Among the Living by Timothy Long Page B

neck.
    “Hey, kitty cat, you have a rough night?”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “Sorry, kitty cat.”
    “Yeah and your mom says hi,” she teases. Bob likes her, she knows this. Bob knows this. She likes Bob, but she doesn’t ever let on. In fact, she has made it clear that she is into women, even though she just fantasizes about that aspect of her sexuality. She can’t ever let on to Bob that she likes him; it would be far too dangerous for both of them. Sometimes she senses there is a mutual attraction, but she always puts him off by talking about some hot chick she is seeing.
    “Harsh! Did she say what she wanted for Christmas? I want to get my shopping done early this year.”
    “A new dishwasher. She’s tired of doing everything by hand.”
    “That used to be my job. So she wants a seventeen-year-old kid who talks back a lot, got it.”
    Kate smiles and then giggles at the joke.
    “You in the hallway in your bathrobe for any other reason than to see my pretty face?” she inquires. “Don’t you have some pervs to call?”
    Bob is a collection agent for a company that sells live porn feeds on the Internet. When the customers don’t pay up or their credit cards end up getting declined after they have rung up a large bill, they send Bob in. His favorite collection method is to leave messages that can be overheard by their spouses. Sometimes Kate wishes she could see the faces of the women who hear: “Hello, Mrs. Smith, your husband owes the she-male fuck city club six hundred dollars in charges. Will that be direct withdrawal from your bank account?”
    “Nah, I was staring out the little hole in the door when you came down the stairs. There is some weird stuff going on out there, and the news stations are being way too cool about it. They say the military is just doing practice drills, but did you see those assholes on every corner?”
    “I know, right?” Kate exclaims.
    “It’s the gas leak, has to be. Half the damn city closed down, and they moved people out of the affected neighborhood. But why is everyone acting so weird? If it’s just a gas leak, do we really need the fucking Army to get involved?”
    “You are kidding, I hope.” Kate sets her night bag down and leans against her door, kicks one leg back, foot arched against it so her knee sticks out. Bob leans against his doorframe and lowers his voice.
    “Nope. But when you do searches, sometimes stuff disappears even as you look it up. I’ve been on the net for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Even cached pages are all fucked up. Like if I search for a page and it doesn’t come up, Google usually has a stored version of it available. That isn’t bringing stuff up anymore.”
    “Maybe Google is just having issues,” she thinks out loud and wishes she still smoked so she could add a cig to this bullshit session. She really wants to go inside and go to bed, but Bob is one of her few friends, and she likes to listen to him. Sometimes he reminds her of what a college professor should be. Well, if a college professor collected for the porn industry.
    “Maybe, and maybe the Army is just doing a practice drill that means they have to mobilize a few thousand troops and put them on the streets of Seattle. Come on, this is the most laid-back city in the world. You were on the street. Was that normal?”
    That gives her pause as she thinks about the guys jumping out of truck beds, checking weapons, looking confused, waiting for orders. It didn’t look normal at all. In fact, it looked downright screwed up.
    “You go do some searches and then tell me what you think.”
    “I’m gonna get some rest first. I’m beat,” she says, the irony of the statement not lost on her or the other. Kate spins around, knowing his eyes are on her legs but not caring. She glances over her shoulder and blows him a kiss.
    “Who’s the lucky girl?” he inquires as she opens the door.
    “Just someone I met online. I don’t think we’re