Free Red the First by C. D. Verhoff Page B

learned
how to swim against the current to reach the source, but entering
the general’s mind was like diving into a mighty river. The torrent
threatened to sweep her away, but she fought with all her strength
and skill. In her limited experience, she had never met a mind
quite like this before.
    Her hand stopped writing as she gazed
into space—the general’s innermost space. She saw images of steam
coming out of the radiator of a jeep and the general’s weathered
brown hands trying to fix the problem. Next came images of endless
highways and camping out under the cover of trees with starlight
flickering overhead. She also saw numerous occasions when the
general pulled an unusual-looking phone from the secret pocket
inside his flannel shirt. Holy crap…the thing was powered by a
nuclear battery. The general worried that carrying it so close to
his chest would give him cancer, but he held onto the phone like a
lifeline nevertheless.
    “ I’m in,” she let Red know
with a whisper.
    As General Moore talked to Hewego’s
senior council members, pictures ran through his head. These
pictures generated the words he used, but he carefully filtered
everything he said. Not that he intended to conceal anything, nor
did he intend to mislead them; the man was simply so disciplined
that every word, every action, had to pass an inspection
first.
    She saw him camped out on the side of a
road, a pup tent in the background, warming beans over a small
fire. He placed a call on his nuclear phone. She couldn’t make out
what the party on the other end of the line was saying, but she saw
his thoughts grow darker and graver. He appeared to age ten years
all at once. He collapsed into a mound, scraping the dirt with his
nails, and sobbed. From the short trip inside his mind, she
understood that he wasn’t an emotional kind of guy. What could have
possibly gotten to him like that? Elizabeth didn’t want to
know.
    She knew she ought to look away, break
the link, but like some sicko driving past a fresh car wreck, she
couldn’t help but stare.
    “ Elizabeth.” Veronica came
to her chair, setting her hands on both Elizabeth’s shoulders. “You
look pale. Are you feeling okay?”
    She shook her head, fighting back
tears—the general’s tears. “Just a bad piece of meat, I
think.”
    Veronica returned to her own seat,
while Elizabeth maintained her link with the general.
    On the journey to Hewego, he had met up
with two guys carrying machine guns. They both addressed him as
General Moore. She couldn’t be sure whether these were genuine
memories or delusions, but she was inclined to think the former.
His mind wasn’t a jumbled tangled mess like a deranged person’s
would be—she’d touched a few minds of the mentally ill in the past
few years, and this man was not one of those. In fact, the
general’s mind was extraordinarily organized—like hanging files
where everything was neatly labeled, and all the corners of the
paperwork matched up without any curled edges. General Moore
genuinely believed himself to be the highest ranking member of the
United States government to have survived the plague. She perceived
him as Atlas, the weight of the world bowing his back, and he
needed others to help shoulder the burden. Her chest felt like it
was being crushed in a vice, but she had to learn more.
    She paused to make a few notes on the
paper, so it at least looked like she was keeping proper minutes,
but writing wasn’t easy when the world felt like it was spinning
out of control. Thirst seized her parched throat. Her fingers
grasped for a nearby glass of water and she gulped most of it down
like she’d just run a marathon. She ignored the inquisitive glares
of her fellow council members as she re-entered General Moore’s
mind.
    She saw him in a huge planetarium
filled with military people and politicians. He wore a starched
white shirt, black tie and a blue jacket with four gleaming stars
on each shoulder. Everyone in the room was