Growing into the Job, Post 625: Licking their Wounds (Patreon)

“The early resistance was learning from its mistakes. Slowly. Very slowly.”
- Lakshmi Vallurupalli

The problem with Gray Man’s basement, as far as HQ's go, was that it smelled like Gray Man’s basement. There was really no other nicer way to describe it: stale suburbia with hints of damp concrete, old carpet and laundry detergent. Something vaguely fungal coming from behind the fake wood paneling and twenty years of furnace dust added to the mystique as did the lingering suggestion of cat litter that, in fairness, might actually have been Ned.

The basement though was - as Buzzcut had declared upon arrival - “secure”, even if Anderson had pointed out that it had three ground-level windows, a sliding glass door onto the backyard, an unsecured Wi-Fi router upstairs broadcasting GUILDERSFAMILY5G, and Gray Man’s wife periodically coming downstairs to ask whether anybody wanted pizza rolls.

Buzzcut had told Anderson to shut the fuck up. It…was…secure.

Ned sat heavily on a folding chair near the old pool table, elbows on his knees, staring at a brownish stain in the carpet while the rest of Sons of Resistance Cell IL-5 command assembled around him.

Nobody was saying much. That was unusual. Normally there would have been arguments. Marauder telling somebody about a shotgun he wanted to buy. Pimples complaining that everybody still called him Pimples. Hunter explaining something about skinning deer that nobody had asked about. Anderson trying to explain basic computer security to men who reused the same password for everything.

Tonight, though, the atmosphere was different because tonight there was a television. And Ned was on it. Or, technically, Ned had been on it. Buzzcut had paused the recording.

The television was an old fifty-inch Vizio Fromm Costco that Gray Man had mounted above a little electric fireplace. Anderson, who was still living here while kinda sorta on the run (from his sister), would watch his 80’s horror movies on it, late nights. Currently, though, frozen across its screen was Channel 5’s Thanksgiving coverage from the Northwood Community Center. It had been broadcast last night. 

And there was Melissa Monroe.

Even frozen in a shitty local-news frame she somehow seemed to dominate the picture and draw every eye in the room. Gray Man was hoping no one could see his boner; he’d jerked off enough times to this woman that it was like some sort of Pavlov’s dog thing, at this point. But yeah there she was:, towering behind one of the serving tables in a Far Horizons T-shirt, smiling down at an elderly woman while she handed her something wrapped in foil.

Behind her were volunteers, families and kids. The little dude they called “Dr. J” was there too, barely visible between two women much larger than himself, carrying a stack of foam containers. Most disturbing, though, at least to Buzzcut, was what was there on the far left side of the screen:

Ned.

His face was partially obscured by some lady’s winter hat, but there was no mistaking him. Not at his size, and not in that jacket that Buzzcut had specifically told him never to wear during operational activity.

Buzzcut stood beneath the television with the remote in one hand. He had already watched the footage, several times, apparently. “Reconnaissance,” Buzzcut said, “that’s what you say you were doing?”

Ned swallowed. “Yeah.”

Buzzcut nodded slowly. “Reconnaissance?” he asked again. 

“Yeah,” Ned replied, with another slow nod.

The rest of IL-5 watched, Gray Man standing beside the pool table, arms folded. Mustache had taken one of the dining-room chairs from upstairs and sat backward on it, forearms across its back, listening intently and making mental notes. Hunter was nursing a beer. Pimples looked absolutely delighted that somebody other than him was getting shit tonight. None seemed quite as concerned as Buzzcut aside from Anderson, who was looking at the television with the increasingly troubled expression of a man who suspected he was witnessing evidence.

Buzzcut pointed the remote at Ned. “So, explain something to me…”

Ned looked up. He had hated it when Buzzcut texted him a screenshot of it at 6:14 last night with nothing except:

CALL ME.

Ned hadn’t called. He’d turned off his phone.

“Did you take pictures of the bit-…employees from that Barbie Fucking Hospital?” Buzzcut asked him. 

“No,” Ned answered. 

“Write down license plates? Record voice samples? Make any notes?”

“No, no and, uh…no.”

“Did you learn anything?”

Ned felt every face in the basement turn toward him. He looked at the frozen television again. He had learned things, and deep in that little ADHD-addled mind of his he knew that that was the problem. He’d learned that the cranberry sauce was homemade. He’d learned that Melissa Monroe remembered her eighth-grade social studies teacher and hugged her hard enough that the old woman disappeared against her stomach, both smiling. He’d learned that one of the Far Horizons chicks had gone outside without a coat because some little girl had spilled cranberry sauce all over herself and she’d given the kid her hoodie. 

He’d learned Melissa could laugh really loudly. He’d learned she called everybody honey or sweetie.  He’d learned that when she talked to you, she looked directly at you. Not over you or through you, but at you.

And he remembered that when he finally reached the front of the line after spending nearly forty minutes telling himself exactly what he was going to do when he got there, Melissa Monroe had looked down at him and smiled like she was actually happy to see him. Like: ‘Hey! There you are!’ Like she’d been waiting, like he belonged there. Then she’d said something about there being plenty left and piled so much turkey onto his plate that the foam underneath had bent.

Ned had stood there with his right hand in his coat pocket, wrapped around the grip. 

And he’d done nothing.

It would’ve been easier if she had been a bitch, if she’d looked down at him the way Buzzcut said women like her looked down at everybody. But she hadn’t. That was the part he couldn’t explain. Like, if she’d sneered at him, or if she’d laughed at his clothes, called security when she looked at the bulge in his pocket, or acted like the giant fucking monster Buzzcut said she was.

Or even just ignored him. That would have made it easier, too. Instead she’d given him turkey and smiled and made him feel special in the space of like ten seconds. Who the fuck does that?

“Ned?!?”

Ned blinked.

Buzzcut was staring at him. “I asked if you learned anything!”

Ned’s eyes flicked toward Melissa Monroe again, frozen on the screen, tits still huge. “No,” he answered, “Nothing important.”

Buzzcut stared at him for several seconds. Then he threw the remote onto the pool table. Then he looked at the screen again. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ned,” he began, starting to pace, “You know what pisses me off about this? It’s not that you went without telling me. It’s not that you’re now on their fucking lady radar, on their news channel, in their files. Sending somebody there for intel was actually maybe a smart fucking thing, especially after your fuckup of Plan B-“

Mustache frowned. “Was the bomb Plan B?”

“Yes the bomb was Plan B…” Gray Man offered. 

“Had there been a Plan A?” asked Pimples. 

“The lawyers,” answered Gray Man. 

Buzzcut had stopped. He was looking at Cell IL-5 like they were the world’s worst morons. Buzzcut resumed pacing.

Ned’s shoulders bunched. He knew he was about to get yelled at. Again. 

“The problem is you were twenty fucking feet from her!” yelled Buzzcut. 

Ned said nothing. I got a lot closer than that. 

“The primary fucking target of this entire operation is standing right fucking there,” the yelling continued, “and you’re wandering around behind some grandma with a paper plate like you’re waiting for seconds!”

A couple guys chuckled. Buzzcut looked at them. They stopped. Buzzcut wasn’t laughing. “Why didn’t you bring a firearm?!?!”

Still Ned said nothing. Hunter suddenly became fascinated by his beer. Anderson cleared his throat.

“You fucked up, Ned,” Buzzcut lamented, punching his fist into the top of the old, worn couch, “royally. Just like you did with the bomb.”

At that, Anderson rose a finger. “For what it’s worth, from a sentencing perspective, I think the failure to detonate was probably-”

Every head turned toward him. Anderson paused, the room fell into silence as Buzzcut pointed at him, without looking.  

“Not. Helping,” said the ex-Coast Guard as Ned sank deeper into the folding chair and, above them, footsteps crossed the kitchen.

A moment later Gray Man’s wife’s voice came from the top of the basement stairs: “DOES ANYBODY WANT PIZZA ROLLS?”

Nobody said anything. They looked at Gray. 

“N-no h-hun we’re o-o-okay…” he called out in answer. 

“I’M MAKING SOME ANYWAY!”

Buzzcut stared at the ceiling. The leader of Cell IL-5 closed his eyes. Then Buzzcut looked back down. He needed ten fucking seconds to think without one of these dipshits saying something. Because the truth was, on the face of it, Plan B had been kind of a disaster. Not a total disaster; Buzzcut wasn’t willing to go that far. Operations had setbacks. Everybody knew that. Normandy probably hadn’t gone exactly according to plan either, and nobody went around calling Eisenhower an asshole or an idiot or insulted his truck.

But, yeah, the bomb hadn’t exploded. That was a setback. Worse, the FBI apparently suspected the Sons. Buzzcut had seen that chesty curly-haired reporter on Channel 5 talking about “local male-rights terrorist cells” before the fucking bomb squad had even finished hauling Ned’s dud out of Far Horizons. The phrase had been all over the news since. Male-rights terrorists. Domestic extremists. Sons of Resistance. They were saying the name now, at least. Buzzcut had to admit that part felt pretty good. It was a name to be proud of. A worldwide movement. 

Far Horizons had tightened security, though. Camera Guy had confirmed that, as had Mustache. Freaky new guards, new cameras, police cars swinging through the parking lot more often. Employees checking badges. Some entrances closed completely.

And Melissa Monroe? Now people talked about the bitch like she was practically a fucking saint - or worse. There’d been stories about the scene inside during the attempted bombing, personal profiles, stories about Far Horizons bravely reopening, stories about their Thanksgiving charity thing. Melissa Monroe smiling, Melissa Monroe hugging old ladies, Melissa Monroe serving turkey, Melissa Monroe talking about peace and love and how they wouldn’t be intimidated.

Buzzcut glanced up at the frozen television and Ned, apparently, getting fucking lunch. So, tactically speaking, Plan B had accomplished approximately dick. Strategically, though…

Buzzcut rubbed his jaw. There had been something. The chatter had changed after the bombing. He’d noticed it first in the forums. Places he’d been posting for months where the same thirty or forty guys usually traded memes and complained about their wives. Suddenly people were talking about New Corinth. Talking about IL-5. Not by that name, obviously - OPSEC - but everybody knew. Threads about the Far Horizons attack had hundreds of replies before moderators killed them. New accounts were appearing. Guys Buzzcut had never seen before were asking how they could help.

Some called the bombing a failure, others called it a beginning. Buzzcut preferred those guys. And then, from one of them, there was the PM. That was different. It hadn’t come through any of their normal channels. Whoever sent it had somehow found one of the encrypted accounts Anderson had set up and contacted Buzzcut directly. No name. No handle he’d recognized. No manifesto. Just somebody claiming to represent people who had been watching what was happening in New Corinth.

People who were, apparently, sympathetic.

‘Your organization has courage but lacks infrastructure and resources.’

Buzzcut had read that sentence maybe fifteen times. He particularly liked the courage part. They knew about Far Horizons. They knew about the Sons. More unsettlingly, they seemed to know things about IL-5 that Buzzcut hadn’t put online anywhere. But they’d offered help: secure communications, money, equipment. Weapons. Recruitment. Even someplace better to meet - a new HQ. 

That last one had seemed particularly attractive after Gray Man’s wife had walked downstairs during their previous strategy session carrying a laundry basket and asked Buzzcut to move his rifle because she needed to get to the dryer.

He showed three of the other guys. Ned and Gray Man got excited. Anderson thought it was a trap. Of course Anderson thought it was a trap - Anderson thought fucking everything was a trap. Buzzcut wasn’t convinced it wasn’t one or just another internet weirdo offering to help overthrow feminism from his mom’s spare bedroom.

They wanted another conversation, and Buzzcut hadn’t answered yet. He looked around the basement: Gray Man was scratching his neck, Mustache was staring at the floor, Pimples was picking something out from between his teeth. Hunter had finished his beer. Anderson looked like Anderson. Ned sat slumped in his folding chair beneath a television displaying photographic evidence that he had either gone to assassinate somebody or had lined up with other morons to get Thanksgiving dinner.

Buzzcut’s jaw tightened. He needed a Plan 3, bad. Because eventually these idiots were going to figure out that he didn’t have one and that wouldn’t be goo-

DING-DONG.

Every head in the basement lifted. The doorbell, from upstairs.

Gray Man froze. 

There was a moment of silence. Then footsteps as Gray Man’s wife crossed the kitchen overhead.

Nobody moved.

Buzzcut frowned. Hunter slowly lowered his empty beer bottle. Mustache turned his head toward the stairs. Anderson’s expression changed first as his eyes widened

“HONEY?” came Gray Man’s wife from upstairs.

Gray Man looked up. “Y-yeah?”

“THERE’S SOME WOMAN HERE FOR YOU??”

Gray Man went absolutely still as every head turned toward him.

“A w-woman?” he called back.

Upstairs, Gray Man’s wife answered: “I DON’T KNOW! SOME…BRUNETTE!”

Anderson was already looking around the basement: there were the three ground-level windows, sliding glass door, stairs, and the exit out to the driveway. He appeared to be calculating all four simultaneously, like a trapped rat suddenly informed that one of the exits might contain a cat. Or a fucking nine-foot tall lioness. 

Buzzcut looked at Gray Man. Gray Man looked at Buzzcut. Mustache stood up. Pimples stopped chewing whatever it was he was chewing. Hunter’s hand drifted unconsciously toward his jacket where he had a pistol. Ned, strangely, looked almost hopeful.

Nobody said the name that had entered the room without being spoken.

Gray Man turned white and Buzzcut’s hand went automatically toward the firearm at his side.

Then Gray Man’s wife called down again.

“SHE SAYS HER NAME’S ANGIE!!”

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