“Great. It’s something to do, you know? And the kids should get a kick out of it.”
“Sounds fine to me,” he said. He had already secretly planned a trick-or-treat for them, and was looking forward to it.
He found Ulrich in Launch Control with his feet up, reading one of his technical magazines. “Erin and Lynette were arguing about something in the cafeteria.” He took a chair.
“What about?”
“I didn’t pay attention.”
“That’s a good policy,” Ulrich said.
“I’ve been giving some thought to our future food concerns. Hydroponic tomatoes are only going to get us so far. What do you think about raising rats?”
“Rats?”
“Yeah. We find some rats, breed them in clean cages, and eat them. The damn things multiply faster than rabbits.”
“You ever eaten one?”
“Yeah, we ate a few back at Bragg during training. No big deal. Splash a little Tabasco on them and they taste like anything else. Look, meat’s meat. And West can show us how to raise them without a big health risk.”
“It’s a repugnant idea,” Ulrich said. “The women will never go for it, and Erin’s likely to freak the hell out.”
“By the time the food runs out, she won’t find the idea so disagreeable.”
“So what are you proposing? We catch a few and keep them as pets without telling anybody what they’re really for? These broads are smart, Jack. They’ll figure it out.”
“Well, it may not matter. So far it looks like we’ve done too good a job of killing them off down here.”
Ulrich frowned. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. We’ve seen a few rats gnawing on the dead guys upstairs. It’s only a matter of time before the bodies are gone and they find their way down here again.”
“Great, so problem solved,” Forrest said, getting up. “Put Oscar to work building some live bait traps.”
“I’ll put Linus on it. He’s better with his hands.”
“No, I want Oscar to do it. He apparently has too much fucking free time.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’ll raise the little bastards in secret,” Forrest said, and disappeared into the hall.
Ulrich sat back and returned to his article. “And if I had wheels, I’d be a wagon.”
Late that night Forrest was sitting alone in the LC reading For Whom the Bell Tolls when Melissa came in and sat down at the console with her paper and pencil. He glanced at the clock to see that it was three A.M.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No. Do you think I could scan the radio frequencies?”
He looked at her and smiled. “That’s why you’re up late. Wayne won’t let you play with the radio.”
She ignored the remark. “I know the code talkers aren’t on now, but I want to see if anyone else might be talking.”
“Wayne runs a scan twice a day.”
“I know, but he’s not scanning now…”
“Use the bottom set,” he told her. “If you mess with his, he’ll know and he’ll skin us both.”
“But that’s the junky set,” she whined. “Wayne’s is digital and its got—”
“Yeah, I know, it’s got all the cool lights. I thought this wasn’t about playtime.”
“Well, digital is better and—”
“Digital is not better. It’s newer, and that’s not the same thing. You can’t fine-tune with digital the way you can with analog.”
“What’s that mean?”
“What do you mean ‘what’s that mean’? Aren’t you a computer whiz?”
“I’m a physics geek, not a computer geek. Big difference. Huge.”
“Okay, well, the dial on the analog set is a rheostat… it works like a dimmer switch, so you can fine-tune the frequencies—if you’re patient. With the digital set you’re either on the frequency or you’re off, no fine-tuning.”
“But what good’s a signal if it’s full of static?”
He closed his book, marking the page with his thumb, and sat looking at her. “Well, Wayne, what good is a clean frequency if there’s nobody on it?”
She grinned. “So then why does ‘Wayne’ use the new one if the old one is better?”
“Because he is a bonehead… because he is too impatient for fine-tuning… and because he has always trusted the latest technology even when it sucked.”
“O-kay,” she said sarcastically. “I-think-I-get-the-point.” She scooted over to the shelf in her chair and turned on the more simple looking analog set. “How long do I have to wait for this antique to warm up?”
He chuckled as he reopened the book. “It’s not that old, you little smartass. And remember to move the dial in tiny increments. Take your time.”
After a minute Melissa picked up on a faint signal…
“Mayday, Mayday. This is Genoine Five,” a scared sounding woman was saying. “Does anyone copy? Anyone at all? If you can hear me, please, we are in Birch Tree, Missouri. We need your help! We need food and medicine. Mayday, Mayday. This is Genoine Five. Does anyone copy? Anyone at all? If you can…”
“I found somebody!”
Forrest had already heard the transmission many times and did not even look up from the book. “It’s a trap, honey.”
She turned to look at him in confusion. “How do you know that?”
“Because no one’s listening at her end. She’s on a loop. Same message over and over. Which either means that everyone in Beech Tree is dead or it’s a trap.”
“She sounds scared to death.”
“I’m sure she is—or was when she made that tape. She’s likely dead by now.”
Melissa turned the volume down, a scared feeling in the pit of her stomach. “But why would she…”
He set the book aside, realizing this sort of thinking was entirely alien to her.
“You take a female prisoner,” he explained. “Someone like you or Veronica, maybe. You give her a microphone and a simple script and you tell her to sound scared—which won’t be too tough with a knife at her throat. Then you play the recording over the airwaves for every idiot predator with a radio to hear. After that you just have to hope whoever comes to Beech Tree looking for—”
“Birch Tree.”
“Thank you, Wayne. As I was saying… you just have to hope that whoever comes to town looking for the woman on the radio has a smaller gang than your gang. If they do, you kill them and take their stuff. If they don’t… well, you lay low and pray to Christ they leave town without finding your ass.”
“No way!” she said in mortified fascination. “For real?”
“For real.”
“You’ve done stuff like that, haven’t you?” she said, her eyes shining with an almost prurient enthusiasm. “Uncle Michael says you’re dangerous.”
He smiled, recalling a once younger version of himself. “Your uncle Michael says a lot of things.”
“He says that before the boogeyman goes to bed at night he probably checks under the bed for you.”
Forrest laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Tell me something you’ve done!”
He shook his head, chuckling. “No. That’s not the kind of thing I need to be sharing with young ladies.”
She bristled. “So it’s not my age this time? It’s because I’m a girl.”
“Maybe I worded that wrong. Some things done during war can sound shameful out of context, and it’s not the kind of thing I prefer to talk about with anyone, man or woman.”
“Because I might get the wrong idea?”
“More because you might get the right idea. War is a bad, bad thing.”