Designated Targets

He could tell, without needing to check, that dozens of pairs of eyes had settled on the back of his newly cut, lightweight suit. Some of the bolder folks would have wandered right out onto their verandas—an awful fancy name for a thin porch made of raw pine boards, roofed in by scraps of tin, and supported at each corner by sawed-off bits of two-by-four. Others would be hiding in their front rooms, twitching aside sun-faded curtains, if they had any, peering out suspiciously at the Presleys’ unexplained visitors.

And if they thought he was something, he wondered what sort of ripple went up and down when Ms. O’Brien emerged from the car. East Tupelo wasn’t used to women like that, not yet. Hell, neither was the rest of America. That skirt of hers would surely send tongues wagging, showing off so much leg above the knee as it did.

But it was time to get into character, so he pasted a harmless, well-meaning expression on his dial. A neutral grin that said to the world he was hoping he’d found the right address.

Slim Jim took in the details of the kid’s house in one quick glance. Again, he didn’t need to stare. It was all old news to him. There’d be only two rooms running off one corridor. You could shoot a gun clean through without hitting anything, hence the name. The kid would probably sleep where Slim Jim himself had for years, on an old sofa in the front room—which did double duty as a kitchen, and a parlor when guests came a-calling. Every stick of furniture would be someone else’s cast-offs, but it’d most likely be clean. Gladys would make sure of that.

The water would be pumped by hand, from a well out in the backyard. There’d be bare boards on the floor and walls. No little comforts or luxuries. Not a blade of grass grew in the brown dirt that substituted for a front yard. Even in the gloom, he recognized the scratch marks of a homemade dogwood broom in the hard-packed earth, and the telltale prints of chicken feet. He bit down on a sigh. It was going to be like a goddamned oven in there.

He really missed his brownstone.

2

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

He’d expected some changes. Even so, after an hour or more in Los Angeles, Chief Petty Officer Eddie Mohr felt like his head had been turned inside out. Sort of like an old sock.

He felt awkward as hell in his new “twenty-first” uniform. Figured people woulda been staring and pointing at him like he was some sort of carnival freak as he walked through the train station. But it was Mohr himself who had to resist the urge to stop and gawk, while nobody else gave him as much as a second glance. Most didn’t even notice him the first time around.

He’d stood on the concourse at Union Station for a long time, ever since he’d painfully uncurled himself from one of the hard, cheap seats on the Super Chief. The station was roaring with foot traffic. Sailors from what they were calling the Old Navy lounged around in their best whites, clearly in no rush to get away to the South Pacific. Hundreds of civilians swarmed over the bright mosaic floor, too, their shoes clicking and scuffing on the tiles. Many of them were of fighting age, but none seemed to be bothered that somebody might front them about why they hadn’t signed up yet. Or been drafted.

Mohr wandered through, hauling the dead weight of his duffel bag as if it were a side of beef. Occasionally he’d spot a uniform like his own, the coloring slightly different from the local rig, the cut a little more stylish. At least that’s how some fairy from New York called it.

His old man had read that article from the Post out loud, howling with laughter, tears streaming down his face. “Lookit this, Ethel,” he’d yelled out to the kitchen. “Lughead here’s standin’ at d’ cuttin’ edge a fashion.”

Maybe that’s why Mohr was rolling and twitching his shoulders so much inside the new uniform. To steady his balance. Meanwhile, he did his best to avoid catching the eye of anybody else who looked to be headed out to the Zone, to the raw, sprawling settlements and industrial “parks,” as they called them. Not a one of them looked much like a fucking park to Eddie Mohr, though. Just a bunch of big sheds and warehouses with a few scraggly fucking eucalyptus trees for shade. Some of them, they didn’t even seem to have workers inside. It was like the machines ran themselves.

He scowled then, and remembered Midway. Machines running themselves—that’s what had caused the whole class-A fuckup to begin with. That’s why he never went out near the factories if he could avoid it.

He’d seen that movie, the one with the muscle man in it. A kraut, and he’d been the goddamned governor of California, if you could believe it! In the movie, the machines had tried to take over the world. He felt like it was about two minutes from happening whenever he set foot in some of them factories out in the Valley.