Asleep or Dead?
“I can’t believe how brave you were!” Patty Jamison turned and looked over her shoulder from the front seat of the long white Skunk Works sedan. She rode in the front to make room for Vern Foster, who was riding in the back seat with Ranell. “I would have been absolutely terrified!”
The three of them were driving to Palmdale for a meeting with Cora Vaughn, the project lead at Skunk Works. She was going to facilitate a virtual tour of a new Navy prototype airship currently heading into a patrol zone in the Pacific theater.
"I thought I was going to have a heart attack," Ranell remembered his trembling knees and how difficult it had been just to breathe.
“You’re a real fighter, Josef!” Foster playfully punched Ranell in the shoulder. “You were smart to reach out to us when that spook made contact with you.”
“I called everyone I could think of,” Ranell grinned shyly. “The GML security specialists told me to contact Lockheed-Martin. But I had no idea the FBI would use me as bait for the sting.”
Foster looked like he was about to heap more praise on Ranell when something outside the window caught his eye. “Quick, Patty. There’s another one!” Foster pointed to what looked like a woman lying beside the road. “Asleep or dead?”
“Oh, stop it, Vern!” Jamison scolded. “That’s not funny!”
Whatever the joke was, it was funny to Foster. He guffawed and nudged Ranell with his elbow. “We’ve got a pool going at work,” he said by way of explanation. “There’s a website that tracks the number of corpses in the different morgues across the city. The bodies are piling up, and we each pick the day a specific morgue will report being filled to capacity. I’ve got fifteen hundred bucks riding on this Thursday.”
Ranell blanched at the mention of the macabre game. He’d heard about this kind of thing, but this was the first time he’d ever met someone who actually participated in one. “Wow,” he replied half-heartedly. “That’s sure a lot of money for a bet.” He felt stupid. How am I supposed to respond to this?
“It’s not really a lot.” Foster missed any cues about Ranell’s discomfort. “It’s mostly just a matter of perspective. It would have been a lot of money last month, but my salary’s practically doubling about every quarter now, so basically, I’m just betting chump change.”
“Vern!” Jamison reached back and slapped Foster on the arm. "Can't you see that Josef has just endured a traumatic experience? He doesn’t need to be thinking about all those poor, starving people.”
For the briefest of moments, Foster looked hurt. And then they turned their conversation back to airships.
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