The Redeemers Read online

  Tom stared at the waves and breathed hard. Gritting his teeth, he tore his documents out of his wallet and, without deliberating for a moment, crumpled them in his hand and threw the massed blob like a baseball into Lake Washington. Unwilling to watch, he immediately walked back to the car and ordered Carl to get inside.

  Smiling, Carl eased into his seat and closed his eyes, relishing his victory as they drove westward on a bridge that would lead them to a terrifying yet irresistible world.

  Chapter Two

  The room was full of the most unlikely collection of men Carl could have imagined. There were old men sitting next to wide-eyed kids sitting awkwardly, while well-dressed or respectable types distanced themselves from the vagabonds sitting beside them. He recognized a few from the initial meeting hosted by one of the newspaper’s recruiters a few weeks back. All of them had been polite but guarded.

  Still, it wasn’t difficult to guess why they were interested in the job.

  Tom quietly sat next to him, still in shock from the brief glimpse of the city’s ruins. It wasn’t as though he had never seen it before. There had been plenty of photos and videos documenting the devastation following the earthquake and the riots that had consumed the city for weeks afterwards. But it wasn’t not the same thing to see with his own eyes the ruined buildings and shattered streets left untouched, like some preserved historical site. Carl had spent enough time in Seattle for it to no longer affect him, but his first time there he too had been shaken.

  It was one thing to view a digital copy of something, but quite another to look upon with his own eyes. There was a quality about the real that was lost in any replication.

  Carl wrinkles his nose, trying to block out the mildew stench coming from the walls. The other recruits also made gestures to indicate their discomfort. They all had to be thinking the same thing: Was there truly no other place for them to meet their editor?

  The door opened. Every head turned, expecting the editor to march in and order them to their feet.

  Instead, an older man wearing a large cowboy hat hobbled like he was strolling through some small town. He had long dark red hair that matched his leathered facial features. Holding a plastic bottle in his hand, he stopped and spat tobacco into it. He then continued walking with a distinct swagger matched only by his unusually large belt buckle. Some recruits winced as they looked at the face underneath the cowboy hat and saw faded black eye patch over the man’s left eye.

  Pausing in the middle of the room, he studied the recruits with a tight grin. Chuckling as he made his way to one of the empty desks a few rows ahead of Carl and Tom, he plopped his hat on the desktop and sat down.

  “I thought when I signed up for this outfit I wouldn’t have to deal with affirmative action hires,” he hollered. He trained his one good eyed at Tom. “But half of you look like you’re the ones they looked at first and rejected.”

  Tom chuckled. “That’s rich, coming from a handicapped grunt.”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “I never said I wasn’t. Just said I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with ‘em when I came here.”

  “I guess we’re all disappointed, then. I suppose we’ll all have to go back home.”

  “How’d you know I was a vet?” the man asked.

  “The same way you know I’m black.”

  Cackles rippled through the room. Still curious, the man nodded his head and offered his hand to Tom.

  “You don’t sound half bad,” he said. “What’s ya name?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Tom.”

  “The name’s Fred, with a ‘ph.’”

  “Bullshit,” Carl interjected. “Contrary to what your mommy told you, you’re not that special.”

  Fred laughed nosily, his chuckle like a high-pitched cry. “You two buddies or what?”

  “Mutual troublemakers.”

  “Sounds like I came to the right place. Who are you?”

  “Carl Farrington.”

  “Ah, you’re formal. I like that.”

  “Care to be formal with your own name?”

  “I don’t have a last name. Not anymore.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “The bitch took it,” he remarked sarcastically, “along with the house, the dog, my kids, and my retirement savings. Good thing they don’t honor divorce court rulings out here.”

  “I thought you came here to get away from affirmative action hires,” Tom joked.

  “Yeah, well that just happened to coincidence with this alimony payment I couldn’t exactly meet on time, or ever. Thanks to affirmative action.”

  Still laughing to himself, Fred pointed at the recruit across from him, a pale-skinned man with dark black hair and thick lips who was dressed in a full suit befitting a Wall Street broker.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  The man hesitated. “Ian Shevchenko.”

  “You American?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You don’t sound like it.”

  “What does an American sound like, then?”

  “Doesn’t sound like they got a Ruskie name, that’s for damn sure.”

  Fred then pointed at him, cackling. “You ain’t gonna like this when I tell you to tie your tie correctly.”

  Ian, along with everyone else, looked down at his upper chest, where his tie was obviously coming undone. His face reddening, he apologized and took it off. Rather than tie it again, he placed it inside a suitcase he had placed upright next to his desk.

  “So, this is what you get when you put out a call like that,” Fred remarked as if to himself. “Pretty interesting bunch, if you ask me.”

  Another recruit asked Fred where he was from. He chuckled. “In an existential sense, I was born in a crater five miles outside of what was then known as Tikrit. Or two miles outside of Fallujah. Just can’t quite keep track of those things.”

  The door opened again. This time, three men walked in and announced the editor’s arrival.

  The recruits simultaneously rose to their feet.

  A man entered and closed the door gently behind him. He then waved to them with a bony hand.

  He looked no younger than fifty-five, even with doughy facial features slowing down the effects of old age. His appearance was neat, short cropped white hair and a freshly shaven chin. He wore a dark blue suit with thin white stripes over a black waistcoat and white shirt.

  The editor reached the classroom’s crumbling blackboard. He placed his hands on the dusty podium and smiled at them. He observed Carl’s bewilderment, dismissing it with a small grin.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I am pleased to see you all here. My name is Wally Norton. I am the editor-in-chief of the newspaper you’re agreed to write for. We haven’t finalized a name for it, but I’m heavily favoring The Cascadian. It’s from the old idea they used to have for a secession movement.”

  Murmurs, but no words. Everyone was, like Carl, stunned to see such a pleasant-looking man standing in front of them. A few were probably wondering if it was a trick to see how perceptive they were.

  “I don’t know what your backgrounds are, or why you’ve come,” Norton said. He paused. His tone tersely deepened.

  “But I will say this: I don’t give a shit.”

  The room was quiet.

  Carl wondered if he had misheard him. Unlikely. The other recruits, including Tom, gaped at Norton with similar opened jaws.

  “Yes, I don’t give a shit,” Norton continued, his easy-going pose now authoritative. “Because my only concern, the only thing I care about, is whether you’ll be able to do your job, which is to bring me back stories to publish.”

  Norton placed his hands on his hips. As he did so, he brushed aside his overcoat. For a moment, they all got a glimpse of the gun holstered on his belt.

  “I know your only access is to online information, so I will update you on the situation,” he resumed. “There’s the 95 percent tax on newspape
rs. Good way to tell the world you don’t want them around. All the legitimate ones shut down last week before the deadline. Meanwhile, they’re all opening back up here. One of the men didn’t want to take the risk and agreed to hand things over to me, so now I’m overseeing the newspaper’s operations. Everything from this point on, of course, is illegal. This means we must be careful with what we do. It’s a whole new world for us. People didn’t like reporters before, but now they’re really not going to like us.”

  He paused, then continued. “Good thing for us, Seattle is in shambles. Contrary to anything you might have been told or read, the city hasn’t changed much since the earthquake. They got the rioters to go away, but the cleanup and rebuilding’s gone nowhere. Plus, the City Council is pretty much a nice little reminder of the old days. It relies on the goodwill of the residents to keep things under control, which means they’re forced to turn a blind eye to a lot of stuff. Also, they don’t have the resources to enforce laws they don’t need to enforce. That includes the finer details of ISA’s policy.

  “Now, having said that, we still must deal with the ISA, and possibly regional law enforcement. So, here’s how things are going to work: We’re going to train you. I don’t care if you’ve already been through the works. You’re still doing it. It’s not just about writing. I want to make sure I’ve got the right people with me. This isn’t an easy or safe venture of mine. It’s my money on the line. If it fails, I fail. And I’m not going to fail. Especially not because one of you ruined it. So, that means you do what you’re told, no matter what I tell you to do. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” everyone sang.

  “Fantastic.”

  He gestured to the three men beside him, then pointed at the recruits. “Get them prepared. I want all the arrangements taken care of by the time the first issue is scheduled. Let’s get this done.”

  The trio barked affirmatively and then began ordering the recruits to grab their belongings and head to the school’s loading zone. While the others complied, Carl stayed behind. When almost everyone had left, Carl timidly approached Norton as the editor spoke on his cell phone. He either didn’t notice Carl or intentionally ignored him until he ended the call. Even then, he seemed distracted as he asked the young man what he wanted.

  “Go get your things,” Norton said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “What did you do before this?” Carl asked.

  “Ha! What’s it to you?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Curiosity gets you into trouble.”

  “It makes you a good reporter, too.”

  Norton was dialing a number when he stopped and smiled at Carl. He put the phone in his pocket.

  “I was an investor,” he said. “At least for the last twenty-five years. It’s how I got the money to buy out the previous owner of this rag. There. That make you happy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carl walked away when Norton sighed and called him back.

  “Okay, you’ve got something you want to say written all over you, kid and it’s going to bug me for the rest of the evening if you don’t get it out. What’s eating you?”

  Carl couldn’t think of how to express his sentiment more subtlety, so he chose to go with a direct statement.

  “I like what you’re doing,” he said. “I just wished I had had an editor like you when I was kicked out of my news site.”

  Norton eyed him with mock gravity. “And you told the ISA to go to hell and they canned you. Now you’re here. You think that makes you brave?”

  Carl shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Norton casually reached into his pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes. Pulling out one carefully, he pushed it between his lips and swept his hand back into his pocket for a Zippo lighter. Flipping it open, he flicked until a small flame appeared and then swept it underneath the cigarette, inhaling soundlessly as smoke poured from out his mouth like a dragon.

  “Because you did what you did not out of courage, but because you’re young and stupid,” he said. “You haven’t lived long enough to understand what you’re doing. You don’t have a wife, or kid, so you didn’t have to worry about finding other work. Even if you hadn’t been able to find work as a reporter, you could have found other work. The termination wouldn’t have meant a thing if you had gone into finances, for example. Courage isn’t when you have nothing to lose, because it costs you nothing. Courage is when you risk losing something worth losing in the hope of keeping or gaining some greater. Don’t dilute the meaning of that word, especially not in front of me.”

  As Carl considered the older man’s observation, Norton waved him off as he took out his phone and answered a call, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Now get out of here and get to the loading zone.”

  “Yes, sir….and thanks.”

  “Sure, kid.”

  Grabbing a duffel bag containing the few possessions from home he deemed worth taking, Carl ran out to the school entrance. The recruiters were climbing aboard a bus sitting in the loading zone.

  Feeling like he was reliving his elementary days, he headed to the bus and went up the steps inside, finding a seat in the front where Tom had reserved a spot for him. The others had settled into their chosen places and were beginning to break out of their prolonged silence, introducing themselves and exchanging handshakes.

  Some were timid or reserved, but none acted hostile or withdrawn by sitting alone and away from the others. It impressed Carl that their mutual purpose seemed to have created a sense of camaraderie already.

  “What did you say to Mr. Norton?” Tom asked Carl as he nestled into his seat, peering out of the foggy window beside him. He stared at the raindrops from the morning’s deluge still trickling down the side, then smiled wearily at Tom.

  “Just wanted to know whether he’s the kind of guy I want to work for,” he said.

  ***

  The rickety “No Vacancy” sign dangled like a hanging victim in front of the motel. The men knew the unlit sign hadn’t been turned on in years, even when the motel had been in operation. To the right of the main lobby, the main section of the motel ran vertically down to the street corner. Some of the motel doors were missing, while others had wooden boards covering both the doorway and the windows. In the parking lot, sections of grassy mounds had emerged from the concrete.

  Most of them tried to hide their disgust, convinced it was yet another test to see if they had the mettle for the job.

  Fred hopped off the bus, tipping his cowboy hat up as he admired the building.

  “Reminds me of home!” he remarked.

  The recruits glared at him.

  “Where would home be?” someone snickered. “Five miles outside of nowhereville?”

  Everyone laughed, save for Carl. And Fred.

  “A coal mine dump in West Virginia, to be exact,” he said. “Not the center of the universe, but there was this gal I met there in high school who made me feel like it was Heaven.”

  “Didn’t she divorce you?” Tom inquired.

  “No, that was the bitch. I was too stupid to marry the angel. Sure, she wanted to have seven kids, but at least she wouldn’t have taken them with her after meeting some has-been colonel in a meat bar. Avoid the crazy, fellas.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Carl said.

  The bus driver and two of Norton’s colleagues ordered them to line up in single file and follow them. Picking up their things, they obeyed, walking to the end of the building where they turned the corner and found a door out of view from the main road.

  “These are going to be your quarters for the next while,” one of the men said. “Get comfortable, because you’re not leaving them under any circumstances.”

  The recruits paused, waited to see if the man was joking as he unlocked the door with a key in his hand and pushed it open, gesturing for them to go inside.

  Carl took his bag and entered the large room. It wasn’t
as bad as he had anticipated. The foul smell of mildew was absent, along with any signs of dilapidation. The carpet was old, but clean, as was the faded furniture. Over to his left, there was a gap between the carpet leading to the other side of the room where a series of single beds were arranged, most likely where a wall had separated the two.

  He tossed his bag onto the bed next to the wall. The other recruits followed suit. Seeing the interior much more maintained than they had been led to believe left them in a cheerful mood.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” one of the men said at the door. “Just remember; you’re not to leave here until we say so. And we won’t say so anytime soon.”

  “When does training start?” Ian asked as he took off his jacket, searching for a place to hang it up.

  “Tomorrow. Bright and early. Be ready.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” Fred asked.

  “Try not to kill each other.”

  “I’ve tried that in the Corps. Didn’t work too well.”

  “Then try again,” the man laughed as he closed the door. A turn of the key had them locked inside the room.

  For a moment, no one spoke. Then, to distract them, they set to work unpacking their things. A makeshift clothes hanger on the wall provided them with a place to hang their coats and hats, while ample room underneath the beds provided them with space for their personal belongings.

  Fred leapt onto his bed, his hands behind his head as he gazed up at the ceiling reminiscently. “At least this’ll be better than Parris. Island.”

  “We’re not training for war, you know,” Ian said.

  “Maybe we are,” someone said. “The ISA and the cops aren’t going to just ignore us. They’ll come for us.”

  “That’s what we’re here for, I suppose. To learn how to avoid getting arrested.”

  “I know how to do that,” Fred chuckled, forming a gun with his hand as he pointed at Ian. “But you Ruskies know that, don’t you?”

  “First of all, I’m not from Russia. I was born here. Secondly, my parents were from Georgia.”

  “Georgia? Hell, it’s changed a lot since I was last down there.”

  “Not that Georgia!”