chapter 37
11:22
Everybody was free to take a walk, Tyler had said—keeping to the area framed by the cluster of buildings—as long as they donned blue overalls, wide-brimmed hats, and refrained from looking upward. The chances of being photographed by satellites was slim, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
Floyd stepped outside the house, his feeling of uneasiness increasing. He breathed deep and dug his hands in his pockets. Lucky Laurel. She was still asleep after her night shift by Russo’s side, but he hadn’t managed a wink. Although Russo had recovered consciousness for only a few minutes, it was obvious his mind was in one piece. That could only mean Tyler and the others would make their move soon. The city had been sealed tight; that much he’d gathered from the stream of news blaring from the radio and frequent interruptions on TV. whatever the plan, when they left the estate they’d run straight into the gauntlet the DHS had thrown nationwide.
He glanced around. Tyler had sworn they would be reasonably safe at the farm unless the DHS launched a house-to-house hunt. But Floyd shook his head in frustration. Going it solo would be tantamount to suicide; his biometric data would by now be lodged in the hardware of every officer’s pad and squad car.
He stopped, glanced around, and tried to get his bearings by studying the different structures. A diagram set on a glazed frame by the house’s entrance displayed a large property, almost two hundred fifty acres, ten times larger than when Tyler had bought it more than fifteen years before. It seemed the government had contributed a large tract a few years ago, but Tyler had not offered more explanations. Shaped roughly like an 8 and divided by a small river where the circles met, the business end was centered in the middle of the lower circle. Although most operations were automated, the farm was the livelihood of many people. But only Tyler and Antonio and his family lived within the compound enclosing the farm buildings. The workers, mostly from Chile, lived on the other side of the river, on the farthest edge of the upper part of the 8, in a row of cottages nestled by a two-story building, with labs built with subsidies from two universities. According to Tyler and Antonio, the farm was a “clean” address, widely known in farming and husbandry circles as a test bed of innovation, connected with ecological energy sources and autosufficiency—a good background to justify movements in and out of the area, and a sound alibi when stopped at roadblocks.
He took another breath and let it out, long and slow. Other than a cup of coffee, he’d had no breakfast. Dread gripping his stomach had prevented him from eating anything solid.
As Floyd breached the gap between two barns, he nodded to a man in overalls leaning against a wall with what Floyd thought was a knapsack strapped over his shoulder. Then he did a quick double take when he identified a mean-looking semiautomatic carbine attached to the strap. To defend them or keep them in? Floyd guessed it was the latter. Tyler was taking no chances and, in his shoes, Floyd wouldn’t have either.
And then there was Laurel.
His marriage had been a fiasco from the outset. So, what happened? his mother had asked on one of his rare visits to the family home in California. Nothing much, Floyd had answered, but his mother had waited, hands on her hips. But there had been no real reason. No major drama, no yelling, just the feeling that the relationship had run its course. He could never picture Carol, his ex-wife, starting a family. The author of a syndicated column on high cuisine, she spent most of the year traveling to competitions and chasing the latest recipes from French gurus. True to form, she set memorable food on his plate when she happened to be around, but other than in her career, she didn’t seem capable of taking responsibility. The loose relationship had suited him for a while, but one day he discovered he missed having children in the house and a dog in the yard. Whenever he tried to broach the subject, Carol would shrug. One day she walked away. The morning after, Floyd fielded a call from a woman with a beautiful suave voice, who introduced herself as Carol’s lawyer. Between the two of them, they took him to the cleaners.
“Hello, Doc!” In jungle-green work trousers and a T-shirt that clung tightly to his padded frame, Antonio stepped over from one of the warehouses with his springy gait. At close quarters, his T-shirt was soaked, as were his trousers, and his face was shiny with perspiration.
Floyd nodded, marveling at the control Antonio had over his prosthetics. If his trouser legs weren’t a tad on the short side, most people would miss the detail. They talked a bit about the weather. Then Floyd asked, “Where did you have your legs fitted?”
“At Brooke Army Medical Center’s amputee-care facility in San Antonio.”
“What happened?
“A rocket-propelled grenade.”
“I’ve noticed the ease with which you move about. Those prosthetics are excellent.”
Antonio nodded. “The army can be a bitch, but they pull out all the stops with amputees. These were the most sophisticated money could buy at the time. Ossur Power Knee, fused directly to bone. The limbs adjust their motion on signals from my brain and body. The feet have multiaxial rotation and anticipate movement.”
“Powered?”
“Knees and ankles both. I’ll race you.”
“No way.” Floyd grinned. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
Antonio sighed and ran a huge hand across his face, his skin ravaged by years of unprotected exposure to the sun. He was about fifty years old—perhaps older, given his high forehead, which was clearly visible beneath a baseball cap. His nose was kinked halfway down and set off at a tangent; broken and badly set.
“Nice operation you have here,” Floyd said.
“Yeah. These are the intensive piggeries.” He pointed to the row of warehouse like buildings.
“What are our chances?” Floyd asked.
Antonio breathed deep, as if to deliver a lengthy tirade, then clamped his mouth shut as he shook his head. “Not good.” Then he sniffed. “Let me show you the pigs.”
Floyd nodded at the swift change of subject and followed Antonio to a twin set of doors that slid sideways when they approached, opening to a six-by-six cubicle with another set of doors ahead. Before entering; Floyd arrested his step. The floor was flooded with an inch of water.
“Well, go ahead.” Antonio waved when Floyd looked back at him. “No other way in for visitors. You’ll have to get your shoes wet. We don’t want soil bacteria entering.” He gave Floyd a gentle push.
Floyd splashed into the building. As soon as both men were in, the outer doors closed and the ones facing them opened with a gentle hiss. Obviously the setup worked like an air lock. The hangarlike building was enormous—endless concrete corridors flanked on both sides by steel pens and brightly lit with powerful lamps disappearing in a misty haze. The cacophony of grunts was deafening. Everything was wet.
“These are our guests. The pigs are constantly monitored and fed automatically. We control temperature through ventilation and water spray misting.”
“You keep them wet all day?”
“At night we turn off the mist and douse the lights. They’re delicate—in particular, pink-skinned animals like these. Here they don’t have mud to wallow in and adjust their temperature, so we do it for them. Our systems are now replicated all over the nation, and I suppose the world.”
The mist explained Antonio’s soaked clothes. Floyd ran a hand over his face and eyed his moisture-laden palm; it was shaking. He pushed his hands into the overalls’ pockets and fisted his fingers, the void in his stomach deepening. “What about dead animals?”
Antonio cocked an eyebrow. “What about them? Fortunately we don’t have many.”
“And the ones you do have?”
“We’d better get out of here,” Antonio said.
Once outside, Floyd raised his face to the sun. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Those other buildings over there house sow stalls and farrowing crates.”
Floyd choked a sharp retort and glanced at three smaller sheds in the direction Antonio had pointed. So Antonio didn’t want to talk about dead pigs. “I thought those were banned.”
“Only in Florida and Arizona.”
“Why the crates?” Floyd tried to remember what he’d read about the cruelty of sow stalls, where the animals couldn’t move.
“Sows will often crush their piglets. In farrowing crates, we separate them in adjacent compartments. The mother can feed her young but not harm them.”
“Hey, guys!”
Floyd turned to see Laurel hurrying down the lane. Dressed in similar overalls—two or three sizes too big and cinched at the waist by a piece of cord—she was far removed from the sorry figure he’d first encountered in the sewer. Even the wide-brimmed Stetson suited her.
“Having fun without me?” She drew level and threaded her arm through Floyd’s, as if it belonged there. “I thought hog farms smelled.” Laurel gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re all scratchy.”
Antonio smiled. “Most do, but here everything is controlled. We send the manure from the piggeries into a sealed underground concrete pit. From there we pump it to those green tanks over there. That’s a two-stage, low-solids digester. The smaller ones on the left are balance tanks, and the squat big guys are sequencing batch reactors.”
Laurel gripped Floyd’s arm harder. “Sounds complicated. How does it work?”
“It isn’t, really. In anaerobic digestion, microorganisms stabilize organic matter and release methane and carbon dioxide.”
The green tanks, Floyd realized, were much larger than they seemed at first—huge metal cylinders pierced by a network of large and small pipes and tubes.
Antonio continued his explanation. “The result is biogas—mostly methane and carbon dioxide, with a small amount of hydrogen and trace hydrogen sulfide.”
“At Nyx we use plenty—” Floyd muttered, and then he could have kicked himself for his lack of tact at bringing hibernation into the conversation.
“Hydrogen sulfide? What on earth for?” Antonio frowned. “It’s horrible stuff.”
“It’s one of the gases we use to lower patients into torpor.”
Laurel must have sensed his discomfiture. “So you send the animals’ waste to the digester and …?”
“We pump pig shit and water into them, heat it, and leave it there to complete the process.”
“You heat the shit?” Laurel asked.
Floyd reached for her hand.
“Right, to keep it around one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”
They walked slowly around the vast concrete area of the digester installation. Floyd reached to one of the insulated pipes and touched a valve. It was warm. “How long does the process take?”
“About two weeks.”
Laurel laid her hand on the nearest tank. “So there is two weeks’ worth of pig shit in those tanks?”
“That’s about right.”
Floyd followed Antonio’s gaze. Past the tanks, in an open field, a large machine trundled, raising a cloud of dust. Whatever the beast was doing, it must have pleased Antonio, because he rubbed his hands and smiled.
“And the biogas? What do you do with that?” Laurel seemed genuinely interested to discover how the system worked.
“Once cleaned, we store it in the gasholder.”
“That sphere?” Floyd eyed a huge white ball on stilts, set on its own in the middle of a grass patch.
“Right.”
Through a passage between two piggery buildings, Floyd spotted Tyler limping toward them. He peered at his face, obscured by a large hat, but couldn’t detect any telltale signals of alarm.
“Taking a guided tour?” Tyler nodded to Antonio. “I left a pager with Raul.” He patted his shirt pocket.
“This is huge,” Laurel said. “I still can’t get over the lack of smell. I thought hog farms stank.”
“We couldn’t have gotten away with odors so close to town. The digester reduces most odors from the livestock. Antonio’s spray system to keep the animals cool and clean does the rest. We contribute no odor, groundwater contamination, greenhouse-gas emissions, or pathogens into the environment.”
Floyd glanced around. The void in his stomach had been deepening. He turned to Antonio. The man was staring at him, his eyes ablaze with a strange intensity.
“The doctor wanted to know what we do with our dead animals.”
Tyler looked down and scoured the ground with the tip of his boot. “They’re protein. We hack them to pieces and add them to the digester.”
Laurel’s fingers dug into Floyd’s arm. The penny must have dropped.
“Prices for farm hogs are stable at $7.40 a pound, deadweight. These animals,” Tyler nodded toward the piggeries, “weigh 270 pounds on average; that’s about two thousand dollars a head, and a small tragedy when we lose any.”
Floyd swallowed. “Look, Har—”
“In your shoes, the thought would have probably crossed my mind. After all, the DHS supposedly knows nothing about us.” He glanced at Antonio. “If things got hairy, we could always throw you in the digester. Expensive meat, though.” Then he looked straight into Floyd’s eyes. “But it would have been a fleeting thought I would have discarded at once.”
“I’m a better judge of character than either of you.” “I didn’t—” Floyd felt heat creeping up his neck. “Of course you did.” Antonio smiled. “For months we planned how to spring Russo, knowing what the stakes were, not only for you but for the lot of us. Things have turned sour, but we’re still alive and kicking, and the difference between them and us stands.”
Floyd waited.
“I don’t think the doctor understands,” Tyler said.
“I do. Antonio is talking about honor … and I apologize.”
Antonio’s smile widened. “See, there’s still hope.”
“How many animals do you have here?” Laurel intervened, her voice weak.
“Four-legged, about fifty thousand.” Tyler slapped Antonio and Floyd’s shoulders. “And lots of the two-legged variety.”
“Christ.” Floyd ran a hand over his face. “I’m falling apart.”
“Some call it shell shock.” Tyler walked along the lane hemmed by barns and stores. “But the enemy must move soon, and until then we can only wait.”
“This must have cost a fortune,” Laurel said.
Antonio nodded. “It did, but most of it came from estate and federal government grants and supports. We’ve pioneered many renewable-energy production technologies. We also get money from universities. They run a few projects here, in a building lab on the farthest edge of the farm. Normally you would see a gaggle of guys and gals with lab coats puttering about, taking samples and the like, but we’ve declared the place off limits while you’re here. Special cleaning and maintenance for a couple of weeks. They will leave us in peace for a while.”
“So you’ve built this on grants?” she asked.
Tyler shrugged. “You can say that.”
Over the rooftops of the farm buildings, Floyd spotted occasional flashes of heat lightning and wondered if there would be a storm. “What happens to the final wastes from your digestion?”
“There is none. The liquid can be used as a fertilizer. The solid, fibrous part we use as a soil conditioner or sell it to make low-grade building products such as fiberboard. The final output is water.”
“How autosufficient are you?”
“If you discount stationery, pharmaceuticals, and a few cleaning chemicals, totally. We have orchards and vegetable plots, chickens, rabbits, and a few cattle to feed us all. The crops in the fields are for the pigs.”
“You mean all these fields are to feed the pigs?”
Tyler raised an eyebrow at Antonio, who grinned and waved to a concrete slab fifty yards away with two dark-green vehicles with four wheels on each side and without cabins.
“Not only the fields.” Antonio chuckled. “Come over.”
As they neared, Floyd assessed the contraptions to discover they were amphibious vehicles.
“What on earth is that?” Laurel asked.
“Transport. Argo Raptors.” Tyler leaned to grip his knee and grimaced. “The weather is about to change again.”
“Can’t you get it fixed?” Floyd thought there had to be a good medical reason why Tyler endured so much discomfort.
Antonio had already climbed behind the wheel of the nearest Argo, and Tyler slumped on a bare wire seat by him. “Only by chopping off the whole thing and grafting on one of these.” He patted Antonio’s knee.
Floyd pretended to help Laurel climb onto the vehicle, his hands on her waist. She cocked her head as if she was taking a measure of his feelings and blinked to accept his ruse.
“It would mean years of surgery and rehab. So far, I’m managing,” Tyler explained as Antonio maneuvered the Argo into a dirt track between fields of hay. They were headed toward a cottage nestled by the woods between the farm buildings and the fields they could see from Tyler’s house.
“So far, he’s going through hell,” Antonio grumbled over the whine of the vehicle’s electric engine.
They passed a cottage surrounded by a white fence, its windows lined with boxes filled to bursting with rows of crimson geraniums. A small woman was bent next to a row of wooden tubs fronting the porch. Red and yellow marigolds crowded the containers. She must have heard the gravel crunch, because she turned, waved a hand, smiled, and carried on.
“My house. My wife,” Antonio announced.
Laurel gripped Floyd’s hand harder. There was pride in Antonio’s words. A vast garage with more than a passing likeness to a barn was attached to a side of the cottage, and Floyd spotted a man there—tall, preppy, and black—with a powerful athletic frame. Antonio followed his gaze and nodded. “Lester, one of my sons.”
Both Antonio and his wife were Hispanic, but Floyd didn’t comment, reveling in the texture of Laurel’s hand. They were all silent for a while, Floyd’s mind spilling out into the deep blue air as he considered that Tyler and Antonio had crafted a small miracle.
Antonio veered the Argo away from the track and into the woods, zigzagging between the trees. The light dimmed. Then the scene changed to a swamp worthy of the Everglades.
The smile faded from Laurel’s face. “Holy—”
Antonio threw the Argo down an incline toward what looked like ground carpeted with grass around clumps of tall plants. Then the ground cover parted to reveal black water climbing to within inches of the vehicle’s sill.
“It’s a lagoon!” she said, drawing closer to Floyd and darting glances at the black water, as if she expected an alligator to raise its snout.
“A two-cell lagoon with a four-million-gallon capacity; all of five acres,” Tyler explained. “This is the separated water after the digestion process. We use it for irrigation or flushing and other needs on the farm.”
The Argo progressed slowly to enter a mass of vegetation. Floyd reached over to let a long leaf slide through his fingers. “And these are …?”
“Typha, phragmites, and Eichhornia crassipes—water hyacinth,” Antonio said.
“But where did you get all this water from?” Laurel asked.
“The river.”
“You buy water?”
“On the contrary; they pay us.” Tyler chuckled. “We return most of the water we use, but much cleaner—almost drinking water.”
“The plants?”
A nod from Antonio. “These absorb most of the nasty stuff from the effluent water—metals and the like. Every so often we run a floating reaper to keep the plants under control.”
Floyd grinned. “Don’t tell me, and you feed the plants to the pigs.”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea. These plants are fibrous. After drying, we shred them. A company buys the product to make insulation panels for buildings.”
Tyler turned around as Antonio edged the Argo toward another incline on the pond’s opposite side. “This is his baby.” He patted Antonio’s shoulder. “He dreamed it up and built it.”
Once on dry land, Antonio maneuvered once more between tall trees to a clearing.
“Wow!” Floyd pointed to a row of huge hangarlike buildings covered in blinding white polymer.
“We pump the water from the lagoon into these greenhouses,” Antonio said, glancing at Tyler and winking an eye.
Inside, the building looked like the hold of a gigantic space station but for the floor, which was carpeted in green. Overhead, a line of pipes held hundreds of arms capped with what seemed like lawn sprinklers spanning the width of the construction.
“Duckweed,” Antonio said. “These plants further purify the water before pouring it back into the river, and, yes, these plants we feed to the pigs, with other proteins and feed-grain crops from the farmland.”
Floyd frowned. “Proteins? I thought you only had pigs.” A few yards away, the carpet of greenery rippled. Floyd looked attentively to discover that it rippled in multiple points. “What the fuck are you growing here?”
Tyler laughed. “Fish by the ton; also in the lagoons.”
“And other things too,” Antonio said.
“Go on.” Laurel shook her head in wonder.
“When we dredge the ponds, we use the sludge, mixed with compost and some of the fibers from the water hyacinth, to raise worms. We also grow mushrooms, but those we sell.”
After a sharp beep, Tyler slapped his hand to his shirt pocket and produced a pager. He toggled it, then pivoted on his heel toward the green house’s entrance. “Russo is awake, and he’s hungry.”