for,” 1600 told him. “Just you remember, it doesn’t stand for drone.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “I’ve got five guys and four directions. Just saying.”
“You’ve got five guys that all look like they broke out of a jail cell,” 1600 told the lieutenant, “Most of ‘em in shower-stall flip-flops, and you’ve got LLE on the scene, so don’t play games with OpSec.” Pointing at Calvin and Mr. Shabazz: “One of these guys gets capped by a deputy, out there in the woods, and another gets bit by a snake? There goes half your game plan. Leaving you and the sniper, there, to replace them. Or them.” Pointing at the scientist and the blonde girl.
“There’s no Standard Kits at this location,” the lieutenant said, “What you see is what you get.”
“There’s a Wal-Mart across the freeway. I saw the sign on the way in; just get us some gear, tell us what the fuck we can expect, and we’ll run the ball.”
The blonde asked, “What do you need?”
“Boots. Jeans. Compasses. Mr. Verre can give you a list.” To Fur: “Just give her the same list we used last time.” This was all bullshit; there was no list, and they had never been on a mission together before, but the old man would know enough to work the angle. “And some food; Calvin’s right, most of us haven’t eaten.”
She got her purse and went to the door, jangling keys. To Fur: “Coming?” The old man didn’t look back, but darted through the door so closely to her that he was less behind than beside.
Maybe not caring that he was outranked by a twentysomething admin, the lieutenant shrugged.
“You’ll get your gear, I guess. Alicia will enter the orders on her phone and they’ll have it waiting in the parking lot before she gets through the red light, so don’t think it’s going to take all day; these millennials are good like that.”
1600 nodded.
“You have some field experience, I guess.”
“Some.”
“In what?”
“Eliminations.”
“You ever find anything you couldn’t eliminate?”
“Yeah,” 1600 said. “We got some fresh faces on the team now.”
The lieutenant nodded for a little while, reflective. “You want to see the movie?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We want to see the movie.”
“Show them the movie,” the lieutenant told the scientist. The scientist went and got a laptop.
“You were with the EPA?” 1600 asked.
“Epsilon-7 was parked with the Environmental Protection Agency,” the lieutenant agreed. “Homeland Security money, in case a terrorist got a dirty bomb. Or whatever. But really the Foundation. Somebody figured, if something happens, the EPA might get called. We’d be waiting. And that’s what happened.”
Mr. Shabazz asked, “But it’s not a dirty bomb?”
“It’s not environmental at all,” the scientist told them. He started the movie. The laptop screen was tiny, broken into six windowed playbacks: men in suits checking respirators, inside the same exact trailer where 1600 and the others now stood. Even the AR-15s were white.
1600 stared at the screen. “What had you been told?”
“A town died.”
“Nothing else?”
“Anybody that went in didn’t get back.”
On the screen, the Epsilon-7 team was going through checklists. “Turn off the sound,” the lieutenant told the scientist, “Move it forward.”
Now Epsilon-7 was leaving the trailer. A white six-wheeled vehicle, larger than the rental van, awaited them. Two got in the vehicle. Three crossed R-13 on foot, paused, and waited as the vehicle moved slowly after them. The sixth video split away, moving towards the freeway, then crossed R-13 at a distance from the others: the sniper’s perspective.
The vehicle rolled over a curb without a struggle, pacing slowly behind the three men at the front. One of the three moved a little ahead, taking point. They passed the Stop sign at Frontage Road; two panned slowly right and observed the convenience store. All of the windows had been broken. A work truck was jammed inside, the tailgate up by the cash register. Newspapers and candy were scattered across the sidewalk.
Calvin asked, “Did somebody drive into the store?”
Frontage Road dipped down behind the convenience store. The point man’s video showed a steeple, glimpsed through trees. Then it went black. Two other videos showed the point man whipped aloft. Rifles were raised; things got rapid. Something fell in front of the vehicle; five screens were black now. The only remaining vantage point was from the sniper’s camera, from the other side of the convenience store parking lot. On that screen the six-wheeled vehicle was twenty feet in the air. The wheels were still turning. It twisted. Something invisible tore the vehicle in half like a strong man wringing out a soda can, dropped the halves, and moved back down Frontage Road—1600 saw trees brushed aside, branches broken, as it went. The crumpled metal halves, spraying fluids, tumbled down the hill after it.
The burnout biker, 1603, moaned softly. 1600 asked: “This happened right across the street from where we are now?”
“It won’t cross the street,” the scientist said. He stopped the video playback.
“What the fuck is it?”
“That’s what you’re going in to find out.”
“It’s a genie,” Mr. Shabazz said. Everybody looked at him. “You need an Arabic translator, and you want us to approach from the four cardinal directions; it’s a genie. And you know that.”
“We need confirmation that it’s a genie-“
“This plan is SOP for genies,” the lieutenant interrupted. “We think it’s a genie, it’s probably a genie, it acts like a genie. You do what we want, you’ll be okay.”
Calvin was wide-eyed: “How the fuck does it be invisible and tear cars in half? I hope like hell you don’t expect to fight that—we got to run away from here, now!”
“If you run away you’ll be gunned down by the drones before you make it to the highway,” 1600 told him. “Just be glad they stopped using the explosive collars. OpSec got frisky with their frequencies, one time, and like three guys’ heads blasted off.” He asked the scientist, “What exactly is the rest of the plan, here, after we cross the street and start humping its’ leg?”
“You’re going to bracket it from the four directions,” the scientist explained. “When the first approach vector gets close, it will move towards that person. If somebody else gets close it will leave the first approach vector and move toward the second. Then the third moves in, and it gets distracted that way, and then the fourth, and so on. Using this method, we can guide it to where we need it to go. This will work- -we tested it with the drones- -we know how close we can get you to it, and we will be talking you through the entire operation via radio headsets.”
“What happened to the drones that got too close?”
“Ripped in half. You have to maneuver it into the churchyard. There’s an obelisk. You have to get it back into the obelisk. There’s an inscription on the obelisk. Your translator will read the inscription aloud.”
“I have an idea,” Calvin said. “We send in the drone, right, and we take a picture of the inscription. Then we have my man here read it out loud over a PA system, from back here. Will that work?”
“He has to be there,” the scientist said.
“Hold up,” Mr. Shabazz raised a palm. “There was a genie, from Arabia, inside an obelisk? And it ended up in a Christian churchyard? How did that happen?”
“We don’t know that. It was brought back from overseas, apparently, a long time ago. Sometimes these things float around.“ The scientist shrugged. “It might have been in a bottle in a museum, or a scroll in a library. This one just happened to be in an obelisk.”
“And what caused it to leave the obelisk?”
“Lightning, probably.”
“Okay,” 1600 said. “It’s not the thinnest edge I’ve ever walked on but it is, well…”
“A little intimidating?”
“Oh, this is some deadly shit. Make no mistake. I don’t care if this plan worked just right five thousand times before. If this shit goes wrong…”
“If this shit goes wrong,” the lieutenant said, “We bring in five other guys that can get it right. So get it right.” A horn sounded in the parking lot. “And here’s your gear. Let’s get this done before dark.”
They went back outside. The Prius was backed up with the hatchback rising. The girl got out with her keys, Fur with white paper bags of takeout food. 1600 went and looked in the trunk: boxes of boots, jeans, the kind of backpacks kids carried into school. He picked up one of the backpacks. It had a superhero on it, somebody he didn’t recognize. The others crowded him, picking over clothes and sizes. He pulled his pants down in the parking lot, dragged denim up his legs, found a pair of steel toed boots that didn’t need laces. Jesus, they had even gotten belts. Somebody put a burger in his hand and he bit down on it without really thinking about what he was doing and when the grease burst out it was like a drug. He had literally never tasted anything so good. His mouth was full of textures- -bacon and cheese and meat and bread and the pickles clamoring for his attention. He could barely chew it. He couldn’t swallow it- -his taste buds demanded more time, more time alone with this wonder. He was staggered back against the car door by the force of it.
The clothes were forgotten. They were munching and chewing and smacking their lips like a pack of hogs, he knew. Nobody thought of anything else. Later he reflected that if the genie had come across the street it would have swept them all up as a cluster. When the burger was gone he licked his fingers and sucked the paper wrapper like a dog. And there were fries- He wolfed them down, biting his own fingers, amazed at the salt crystals and the crispness of them. When it was all gone he nearly cried.
“Chow’s done,” the lieutenant said. “Time to move out.”
1600 looked at him. “You didn’t get any, Epsilon?”
“I’ll eat later.”
“Sure you will.” 1600 turned his back on the man, checked the car. He pulled on a t-shirt and an orange vest, a baseball hat with the name of a college team. Protein bars and a water bottle went into the superhero backpack. Figured he looked like a road worker or something. The boots fit pretty good too.
“D-TEAM,” he hollered, “HUDDLE UP ON ME!” They came over and he grabbed shoulders: “Okay, look. You heard their part of the plan. Here’s ours: we go in, we do the job, we get the fuck out. Don’t fuck around! There’s four cardinal directions, right? If one cardinal makes a run for it, he’s going to get killed by the drone, and then the other three cardinals are going to get killed by the genie. If all four of us are in play, this will probably work, but if one goes down we’re all fucked. Understand?”
They all nodded.
“Rule one: don’t let them hurry you. You got the eyes and ears, all they got is the high side. Don’t stop moving, but don’t let them hurry you. Rule two: anybody starts talking about a beer party, you kick them in the balls and run for the treeline.”
The girl came around and handed out compasses, making sure everybody had only one. He asked the others: “Do you guys know how to use these?” Calvin looked at him blankly and he pulled the kid aside.
“Okay, look,” he said. “The needle points north, right? They tell you to go to the south, you line it up with the N and head towards the S. They tell you west, line it up with the N and head for W. That’s it, it’s easy. Okay? Now listen. Do the boots fit? Don’t you never give up those boots for the rest of your life. You walk back on the unit? People gonna know don’t fuck with this guy, because he fucks with the infinite. What we’re gonna do today? You come back from it, you ain’t never gonna fear no mortal man again. You understand me?”
Shocked, he nodded.
“This is the infinite,” 1600 hissed, knowing he looked scary. “Most people in the world, they don’t ever face up to anything like this. This is what science can’t explain, and we’re gonna go see it. People be sitting in churches, watching TV, wondering. You’re gonna know.”
“Radio check,” the scientist called. 1600 went and put on a headset. There were four of them, all with little cameras on the headband, one for each of the directions; Mr. Shabazz would have to rely on 1600’s contact.
“I’ll take the kid and, uh, the old man? To their dropoff points,” the blonde girl said. “Lieutenant, can you handle the others?”
“The corporal can take that one.” He meant the burned-out biker. To 1600: “You two will be leaving from here. It’ll take some time to get everybody in position. Just wait here, you’ll be called on the radio.”
He realized: the number had been on his denims. They had already forgotten it, maybe never even noticed it. That was okay. Sooner or later somebody would ask him, or make him a new one. 1600 just hoped he got to keep the blaze orange vest. If they asked for that he’d have to give it up. The boots they’d have to take off of his unconscious body, though.
The girl zipped off in the Prius. The corporal roared off in a SUV. The lieutenant and the scientist went back inside the trailer. 1600 and Mr. Shabazz looked at each other.
“Shit,” 1600 said, “Fur missed the briefing.”
“I talked to him,” Mr. Shabazz said.
“He try on that girl?”
“He tried.”
“Well good for him.”
Mr. Shabazz looked away, took off the gold-rimmed spectacles, and tugged out a shirtsleeve to wipe them off. “He said she made him nervous.”
“Nervous how?”
“Talking about killing people.”
“Killing what people?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she say some shit about a beer party?”
“Nothing about that.” Mr. Shabazz hooked the spectacles behind his ears. “What’s a beer party?”
“It’s when they take you in a barn,” 1600 explained, “except there’s no beer and they hose you down with machine guns.”
“No,” Mr. Shabazz said, “I I think he would have said something about that.”
“Fur definitely would have—me and him talked one time when I was on the bucket. That girl just hasn’t been around D-class before. We got lucky, she was a soft touch. You meet her in a year she’ll cut your throat with one hand and take a Selfie with the other.”
Mr. Shabazz picked up his cartoon character backpack and walked to the edge of R-13. He looked down towards the overpass and the Trooper with the sawhorses.
1600 tapped a button on the radio headset. “Radio check, over.”
“You’re five-by.”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“This is Command.”
“Command my ass,” 1600 said, “what’s your call sign?”
After a second: “This is Ingram-17.”
“This is D-1600, over.”
“We have you.”
“You have me?” He looked up. There were a couple of drones drifting around. The big ones—the ones with the weapons—were out by the freeway and to the west and north, covering the other cardinal points. “Can you see me?”
“I can see you.”
“Confirm visual identification. What am I doing?”
“You’re standing in a parking lot and waving. Wearing a backpack. With a Negro male.”
“That’s me alright—where are you?”
“Crisis Command Directorate.”
“You D-class?”
“No, man. I’m not D-class.”
“You OpSec?”
“I’m OpSec.”
He turned off the radio and went to join Mr. Shabazz. “Back there in that office,” the black man said, “You showed no fear. You said you wanted your stuff, right? And that man threatened to kill you.”
“He didn’t holler ‘I’ll kill you!’ but that was what he meant, yes.”
“But you kept right on. You weren’t scared?”
“I’ll tell you what I told Calvin,” 1600 said. “You fuck with the infinite, you ain’t ever going to fear a mortal man ever again.”
“But you didn’t…”
“What?”
“You didn’t get mad at him, either. For threatening you.”
He shrugged. “You know what the D stands for. He knows it, I know it. So he wants to bring it up—so what if he wants to bring it up? I been under that threat since I was fifteen years old. I’d have to be mad all the time. See it isn’t that he wants to say it right now, it’s that it’s always there.”
“Uh-huh.”
1600 looked across the street at the fucked-up convenience store.
“You got—okay, I’m not going to say anything. Never mind.”
“Okay.”
“You have a slave mentality—there, I said it.”
1600 looked at him. “Wow. That’s big, coming from you.”
“Now you are going to have to explain that remark,” Mr. Shabazz said, “Or I might take offence.”
“Well you’re obviously a militant-ass black man, right? If Bill Cosby came up to me and said I had a slave mentality I’d be like what the fuck? But coming from you!”
“Right, okay, fine. I did nearly take offence. But I understand.”
“You’re NOI?”
“I was. The brothers got, I don’t know, attitudinal.”
“Well let me respond to what you’ve said,” 1600 told him. “Let me ask you a question. Did you enjoy your hamburger?”
“I did as a matter of fact—it was a very good hamburger.”
“I agree. It may have been the best goddamn burger I ever had in my life. Let me ask you another question: at any point, did you overhear me thanking anybody for the burger?”
“I did not.”
“You get somebody in here that says, Duh, thank you for the delicious hamburger! To the people that are threatening to kill them, then that person has a fucking slave mentality. I wanted a burger, I got the burger, it was a good burger. Done. The difference between me and you-”
“Oh, here we go.”
“-is that you think you deserve a burger.”
“I do deserve a burger.”
“If I had five dollars in my hand and went in to the restaurant and said: I order a burger, and they took my money, then you’re goddamned right I’d deserve a burger. I don’t deserve a burger because I have to fight a genie under threat of execution.”
“Because you’re a human being,” Mr. Shabazz said, “You deserve a burger.”
“Well, maybe, but I’m not gonna get one for that.” 1600 studied on the thought. “I think, if somebody actually volunteered to fight the genie, then Yeah they’d deserve the hamburger and a whole lot more.”
“I haven’t volunteered for anything.”
“It’s a D,” 1600 said, “not a V.” He looked across the street at the convenience store. “I ain’t no V class, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just get bored sometimes. Like now.”
“You’re bored!”
“You get in these situations,” 1600 said, “You have to learn to manage yourself. Like, when we were in the van? The guy was driving too fast, there was a little adrenaline there. It was good. This is different.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I gotta stand here while the other guys stump the swamp? I’m gonna be bored. You know what it makes me think about, Epsilon-7 made it all the way past the convenience store before they got jumped.”
“The convenience store,” Mr. Shabazz pointed out, “got jumped at the convenience store.”
“That’s true.” He keyed the microphone. “Ingraham17, this is D-1600. Over.”
“You don’t have to say ‘over,’ Ingraham-17 said, “it’s not that kind of radio. It’s like a phone.”
“Okay, fine. I have a bunch of questions for you, so let’s break this down. First of all, the guy said this was all by Standard Operating Procedure. What’s the Procedure?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Ingraham-17 told him, “You just go when and where I say.“
“Ingraham-17, I was born at night, but not last night, you copy?”
“Just follow my directions and you will be fine.”
“Nobody is talking about not following your directions. We are here to run a play. Are we going deep? Do we pass, do we score? Over.”
“…Your role is to provide a distraction. That’s it.”
1600 rolled his eyes at Mr. Shabazz. “I got the approach vectors briefing already. Let’s try this another way.” He reached up and popped the camera off of the headset, then held it about two feet in front of his face and pointed at the lens. “I want you to tell me the code name- -not the code name for this operation; I mean the code name for the Procedure that we are following at this time.”
Tightly- -sounding really pissed off now- -Ingraham-17 said: “That’s classified.”
“It’s classified?” To Mr. Shabazz: “It’s classified!” Back to the radio: “Excellent! That’s great! Tell me what the classification is.”
“The fuck are you talking about! It’s a secret!”
“Of course it’s a secret, Ingraham-17. We all know it’s a secret. This is the Foundation; everything’s a secret. But what kind of a secret is it? What is the classification rating number for this SOP?”
Nearly a minute of silence went by before the voice returned: “It’s. A. Two.”
“Right,” 1600 said. “I’m cleared. My security rating is a Two.”
“You’re a fucking D-class, you fuck! You don’t have a security rating!”
“My security rating is a Two,” 1600 repeated. “’Direct access to anomalous objects and entities,’ that’s me.”
Ingraham-17 went silent.
“You ever go in a secret building, the kind of place where they keep the monsters, and see how many D-class were working there? Did you think they got in there without a security rating? Or did you just never get let in there yourself? What’s your security rating?”
“D-1600,” Ingraham-17 said, “Be advised that the code for this procedure is TARNISHED SCIMITAR.”
“The code name is ‘Tarnished Scimitar,’” 1600 told Mr. Shabazz. “That’s really good news.”
“It is a cool name,” Mr. Shabazz agreed. “But why is it good news?”
“If the name’s bullcrap it’s a sure bet the operation is bullcrap. Like, they haven’t thought about it very much, you know?”
“What’s his security rating?” Ingraham-17 demanded.
“It’s a Two. ‘Direct access to anomalous objects or entities.’ Ingraham-17, he’s here. If it wasn’t a Two this morning it’s damn well a Two by now.”
“…Fine.”
“I’m not done yet. This is a genie run, right? Confirm or deny.”
“…Confirm.”
“We’re supposed to dance around this thing and get it to go where we want, right? Confirm or deny.”
“Confirm.”
“So you can see us on the screen, not just on the drone camera but on GPS, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Okay, now, can you see where the other guys are?”
“…Yes,” Ingraham-17 said warily, “the other members of your team are moving into position.”
“Are they a long ways from it? Are they close to it? What’s their ETA to jumpoff?”
“Okay—D-1600—be advised that the other members of your team are following instructions and approaching the entity.”
“Can you see it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How!”
“Trees breaking.”
“…Okay,” 1600 said, “Where is it, then?”
“It’s uh… It’s north-northwest of your position, it’s west of Frontage Road, and it’s about halfway to the brake pad factory.”
“How fast does it move?”
“…Uh, it usually moves at about walking speed, about four miles an hour, but it does sprint. It can move quickly for short distances.”
“What, like it gets tired like a person?”
“Not like a person,” Ingraham-17 said. “More like… A tiger, maybe.”
“So if it turned around and just came right at me, right now, you would have time to get me clear, right? Ingraham-17, at this time I’m requesting permission to advance towards my objective.”
“The fuck in hell,” Mr. Shabazz whispered.
“Ingraham-17, request permission to advance to the Frontage Road interchange and get a visual on the churchyard.”
“Well, all right,” the OpSec guy said cautiously. “You are cleared to advance as described.”
1600 popped the camera back on the headset, said to Mr. Shabazz: “Let’s go,” and headed straight north. When he’d cleared the street he didn’t immediately turn left, but crossed the convenience store parking lot. When they’d been driving in in the rental van he hadn’t been able to see it that closely and it had seemed like a regular convenience store; he hadn’t been able to see the truck that was jammed inside, or that all the windows were broken, until the Epsilon-7 video. From here it was clear that the video still hadn’t been enough. There were two cars inside the store, not one—the was a car smashed into a crumpled ball that was all the way in the back—and there was part of a person between the entrance and the broken countertop. He stepped towards it.
Ingraham-17 said: “D-1600?”
1600 ducked down low and ran hard across the broken glass, boots sliding and crunching, and entered the store. The dead person was just the bottom half. Entrails had spilled across linoleum. It smelled pretty bad but the flesh wasn’t rotten yet. He was moving fast and when his waist struck the counter his torso folded over it, arms to the other side-
“D-1600, you get out of there right now!”
-fumbling around, grabbing, and he came up with a carton of cigarettes. His left hand snatched a lighter from the fishbowl-
“D-1600 you motherfucker- -Epsilon he’s got the only radio- -get back out where I can see you!”
-and he danced around puddles of congealing brown blood before ducking under the door bar and crossing out to the parking lot. He waved the carton at Mr. Shabazz, who was only now crossing the street. Mr. Shabazz executed theatrical golf claps.
“D-1600,” Ingraham-17 spat, “we have a problem.”
“Don’t know if ‘we’ is the right word, there, Ingraham,” 1600 told him. “That’s on you, and it’s only on you if you want it to be. Cause I didn’t do anything I was told not to—I was following orders and dropped by the convenience store for smokes, that’s all.” He busted open the carton and gave two packs to Mr. Shabazz.
“…D-1600, advance to the position as described. Do not go anywhere else.”
“Copy that.”
They walked to the Stop sign, opening the packs and lighting cigarettes. When they got there, Mr. Shabazz said, “Thank you for the cigarettes.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re a pretty good cellmate.”
“Likewise.”
“But I got to ask you—you’re good at this shit?”
“I’m alive.”
“You think you’re going to be the best D-class ever,” Mr. Shabazz said, “Get all the special treatment? Is that how it works?”
“Oh hell no,” 1600 said. “Oh, don’t get it twisted! I did used to think that way when I was younger. It doesn’t work like that at all.”
“What made you change?”
“When I realized they had no idea who I was. Like, if you accomplish something? They don’t fucking care, they think you just did what you were supposed to do, and then it’s off to mopping floors or whatever, and when they pull you out of the cell the next time nobody remembers about any of it.”
“Riiiight.” He puffed, coughed. “Damn it’s been a long time since I smoked.”
“They don’t have cigarettes in San Quentin?”
“Too expensive. Look, it seems to me that these people are doing the same thing with us that white people in the south did with their slaves.”
“I never heard of anybody getting auctioned.”
“Not that—I mean the dehumanization. We’re all interchangeable, to them? Yeah, same thing. Slaves had no reason to have any ambition. It wasn’t just that you couldn’t rise to the level of a white man. You couldn’t even rise above any other negro. It didn’t matter if you were the best fucking slave in the world, or if learned to read or cured cancer or anything else. You were still a nigger, and no better than any other nigger, no matter what kind of scum-sucking pig he might be.”
“Okay,” 1600 said, “Sure, that sound right.”
Mr. Shabazz pulled the gold-rimmed spectacles down and looked at him over the rims. “You got to resist that mentality.”
“You have got that,” 1600 agreed, “exactly right.”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
He shrugged. “Tell me.”
“You think that security rating—a ‘Two’—you think that makes you special?”
1600 tugged the little foil wrapper out of the cigarette pack and very carefully wrapped it around the headset’s antenna stub. “I don’t have a security rating.” He took the foil back off. “Ingraham-17, we had some interference there. You hear it?”
“Your camera feed blacked out for a second but it’s clear now,” Ingraham-17 replied.
“Copy that.”
“Okay,” Mr. Shabazz dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the pavement. “I think it’s time we talked about what we’re up against.”
“You said it was a genie.”
“I was hoping you knew more than that.”
“Haven’t got a clue.”
Mr. Shabazz pushed palms together, hard. Muscles stood out on his neck. He inhaled and exhaled, deeply.
“I would say it is likely- -it is likely- -that we will get out of this alive. That they do know what they’re doing, this time. This feels like something they’ve done before. If it’s something they can put a name to? Something that’s been around? They probably do have a procedure, and it probably will work. The really dangerous entities are the ones nobody can put a name to.”
“You understand this is not some Robin Williams character, right?”
“Yeah, I got that. What do you know?”
“They’re not demons, they’re not angels, they’re not people… I’ve been trying to remember. Who picks up a book about folklore and memorizes it?” Mr. Shabazz rubbed his temples. “According to the culture, they were formed before Adam. By God, but before Adam. Then He got pissed at them and sent His angels in after them. The survivors went and lived in the wastes. There was a bunch of stuff about… I don’t know, they can be commanded by wizards, like demons, but they can do both good and bad things; demons can only do evil. They can possess people like demons but they can also pick up stones, build buildings, and turn into dogs. The root word means hidden but the cognates are… Uh, heaven, possessed, insane, garden, and embryo.”
“What’s a ‘cognate’?”
“Words that are based on it."
“Will it obey a priest?”
“They’re not Moslems,” Mr. Shabazz said. “They’re not Arabs. They just happened to, ah… Be there, out in the desert all by themselves, when Mohammed came along.”
“Okay,” 1600 said, “So?”
“We don’t really know what we’re getting into. We don’t even know why it didn’t cross the road and kill us when we were eating.”
“Oh,” he said. “I know that. It doesn’t want to get too far from the obelisk.”
Mr. Shabazz squinted. “The obelisk it was trapped in? Why not?”
“That’s all it knows.”
“D-1600,” Ingraham-17 said, “Begin walking northwards along Frontage Road.”
“They want us to go,” he said. “Come on.” He headed off. The road dipped down sharply into the treeline; a lot of the trees had been uprooted and knocked over, reminding 1600 of the Florida hurricanes of his childhood. Smashed branches, and the crumpled hunks of metal that had been Epsilon-7’s CBRN vehicle, were mixed together at the bottom of the hill. Rivulets of gasoline and blood ran across the pavement into a ditch. A white AR-15 lay on the double yellow line. He asked, “Ingraham-17, how far do you want us to go?”
“I’ll tell you to stop.”
Afternoon had pushed towards dusk. The lieutenant had wanted to finish up before dark, 1600 remembered. He had concerns about that. They passed a ranch house, somebody’s residence; half of a pit bull lay on the porch roof. He could see the churchyard ahead. The church itself looked very old. It was made of rain-eroded brick. The building was intact but great oaks had been pushed aside and uprooted at the edge of the graveyard.
“You wanted all that gear,” Mr. Shabazz said. “You think that’s going to help? An orange vest and some off-brand boots from a Wal-Mart?”
“I wanted gear,” he said. “I got gear. That was the endgame.”
“I think they bought you for some gear.”
“The gear counts on the unit,” 1600 told him. “The Foundation doesn’t know enough about us, or care, to bribe us like that. We could be going down here in some flip-flops. It would be just the same. Ingraham-17, is this some kind of special church? Like a cult?”
“It’s just a regular church as far as I know,” the OpSec man said over the radio.
“Because, it didn’t wreck the church.”
“It hasn’t attacked a building yet. It went after people and cars. It may be attracted to movement.”
He told Mr. Shabazz, “The guy with the drone thinks it may go after people and cars because they’re moving.” Back to the radio: “Where is this obelisk, exactly?”
“It’s in the front yard of the church.”
“I see it.” The thing was barely five feet tall; if it had been in the graveyard he never would have been able to find it. “You need to break this down. Where is the genie, where are the other guys, and what’s our timeline exactly?”
“It’s on the far side of the graveyard,” Ingraham-17 said, “In the woods, and it’s surrounded by the other members of your team.”
“What the fuck does ‘surrounded by the other members of my team’ mean?’ They got it surrounded?”
“They’re equidistant from it on the north, east, and west. When you move to the obelisk it will move towards you.”
“Right, then what?”
“You have to meet it at the obelisk.”
“We have to meet it at the obelisk?”
“D-1600,” Ingraham-17 said, “that is correct.”
He shared a look with Mr. Shabazz. “The fuck.”
“This will work,” Ingraham-17 told him. “You have to be at the obelisk. It won’t hurt you at the obelisk.”
“They think it’s, like, it doesn’t want to spill blood on the prison where it was kept? What the fuck kind of sense does that make?”
“It’s a genie. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Copy that.” 1600 looked at Mr. Shabazz and quoted: “’It’s a genie. It doesn’t make sense.’”
“There’s a whole lot to this shit that doesn’t make sense,” the black man said. “We deserve better than this.”
“Maybe so. We ain’t going to get it.”
“You deserve better than this.”
1600 looked at the treeline across the graveyard and then back to Mr. Shabazz. “I shot up my high school.”
“Aw, man-“
“I don’t know what kinda life you think I’m gonna have. I could be rotting someplace, but I got some gear and a burger, and eight packs of smokes, and I’m gonna go meet the infinite.”
“You ought to resent it.”
“That would cost. You ready?”
“Not yet.” Mr. Shabazz took out the compass. He oriented it to the north, turned around to face Mecca, and knelt on the ground.
“D-1600,” the radio said, “What’s that your translator’s doing?”
“He’s saying his prayers.”
“D-1600, stop him from doing that.”
1600 lit a cigarette.
“D-1600, you can’t let him do that. It could set up vibrations.”
“I’m on my break.”
“He’s going to upset the entity!”
1600 smoked.
“Okay.” Mr. Shabazz half-rose, instinctively reached for the prayer rug, and then stood the rest of the way up. “I’m ready.” They looked at the obelisk together. “You scared?”
“Fear is a big family,” 1600 said. “I got to know most of the relatives. Helplessness and hopelessness—those are like the little kids. Horror’s an uncle. I’m not immune to Big Daddy Terror, and Mama Dread, but they ain’t here right now. I am worried about getting torn apart. I am concerned about a beer party happening when this is over. But I ain’t scared of the infinite.”
“God has given me the strength not to punk out,” Mr. Shabazz said. “It will be as He wills.” He turned and walked into the church driveway. 1600 followed. The driveway, paved, broke into a neat circle that closed at the steps of the church. They crossed grass to get to the obelisk. The obelisk was a single piece of sandstone, four-sided and pointed on the top.
“I don’t see an inscription,” 1600 said.
“It must be on the other side,” Mr. Shabazz. He stepped around the obelisk and his face contracted. 1600 followed him. The plaque was in English: ERECTED 1879.
“Well, shit,” 1600 said.
He had been blown about by hurricane winds, once, during his childhood in Florida. This one came in hard and fast and pushed him over like that child. The force was incredible; his hat was yanked off, the radio headset tossed aside, his clothes rippled. There was no rain, just the gale. It kept him pressed to the grass for no more than a few seconds and then it was gone.
Just like that, gone.
1600 flailed around, crawled found the radio and put it on. He saw that Mr. Shabazz was kneeling by the obelisk.
“Yo,” 1600 said, “cellmate?” He put on the headset. “Ingraham?”
The black man turned around. His spectacles were gone. His eyes were pure white. He spoke. He spoke steadily for some minutes. 1600 could not tell what was said. Every word of it was in Arabic.
“Yo, Shabazz? Are you in there?”
The whited eyes stared blankly. “What,” the genie said, in English now, “What are you?” A soft ffffff traveled across the churchyard. A tranquilizer cartridge punched into Mr. Shabazz’s bicep. 1600 looked into the graveyard and saw Epsilon-7’s sniper reloading.
“…We’re slaves,” 1600 told the genie.
The sniper fired again. 1600 experienced a sunburst of pain in his left shoulder. Then it was gone, replaced by the sensation of drowning in warm honey. The ground rushed up to meet him like falling into a bed.
“Epsilon,” the radio said, “Epsilon, the entity is contained.”
