United Earth NY City October 2094 Ch1

=NY City October 2094=

The dead man lay with his face down on his bed, his arms still tied with plastic cable ties. The sheets and covers pooled around his feet. The back of his head gone, instead there was a gorey mess of blood.

He had on a pair of dirty socks and his skinny white legs were covered with a fluff of hair. he was otherwise butt naked. The apartment smelled of old clothes and moldy air and something else. Bruce Thurlow recognized that other smell. It was the scent of a body. Brutally violated giving up its life. It was a smell that had intrigued him once. Then it had depressed him. Now, it was just something he was used to, it was part of the job.

Bruce was a reporter with the New York Times Online Edition and he stood at the dead man’s bedroom door, Iphone in hand speaking notes about everything he saw in a bullet list type of style. The same kind style he had used in high school and the Navy and four years of newspaper work.

Detective Joe Connors saw him at the door frame and separated himself from the cops, the ME and CSI. He and Bruce were friends, well at least as much as a cop and a reporter could be. Connors was in his late forties, overweight and wore a tan trench coat that flapped about his calves. There was a fair amount of gray stubble on his chin where he had misses shaving this morning, and his thining gray and black hair combed over a balding scalp and stuck in place with the help of some sort of moist shimmering hair gel.

“['[Oh for Christ’s sake]], Bruce get out of here, will ya? How did you get past the yellow tape up front anyway?” He asked shoving Bruce backwards.“I let you see the stiff, once ME and CSI are done. Anymore and the rest of the media that shows up wants the same treatment and we never getting rid of your kind ever again.”

Bruce smiled his best ‘your my buddy’ smile.“Come along then, chat with me for a second or two, will you? I got a deadline coming up. Newspapers need all the edge nowadays.”

“And have a story that beats the big boys from Google News, MSNBC and the likes, eh?”

“Exactly. By the way there was no yellow tape at the back door when I got in.”

“Remind me to chew the uniforms a new one for that.”

Two steps and they were in the kitchen. A younger detective, Joe’s partner wearing latex gloves crouched before the overflowing trash can and digging through a bunch of discarded TV dinner boxes and sticky plastic trays.

The apartment is small and cluttered and to Bruce’s trained eyes it had been searched. Drawers were open, closet doors ajar and clothing and dishes scattered across the floor.

The cushions of the sofa sliced open and the stuffing spilling out like yellow canker sores.

The kitchen floor was linoleum and there were two metal bows side by side right next to the kitchen table. There were dishes still in the sink, a cereal bowl and an empty stained coffee mug, with Snoopy sitting on his red doghouse, dressed as world war one fighter ace imprinted on it.

An ancient Apple desktop, a flat screen Toshiba TV, and a pile of newspapers and magazines next to the mutilated shabby looking couch in the living room.

The characteristic whining of an incoming moon shuttle was suddenly heard overhead coming in to JFK airport.

The carpet was light brown and threadbare along the edges, with a faint pattern of bluish rectangles.

The door had three locks and two deadbolts in addition to two door chains. This was nothing unusual for any apartment in New York and especially in a neighborhood like this. Now as winter was approaching fast and the many homeless looked for places to be warm. He noticed that none of the locks appeared to be broken and the door frame was intact.

During the past five years working for the NYTOnlineEdition, Bruce had run into Joe on a fairly routine basis. Bruce was technically a general assignment reporter, but he mostly covered crime.Despite all the chaos in the world murder was still a crime. He and the older detective had a good work relationship.

Joe was more or less straight when it came to news and Bruce was equally polite when it came to asking the questions. Joe handed Bruce a bone once in a while and he made sure the department was never misquoted and things that were not supposed to find their way online, stayed out.

Joe sighed wishing for a cigarette and popped a Nicorette gum instead.“What we have here is one David Putnam. Age 59, apparent big bore something gunshot point blank and through a pillow to the back of his head.” Joe’s accent still had the unique New Jersey flavor, despite the fact that Joe was now working on this side of the river for over thirty years. “Poor bastard was tortured so it seems before his lights were turned off, permanently.And the shootin’ hardware was something new and fancy.”

Carl recording it all with his phone said.“Well him being shot seems obvious.”

“Yep, smart ass. It sure looks that way, but I am not calling it a shooting death until the ME says so. And the ghoul is still busy. Would make me look like an idiot if they turn him around and find a knife through his heart, right?”Despite the depressing and gruesome sight, in the next room. Bruce could not fight the hard grin that curled his lips.“Yeah I guess that makes sense. Any guesses who might done the shooting? You said something about a fancy gun, Looking at the door, it doesn’t look like forced entry. What do you think?“”

Joe hefted his watery eyes at Bruce, chewed on his wad of nicotine gum and gave Bruce the look.“I think those gums are awful, I tell you, but tobacco use is now outlawed within the city limits of New York.Not that I could even afford a five pack. 2 Gold Pennies would you believe that?”

“Joe...”

“I better go back to the CSI guys and tell them we might deal with a shooter and have a closer look at the door.”

“Joe, I think it is pretty obvious the old bugger got shot. Who’s got guns in New York city these days? The cops and organized crime. Not civilians and certainly not the average homeless or street thug. So what do you think?

“Still there is plenty of hardware out there and now with them damn aliens, we suddenly find ourselves with guns that don’t look like guns and leave nothing but ashes.Whatever killed that poor bastard wasn’t made by Smith & Wesson.”

“That dead schmuck wasn’t blasted by some Saran laser. That head was busted open by some sort of slug, right?”“I think you crossing the line from being a reporter to being a god damn PI or something and a royal pain in my ass.”

“It’s my exposure to you,Joe. I soaked up all that crime scene expertise seeing you at work. How did the call come in?”

“He got a friend downstairs, I’ll think it’s the super or something. He heard some noise last night. Thought it might have been the TV. Then David didn’t show up for their usual lunch. When he came up to check he found the door not completely closed. He pushed it open, saw the body and called us.”

Joe wrapped the gum in a piece of tissue and put it in his pocket.“God awful these things! ” The detective again gave Joe a quizzical look.“Come to think of, what explains your presence? Especially since we don’t use open radio anymore.”

“You are not the only friend I got in the precinct, Joe.” Bruce looked around the kitchen and then asked.“Anything like suspects or theories?”

“C’mon, we’ve been here all of 30 minutes and you fouling up the crime scene for almost that long.”

“Burglary gone sour? Home invasion would explain the cable ties.”

“Look, Bruce, get the hell out, will ya?”

“Just give me a few seconds.” Bruce made a gesture that included the whole place. “No pictures and no paper books. You’d think this old guy would have pictures of family and friends on the walls. But no, nothing.”

He looked at the magazines.Time, featuring well aged Baron Trump on the cover. Reader’s Digest with a picture of Barron Trump. National Geographic with a feature story about the first manned landing on Venus. There were several copies of Stars and Stripes and a Sports Illustrated. The Reader Digest explained perhaps the lack of books. He didn’t see a Kindle or Smartphone anywhere.

“Bruce let’s go.”

“I am out of here.”

By the door, he finally figured what was bothering him. It was the coat that was hanging right by the door.Old desert camo parka, torn and mended, no insignia, no patches.

Bruce glanced back, the coroner’s men just lifted the the black body bag onto the gurney. Holy Shit. Could it be? The guy claimed to be a veteran. Bruce remembered.

It had happened a month ago, the first cold day of September. A truly awful day. For six hours he’d been standing on a pier on the Hudson Bay,waiting for harbor patrol to fish for a stolen car. A bunch of Opio-boys had driven straight off the pier during a police chase the night before. Their stunned parents huddled by the end of the pier, ready to identify the drowned remains. When the pushy ashhole of CBSNews.com shoved past him to interview the parents and the two homeless looking men that had witnessed everything. He was actually kind of glad it wasn’t him who had to talk to the distraught parents.

Chuck, the reporter for Fox News seemed equally relieved.“I guess that is an exclusive they can have. I am satisfied with a few seconds of car being fished out the drink and a short commentary.”

“Yeah, thank God I don’t have to talk to the families and get the usual “How do you feel” feely bullshit for the local news section, no one really going to read our crap or watch the footage anyway.”

Chuck gave him a knowing look.“Do you think anyone is clicking on the Local new section for a piece of two kids high on some new drug?” He answered his own question.“Nope, they going to watch that crazy Dr. Isah flying that fire engine of his around Freedom One, or check the prices on trans system flights to a Saran world. ”

“What are you going to do when they come? Evacuate or stay?”

Chuck snorted and spat on the wet asphalt.“They not going to have enough seats for 18 billion people. You know it and I know it, there are not going to be any evacuation arks from our new friends from beyond. They suck the elite, take the rich and the rest is going to be Xunx food.”

Bruce knew his colleague was right.“Well they say it is going to be another hundred years before they come. Maybe you and me won’t be here anyway.”

“That’s to keep the people from panicking. I tell you, it’s going to happen sooner than anyone expects. ” Bruce tipped two fingers to his forehead and walked away with his drone operator, perhaps to get some footage on the car that was now sitting on the hard surface and behind yellow police tape.

The he felt a touch on his elbow, and heard an old man’s voice.“Are you a reporter?”

Bruce turned around. The man stood on the cracked concrete and asphalt surface of the no longer used pier, no one imported or exported much these days; some candy wrappers and pieces of waste paper swirling about his feet, kicked up from a stiff breeze.

No one in particular paid attention to the man. He was tall, wearing a military camouflage parka, like they had issued during the war. He also wore military boots, scuffed and worn. His army parka was bereft of any insignia, rank pins or unit patches. even the name tag was torn off.His hands were shaking and he quickly shoved them into the deep pocket of the parka. His face was pale and had the same color as a chinese dumpling, or in other words virtually none. He had dark rings under his blood shot eyes asd if he had not slept for the last five years.

His hair was thin and gray and appeared unwashed and stringy.

“Yes I am a reporter, but I am done here, if you have seen what happened, you want to talk to the drone operators and flash-news guys of the big websites.”

Bruce paused for a moment. “...you are a veteran of the Chinese campaign right, seeing your camo and all.”

“Yep, US Army” The old man noticed Bruce’s underarm tattoo. “So are you it seems.”

Bruce nodded and reached in his pocket for a Silver chit.

The old man shook his head.“I am not panhandling. Put your money away. This is not why I approached you. I am a veteran and aye they forgot us, but I’ve never begged. Not once!”

“I am sorry then, what is it I can do for you?”

He looked around and stepped forward, his breath smelling of cheap liquor. “I got something for you. A hell of a story. But only if you have the guts to run with it. Them damn aliens looking over everybody’s shoulders and all.”

“That is for my editor to decide. What’s it about?”

The old man lowered his head and looked around as if to make sure no one else was within earshot. “Something really bad. But something everyone needs to know about. It just might be the biggest story ever since those aliens landed or that black shrouded spook dissolved nation states more or less overnight and without asking anyone for permission to do so.”

He looked around and held the seams of his parka close with his left. “You know there are people getting killed for speaking their minds, even five years after the world stopped spinning.”

Bruce watched the old man getting agitated, it all sounded like the cock and bull story of a boozer, but there was something about the way the old man spoke. Damn, Bruce thought he is a veteran, he deserves better. Heck we all deserved better.”

“I tell you what, Mr....?”

The old man shook his head again. “Oh no, no names, not yet, but tell me will you do the story?”

“I don’t know what it is all about, but if it is of public interest and attracts clicks I am sure my editor will put it online. Why don’t you let me look at what you got?”

The old man showed signs of relief and revealed several missing teeth as he grinned. “Good, that’ ll be good. Look I have some important documents, something important to show to you. Here is just a taste, so you know I am not fibbin’.”

He handed Bruce a smudgy ancient looking thumb drive. “That is where the story should start. On that thumb drive is stuff that should get you hooked. I be right here tomorrow afternoon, come if you dare to hear more. If you don’t show up or think I am just a loon Vet, I go somewhere else.”

Bruce knew what the old man meant with ‘Going somewhere else.’

But despite that, tomorrow he’d take the old guy for lunch at Denny’s for the best meal the unkempt geezer had in ages and listen to his tales of conspiracies involving the Saran Queen, the Xunx and perhaps even one of the new popes.

Bruce would nod at all the right places, pretend to record the stuff, then slip him ten chits of silver and then go home and get drunk because of all the old memories the old man had brought to the surface. So be it.

“Fine,“Bruce said. “Tomorrow, right here.”

“Good.” The old man looked as if he wanted to say something else, but then he swung around and walked away, his step more confident. That was the last time Bruce had seen of him. The fellow veteran had not shown up the next day, or the day after. After four days, Bruce had given up on him.

The memory stick had a equally ancient word document on it. A simple list of six names. A quick google search revealed to many possibilities but none of the names seemed in any way connected or showed up as part of something even remotley interesting.

he then had more or less forgotten about the whole thing.

Now he was standing in the hallway of David Putnam, breathing deeply. The old man had a name after all and now he was dead.

He shook off his promise to the detective to leave the place and went downstairs to the next landing and rang the doorbell.

No answer.We’ll let’s try the super. He went down four floors and rang the bell at the door marked, ‘Tony Andrews. Superintendent’.

The buzzer was answered right away and the door opened only as far as the heavy chain allowed.“I already gave my statement.”

Bruce decided to walk on thin ice as he said.“We only have a few more questions, Mr. Andrews.”

The door closed, the chain was removed and opened again to reveal an older man, with only the partial remnant of a gray ring of hair around most of his otherwise bald head. What he lacked in terms of hair, he surely made up in the ear department. They were big and fleshy, competing with the bulbous nose that stuck into the world above a small mouth.

The man was wearing a housecoat that partially covered a wife beater undershirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. His feet in worn senior Nikes and his left hand in the coat pocket. There was an intense distinct smell, Bruce instantly recognized. Someone had smoked in here and only recently. Not the New York state legal marijuana, but illegal tobacco. Sixteen years since his last cigarette and the craving was back instantly.

The man let him in and closed the door.“How long will you guys be in here, you figure?”

“Craving another cigarette, Mr. Andrews and afraid someone might smell it, even through the door?”

The old super dropped his shoulders even more.“This is my house and I should be able to do whatever I want in my own four walls.”

“I doubt it will take all day. There are only so many man hours than can be spend on something like this. No worries, Mr. Andrews I am not going to say a word about the smoking, but I would be obliged if you tell me again what you have told already and maybe answer a few questions.”

Andrew sighed, Bruce couls not really tell if it was a sigh of relief or a sigh of annoyance.“We might as well sit down for that, I brewed some substitute, care for a cup?”

Bruce nodded.“Sure I have one.”

He followed the man into the kitchen with a small hard plastic table and two shabby chairs. There were bottles of condiments lined up at the wall facing side of the table and a prominent ash stained glass dish in the middle. The window, framed by curtains that once might have been white was covered with the peel of stickers of ‘Substi Do-good’, the advertisement character of Mellow Brew. Both the character and the syntho-coffee substitute of Schwartz Foods could be found in almost every household, up and down the East Coast. Each pack of ten pouches came with a collectible peel of sticker with Substi and his friends in various situations and costumes. The number of stickers on the window and the wall next to it were a testament to the frequency the man consumed this product.

While the old man placed a pouch of Substi into the Squeeze-and-brew and placed a coffee mug under the dispenser spout, Bruce kept looking around and noticed a KaBar fighting knife in its scabbard mounted in a frame. The light did not allow him to see the inscription on the associated brass plaque.

The old man put two mugs on the table. “This was David’s mug, I hope you don’t mind. I only got two mugs.”

“No I don’t mind.” Bruce took the mug and helped himself to a little whitener, what the company called a plant based non dairy milk substitute.

The old man said.” David and I weren’t friends or anything like that. But he and I decided to have lunch together every other day. Ever since his Beagle died, he was even more depressed than usual and heck I am not doing much better. I had a good career as an AI developer for MS in Seattle. I guess I was lucky I was overseas in a Cyberwar unit of the Army when the Taliban ICBM flattened the Emerald City and my aunt left me this building.”

Bruce did not get the impression that this was a former computer guys abode, but the war and the global changes had done the strangest things to people.

Tony took a sip, then said.“When he didn’t show up as usual, I went up, found the door unlocked and not completely closed so I knocked and after the third of fourth knock I went in and found the poor bastard in the condition he is now. I called it in and that’s about it.”

“You knocked?”

“Yes, David had his door chime disabled. Drove his crazy fat Snoopy dog crazy.”

“Did he have any family?”

“Not that I know off. he never mentioned anyone but his dog. We didn’t talk much. Heck I didn’t know his name was David for over a year. He is a quiet tenant ,pays his rent...” Tony sighed.“I better talk about him in the past tense now.”

“This is a few grades above rent controlled housing. How did he pay the rent? I mean there is virtually no support from Washington.”

“There is some support if you complain long enough and stand in line for days. Now that is a crime you guys should investigate.”

Tony leaned back.“Besides I can charge whatever rent I fucking choose and I charged David a little less. He fought in the worst hell over there and when he comes back is supposed to live in a tent or whatever, because some freak with a hood declares nations obsolete and threatens to kill all world leaders who didn’t comply?”

Bruce pressed his lips together and nodded.“That Guardian did kill quite a few just to prove he can do exactly that.”

“To hell with that thing. That’s where I think he came from in the first place.”

“Is anyone else living here that might have heard or seen something?”

“If Miss Anderson would still be here,“Tony mused,“she could tell you the number of nose hair the bastard had. Unfortunately the boy living in the apartment now is stoned when he is here.” He took the last sip out of the mug.“The name is Kelly Hawk, he is the definition of a looser, but gets his chits from a well to do mother. He plays in a band or something and hasn’t been in when you guys buzzed the door. Selena Burton one floor up might have heard something, but she works at a roof garden company and isn’t in till later this afternoon.”

Bruce felt he heard enough from now and got up, finished the lukewarm rest of his Substi. Thanked the old man and left the apartment.