Patriot Smith, page 42
part #1 of Patriots Series
Something was wrong in what she was saying but he needed some time to think about it, if he were going to catch it all. That decided, and as everyone else except Mel walked in, more or less ready for the day, Sebastian got up and started to make the scrambled eggs. No one spoke at first, about what was going on, until Chloe did it herself.
“Um… So, the thing in Montana? We were, the ones going except Melissa, we were there for… To get orders and weapons for an attack.”
The only people acting at all shocked by the news were Doug and Paul. Karen just glared at Chloe and then the others.
“Of all the stupid, dumb ass bullshit to be pulling right now! We’re just starting to get things going here and you want to ruin it? Why? I mean, okay, this current batch of stuff is way too into being all-American-all the time but our ratings are… huge. Not just for us. This isn’t just Marty’s Corner getting us some real attention either. Sebastian and Chloe: We Got Your Back has over a hundred million views for the first episode alone. That’s bigger than anything on network television. The other episodes are still growing, too. Patriot Smith is getting Game of Thrones numbers, if you can believe that. Even Neighborly beat out everything but our own programs for the pilot! We’re finally getting a real chance and you all want to go and do… Dumb ass things like that… You hate success? That or you love the idea of going to prison that much? I’m not down with that, just so you know. This crap better not come back to bite me. I swear…”
Whatever she was going to threaten them with, she didn’t get to, since Sebastian interrupted them with two sliced up cakes and a pan filled with eggs. It was the large cast iron one, so was big enough for two eggs per person. He’d made more than that, figuring that at least some of them would appreciate the protein. Plus, it had finished up the can, before they could get too old to be useful anymore.
On the far side of the table, Paul just looked dismal.
“I don’t understand. We’re a production studio… We’ve all been doing that, not hurting anyone.” His voice was small, and sad seeming. Like his dog had just died.
Chloe bit her lips, sucking both of them in, like she didn’t want to speak, then did it anyway. She kind of had to, at that point.
“It wasn’t just us. Everyone is being activated. All over the country. At least that was what I was told. We were supposed to get everyone, all of the ones there… Get blackmail material on them. It’s, the word has gone out. It isn’t just there, it’s everyone. That’s why Governor Brown is backing New California. They have something really dark on him. No one said what but it has to be bad. Cannibalism or pedophilia. Nothing else could get anyone to do what he has been. So, you know… that stuff.”
She tried to leave it there, so Sebastian looked around the table, then spoke to Doug, since poor Paul seemed ready to have a meltdown. Everyone else basically knew everything, more or less. There was probably more to it. Things that everyone had hidden but if that was the case there was no way for him to know what it was.
“They had a big orgy, with a bunch of young kids. Not little, thank God but high school age. Probably to get that material on them, in an attempt to control them. I think that only Chloe and Vina really have anything that can be used against them that way. You both did most of the boys there, right? Any sense of their actual ages?” He was blunt about it but not mean sounding.
After all, they weren’t going to prison for underage sex. No, they’d be going for terrorism. If they didn’t do the right thing. Maybe even if they did. The thing there was that some of them were actually guilty of what they’d done. They hadn’t blown things up but traveling to a different state to even plot that kind of terror had to be a crime.
Chloe and Vina both looked absolutely stricken. It was the tan, busty, somewhat elfish looking girl that spoke first.
“You know about that? How? It… They told us we had to do it, or they were going to kill us all. I didn’t want to… Not that it will show on the tape. What do we do now? I was so scared…” That part seemed real but she was an actress. It would have no matter what. The girl had skills that way. They all did.
Sebastian tapped the table with his left index finger, then, did it harder.
“First, you all need to go and write up the whole thing. Confess to everything that you’ve done that anyone might ever find out about. Then we send that off to the government. Focus on Frank and Jan. What they said and might be planning. Anything else like that you know. It will probably have you in prison for twenty years each but not doing it might end up with thousands being dead. Then… Well, after that, we need to work non-stop on getting all the shows out. If we all end up in prison for being here, then I don’t want to leave the seasons hanging. We owe the viewers at least that much.”
His words got mixed reactions. Most of them weren’t all that interested in lengthy prison stays, it looked like. He understood that. Then, if all they’d really done was what he’d been told, they probably wouldn’t be punished that severely. He simply didn’t trust them anymore. It felt like a mistake to have ever done it in the first place. Now, at any rate.
An argument started then, with Hal and Rene basically being on his side, suggesting that they do the right thing, with Sara being more on the fence. The rest of them were seriously considering the merits of not saying anything at all, clearly.
Doug even got angry about it, and slammed his fist on the table, hard enough to make everything jump.
“No! They didn’t do anything. Not on purpose. It isn’t fair to lock them up. Even if the government isn’t going to be insane about it, it’s too big of a risk. There is no way to tell if they won’t make an example of them. We need to protect them.”
It was Marc that answered him, sighing and rubbing at the bruise on the left side of his face. It was bigger now, and turning green and yellow at the edges with a bright purple center.
“I’m not that into the idea either. It’s… If we don’t come forward, then more people will die and that will be on us. I think we need to follow Sebastian’s plan here. Confess it all and tell the FBI, or whoever and then… Just get everything we can done, show wise, before they take us out.” He looked at the other would be terrorist then, his face sad. “We can’t let this come back on the others here. They didn’t do anything. Really, we didn’t do much. That… Well, we’re still going down for it. One way or the other. Even if they all hid it, in the end that would probably just have them locked up too. We can’t let that happen.”
One by one the others started to nod, with Chloe going last.
“Damn it. This is… Not the way things were supposed to be. It was supposed to be easy. With no blood being shed. No one good being hurt. How did it all go so wrong?”
He needed to keep his mouth shut, Sebastian knew. Mainly because his answer, the one he thought was correct, was inflammatory. Making them all feel mad at him wasn’t the best or safest course of action at the moment, for any of them.
What it was, he knew, was honest. So he spoke. His voice managed to sound gentle at least.
“The flaw was in the basic premise. The world isn’t a bad, or totally unfair place. Not our world, the one we live with in the west. There isn’t a boogeyman under the bed, and white people aren’t all KKK members. Almost none of them ever really were. Where it went wrong was that you were told that hurting people enough would get them to cower in a corner, instead of fighting back. That works for some people but not enough. Strong and good people won’t give in to terrorism. That’s why this was always doomed to fail. It was put together by people that are essentially weak. Cowards. They thought that by making the rest of us suffer enough, we’d give in. Because that was how they would have reacted. Only the rest of us don’t all do that.”
Waiting then, hoping that no one would turn to violence to prove how strong and tough they really were, Sebastian looked around. One by one they all dropped their eyes.
Even the people that weren’t guilty of anything. Except for Hal. He kept his chin up. After a moment, he spoke, gently.
“Let’s get to it then. We don’t want to lose too much time on things today.”
They didn’t take hours to write things out, just each sitting and putting everything they could on a computer document page, some of them needing several and then they sent it all off to Agent Brevet. They’d gotten back to him already on the other things, from when he’d last been in touch.
That had simply been her letting him know that the information that he’d gotten had been sent to the correct departments. Also that she’d sent his new song about hand washing to the CDC. That had been before they’d gotten busy with the new plague, from the time and date stamp. At least publicly so.
As soon as that was finished, he got himself up, feeling tired and jazzed up at the same time.
“Let’s get to work. No being glum while acting, either. I want this all to look sharp, the whole time. Come on.”
Then they got to work. No one charged the fences down while they were up in the studio and they got most of what they needed done that day, missing only a few exterior shots to make it look like they weren’t just working inside a small studio the whole time.
The next two days were actually different, in a way. He had to make more candy and bake several different product types for the farmer’s market. People had wanted bread and the cookies and all that went over well. It was incredibly tense but Karen pulled out the stops and not only got them the use of a parking lot for the fight scene they needed to start the show off with but permission to shoot inside the drive-in restaurant. It was privately owned, being a place called The Ram. Even better, since no one was actually coming in, since they couldn’t get supplies to make food, the whole staff volunteered to show up, along with friends and family members, to make it look like the place was actually working and not empty.
That meant they added a bit more material and did scenes for three different episodes at once. Two of those he’d made up on the way over, figuring they might be able to be added later. They were both John and Tommy talking about different things. Mainly political theory and why people did the kinds of messed up things they did. They were going to be in the next episodes, so they used progressive makeup to cover up the bruising. Making them darker to start with, then lighter for each of the scenes after that.
It might work. The people there were great, taking direction well and actually offered to have them in whenever they wanted. For free, which was also kind of them.
His plan was to do the next of Hal’s variety program after that, when they got home from the market. Not everyone went in for that, since they didn’t really need twelve people for it. Or to waste the gas that would take, if they took the two larger vehicles. Their budget was being strained that way already, just having gotten everyone over to the drive-in for the shoot the day before.
Paul was on music and editing for that, having been working late each night. A lot of them weren’t really sleeping, it seemed. Sebastian could feel that one for himself. The world was freaking intense, what with the fear of being arrested at any moment hanging over most of them.
At the market, Officer Johansson smiled at him. Greenwood waved but didn’t come over to talk like the lady cop was.
“Sebastian! How’s everything going? This place looks good.” She glanced around, since there were seven tables set up, with one of them seeming to be selling baggies of pot. That and small wooden pipes, along with a few packs of papers. When he looked closer, there were some tobacco products as well, though it was mainly cannabis.
That was still illegal to sell without a license but Officer Debbie just shrugged and pretended not to notice it. For their part, they had illegal bottles of wine on the table, next to the dried fruit. Just ten of them, and they were pricey but half of them expected to end up in prison anyway, so people were kind of willing to take the risk.
That got ignored as well. If with a small smile from the woman.
Sebastian did it back, not totally feeling it.
“Things have been better. There might be some things coming down soon. With the government. Any word on the thing out of Texas?”
She nodded, then leaned into him, whispering as if they weren’t standing in a crowd of nearly seventy people already.
“We were told that the quarantine area might be expanding. That, if it makes it up this far, we’ll have to be ready to kill anyone that won’t stay inside. The food deliveries… That part is hard. FEMA doesn’t have the resources to cover little areas like this. If it wasn’t for things like the market here, a lot of people wouldn’t be eating at all right now. The cities get food brought in but I hear it isn’t really enough in a lot of places. It’s bad and about to get worse.” She looked away, trying not to tear up.
“Yeah. That’s about what I’ve been hearing as well. I’ll have to check on that, later today. If I get the time. We still have to get our work done, if we can.”
That got a nod, and even if they weren’t all that close, the on-duty cop gave him a small hug. It was quick and not that many people noticed.
“Be careful. I… Just don’t take any chances you don’t have to. Working with the government right now might not go over that well, with everyone.”
Then she walked away. Leaving him to wonder exactly what she meant. He kind of understood, naturally. He’d said there might be some things coming up with the government, and then asked about the news. To her that was him slyly giving her information about what he was up to. He just didn’t want her to be too shocked when she was brought in for the raid on their house.
When they got back home, making certain that all three gates were well and truly buttoned up tightly, he bothered to check his email. That had several messages, from different people. None of them anyone he knew, except for Agent Brevet.
She just asked what the schedule was for the new shows coming out, which he provided. After all, she was smart enough to understand that if they were all being arrested it was going to put a crimp in production. The CDC, rather surprisingly, had a message for them as well.
Instead of asking them about linking to their wonderful hand washing song, it was a compiled document about the current epidemic, the fact that they weren’t calling it that yet and every bit of information they had on quarantine procedures and how to survive it, if at all possible. Including some things that he’d never even thought of like how to sanitize the outside and inside of the food boxes being delivered to cut down on the risk of exposure to the new disease. They had a name for it but it was mainly numbers and letters, not anything catchy or easy to remember.
The body of the email informed him that they had a two-hour time slot on every channel in four days, of which half, or one hour, could be used for an informative program, if they could come up with that kind of thing in time. It was a long shot but if no one was willing to help, it was going to end up being a few doctors vamping and answering questions for the whole event.
Sebastian answered that they’d have something for it. What, he didn’t know but it was the kind of thing that had to be done. Otherwise, people were going to start to panic. That had to be the main theme. That and explaining that dying was better than running away to infect other people.
They seriously needed to get on a good name for it, since one of the major symptoms was bleeding from the rectum. If they left it up to the public the names for it were going to be kind of rough and hard to use on the news.
The last thing he opened was from the FBI. He felt dread then, for the first time since he’d found out about what had been going on. That was deep and left a sickened feeling in his stomach as he opened the email, which was written a bit formally. At first, he wondered if it were a form letter, until the man writing it, Agent Gerald Waters, asked him if he was safe there and if he needed extraction. That was pretty different but the rest of the email was in the same vein. Asking if he and the others were secure there, indicating he could bring help in, if they needed it. It was polite and there were no threats involved at all.
Which was probably a trick.
There was a phone number at the bottom, so even if he hated that kind of thing he went to the other room and brought the white handpiece back with him. That was going to need to be sanitized with each use, from then on. It was too close to his mouth and a sudden paranoia about germs had decided to take him.
After dialing, a man’s voice spoke in his ear.
“Agent Waters, FBI. How may I help you today?” He sounded normal, not like a stressed-out person, even if that pretty much had to be an act. The world was melting around them. Disintegrating before their very eyes. Everyone sane was going to be kind of stressed.
Just as the man picked up, Vina walked into the room, with Paul directly behind her. They both looked tired. That and a bit miserable. Also like they’d just been off having sex. It was a bit strange, timing wise but he got it. They were both seeking comfort. That kind of thing was pretty normal and they were both single adults. Plus, if Vina went off to prison, she might not get to have someone as kind or attractive as Paul, as far as sex went. Not for a good long time.
The trick of the moment would be in not freaking them both out too much. Him being there on the phone would probably be enough to do that, since it wasn’t a thing either of them had ever seen before.
“Hey, Gerald. This is Sebastian Rivera from Vagabond Studios? I was just calling back to let you know that I got your email. Everything is going well here. Well, everyone is feeling stressed out, as you might imagine. Afraid that the might of the government is about to fall on them. You understand how that works.” It was true and got too much attention from the others.
The man on the phone actually chuckled. It wasn’t even menacing sounding.
“I bet they are. Still, what they gave us isn’t actually worth that much to us right now. We have people looking into the situation in Montana but the individuals you were talking about, Franklin and Janice Merick are both missing. So are their kids, um… Colin and Kara. Both Merick as well. That’s hard to do right now, vanishing like that but not impossible. You’re doing okay there? No one has a gun to your head or anything?” The last bit came out sounding nearly serious.
