The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [115]
“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