Quaranteam - North West Ch. 01-04

It was my turn to eye the old Suit up and down. I sighed and shook my head ruefully. "Fine. Come on up."

I turned and handed the shotgun to Leo, who took it carefully with both hands. "Put that back where it belongs," I said, and as I walked back towards the house I looked at Erica. "You should probably go get dressed, E. Sounds like we've got company."

Erica stopped me with a hand on my shoulder as I mounted the porch steps. She still looked concerned, and she squeezed my shoulder lightly. "Are you sure about this?" she asked in a whisper. "You've mentioned things, but never like this."

"Never been quite this out there," I said. "but I'm not about to shoot some CIA spook in my front yard before I even hear what he has to say."

"Fuck. Is he really a spook?" she asked.

"Guess we'll find out."

***---***---***

The five of us were sitting down in the living room. Walters, along with Erica who had thrown on a sundress underneath a long knit sweater, and Leo were all drinking freshly brewed coffee while Agent Greerson and I sat across the main coffee table from each other. I was letting my emotions get the best of me, sitting forward in my seat and occasionally fidgeting with a couple of paint stains on my pant leg. Greerson sat back like he was as comfortable as he'd ever been. I knew I was giving myself away, my investigation and interrogation training had given me better instincts than this, but it had been seven years since I put them to actual use. I was getting soft.

"Well," I said. "How about we start at the top, Agent? What exactly does the government want with my land in the middle of a pandemic, and why show up completely unannounced?"

Greerson gave a soft smile and nodded to himself as if he'd confirmed a thought. "Son, I know a lot about you, because for the past week there has been a team of backroom analysts digging up everything they could about you, your family and this property. The one thing we can't know for certain is how muchyou know about what's been going on in our country. So the first thing I want you to know, upfront before we talk about anything else, is that we are abso-fucking-lutely caught between a stampeding bull and the rodeo arena wall."

"I'd have gone with clogged sewer drain and an industrial fan, myself," Walters put in.

"Same impending shitshow, but it misses the feeling of uncontrollable careening danger," Greerson said.

Walters shrugged. "That's fair."

"Yeah, alright, we know the world is fucked right now," Leo said, annoyed with the banter. "We've been stuck in quarantine for months already."

"No, kid. You don't know," Greerson said to Leo. "Not really. You check news sites and social media more than your two friends here, but even you don't fucking know." He turned back to me and met my eye. "It's bad, and it's getting worse. Projections are not pretty on this, and people like me are picking up the backup plans to the emergency backup plans. We're talking the kind of shit the conspiracy theory nuts couldn't have dreamed up ahead of time if they had a month-long conference to put their heads together."

"Apocalyptic," Walters said.

"Not... quite," Greerson disagreed. "But definitely world-changing"

"This isn't real," Erica whispered from her seat. "This is fucked."

"Fucked is the right word for it," Greerson nodded. "But I'm being very real with you. Quarantine isn't going to work. Our society isn't built to handle it, people screw up constantly. Politicians think they can use it to their advantage, or ignore it. That's why organizations like those that Walters and I work for have measures in place to operate without oversight, and very quickly, in these sorts of emergencies."

"So, if this is all true, what exactly do you want?" I asked.

"We want your land," Greerson said. "All of it. A big part of the success strategy on some of our backup plans includes building brand new quarantine settlement facilities for the vaccinated, and your property was flagged as prime real estate for the purpose in this region. You're remote, but not too remote - twenty minutes from the nearest town and an hour and a half from the nearest city. It borders onto a significant enough water source with the river to the west, and basic services can be expanded on without too much difficulty."

Walters leaned forward, his mug of coffee cupped in both hands. "Mr Black, in effect, the government wants to purchase all 560 acres of your land from you and put a whole bunch of healthy people on it to make sure we don't all fucking die."

"No," I said. Greerson didn't blink.

"You haven't even heard our offer yet," Walters said.

"He doesn't need to," Greerson told his partner, then turned back to me as he talked, staring me down. "This is generational property. MMrBlack's great-great-great-grandfather purchased this land with cash he raised as a bounty hunter back in the days of Cowboys and the California Gold Rush. And ever since, the Black family has had to fight all comers to keep it. He could be absolutely destitute, dying of hunger, with famine and a draught in full swing and a forest fire on his doorstep, and I bet Mr Black here would tell you to fuck right off with an offer."

"Something like that," I said. I was a little surprised by even the sparse details Greerson was saying about my family history, but not as spooked as Leo and Erica seemed to be. They'd heard the stories from me, sitting around the campfire pit out back with beers in our hands, but I wasn't the only source for the family history. Local court records were probably full of sordid details going back decades, if not over a century. He might have dug up details of events that didn't get passed down verbally through the family tree - based on the dark shit I did know about, I couldn't imagine what might have gotten left out.

Greerson finally sat forward, meeting me energy-to-energy as he kept my gaze locked in. "And yet, here we are, Mr Black. We can either come up with a deal, or I swear to Christ and all the Saints that the government will seize this land for eminent domain under the emergency provisions of the pandemic and you won't be able to do a fucking thing about it."

"Sell, or die," I said. "So you can build a 'resettlement camp?' Jesus Christ, yourself. If you know so much about my family history, you know building a fucking 'camp' of any sort on this land would be the absolute last thing I would bend over for."

"I didn't say 'camp.'" Greerson said. "No matter what your Native, and Japanese, forebears had to go through, listen to me - this is the farthest thing from that."

I was 1/32nd native from my father's side and 1/16th Japanese from my mother's side. Again, not the hardest thing to dig up, but while I had the black hair of both those ancestries, I mostly just looked like a tall white guy with a pretty generic last name. No one ever assumed I was anything else in passing.

"What does that even mean?" Erica asked.

"It means we aren't building concentration camps," Greerson said, glancing over at her. "We aren't building a reservation, or an internment camp, or any of the other shitty things our and other governments have done to people." He looked back at me again. "We're going to develop this land into a neighbourhood. The God damned fanciest kind of gated community you can think of. Big houses, big properties, for people who do or did important work to settle in safety and stability as we try to survive this shitshow virus."

"None of this answers why," I said. "Why should I agree to this? Why shouldn't I make it so fucking annoying that you go find a different patch of land and leave me alone?"

Greerson frowned, though I had the feeling he'd been planning this from the start. He wanted me to work to peel back the layers of information, to earn the answers because that would make me believe them more. It would tick off boxes in my psychology and experience. The fucking problem was even though I knew he was doing it, it was also working. "Because you'd be saving lives," Greerson answered. "Our pilot development down in California is called New Eden - the place is only two-thirds built to starting specs, and we're already out of room on the next five phases of development once it's opened. Now it's my job to set up the next locations and get them rolling because our current projections are that within the next six months, the death toll is only going to skyrocket. We can't even get a grasp on what the numbers might reasonably be because the range is so fucking staggering. Millions is the easy number, Mr Black."

It was my turn to say it. "Fuck."

"Now, you're not going to hear that on the TV," Walters said. "You won't hear it from the CDC, or the other health agencies. The only reason we are cleared to tell you this is because folks in our circles have developed the preference to workwith reasonable people when they are useful. And also, who would fucking believe you?"

"Here's our offer," Greerson said, pulling out a slip of folded paper from inside his suit jacket and putting it on the coffee table. "That's the hard cash number we've designated for this deal. No taxes. Straight transfer from us to you. There will also be other perks, including homes inside the settlement for you and Mr Lacosta. Things are about to get really weird in the world. Have you heard anything about the Tier system?"

"Nothing," I said, but Leo spoke up.

"I saw some rumours. It's supposed to be some kind of a terrifying triage, right?" he asked. "Who's the most worthy kind of shit. People started protesting, but I thought it got debunked."

Greerson nodded. "Oh, we stopped the protests, but it's all too real. I won't hide it - I find the entire thing absolutely unamerican. It's the kind of shit the Chinese government operates, but it is what it is."

Walters drained the last of his coffee and set the mug onto the coaster on the coffee table politely. "Suffice it to say, it's a sort of social karma system. The more important you are to society, the more protections and comforts you're afforded as we roll out our limited resources on quarantine defences. There's 5 tiers, one being the lowest and five the highest. Most of society will land in the 1's and 2's, including all three of you. This development we'll be building is mostly going to house 3's and 4's. As part of the deal, we'll place Leo at tier 3 for resettlement purposes, and you Harrison would be placed at tier 4 despite your lack of qualification in the matter."

This entire conversation felt like I was running downhill trying to keep up with an avalanche. "That sounds an awful lot like a really great way to set up for corruption," I said. "A fucking caste society? Really?"

"It's already done," Greerson said. "Believe me, there were a lot of in-the-know people against the idea. But it's the only idea that works in this situation. We've gamed it out to the Nth degree. Leo, your description is pretty much the best that we were able to make internally. We're triaging society to make sure it stays together and can weather this hurricane."

"What would we tier at without this?" Leo asked.

"Leo Lacosta," Greerson said, talking as if he were reading directly off of a portfolio even though he rattled it off without referencing anything. "Positives: Early thirties age bracket, relatively fit and healthy. Low-to-Mid career path - carpentry skills of moderate qualification. No criminal record. Negatives: No community investment. Likely rating: Tier 1."

"Harrison Black," he continued. "Positives: Early thirties age bracket, relatively fit and healthy. Former military service including Military Police service, honourable discharge at the rank of MP Investigations Special Agent, no known psychological impacts. No criminal record. Negatives: No community investment, null-rank career - freelance artist. Likely rating: Tier 1."

"To be fair, thereis a big question mark on your file that we couldn't fill," Walters said. "Your honourable discharge happened mid-tour, without any reported incidents or injuries. It's surprising you haven't been called back into at least reserve service with the Emergencies Acts. A decent answer would probably bump you up to tier two."

"I can't talk about it," I said.

Erica snorted and rolled her eyes, and both men looked at her.

"Erica," I warned her.

"What?" she demanded. "They just called you 'low tier,' Harri. If you're not going to tell them then I will."

"Ican't talk about it," I said again.

"Harrison knocked out an Air Force bigwig when he was an MP and stationed in Germany," Leo cut in. "The guy was abusing and trying to blackmail a female subordinate into sex. The only reason we know is because she tracked Harri down a few years ago and we met her in a bar in Portland."

"The bigwig was politically protected and nothing happened in the end," Erica said. "At least, that's what she said. He got shuffled around, and Harrison got the boot."

"I got an honourable discharge instead of a court martial for striking a very superior officer of a different branch," I said. "And part of that deal was that Inot talk about it."

"Well that explains some things," Greerson said. "It wouldn't change anything though. If you were doing something more useful with your life than painting little pictures, you might have made tier two or three without this offer."

"Says you," Erica scoffed. "Artis useful. And important!"

Greerson pursed his lips slightly. "Erica Lacosta. Not an official resident of the property, but I know enough. Positives: Early thirties age bracket, relatively fit and healthy. Negatives: Criminal record, including battery, two counts of public drunkenness, and public urination. No community investment. Null rank career - tattoo artist. Likely rating: Tier 1."

"Hey, fuck you too," Erica said, and pointed her middle finger at Greerson, along with a scowl to go with it. Honestly, none of that was surprising news about Erica for me except for the Battery charge, I definitely needed to getthat story out of her.

"OK, we get it," I said, interrupting what I had a feeling was about to become a degenerating path of conversation. "You know about us. You do realize this is all a little much, right? It comes across as insane."

"Of course it does," Greerson sighed. "But a year ago, only bored analysts tripping on LSD were asked to think about these kinds of situations. Now we're in it, right in the damned middle of the clusterfuck."

"You should really look at the offer," Walters said, gesturing to the folded paper I hadn't looked into yet. It sat on the coffee table like an accusing finger pointed at me by my father, and his father before him. How dare I even consider this?

"So it's a buttload of cash," I said, still not opening the paper. "And we get treated like what, royalty? And in exchange, I lose my family legacy."

"Royalty is a stretch - you're selling us land, not curing cancer. We'll take care of you like valued members of society. You'll also get early access to the vaccine," Greerson said.

"There's a vaccine?" Leo immediately asked. "Social media has been wild with rumours but-"

"It's still experimental," Walters said. "And undergoing trials. But it's functioning, with some unconventional side effects. They're still doing long-term tests down in California, but we're going to start rolling it out down there any day now once the doctors are happy with the plan. That's how bad we need it, FDA bullshit be damned."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Flipside, stick. If I don't cut a deal, you'll use the might of the US government to bend me over and rip my family legacy right out of my ass."

"You got it. But like I said, we prefer working with people. There's always a silver lining to making friends," Walters said.

"Fuck," I said again. Then I flipped one half of the paper open and looked at the number written on the inside. There were a damn lot of zeros. "I need to call my sister," I said. "But pending her approval, I'll lease it to you. All 560 acres, for a hundred years less a day - that's what people do, right? And Leo and I get to pick where our houses are built."

"That's not how this works," Walters said.

"It's my counter offer," I said.

"Hold on," Greerson said, raising a hand to his partner. He narrowed his eyes as he looked me over again. He was a man who made judgment calls on the fly, despite his ability to reel off memorized facts like he'd been living with them for years. I could practically see the rusty old gears turning behind his grizzled facade. "Fuck it," he finally said. "We need to survive the next six months, year, five years and decade before anyone will be worrying about next century. Make your call."

"You're really doing this?" Leo asked me as I stood up and fished in my pocket for my cell.

"My family has had to defend this land from everything and everyone except the federal government," I said. "Up until now, they might be the only people who haven't thought they had some claim to it. Obviously, this will all need to be in writing before I make a final agreement, but look at the news - everything they're saying makes some sort of terrible sense. And I'd rather get the carrot than a stick so far up my ass it's tickling my brain stem."

I went outside to the porch to make the call to Valerie, my older sister. It was quicker than I thought it would be - Val and her husband Brad were hearing horror stories from their nursing friends in the local hospitals, and she immediately understood the position we were in. We hadn't always gotten along the best growing up, but if Val had one thing it was a practical head on her shoulders. When I came back inside, I nodded to Greerson. "Add in another house for my sister and her family, and we've got a deal."

"In exchange for the Lease, and the extra house," Walters said, "We're going to need your help in identifying the landscape. I assume you know it fairly well - we'll want you to walk our surveyors through to show any odd landscape elements, seasonal issues like flood areas, that sort of thing."

"Done, as long as I can point out the shit they shouldn't fuck with and they actually listen," I said. "There are some pretty big old growth trees out there that would be a fucking shame to cut down."

"I understand your concerns, son," Greerson said, as he stood and offered his hand. "But believe me when I say this - we aren't looking to build any high rises or pave over the place. These developments are for people important to society for one reason or another, and that means we're making sure to give them the best we can. Landscape included."

One last deep breath and I reached out and hovered my own hand near his. "In writing before it's official."

"The contract will be done by this afternoon and we'll email it over. Our lawyers work on our timeline, not their own," he said and grasped my hand in his. We both had larger hands than most, but I could immediately tell he had the grip of a man made from the iron bones of a hard life. I'd like to think he felt the same in my grip, but I had a feeling he'd shaken hands with much harder and scarier people than me.

"When can we get vaccinated?" Leo asked. "If we're going to be working with surveyors and shit, shouldn't we all be as safe as we can?"

"We have a testing site opening up in Portland as we speak, so it can get done as soon as possible," Walters said. "Though, as I mentioned, things are a little bit unorthodox right now. Harrison and Leo, you'll need these codes. Get online this afternoon, go to the website and fill out the questionnaire. It's extremely important you are entirely truthful. Your answerswill affect how your tier ranking will play out for you as we roll it out over the next few months across the west coast." He pulled out two business cards from a pocket, each with their names, an URL and a twenty-five-digit passcode, and handed them to Leo and I.