Kim shoved her pack to the floor, turned all the way around, kneeled on the seat, and folded her arms on the seat back to make herself more comfortable. “Can’t be that long, right? No way we’d be on school buses if we were going to be traveling more than an hour or two. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
Sue unclipped the gas mask that was bouncing off the outside of her pack. She held it up to her face. “You see this thing? It’s like three sizes too big for me, like they decided to make a gas mask that could fit a grizzly bear. If there’s gas or bio, or whatever it is they think they’re trying to get us ready for in such a hurry, it won’t matter if my mask is on or not. The fucking thing doesn’t fit.” She clipped the mask back to her pack. “We fought a war with Humvees that couldn’t withstand a basic blast from an IED, and we’ve spent the last couple of days getting on and off planes, jumping up and sitting down. And you’re banking on something making sense in the military? You’re telling me that putting us on school buses means we aren’t going very far?” She shrugged. “Want to put some money on it?”
“Yeah, but a school bus means—”
“A school bus means things are really fucked,” Sue said. “You know how people get about that sort of stuff. Armed troops of any kind on US soil make citizens freak the fuck out, so what do you think it’s going to do to people when they see us loaded up in little yellow school buses?” She reached down to touch her M16. “We ain’t exactly toting Scooby Doo lunch boxes here. If this is a big enough deal that they’re requisitioning school buses, something is clearly fucked. So yeah, I’m a little concerned that my gas mask doesn’t fit.”
“Come on. You know you’re not going to need a gas mask.”
Honky Joe held up three aces. Mitts swore, and Goons just calmly handed his cards to Duran. Honky Joe gave his cards to Duran as well, and then turned to Sue and Kim. “Gas mask? Maybe. Maybe not. But I agree that this is fucked up. With the nuke, deploying somewhere closer to China maybe makes sense, but we’re deploying stateside. That, my friend, is a big deal.” He leaned over Sue and tapped on the window. “You see that?”
They were driving past flatbeds loaded with chain-link fencing and posts. Each truck was loaded to the gills, the trucks themselves five abreast in a line that must have stretched close to a mile. It took the school buses more than two minutes to pass the trucks.
“You already know how big a deal it is to deploy troops on domestic soil,” Honky Joe said. “But that’s a bigger deal. What do you think that fencing is for? We’ve got to be setting up internment camps or something. Who for this time? Who we trying to keep locked up?”
Kim looked down at Sue’s gas mask as it jiggled atop her pack. The glass eyes and filter canister made it look menacing, bug-like. “No,” Kim said. “You don’t deploy troops in the United States unless you’re expecting an invasion. Or something. My bet is it’s a something. Gas masks? It’s not who. It’s what. And the fences aren’t for an internment camp. Think of it as a quarantine. The question isn’t who are we trying to keep out, but what are we trying to keep out?”
Sue held the oversize gas mask up to her face again. “Fuck,” she said, drawling the word out. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
American University,
Washington, DC
Bark was crying again. It was eight o’clock in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. Melanie had slept for maybe four hours, and Bark was crying again.