Riffster: “Astor…. I'm still only in
Astor. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle.
When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and
there'd be nothing... I hardly said a word to my wife until I said
yes to a divorce. When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was
there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I've
been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every
minute I stay in this room I get weaker. Each time I look around
the walls move in a little tighter. Be careful what you wish for. I
wanted a mission, and for my sins NEFGA gave me one. Brought it up
to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it
was over, I'd never want another.”
“I was going to the worst place in the world, and I
didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a
river, that snaked through the woods like a main circuit cable and
plugged straight into Shimski. It was no accident that I got to be
the caretaker of Promotion’s Director Scott S.
Shimski’s memory, any more than being back in Astor was an
accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own.
And if his story is really a confession, then so is
mine.”
Shimski: (on tape) “I watched an ammo can
crawl along the edge of a guardrail. That's my dream. That's my
nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a guardrail, and
surviving. We must find them. We must log them. Film canister after
film canister, hide-a-key after hide-a-key, Altoids tin after
Altoids tin, M&M tube after M&M tube. And they call me a
numbers ho. What do you call it when the White Robes accuse the
numbers ho’s? They lie.. They lie and we have to be merciful
to those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate
them..."
Riffster: “How many numbers ho’s had I
already sanctioned? There was those six that I know about for sure.
Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time it
was a NEFGA’n and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make
any difference to me, but it did. Carp...charging a man with being
a numbers ho in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in
the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the heck else was I gonna
do? But I didn't know what I'd do when I found him."
"I was being ferried up Mormon Creek in a Navy PBR, a type of
plastic patrol boat, pretty common sight on the rivers. They said
it was a good way to pick up information without drawing lot of
attention. That was OK, I needed the air and the time. Only problem
was I wouldn't be alone."
“The crew was mostly just kids, rock and rollers with
one foot in their graves" The machinist, the one they called
PaintFiction, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for
Ocala, probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. SoulBait on the
forward 50's was a famous surfer from the beaches south of LA. You
look at him and you wouldn't believe he ever fired a weapon in his
whole life. Loopy was from some South Bronx carphole. Light and
space of Ocala really put the zap on her head. Then there was
Federation, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure
as heck was Chief's boat."
“At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier.
I couldn't believe they wanted this man terminated. Third
generation Palatka High School, top of his class. About a thousand
decorations. Etc, etc... I'd heard his voice on the tape and it
really put a hook in me. But I couldn't connect up that voice with
this man. Like they said, he had an impressive career. Maybe too
impressive... I mean perfect. He was being groomed for one of the
top slots of NEFGA. President, V.P., anything... In 2002 he
returned from a tour of advisory command in Ocala and things
started to slip. The report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and George
Bush was restricted. Seems they didn't dig what he had to tell
them. During the next few months he made three requests for
transfer to Urban Micro training in Jacksonville, Florida. And he
was finally accepted. Urban Micro? He was 28 years old. Why the
heck would he do that? 2003 he joined the Special forces, returns
to Ocala. It wasn't just insanity and numbers runs. There was
enough of that to go around for everyone."
“Shimski split from the whole friggin’ program.
How did that happen? What did he see here that first tour? 28 years
old. If he joined the Urban Micros, there was no way he'd ever get
above Promotions Director. Shimski knew what he was giving up. The
more I read and began to understand, the more I admired him. His
family and friends couldn't understand it, and they couldn't talk
him out of it. He had to apply three times and he had to put up
with a ton of carp, but when he threatened to resign, they gave it
to him. The next youngest guy in his class was half his age. They
must have thought he was some far-out old man humping it over that
course."
“October 2004 on special assignment, Lake George
province. Shimski staged operation Film Canister with combined
local forces. Raided a major success. He received no official
clearance. He just thought it up and did it. What guts. They were
gonna nail his butt to the floorboards for that, but after the
press got hold of it they promoted him to Promotions Director
instead. Oh man, the bull piled up so fast in Ocala, you needed
wings to stay above it. No wonder Shimski put a weed up command's
butt. The assimilation was being run by a bunch of four-star clowns
who were going to end up giving the whole circus away."
“Late summer-autumn 2005: Shimski's cache hunts in the
highlands come under frequent muggle ambush. The camp started
falling apart...November: Shimski orders the assimilation of three
Ocala men and one woman. Two of the men were Land Managers in the
Forestry Division. Cache disappearance activity in his old sector
dropped off to nothing. Guess he must have hit the right four
people. NEFGA tried one last time to bring him back into the fold.
And if he pulled over, it all would have been forgotten. But he
kept going, and he kept winning it his way, and they called me in.
They lost him. He was gone. Nothing but rumors and rambling
intelligence, mostly from captured muggles. The muggles knew his
name by now, and they were scared of him. He and his men were
playing hit and run all the way into Lake Delancy."
“State Rd 19 bridge was the last NEFGA outpost on
Mormon Creek. Beyond that there was only Shimski. He was close. He
was real close. I could not see him yet but I could feel him." Part
of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I
got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I
felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront
him."
Everything I saw told me that Shimski has gone insane. The
place was full of micros: Film canisters, Altoids tins,
Hide-a-keys, M&M tubes.. If I was still alive, it was because
he wanted me that way. It smelled like slow death in there, peanut
butter, nightmares. This was the end of the river all right. On the
river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I'd know what to
do, but it didn't happen. I was in there with him for days, not
under guard - I was free - but he knew I wasn't going anywhere. He
knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the
Illustrious Potentates back in NEFGA could see what I saw, would
they still want me to terminate him? More than ever, probably. And
what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how
far from them he'd really gone? He broke from them and then he
broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken up and ripped
apart..."
“They were going to make me a voting member for this
and I wasn't even in their friggin’ GC forums any more.
Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was
up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to
go out like a NEFGA’n, standing up, not like some poor,
wasted, rag-arsed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and
that's who he really took his orders from anyway. "
“The horror. The horror..."