Dead Earth: The Green Dawn (2 page)

“I don’t see no damn green in the sky,” Patty
said, walking back to the counter. “I think it’s another one of
Pops’s crazy stories.”

“Sure,” Jubal said, standing up. “Pops is
pulling a fast one on us.”

Pops swiveled his stool away from them,
puffing on his cigar.

“So, Patty. How about those dinners for Damon
and Ma?”

“Sure thing, hotshot. I’ll be right out with
them.”

After Patty left, Pops swiveled his stool
back to face Jubal.

“I also heard they’ve closed the roads into
Nevada, Jubal,” the old man said in a tiny whisper of a voice that
the deputy did not like one bit. Pops Perez scared? He couldn’t
fathom it.

Jubal had heard that the roads into Nevada
had been closed, but like any rumors these past few days, he
couldn’t get confirmation. The newspapers only guessed at things and
so did the talking heads on TV. Everything seemed to be going to
shit all at once, but Jubal refused to let it frustrate him.
Sheriff Damon Ortega wouldn’t get his feathers ruffled in a
situation like this, so neither would Jubal. He’d take things a
step at a time.

He leaned on the counter, his head close to
the old man’s.

“Listen, Pops. Everyone in Serenity is under
a lot of stress right now due to the weird rumors flying around. On
top of that, everyone’s getting sick, and poor Doc Mitchell has his
hands full trying to keep up. What would really help me would be if
you could keep these wild speculations to yourself for a while.
Just until everything settles down a bit, which I’m sure will be
any time now. Can you do that for me?”

“Wild speculations? So you are saying the sky
was not green this morning?”

“No. You and me know it was, but there’s no
sense in working folks up about it. Not until we determine there’s
a real reason to inform everyone.”

“Sure, Jubal, I’ll keep quiet. I’ll do that
for you. I am sorry if I caused any problems.”

“No, you’re fine. Just keep these things to
yourself for now. And try to show a strong face; do it for the
town. Do it for Serenity.”

“Okay, okay. It’s no problem for me.”

Jubal laid his hand on Pops’s back. “Good
man.”

“Here’s your grub,” Patty called, bursting
from between the swinging doors. “Now you tell your mama and the
sheriff to get well real soon and that I’ll be keeping them in my
prayers.”

Jubal took the dinners from her and winked at
Pops. The old man puffed on his cigar, a sad, worried look on his
face.

“I’ll tell ’em, Patty.”

Jubal stood outside Conchita’s with the
Styrofoam-encased meals cradled in his hands. He looked at the sky,
relieved to see endless blue surrounding the blazing sun. There was
nothing as beautiful as a New Mexican sky, and he’d hate to see
anything ruin it.

“This will all blow over,” he said aloud,
then abruptly shut up. He’d been talking to himself a lot this past
week, not that there was anyone around to hear him. They were all
in bed, waiting for Doc Mitchell to pay a visit. But from what the
doc had told Jubal, he wasn’t having much luck determining what
ailed everyone. Some sort of virus, he’d said, trying to keep a
smile on his red, sweating face but failing miserably. There are
lots of viruses going around, he’d said.

So, maybe the sickness would blow over soon,
the sky would remain blue and everyone would go back to town
business.

Or maybe not. Jubal wanted to be an optimist;
they seemed like the happiest people. But with all that life had
shown him, he figured the closest he could get was to be a
realist.

His father—the real guy, not the uniform with
the shiny badge that most of Serenity looked up to; the man Jubal
remembered as sometimes cranky, sometimes drunk and always, at
least until that last day, somewhat careful—once told him that the
world could go tits-up at any moment and all any man could do was
be prepared. Danny Slate’s glass was always half empty. He would
routinely stave off his pessimism through charitable acts, while
secretly suspecting that mankind’s innate badness would someday be
the ruin of everything.

Forcing a smile, Jubal tried to be
cheerier.

As he drove the mile to his mother’s house,
he turned the cruiser’s radio to a classical station; the music
always soothed Jubal. He needed a break from the news about the
aggressive talk from the new China-Russia Consortium and the
endless speculation about Nevada. Somehow, the knowledge that all
of the classical composers and many of the musicians he was
listening to were long dead calmed him, gave him hope that
something good could survive what increasingly looked like bad
times.

He turned into his mother’s driveway and
found the house exactly as he had left it that morning. The porch
light was on and the curtains were drawn.

A fresh knot of anxiety bloomed in his
stomach as he rushed up the steps, but when he stepped into the
living room he found his mother on the couch watching TV.

She slowly lifted her head and gave him a
faint smile.

“I brought you some lunch, Ma.”

“Just put it on the table. I’ll feel like
eating later.”

She looked worse than she had the night
before. Her skin was pale and the circles under her eyes were the
color of day-old bruises. Strands of white hair stood out in sharp
relief to her original, lustrous black. Surely the white hadn’t
appeared overnight; he must have missed it before. She wore a
frayed housecoat and was covered to the waist by a thick comforter
adorned with Navajo artwork. She’d had it since Jubal was a
child.

“Ma, have you had anything to eat today?”

“I had that soup you fixed me.”

“That was last night.”

“And it was good.” She smiled to let him know
she was playing with him. She sat up, sighing with the effort.
“Hand it over, Tex. And get me a fork.”

Jubal hurried into the kitchen to fetch
silverware and napkins.

“Want some water, Ma? Or juice?” he
hollered.

“Just coffee. I made some this morning.”

He poured her a cup, added a little cream,
then returned to the living room. His mother had opened the
Styrofoam box and was staring warily at the contents.

“I guess it’s Wednesday, huh?”

“Eat some of it. Please.” He handed her the
fork and napkins. He set the coffee on the end table.

She ate a forkful, chewing slowly. She looked
ten years older than she normally did and it broke his heart. His
mother was always so active, so vital, volunteering at the church’s
day care, and at the Red Cross. Now he could see the deep lines
etched into that kind face, and she looked as though she’d lost 20
pounds in the past week. He could not remember her having an
illness more serious than a slight cold.

He sat on the couch next to her. She had been
watching a disc of one of his father’s favorite shows: an old
Western called
Gunsmoke
. Dad had loved it as a child and had
tried many times to get his wife interested in it. It wasn’t until
after his death that she watched it, and now hardly a day passed
without a viewing.

They sat silently, his mother chewing as they
both watched Miss Kitty pine for Marshall Dillon.

Finally, Jubal said, “Ma, I’m calling Doc
Mitchell.”

She swallowed, then set the Styrofoam box on
the coffee table. She picked up the coffee from the end table and
took a drink. “No, you won’t. This is just a little bug. I’ll be
fine in a day or two.”

“Ma, it’s all over town, like some kind of
epidemic. I’m calling Doc.”

She waved the suggestion away. “Just sit a
bit and tell me what’s going on.”

Jubal shrugged. “Same old stuff. The diner
was only half full, ’cause of the virus.”

“Is Damon still sick?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going over there
next.”

She patted his arm. “And how is Fiona? She’s
not sick, too, I hope.”

“No, she’s fine.”

“Well when you stop by that drug store, you
tell my future daughter-in-law that I need something to kill this
bug, okay?”

“Sure, Ma.” Speaking of his fiancée made him
feel a little better. And maybe Fiona
would
have a
suggestion that might ease his mother’s symptoms.

“And what about this thing up in the desert?
Anything new?”

Jubal shrugged again, just as he had always
done when talking with his mother. He was aware of it, but helpless
to do anything about it. “Nothing but gossip.”

“They say it’s terrorists, though nobody’s
taking any credit for it. That right there is enough to make me
suspicious.”

Jubal rolled his eyes.
Here we go.

“I was just a girl when they hit us the first
time.”

“I know, Ma.”

“And I never forgot the sight of those people
jumping from that burning tower, knowing they were going to die,
just wanting another second or two of life. I never forgot it.”

Jubal patted her hand. “I know.”

He expected her to be at least a little
teary-eyed, as she usually was when she told the story. Yet when
she turned to face him, he could see anger there. “That’s why it’s
sacrilege to lie about a terrorist attack. It’s bullshit, Jubal.
The army or the CIA has screwed the pooch again and the bastards
are covering it up.” She pointed at the remainder of her lunch. She
had eaten maybe a fourth of it. “Now put that away and let me nap.
Then go see about that fat old sheriff.”

Jubal put the rest of her lunch in the
refrigerator before he went to his room and shut the door. He
called Doc Mitchell’s office and left word with Rosario, Doc’s
long-time secretary, that Jubal would appreciate it if Doc could
drop by the house to check on his mother.

There were advantages to living in a small
town.

Jubal opened a drawer and withdrew a small
notebook. He flipped through several pages before he found the name
he was looking for.

Luke Dressen had been one of Jubal’s best
friends at NMSU. Luke had kidded Jubal constantly about his plan to
return to Serenity to work. As far as Luke was concerned, big
cities were where the excitement was, and he planned to join the
FBI in one of their major field offices. Jubal would never forget
Luke’s aw-shucks grin on graduation day when his friend had said he
had accepted a job with the Pahrump Police Department back in his
hometown.

Jubal punched in Luke Dressen’s number. They
hadn’t spoken for nine months or so, but still kept in touch via
email. In fact, Jubal had received a packet of Luke’s patented
so-bad-they’ll-make-you-groan jokes three weeks ago.

Instead of a ring, Jubal heard a flat metallic
voice informing him that all lines were unavailable until further
notice. The announcement was followed by a fast busy signal.

He hung up and thought about what Pops had
said at the diner. Were the roads into Nevada really blocked by
military vehicles? Jubal had a suspicion that he might have to call
a friend on the state cop force and ask a few questions.

But that would have to wait.

He returned to the living room and found his
mother dozing, while on the screen Festus was trying to explain to
Matt that he wasn’t sleeping; he was just resting his eyes. Jubal
pulled the comforter up to his mother’s shoulders. He heard her
murmuring, the words too faint to understand. She must have been
dreaming, and for some reason he could not understand, this
disturbed him.

He turned off the TV, locked the door and
went to his cruiser.

Beethoven’s third symphony, the “Eroica,”
played on the cruiser’s radio. As he pulled out of the driveway,
Jubal began whistling along with the second movement—until he
realized it was the funeral march portion of the symphony. He
abruptly stopped whistling, but left the radio on anyway; you
didn’t shut off Beethoven.

A sharp static burst interrupted the music
for a moment, but then the signal cleared again.

Sheriff Damon Ortega lived clear across town
from Jubal’s mother, which wasn’t actually that great a distance in
a town the size of Serenity. But Jubal took Lone Peak Road instead
of Main Street. Lone Peak was a dirt road which ran parallel to the
town on its east side; Jubal admitted to himself that he was taking
it so he wouldn’t have to drive through the middle of town again.
He was avoiding the business district although he knew it was his
job to patrol up and down the main thoroughfare, but all those
near-empty sidewalks made him nervous. Besides, Lone Peak would
take him out to Damon’s a lot quicker.

The conditioned air in the car felt good, and
out here, amid the wide-open sun-drenched desert beyond the town’s
edge, he could almost imagine that things were just fine.

Jubal turned up the radio and pressed down on
the accelerator.

In a short while, the deputy pulled up in
front of a silver-paneled house built into the side of a small
hill. Parked in the dirt yard in front of the house was a shiny,
black Dodge Beamrider truck: Damon’s pride and joy. Hell, the
solar-powered vehicle, which Damon washed every day religiously,
probably cost more than the solar-powered house the sheriff was so
proud of.

Jubal turned off the radio with some
reluctance; he did not want to face the silence. Usually he didn’t
mind the quiet; in fact he cherished his quiet times. But today, he
felt down and lonesome and he knew the silence would only intensify
these feelings.

A mourning dove cooed its particular song as
Jubal rang the doorbell.

No one answered, so he jammed his thumb
against the button again.

The door swung open.

“Okay, okay,” said the large shadowy shape
inside the door’s frame. “Don’t break the damn thing. C’mon
in.”

Jubal removed his sunglasses and entered the
house.

“Man, it’s dark in here. You’d think a fancy
all-solar house would be lit up like...the sun,” Jubal said.

“I need it dark in here. Me and the sun
aren’t getting along too well just now; it aggravates my symptoms.”
As if on cue, Damon barked a lung-rattling cough.