Showdown at Diego’s Diner (first revision)

Would you judge me if I entered a fiction contest created by L. Ron Hubbard? And yeah, I mean THAT L. Ron Hubbard.

Before you unfriend me or send me to The Hole or whatever, know that I judged the shit out of myself first, when I learned the Writers of the Future contest is loosely tied to the father of Scientology. From what I’ve read, the cult and contest share little except a founder, but that’s like giving Oppenheimer a pass because he didn’t personally pilot the Enola Gay — he only worked on the bomb.

Do I really want to be associated with Scientology, even in spirit?

I mostly want to be like this guy. Carl Frederick is a quantum physicist who moonlights as a sci-fi writer, so he’s already got that going for him. He made the contest finals in 2002, then took home first place and $1,000 in 2003. And got published. And launched a career. He’s living the dream thanks to Hubbard’s contest.

But when Hollywood latched onto the Church of Scientology as the latest, greatest fad, and the media exposed its founder as a reclusive wannabe prophet — plus allegations of church abuse and LDS-style brainwashing by his right-hand man — Frederick publicly declined his invite to the Writers’ annual L.A. awards gala. The Village Voice reports the literary agency behind the contest, Author Services, is owned by a branch of Scientology, and as late as 2012 the gala was possibly (likely) funded by the church. But the Voice found no evidence of sketchy recruitment tactics, and points out none of the judges or past winners are Scientologists:

“They maintain very deliberately a solid firewall between Scientology and the contest. There was even a time when a winner asked about Scientology and he was told, ‘Not this week.’”

Good for Frederick. His fiction career is soaring — workshops with heavyweights Tim Powers and Kevin J. Anderson, publicity through Author Services, more than 40 stories in Analog — AND he gets to take the moral high ground in hindsight, after the L. Ron Hubbard brand went sour.

As for me… wrong place, wrong time, but potentially the right contest, so I did what I never do and made a pro-con list:

Pros

• Printed anthology
• Wide circulation
• Respected panel of genre judges like Powers, Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card
• No entry fee… HUGE selling point
• 17,000 word limit… who does that?
• For unpublished writers only
• Story rights remain with the author… also huge selling point
• Chance to submit 4 times per year
• Cash prizes for 3 finalists every quarter, plus $5,000 for annual grand prize winner
• That fancy awards gala
• Exposure through L.A. literary agency

Cons

• Ties to Scientology
• The name L. Ron Hubbard
• Orson Scott Card… also a sketchy dude
• General WASP-iness of judges panel
• No royalties for printed authors… bummer
• Growing group of finalists denouncing the contest

So yeah, I went ahead and sent “Showdown at Diego’s Diner” to the Writers contest. I should hear back in a month or two. I still feel like I need a shower, but the deciding factor was the story itself — I can’t think of a better submission for a contest potentially funded by a fanatical cult. You be the judge.

Side note… this was the first story I sent to Critters, the online genre workshop, and I’m so incredibly grateful for the feedback on plot, character and theme. All my love to the workshop and its tens of thousands of members. Makes me wish THEY sponsored a writing contest…

…the Edit

Words: 7,420

Revisions: Showdown at Diego’s Diner (rough draft)

The garbage woman knew more about the dead family than anyone, even the Feds. She still does.

When I got to Hillside Heights at 6:30 a.m., the only people at the mansion were two beat cops, posted on the sprawling front porch like Royal Guard. Yellow tape was strung between Victorian columns, masking the front door, but the place looked otherwise pristine: purple trim seemed freshly painted, lace curtains still drawn, the grass impossibly green. There were even flowers, real flowers, in marble pots at the stoop. The Mercedes in the driveway might as well have been waxed overnight. All doors closed, no signs of a break-in.

It was my second time inside Hillside Heights. Driving through the neighborhood in my backfiring Nissan was impressive and depressing, in a way only domed Reformer communities can be – nicer homes, cleaner air, no Geiger sirens, no hot wind blowing, no fallout dust, bright colors everywhere, like living in a crayon box.

I almost felt envious, but it’s all aggressively synthetic. Rockwellian, with water fountains and light posts on the main drag, and the sound of chirping birds pumped through hidden speakers in fake trees. Real birds live only in zoos these days.

I wrote an article about Hillside’s dome tech a few years ago:

“Dome shields new Reformer oasis from atomic wind; flowers, orange trees thrive.” I never mentioned the artificial chirping.

I was the first reporter on scene. A bronze sign reading “The Sparrows” hung over the front door, breaking my heart a little. A family had lived there.

No television crew, no gawkers even, but I had a hunch the solitude in Hillside Heights wouldn’t last long. I’d blasted the news online an hour earlier, seconds after I got the tip about a Reformer father, mother and their three young girls: church on Sunday afternoon, all dead by Monday morning. And those are just the alleged facts.

My editor called it juicy. I went with this for the web post:

“BREAKING: Horrific morning reportedly leaves five dead in domed Reformer neighborhood; stay tuned…”

The online rumor mill was already churning: dad did it, mom did it, Feds did it, maybe all three. Our readers love dark conspiracy theories, especially Reformer conspiracies. Reformers are the nobility of modern America, living fat and comfy while the rest of us aren’t expected to live past fifty. I have my theories about the Sparrow murders, but I don’t like to assume, and I don’t report on rumors or theories. They’re merely a good place to start.

“Officers,” I said, shaking their hands and introducing myself as James Crowley, beat reporter with the Herald, but friends call me Jimmy. Except Crowley isn’t my real last name. A journalist can’t be too careful these days. “Busy morning. Almost reminds me of the Lakeside suicides.”

They didn’t seem impressed. Cops usually aren’t, but these two felt especially prickly: baggy eyes, stubble, oozing annoyance. I’m guessing they were still asleep when I showed up at the dome, where the rent-a-cop at the entrance made me wait a half-hour for decontamination. That’s when my reporter senses started tingling, told me they were stalling. But why?

“Sorry to wake you two,” I said, standing below them on the wooden stoop. “Should’ve brought us some coffee from the Outside.”

Blank stares. It might not have helped to mention Lakeside, where seventy-six Reformers supposedly killed themselves six months earlier, a national tragedy in another domed oasis, that one outside of Washington D.C. These two cops were Reformers, same as everyone else who lives at Hillside, and they have to be, by law. Us common Americans aren’t welcome in domed communities without a damn good reason these days, and the First Amendment’s the only reason we – bloodsucking journos – have when there’s a crime of public interest. God Bless the U.S.A.

“How many dead?” I asked.

The taller of the two cops, Sergeant Baker by his nameplate, held up five fingers. Fatalities: confirmed.

“Any chance I can peek inside? See for myself?”

The sergeant shook his balding head. A graying mustache shook with it. Damn – shut down.

“Tough morning in a quiet neighborhood,” I said to the shorter of the two cops, redheaded Officer Smythe, his cheeks soft as baby fat, as I typed his name into my mobile. “It’s my first time here in a few years. Have you talked with the neighbors yet? Anyone hear or see anything?”

“No, sir,” the mustache replied, silencing Officer Baby-Fat before he could speak. “We’ve got detectives for that.”

“Have you been inside?” I asked. According to my tip (and now a police sergeant) the entire Sparrow family was mere feet away, at the base of the stairs, where a garbage woman allegedly saw them through an open door this morning during collection – bodies stacked like human dominoes.

“No one’s been inside.”

“What about the dog?” I tried.

Uncomfortable silence. More alleged facts: The garbage woman found the family dog on the street early that morning, same time she saw the bodies. I assumed the mutt escaped through the open door, but you know what they say when you assume: makes an ass out of you and me.

“What dog is that, sir?”

“The dog the garbageman found,” I said. “The family dog.”

The dog was my ace in the hole, for now. If the cops realized I knew more than they did – realized I’d already talked to the responding party, the woman who saw the scene before police tape went up – they might be friendlier. Maybe.

“The dog’s gone,” the mustache grunted. “It was a garbage woman, by the way.”

“Of course,” I replied. “And the dog escaped how?”

Officer Baby-Fat chimed in: “Front door, we think.”

Jackpot. Time to pry at the newbie…

“So the front door was open?”

The sergeant’s mustache itself looked ready to strike as he stepped between me and his underling.

“We can’t say, sir. It’s an open investigation.”

Lovely – my favorite phrase in the book.

“I gotcha. But you can tell me where the garbage woman found the dog,” I pressed. “In the backyard? Front yard? Next door?”

I knew the answer, but I wasn’t going to give up while I had the guys backpedaling. They’d already confirmed five people were dead inside, backing up most of the garbage woman’s report. Come on, Officer Baby-Fat, give me what I want to know…

“It was outside the house.” The mustache shut me down, again. “But sounds like you already knew that, sir. If it helps, it was a golden retriever.”

My thumbs flew across the mobile screen, as if the dog’s breed was vital info.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Officer Baby-Fat said, nodding to my mobile. I like to joke I’d be out of a job if someone broke my fingers, but mustache might take it as an invitation.

“Thanks, I try. Do the Sparrows have any family? Someone I can contact? Learn more about the deceased?”

“Sir,” the mustache started, “we don’t know much. Officer Smythe and myself are just here for the party.”

I followed his gruff gaze over my shoulder, where a van screeched onto the dead-quiet street, tires echoing from one end of Hillside to the other, like all sound in the dome at this hour. The Channel 8 crew was tailed closely by Channel 12, the two soon jockeying for B-roll of the beautiful Reformer house with real-live flowers out front, a dead family inside.

“Thank you, officers.” I extended a business holo with my name and mobile number. “Sergeant Baker, Officer Smythe: give me a ring if the detectives want to talk. I’ll see if the neighbors have made us some coffee.”

“Don’t need coffee with all that bullshit.” The mustache pointed to the TV crews. “I’ll let you know the minute we hear anything, Mr. Reporter.”

Doubtful, but guess I can’t blame them for being uppity assholes. You are how you’re raised, my Mom said once, and these two were raised different.

 

******

I walked down the street, scanning for signs of life at neighboring homes. All big, all beautiful, all more-or-less dark, like the nation’s most luxurious ghost town. No garbage bins though, and a wrinkle in the garbage woman’s story: Had there been collection that morning?

Lights were on in just one home at the end of the block. When I got close, I saw a lone woman with pristine silver hair in a white bathrobe, sitting on a wooden swing suspended from the patio cover, legs crossed under yellow porch light, coffee mug steaming on a knee, gaze locked on the hubbub at the Sparrows’.

“Good morning, ma’am.” I introduced myself. “Did the sirens wake you?”

“Not hardly,” she said, her tone pleasant enough. My kind of source. “Can’t sleep past 4 a.m. anymore. Insomnia, you know. We Reformers have problems too.”

“How long have you been here, in Hillside Heights?”

“Since the days of the fallout storm. Fall of ’46.”

I started taking notes. Never hurts to butter up your sources, make them feel special, like you might write their memoir for them.

“My husband’s a scientist, you know,” she continued. “Working with the Chinese on clean-up, but we have always been humanitarians. His great-great-grandfather was an Oppenheimer. My great-great aunt was a Tabor. We’ve been – ”

She kept talking, but you’ve got to cut people off before they actually think you’re writing their memoir. Especially Reformers.

“Have you heard what’s happening down the street? At your neighbors’?”

“I don’t know know what happened. But I have my theories.”

She winked and sipped at her mug, keeping me waiting, then started rocking back and forth like a wise, old Auntie Em, about to spin Dorothy a yarn.

“Those Sparrows have always been odd ducks. She – Beatrix – she was a surgeon before moving to the neighborhood. He – I never had the pleasure… Reginald, perhaps? – I’d heard he was military. Looked like it, anyway. Their kids were smart enough, and very well behaved, but I knew something was off the minute they moved in.”

Another sip. I waited.

“They got caught up with those Suicidals, I think.” She said, as if telling me about a scandalous book she read.

“Suicidals? Like the cult?”

“Oh yes, the same.”

The plot thickens.

“When did the Sparrows come to Hillside?”

“Before the youngest was born, I believe. Year after the first bomb dropped, so six, maybe seven months after us.”

I wondered wildly if her famous husband (or Mr. Sparrow) had a hand in screwing our planet six ways to Sunday, but that’s for another article. Just the facts today – just the Sparrow murders. And now, possible suicides.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” she asked.

“The police aren’t saying much, but I’m thinking so,” I replied. “Did you hear anything this morning? When you couldn’t sleep?”

“Not a thing. My apologies.”

“It’s alright. Supposedly someone saw them – saw their bodies – stacked at the bottom of the stairs this morning. A garbage woman, when she found their dog out front barking.”

“Of course she did.”

I looked up from my mobile. “What do you mean?”

“I never heard a dog this morning. That silly girl makes up stories.” She shrugged and never finished the thought.

“Ma’am?”

“She’s another odd duck is all.” She sipped. “Her husband died a year back – he’s a Roosevelt, you know – but she’s still here, living off his good name, nosing through our trash.”

“Ah.” It was all I could think to say. From what I’d learned so far, the garbage woman wasn’t making things up. Not a liar. It made me second-guess Auntie Em’s Suicidals story, and the mystery dog, except she didn’t strike me as a liar either… gossipy old-money type, maybe, but not a liar.

“You want to know my opinion, sweetheart?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I don’t understand: Why join a cult to meet our Savior, make a big scene of it?” She spat the word “cult,” like it tasted rotten. “The government has those kits now. Anyone with any sense should go that way. More respectful, I say. Quieter too.”

My thumbs were flying across my mobile. Auntie Em was on a roll, giving me pure, uncut gold.

“Don’t quote me, but it’s nothing I would ever do.” She looked away for the first time. Ashamed, maybe, or too proud to say cult again. “It’s for the weak. Those children deserved more.”

“Ma’am,” I started, “Do you have any proof? Of this connection to the Suicidals, I mean. Pamphlets, or maybe something they said? Like, did they ever miss church?”

“Oh Lord no, nothing obvious like that,” she replied, composing herself again. “They’d have been excommunicated, like that garbage girl and her child. But I know it’s true – I know it in my bones.”

“Child?”

“Oh yes, her little one’s the only reason she’s still among us. For now. Plenty of children grow up on the Outside, do they not?”

“Sure.” I felt suddenly dirty, like I were caked in fallout film, but kept my mind on the facts, alleged and confirmed: single mother with a dead husband, an outsider in the dome, allowed to collect their dirty diapers and orange rinds. And the neighbors take sick pleasure in that. Then, there’s the Sparrows as Suicidals, a seriously heavy term in the States these days, with seriously heavy ramifications.

“What’s your name again, sweetheart?”

“James. But friends call me Jimmy.”

I stepped onto the porch to shake her hand. She took it, still seated, like a queen receiving her subject.

“Mrs. Tabatha Oppenheimer. Pleased to meet you properly.”

“And you, Mrs. Oppenheimer.”

She finished her coffee and coughed, daintily, into a white handkerchief.

“What do you think, Mr. Jimmy?”

“About what, ma’am?”

“These deaths.”

I had my doubts about them, namely: Why had no one from this supposed cult come forward? Practically everything the public knows about the Suicidals came through authorities, including the official statement on the Lakeside suicides: “Tragic demonstration by a new and dangerous cult.” Seventy-six dead in just under two weeks, a new batch of five or six found every day, their bodies always stacked. At least two dozen more since then, from Pensacola, Florida to Washington state. But no commune, no figurehead, no exalted leader, no Manson or Jim Jones guiding converts to their final reward.

Smoke and mirrors? Maybe, but in the end, more than a hundred Americans are dead. And now, a Reformer family. Supposedly.

“I’d say you and I are still here, ma’am. That’s worth something these days.”

Finally, a genuine smile.

“You’re right, Mr. Jimmy. You’re absolutely right. No offense, but I always assumed you types were taller.”

“Us types?”

“TV reporters. You are on television, aren’t you?”

“No ma’am. I’m with the newspaper.”

“Oh.”

A pause, me standing awkwardly between the porch and front yard, she staring down the street to the Sparrows’ home.

“I thought it were odd you didn’t have a camera,” she finally said.

“I could get a photo if you like, Mrs. Oppenheimer. We’re online.”

“Of course.” She plumped silver hair with manicured nails. “Shall I look concerned?”

I snapped a few photos for the story, then uploaded one to our flash news platform, seeing my early post already had three hundred shares and dozens more comments. Not bad for a Monday. The latest photo showed Auntie Em sipping coffee – just another weekday morning – as cop lights and television crews scurried in the background. The post read:

“Police confirm five dead, neighbor suspects Suicidals in horrific Hillside Heights tragedy.”

It might’ve been assumption, but it wasn’t fake news. She truly, honestly suspected Suicidals. This one’ll spread like fire.

 

******

I was scouring the street for another source when my mobile rang: my editor.

“Jimmy,” he croaked at me. “How’s the hunting?”

“First one here,” I replied. “Our source from this AM is coming up golden, most everything confirmed. Just got some gems from the neighbor too. Rich lady’s convinced it’s the Suicidals.”

“Saw the post. Good work, now get the confirmation.” I held the phone at arm’s length when he stopped to cough and hack. “And let’s not say ‘horrific.’ Try ‘devastating,’ or ‘shocking.’ Lighten the blow a bit. Can’t be rocking that boat.”

Another coughing fit. He’s in his fifties, an age outlier these days, and sounds like he’s been breathing from a tailpipe since birth. Fallout in the city will do that to you. Kills sperm too. No good for the nation (or species) when suicide rate is one-in-five hundred, mostly government subsidized through kits.

“Yep,” I replied. “Cut the horror. Got it.”

“That’s my boy. Copy’s due ASAP when you get back. Call it noon. Let’s blow this thing out of the water.”

And his rasp was gone. I checked my watch – expecting a call from the garbage woman – and looked up to see an unmarked black craft with no wheels hovering outside the Sparrows’ home. I hadn’t heard them arrive, not even an echo. Whoever they are, their tech is spooky good. Smells like the Feds.

My mobile chimed again: restricted number.

“James Crowley, the Herald.”

“Mr. Crowley, sir, it’s Suzanna. The garbage woman.”

Right on time.

“Thanks for getting back to me. Are you done with your shift? Ready to talk more?”

“Yes, yes. Can we meet?”

“Of course. I’m at the house now, at the Sparrows’. Want to find me here? The detectives are inside.”

White silence. I was wondering if the call had dropped when her voice reappeared, low and cautious, like sharing secrets in a courtroom. Curious.

“Can we meet somewhere else? Somewhere Outside?”

So not at Hillside. Curiouser.

“Sure. How about coffee and breakfast? I know a diner on the edge of the city, 33rd and Zuni. Nice neighborhood, I promise.”

“I have no money,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “We get paid differently in the dome.”

“That’s fine,” I replied, a little embarrassed myself. I knew Reformers had “risen” past petty cash. “My treat.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Crowley,” she said. “Can you meet in thirty minutes?”

“Sounds like a plan. Do you need a ride?”

“No, thank you. I’m in the car now.”

“Perfect. See you soon.” I’d be speeding like NASCAR to get there on time, but I was on deadline and couldn’t let my primary source slip away. “And if you get there before me, tell Diego at the counter I’ll have the usual.”

Diego’s Diner: the perfect place to meet a source when your reporter senses are tingling like a motherfucker.

“Yes sir, I’m looking forward to it.”

I hung up as two men in dark suits emerged from between the mustache and Officer Baby-Fat. One detective, wearing a blue tie with close-cropped hair, closed the door before I could peek inside, then started hacking and coughing as bad as my editor. The other detective was wearing aviator sunglasses. Their no-bullshit scowls and hovercar confirmed it – Feds.

“Excuse me, detectives!” I jogged past the TV crews to the front patio. The mustache gave me another one of his looks, like eating sour grapes. I ignored it, introducing myself. “What’d you find inside, gentlemen?”

“It’s an open investigation,” the blue-tie detective replied. “We’ve got no time for this.”

Cops are prickly, but the Feds were raised by the bomb, and they give me the chills. To think: Just a few years ago, in the thick of the storm, they were rationing bread and burning bodies in piles. Now, they’ve got Jetsons hovercars.

“I gotcha. But can you confirm a few things?”

Blue tie crossed his arms and I went through the list of facts. When I got to the Suicidals rumor, aviators spoke up.

“That’s conjecture. We have no evidence this is anything more than a domestic incident.”

“Were the bodies stacked?”

“No comment at this point,” aviators said, handing me a business holo with a federal phone number and no name. “You can follow up with our lead detective tomorrow. Central office will refer your call.”

Aviators stepped past me, followed by blue tie, stifling a guttural cough. Like Auntie Em said, Reformers (and Feds) have problems too. But I’m on deadline.

“Do you suspect foul play?” I yelled after them. “Just the facts, detectives. You can tell me that.”

“Open investigation. But off the record?” Aviators turned to face me. “Our business here is our business. The minute we deal with you types,” he removed his glasses, showing cold, steel eyes, “is the minute this happens.”

The two suits then got in their craft and glided away, quiet as a whisper, up through a hatch in the dome. He’d said “types” the same way Mrs. Oppenheimer said “cult.”

Future headline:

“Feds field test new, covert hover tech at scene of Suicidals tragedy; Robocop eats his robo-heart out.”

I chuckled – you’ve got to keep a sense of humor about these things – stepping into my dusty jalopy and waving to the cops at the door. Officer Baby-Fat looked to the mustache, who said and did nothing. But I could feel his eyes burning holes in my tires.

 

******

I do most of my thinking in the car. I’ve written entire articles from behind the wheel, dictating copy into my mobile while staring down a deadline. Something about being trapped in one place must get the juices flowing, like taking a shower. Peace, quiet and hot water are luxuries these days.

As I drove from Hillside to Diego’s, past Swiss-cheese tenements with empty Fed front-loaders and ghostly faces huddled around can fires, I arranged the pieces of this puzzle. The Feds are involved. Reformers too. Suicidals might be involved, but I’ve got my doubts. Doubts about the cult in general. Either way, five people are dead, including three children. One neighbor says, “good riddance,” and a disgraced garbage woman has a secret to share, but not inside the dome – her home – for fear of something. I couldn’t see the picture for the pieces.

At a stop light I scanned the road and hazy sky, just because. Paranoid about that spooky new tech, maybe, and legitimately worried about a Fed tail. Seeing nothing, I moved onto my doubts, and the facts in need of checking.

It’s a well-known non-fact the Suicidals are a loose collection of fanatics, deemed a cult by the Feds, explained away by most media as religious zealots or borderline traitors because they tend to be everything except white, Christian and Reformer.

But my editor has a different theory, one he’s been investigating personally for a few months now, and one I tend to believe: It’s all a ruse, a distraction, for something larger. Darker. This cult stages disturbingly public mass-suicide “demonstrations,” as we’re told, but there’s no leader, and the suicides and body stacking almost always coincide with seemingly unrelated events, the kind of world news you forget the next day, when every outlet is slammed with Suicidals coverage: a fire bombing in eastern Russia, an oil-field takeover in Saudi Arabia, nuclear silo raids in Iran and Brazil – at least seven other coincidences since the cult appeared. Nothing solid enough to claim correlation, but the timing is suspicious.

And then there’s the Sparrows. They don’t fit the mold. Only once before have Suicidals demonstrated in a domed Reformer community – Lakeside, when the President himself paid respects – and even then, there were no children among the dead. I’d been waiting all morning for the other shoe to drop, thousands of miles away in some devastated foreign country, or maybe condemnation from the White House, but nothing.

Something’s not right at Hillside Heights. As for me, it comes down to one missing piece, the same question as Lakeside: Who does the stacking?

 

*******

I got to Diego’s Diner five minutes late. The wind was howling, dirt pattering like hail on the red-and-green diner and its short, stout, white-framed windows, looking like a Mexican flag with a menu. It’s no bigger than a double-wide trailer. Diego repaints the whole thing once a month, when the wind dies down after midnight, and one day he’ll run out of paint – long before the wind stops.

Parked out front was a lone red Mercedes. Must be Suzanna. It seemed noticeably out of place on its patch of pea-gravel and chunky concrete. I parked out back, by Diego’s chicken coop in his private lot, surrounded by corrugated-steel fencing topped with coils of barbed wire. Nothing else there except a vintage Chevy truck on blocks, caked in orange film.

Fact: At Diego’s Diner, there’s one way in – the back door – and three ways out. The truck hasn’t moved in the eight years I’ve known him, and like the coop, it hides a reinforced steel hatch you’d never know existed. Two hidden exits.

Before the bombs, when I published under my given name, James Spears, I wrote a fluff piece about survivalist crazies in town. He’s one of them. The diner is a pre-fab steel crate, four inches thick, with reinforced windows and an insulated footprint below, buried six feet down with man-sized tunnels branching out in three directions. He smuggled odds and ends – mostly construction materials – through the bunker before the bombs. “Off the record, amigo,” he said then, and my word was good. I never told a soul. As far as I know he’s just a cook now, said smuggling’s too dangerous these days. Too many malosos in the game. Bad men.

No one must’ve read the article. When shit hit the fan, I was the only fallout fugee to show up at the diner’s back door, duffel stuffed with laptop, clothes and nothing else, hoping and praying he’d have a heart and room for me. He did, and now I’ve got a guaranteed spot in the bunker next time. I’d go so far as to say Diego and his family – wife Flora, daughters Pilar y Anna Maria – are my only real friends. My family’s been gone since week one of the bombs. Rest in peace, Mom.

Through bent blinds, I saw two people at the spackled counter: big, burly, smiling Diego, wearing a mangy Dodgers hat and manning the flattop (as always), and a black woman in greasy green overalls with a coffee mug cupped in her hands. The survivalist-smuggler-cook was miming his way through a story, she was nodding politely. I could hear his thick accent through the open hood vent:

“– she say, ‘Papi, there are no bombs in Mexico. No radiation. Why do we not go home?’ But I say, ‘Pilar, mi hija, there are some things worse than radiation.’ Do you agree?”

I entered then, jangling the little golden bell on the back door.

“Señor Spears, you bum!” Diego wagged a steel spatula like a disapproving finger. “That’s no way to treat a pretty lady like Missus Suzanna.”

“Miss,” she corrected him, facing me when I sat next to her. “I only arrived here myself, Mr. Crowley. Diego was telling me about his family. I didn’t know Mexico was so dangerous.”

“Oh yes. The bombs drop here,” he slapped the flattop with the spatula, “life goes on. But Mexico? Nowhere to go. No life to live. I come here ten years ago with – ”

“My apologies for running late, Suzanna,” I start, interrupting a tale I’ve heard dozens of times, “and apologies for Diego. He’s worse than your dentist for telling the same boring story, over and over.”

The cook looked hurt. “You are calling my life boring, amigo?”

“Only when you won’t stop yapping about it, perezoso.”

Diego belly laughed, the corners of his wide mouth nearly touching his eyes. He poured me a mug of dark roast and cracked two eggs before I even said, “the usual,” then turned on music. Hendrix wailed over a small stereo.

Diego loves the oldies, and it’s another reason I love Diego: You don’t hear much music Outside these days. Proud to say I introduced him to the American classics over forced bonding in the bunker, waiting for the bombs. What else have fallout fugees got to do but listen to music and reminisce?

Although her overalls smelled vaguely of an old sponge – like tepid, coppery water – Suzanna looked ready for her closeup: brushed black hair pulled to one side, the other side shaved close to her skull, the effect drawing attention to intensely brown eyes and delicate dark freckles, spackled like Pollock across her nose. Her long, lean fingers were clean, the nails freshly painted purple. I wondered: Could those hands kill?

“Hungry?”

“If you’re still buying.” She winked, charming and confident. “I take mine over-easy, Diego. And toast with orange jam if you have it, please.”

“Dios mio,” the cook said, feigning surprise at the order: fruit is a minor delicacy Outside. “Work date or real date?”

My cheeks flushed as he grinned at me over his shoulder.

“Here for work, perezoso,” I replied. “Suzanna’s from Hillside Heights.”

“Ah,” and he nodded. “Say no more. Only special women know naranja. You know the cost, amigo.”

I nodded, cheeks still burning. Diego loves embarrassing me in front of sources, on the rare occasion we meet at the diner, but I let him. The more comfortable they are, the more relaxed they feel, the more willing they are to talk. His charm is better than booze for loosening lips.

“Onto business, Suzanna,” I said, fingers ready on my mobile. “Remind me how to spell your first and last?”

“It’s Suzanna Roosevelt,” and she spelled her first name. “Roosevelt like the presidents.”

“Any relation?”

“Distant in-laws,” she said. “Very distant. You must know I’m a Reformer then.”

“Not until now,” I lied. “But I should have made the connection. How long have you been a garbageman at Hillside?”

“Garbage woman,” she corrected with a sly smile. “It’s been long enough. Best thing for me, really. It’s real work – outside, in the sunshine, using my hands, getting dirty – and I’m proud of it.”

Except “sunshine” is a relative term these days. And no one – absolutely no one – chooses to be outside. Unless they’re in a dome, I suppose.

“Enough time for a shower this morning?” I nodded to her clean hands as they wrapped tighter around her mug.

“My mother raised me better than to eat with dirty hands.”

“I like her already.” We shared a smile, breaking the temporary tension.

“How’d you get into it?” I continued, beginning to check Mrs. Oppenheimer’s alleged facts. “Taking out the trash, I mean.”

“Pity. For my husband.” She paused. Tension returned. “But weren’t we here to talk about that family? The Sparrows?”

“You’re right. Did you know them? The parents or the children?”

“Hardly. The oldest girl sold orange juice on Fourth of July last year, a tiny stand out front. Her little sisters sang ‘God Bless America’ for anyone who bought a glass.”

She smiled, a faraway look rippling her freckles. “But like everyone in that hellhole, the wife and her husband kept to themselves, except to entertain. They did invite us once, my husband and I, several years ago.”

“To their house?”

“Yes. Beautiful little shrine to the cause, but so empty, really. Hollow, like no place I’ve ever seen with young children. What they threw out was far more interesting.”

“How so?

“This is off topic,” she replied quickly, “but what is an _oso_?”

It took me a beat to make the connection.

“Perezoso,” I replied. “It means sloth. See the resemblance?”

Diego turned, obviously eavesdropping, and grinned again, making his broad features even broader, eyes practically vanishing as his mouth circled up.

“Perezoso,” she thought aloud, smiling. “I never learned a second language. One of my biggest regrets.”

Let’s get this train back on the tracks.

“This morning,” I started. “Tell me what you saw.”

Her gaze turned suddenly seductive, like flirting over drinks at a dingy bar far from here, where life is simpler. Cut and dried. But nothing is simple these days.

“I was making my rounds, as always. It was just before dawn when I found the poor dog howling in the street, like some kind of wild animal. I’d never heard anything howl like that before…,” and she waved her fingers as if shooing a fly. “But that’s not important.”

But oh, Miss Roosevelt, it is important, because two alleged facts gnawed at me as I drove to the diner: Does Hillside Heights really have trash pickup at 5 a.m. on Monday mornings, and was the dog actually howling like a wild animal? The Sparrows were last seen at church Sunday, according to Suzanna, and reported dead Monday morning, also by Suzanna. But I’ve got a hunch Suzanna isn’t welcome at church since her husband died, and my gut tells me Reformers don’t like waking to the sound of a big, smelly garbage truck. I thought of Mrs. Oppenheimer: “I never heard a dog.”

Why was Suzanna there? And why call me – the press – before the cops?

I waited for her to continue, the intoxicating smell of greasy breakfast filling the diner, the metallic cling-schink of Diego’s spatula counting the beat as she finished her coffee in silence, Hendrix moaning on the stereo about being experienced.

“Do you mind?” she said, reaching into a front overall pocket for a can of honest-to-God Copenhagen Long Cut. Another delicacy.

“Not at all,” I replied. She pinched a wad and placed it in her lower lip, flicking tobacco flecks to the tiled floor.

“I have to ask,” I started, distracted against my better judgment. “Why chew? Why not vape?”

“You follow the news,” she said, stopping to guide a hidden tongue between her teeth and lips, expertly pressing the dip into a small, tight ball. “You should know vaping kills.”

“So does that.”

“So does everything.” She shrugged and raised the cup to her lips, discretely spitting into it. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she were sipping coffee.

John Fogerty had taken over for Hendrix, Diego’s flattop metronome halting after the first few lines of “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” The cook faced us with twin breakfast plates: two eggs, two sausage links, two pieces of toast, one small spoonful of orange jam. It looked like edible gold.

“Por Señor Spears,” he said, “Y la señorita especial. The jam is from your gardens, no? At the Hillside? It is very expensive.”

She seemed to blush. “I suppose.”

A group of three men noisily entered just then, the bell ringing, and Diego left to pour their coffee as they crowded into one of the booths on the back wall.

“He called you Spears?” Suzanna asked.

“We all have our secrets, right?” I said, leaving it at that. She nodded, saying nothing, and got lost in her mug. I was halfway through my first egg when she spoke again.

“I saw a folder in their trash, maybe five months ago,” she said, her plate still untouched, including the jam. “The papers were burn, but I could read the list. Homes in Lakeside, cities around the world. I recognized most from the news.”

I stopped eating, wiped my mouth, prepared to take notes. “I didn’t think garbage collectors generally dug through trash.”

“I don’t,” she continued. “But I had my reasons.”

“Go on.”

She spit into the mug.

“The next week I saw another, this time with people: Senators, Democrats, Republicans – a hit list.”

She seemed to be talking to herself. I let her.

“It’s almost like he wanted to get caught, right? Wanted someone else to see what he was doing. If only his poor children…”

She tailed off.

“Mr. Sparrow, you mean,” I guessed. “What about his children?”

But she was somewhere else, working through the angles, maybe stalling. I saw it in the way her fingers clasped and unclasped, like the teeth of two jittery gears.

“I did it to protect my child. They tried to remove us, tried to take my home – our home. Everything.”

“You did what, Suzanna?” It was the first time she’d mentioned her kid. “Dug through their trash? Tried to turn him in?”

With that Suzanna faced me, her brown eyes fiery as embers.

“They think they’re the only ones who can play dirty, Mr. Crowley. Seventy-six souls. Seventy-six of their own.”

“They? You mean the Reformers.”

She didn’t answer except with her eyes, freckles pinched tight, upper lip trembling, letting me assume what she meant by “they.” But I don’t assume.

“What did they do?” I tried. Silence, except the clank of Deigo’s spatula at the flattop and Fogerty on the stereo. “What did you do?”

“Off the record?” she finally said, more of a command than a question.

“Off the record.” My mobile went under the counter and I took her fidgeting hands, gently, reassuring her that whatever she had to say, she could say to me. “You were looking forward to this, Suzanna. You told me so earlier. They play dirty, but who do you play for?”

“We don’t want credit, Mr. Crowley.” She slipped from my hands, started spreading jam on toast. “We don’t need it. What we want is – ”

That’s when I saw the notes on my mobile go black. Piece of shit, I thought at first, but then the screen went fuzzy, like snow on an analog TV, and the mic started clicking. Digital static.

“Yo, you got service in here?” Commotion from the three men at the booth. “Trying to text my lady and – ”

One man was peering through the blinds, pointing at something through bent slats.

“You ever seen one of those up close?” he said to the others. “Like in real life?”

I couldn’t see what they saw, but I could hear it: a deep, reverberating thrum, like an industrial fridge in its death throes, coming closer, rattling plates and mugs on the counter, my phone still clicking.

Oh shit.

My veins turned to ice. It could only be one thing.

“Suzanna,” I said, quickly glancing at Diego, hoping he knew what needed to be done. “I don’t know what you saw this morning, or what you did, but I don’t think you’re safe here anymore.”

Except I didn’t have to tell her that. Those fiery eyes had extinguished, her entire frame frozen stiff except for one trembling hand holding uneaten toast, shaking jam and crumbs. The cook nodded. Go time.

“The usual,” I said to Diego, “for real.”

“Vamos, Suzanna, come with me!”

Diego grabbed her hand and pulled her around the counter, shhshing her, motioning to the tile at his feet. The three idiots at the booth raised the blinds, staring out the window at a sleek, rotor-less helicopter landing on the grass – the Feds.

“Where are we going? What IS that out there?” The words tumbled from her, and for the first time since I met Suzanna Roosevelt, she sounded frightened, unsure. “Wh-where are you taking me?”

“¡Abajo!” Diego yelled. “Down!”

I swung around the counter just before the first gunshot CRACK! and flinched. The booth guys yelled, Suzanna screamed. The three of us, wedged between the flattop and counter, dropped low as a second shot CRACK TING! ricocheted off the outside diner wall. Couldn’t see a thing except Suzanna’s face and Diego’s hands. Across the counter feet scuffled on linoleum, toward the back door.

Diego was opening the bunker hatch when CRACK CRACK CRACK! and shattering glass. The tiny diner flooded with noise. Yelling and manic cursing. Whistling wind. Shattering china. Fading John Fogerty. Insanely, I had one thought through it all: This article’s bigger than the Sparrows…

The Feds unloaded, again and again and again. From inside the hatch Diego yanked on my arm, bellowing something I didn’t catch. I nearly tumbled down the spiral staircase onto cool, stained concrete, the hatch slamming above us, locking us in complete darkness, Suzanna stumbling over paint pails in a corner. Silence. We were huddled together at the base of the stairs when the muffled CRACK CRACK CRACK-ing ended. Diego pulled the string on a single bulb, casting low, weak shadows.

What seemed like hours passed in sickening silence. Had they left? Was it safe to check?

“Now?” I whispered.

Just then, from the other side of the hatch, as if in response, there was roaring and crashing and howling, louder than the bullets, louder than a wind storm, louder than god – nearly louder than the bombs eight years before. No one moved or breathed in the near-dark, me having flashbacks, Suzanna gripping my hand like a cliff face, like our lives depended on it. My other hand squeezed the stair railing.

Eventually the howling tapered off. Silence returned. None of us spoke, none of us whimpered or cried. Time passed. I’ve still got no idea how long. I don’t remember breathing until a sudden hissing came from the hatch.

Diego was above us on the stairs, spinning the hatch wheel when he yelped, scaring the shit out of me.

“Hot,” he whispered, gingerly testing the metal wheel with a hand wrapped in his cook’s apron. Suzanna’s freckled face faded in and out of hazy light as he opened it, inch by inch.

“Is this where – ”

“Yes,” I replied, eyes up, voice raspy. “Quiet. They might still be around.”

Diego, clearly feeling safer here than one of his two other exits, grunted up and out the hatch. Suzanna followed. She helped me next, my hand screaming in agony when she gripped it. I bit my lip. She might have bruised a bone or two.

“Sorry,” Suzanna whispered.

“It’s fine.” I winced through a half-hearted smile. I could barely make a fist, and another insane thought: Those hands are certainly strong enough to kill.

Diego’s Diner felt like a furnace and looked like a war zone. Everything was charred black, and I realized what the roaring was: firebombing. They had shot out the windows, torched the inside, then watched it burn. Standard procedure for contaminated buildings these days – the paperwork writes itself. Same tactic used at Lakeside. When the bodies stopped piling up, after the President returned to the White House, Feds torched the whole goddamn dome, while halfway across the world a foreign general was found dead in his home, along with his wife and five children. Dirty, discarded puzzle pieces – and we could have joined them.

In the ashy sunlight leeching through broken windows, I saw my hand was already bruising in a band around the middle. Diego was surveying what remained of his diner, including three smoldering lumps of coal, grasping for the back door. Jesus.

“The usual, eh amigo?”

“The usual,” I said, repeating our code word for “get the fuck in the bunker,” and started laughing, like a maniac, I’m sure. I couldn’t help it. The scorched black everything around me felt so madly familiar, from those endless weeks eight years ago, and I was thinking: since when did huddling in an H-bomb bunker become just another average Monday? And that reminded me what I meant to ask Suzanna before we were nearly assassinated. So I laughed.

That got Diego laughing too, his big, broad face covered in soot (¡perezoso!), and then Suzanna was laughing – politely at first, soon hard enough to make her freckles dance. She looked beatific when Diego gave her a bear hug. They didn’t let go for a long time. She might have started crying.

I was standing in what used to be the breakfast counter, taking a photo of the three lumps by the door and making a note for my story due at noon – how life before the bomb, before all this, was like a fictional story inspired by true events – but my bruised hand was clenched tight, my other shaking with adrenaline. Work could wait.

Only first, one piece was still missing. I knew there was no trash pickup that morning, knew the Suicidals were more than a cult, knew my editor was on to something. No assumptions, except:

“Suzanna, did you know Diego had one of these? Had a bunker?”

“No,” she replied, dabbing a puffy eye. “Not at all.”

“Did you kill the dog too?”

Her look was heartbreaking.

“No, never.” Then nearly to herself: “I had to let it go.”

And I believed her. Call it my reporter sense.

“Did you know they’d come?”

A very long pause.

“I’m not on their side, Mr. Crowley. They killed my husband.”

“I know that,” I lied, taken aback by this new fact, but hiding it like a pro. “Did you know they’d come for you?”

“I’m on a different side.”

“What side is that?”

An odd chuckle.

“Off the record?”

 

| END