Fail State, page 11
part #2 of End of Days Series
But of course, she thought.
That was the sort of shit Damo had in his storeroom.
These mopes had been hitting luxury yachts all over the Bay, and probably up and down the coast.
That’s why they looked so well-fed.
Or why they had looked so well fed.
Now they were just fucking dead.
The salvage piled up at the transom of the Reef. A lot more than she had first thought. She was already thinking in terms of nutrient stacks; by how many calories for how many people they had just fattened up the margins of their own survival math.
It helped. Meant she didn’t have to think about what she’d just done.
“You good, Miss Ellie?”
“Huh?”
That was Karl.
He threw off the line still holding them to the other vessel and waved up at Damo in the wheelhouse.
“Good to go, chief.”
The deck thrummed beneath their feet as Damo spooled up the engines.
She felt better as they moved away from the scene of the…
What was it? A killing? Murder?
No, it was self defence, Ellie assured herself. Those assholes shot first. They came at her Jodes and little Maxi meaning to do them harm.
“Miss Ellie. You should sit down in the shade. Have some water. Seriously.”
Karl again.
“What?” she said.
He made a face at her. Pointed at himself.
“Miss Ellie. Look at my serious face. Listen to my serious voice. You’ve had a real shock here. It’ll pass. I promise you that. You’re tough. I rarely seen anyone with more grit than you. But we all got only so much as we got, and you need to give yourself a rest now.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. “Some cold water would be nice.”
“Maxi!” Karl called out. “Where’s that water for your other mom?”
The boy appeared with a bottle of Perrier. It was chilled and beaded with condensation.
“I put a lemon in. Like a chef!” Max announced as he proudly handed it to her.
Ellie laughed. A nervous, ragged sound. But a real laugh nonetheless.
She rubbed the boy’s head and climbed up the steps to the open bridge, where she sat on one of the padded leather stools, gratefully drinking the icy cold water. Jodi came and draped her arms around Ellie's shoulders again, but it was hot, and Ellie felt sticky and uncomfortable. She also worried that she was covered in blowback from the shotgun blast. She eased her girlfriend loose and said quietly, "I'm okay, baby. I just need to sit by myself. Also I’m fucking gross. I need a shower.”
Jodi kissed her temple, but backed off.
“I’m so proud of you. Maxi too.”
“You done real good,” Karl affirmed.
Ellie looked at him.
“Karl. You told us you were a driver in the army. But you… you…” She was lost, looking for the right words.
“Ain’t the first time I been shot at, or had to shoot another, Miss Ellie,” he testified.
It sounded just like that too. As though he’d put his hand on a bible to deliver a sworn oath.
“Got ambushed four times in Iraq. And once in Utah! That was a whole thing, let me tell you.”
The expression of astonishment, freshly remembered, upon his face was so real she laughed out loud. And with that laughter, a great stoppage somewhere between her heart and her soul unblocked and before Ellie Jabbarah could get hold of her feelings, they erupted from within; a sudden and furious outpouring of tears and great gulping draughts of air, and cruel, bitter laughter at the madness of having survived a for-fucking-real fight to the death, and more tears, and hugs from Ellie and Max, and a firm squeeze of the old shoulder by Karl, and a “You right, mate?” from Damo up at the wheel.
A few minutes of that and she was done with being fucked up by everything she’d been forced to do.
“I’m right, Damo,” she said. And she did not lie.
Because those men had made her kill them.
Damo cut the motor back as they left the narrows behind them and entered a confluence of at least three riverine systems. It was so confusing in the Delta. Ellie had no idea how he managed to keep track of it all.
She wiped the last of her tears away and promised herself she would not lose it again. Ever. She could see some of the other vessels far across the water, much further away than they had been earlier that morning. It had all changed so quickly. They had settled into something of a rhythm here. Alternating watches. Fishing off the back of the boat. Even swimming occasionally. It had been quiet. Pleasant. But of course it couldn't last.
"So I reckon that fuckin’ tears it,” Damo said. “Dunno where those fuckwits came from. Dunno why they chose us…"
“Cos we were the best and biggest target," Karl suggested.
“I guess they liked nice things,” Ellie said, pointing to the salvage they had taken from the dead men’s boat.
“Yeah I guess so," Damo conceded with a shrug. "But they won’t be the last. It's been a week or so since the sticky fucking faecal matter hit the rotational air cooling device. And there's no sign it's getting any better. People must be bloody desperate by now.”
All four adults stood on the flying bridge. Ellie was spotted with blood, but not her own. Karl looked super chill, sitting directly across from her, behind a pair of Damo’s mirrored shades, still cradling his shot gun. Jodi hovered nearby, tending to Maxi who was begging to hear stories of the pirates and how they had beaten them.
Damo kept them in the middle of the channel, feeding a little power to the engines every now and then, adjusting the wheel to hold their station.
"It's not a good look," he said. "Those blokes just sailed in here, had a look around, and decided they’d have a red-hot go. Fuck that for a game of two-up. Tells you everything you need to know about what's been happening back in the city. Cos that's where I reckon they came from. They looked pretty fucking well fed to me. And pretty bloody sure of themselves too. They probably been pulling this stunt or something like it since everything turned to custard. So we need to make some choices, and be fuckin’ sharpish about it.”
"You should do what you think is best, Damo," Jodi said.
"What about you, Karl? What you reckon?" he asked.
Karl Valentine shook his head.
"I'm just grateful to be here, Damo," he said. “Was nothing good happening when we left town. Looks like it got a lot worse."
Frustrated by that non answer, Damo threw his hands in the air.
"Mate, I want to know what you think we should do. I want everybody to tell me what they think we should do. I'm not the captain of this ship. All right. Get it through your thick fucking skulls. I'm just the bloke who wrote a big fucking check for an orgy boat a long time ago. And to be honest, I never had any fucking orgies worth writing home about, and now that I can't write any more cheques to make my problems go away, I've got no fucking idea what to do about them. So I’m asking you Karl, all of you, what do you think we should do?"
It was Jodi who spoke, surprising everyone. She was the least assertive among them, the most likely to keep her mouth shut in any discussion. Mostly she took care of Max and looked after Ellie, who had stepped up to keep them safe. They all took turns standing watch. But Ellie, as she had just proven, was willing and able to stand up with Damo and Karl if it came to a fight.
"I think…" Jodi started. She stopped and seemed to search for the words. "I think you’re probably right, Damien. Those men thought they could just come in here and take whatever they wanted, and that's what it's like everywhere now, I bet. They’re just like that guy who mugged me for my camera. And they won’t be the only ones. There’s a lot of men like that. They make it bad for everyone.”
Nobody said anything for a moment. Eventually Karl broke the silence.
"That's usually how it goes," he said, with no further explanation.
"What about you Ellie," Damo asked. "You think we should stay here, try to get back out through the Bay, maybe head up or down the coast, or what...”
She cut him off. The shock she’d felt earlier, and the guilt that rode in behind it, that was gone now. Washed away by that flash flood of tears. This was just like handling Damo when they overbooked lunch and had rumours of a Gourmet Traveller writer spooking about.
"You had a plan, Damo. We hit a roadblock, that's all. We couldn't get up river. Into Sacramento, or past it or whatever. But that was more than a week ago. Things have changed. Probably got much worse like Jodi and Karl said. Maybe nobody’s even guarding the port anymore. But we won’t know unless we head up to Sacramento and find out. Let’s try that.”
Damo weighed it up, speaking slowly. "They still have a working government up there," he said. “Got that stronghold thing going for them.”
"Well that can go either way, I imagine,” Karl said.
"They weren't letting anybody in before," Damo said. "Don't know why that’d be different now."
The breeze which had been wafting across the lake all morning, stiffened, drying the sweat on Ellie's skin. She blinked away a strobing image of the one man she knew for sure she had killed.
Fuck him.
"They're not letting people in," Jodi said. "But I'll bet they're letting them out."
Everybody turned to her.
"What do you mean Miss Jodi?" Karl Valentine asked.
"I mean, if they're short of food like everyone else, I'm sure they would be grateful if we offered to take some people with us. You know, to Damo’s farm.”
The big Australian looked at her as though she was nuts, but then his expression changed.
"Shit mate," he said. "You might be right."
15
Cream of groundhog stew
Tammy wasn’t sure how many times they’d broken camp after that crazy shit in Ohio, but it seemed to her that they’d been on the road for an eternity, and now they were so close... but Elkins might as well be on the far side of the moon, as far as she was concerned.
She stared at the Rand McNally again, ignoring the bloodstains which always made her a little queasy. They’d scavenged the precious road atlas from the wreckage of a massive pile up on a backroad an hour out of North Georgetown. No earthly reason she could figure out why seven cars would just decide to drive into each other like that. But it had thrown a lot of stuff clear of the impact and the road map book had been only a small part of their haul.
That was days ago though, and they’d run out of the food they’d salvaged. Things were getting tight again.
“Gotta be a back road around Dryfork, a way we could get into Elkins from the side,” she muttered to herself.
Roxy was leaned up against the car next to her, watching the kids play on an old tire swing hanging from a tree in the front yard of a farmhouse. There was no prospect of anyone from the homestead taking offence to them pulling into their patch. It had burned down some time ago. Smoke still curled up slow and lazy from the embers.
“That book ain’t so good at the little roads as the big ones,” Roxarne said.
Tammy blew out her cheeks.
“Yeah but we can’t use the big ones no more. Man, I really fucking miss the GPS,” she said. “Ain’t no getting past that roadblock at Dryfork, and our gas is pretty much just fumes now.”
It was their third tank, and it had cost her most of what was left of their cash. To think they’d ever dreamed of going all the way to Canada.
The two families had spent more than a week and a half trying to reach Roxy’s people, and Tammy was determined that a bunch of hilljack assholes hiding behind some thrift store barricade weren’t going to stop her. If they had to, they would ditch the Olds and hike to Elkins, but only if they had to.
At least it seemed the heat of summer was behind them. The hundred plus days they’d endured back in Dillonvale were a bad memory and the mercury mostly now hovered around a very pleasant eighty or so. Maybe it was because of all the factories that shut down, Tammy thought. They stayed the hell away from the main roads and big cities now, of course. Only a fucking idiot would venture out where millions of other idiots had already brought themselves to a bad end. And tracing a long and wandering route north through the back country had in a way been the adventure she’d promised the children.
They slept out under the stars most nights, with Rox and Tammy taking turns to stand guard. Even Bobby Jr had volunteered to stand a watch, but proud as Tammy was of him, she wasn’t about to entrust their safety to a twelve-year-old boy. And she sure as hell wasn’t about to hand over the pistol to him neither.
They’d recovered the gun, which looked to her like an old fashioned police revolver, from the same place they got the road atlas. That massive pile up outside of Georgetown. It was in the glovebox of a little two-door that’d been crushed between a big ass pick-up and a Volvo SUV. It was Tammy who searched the car, because the owner was still wedged in behind the steering wheel, and she had been there some time. The poor woman—Tammy was almost certain it was a woman—had been on the hefty side when she was alive, but in death she was enormous. A giant, bloated balloon of flesh, swollen taut and fit to burst.
That wasn’t the sort of thing would normally invite a close inspection, and they had surely kept all the children well back from the wreckage. But supplies were tight, and for an honest to goddamn miracle none of those vehicles had burned. Probably cos they were as low on gas as the Oldsmobile. So there could be road food. Twinkies or even Pop Tarts. It would have been rank foolishness not to check for stuff they could salvage. Their carefully hoarded stash was running low. What she would not do for a fishing pole and some lures, she thought. Or a .22 rifle for squirrels.
Tammy had been sure of finding food in the dead woman’s ride. She looked to have been the type to drive and snack. But instead of the potato chips or melted chocolate bars she prayed she might find, the woman’s glove box gave up the revolver. It only had four bullets, but even so Tammy felt a whole helluva lot better to have the protection.
“We could maybe try going through that big park there,” Roxy suggested, pointing at a large green chunk of the map.
“The Canaan Valley Wildlife Refuge,” Tammy read out.
She recognised ‘Canaan’ as a Sunday School word. Sort of place the Pharaohs or Israelities hung out back in the day.
“If there’s wildlife, maybe we could shoot a deer or something,” Roxy said hopefully.
“Maybe,” Tammy said, cautiously. “Or maybe the place would already be full of people camping out and shooting deer and maybe shooting each other by now.”
It was so hard to know what to do.
“Hey!” Roxarne said suddenly. “If it’s a national park, there could be rangers there. And they got to help people. It’s their job, right?”
Tammy frowned, unconvinced. But, thinking about it, maybe Roxy did have a point. It had been some days since they’d seen anything like a police man or a state trooper and Tammy had gone from dreading such an encounter—even though they’d spent all the evidence of her grand larceny on fuel and food—to dreading the idea that she might never see another cop again.
What the fuck had happened to them?
“Well, I guess there would be camping facilities, like showers and stuff,” she conceded. “And maybe a ranger place where they could give us directions and some fuel? We’re just two women and four kids, and we’re in some trouble here.”
None of it sounded convincing as it came out, but she worked hard to convince herself anyway.
“I reckon we got enough gas to make it, and I can’t see where else we could go.”
“Then let’s go,” Rox said, settling it.
They wrangled the kids back into the Olds and pulled out onto the road again. Forty minutes later, the car coughing and dying, Tammy steered them into a little roadstop with a few picnic tables and barbecue setting. They were out of gas and a good few miles short of the park proper.
But there was a water faucet and so they made the best of it.
Roxy got a fire going with some twigs and junk the kids hunted up from around the site. Bobby Junior pitched the Dora tent, and Tammy took stock of their supplies. They had a packet of fig newtons, two bags of cheese and onion potato chips, some beef jerky and half a dozen of the mystery cans from under the sink back in Dillonvale.
It wasn’t much, but Jakey and Wynona came running up to report that they had found a dead groundhog on the road and it didn’t even smell. Bobby Jr., sent to investigate, brought the critter back and confirmed that it was indeed fresh roadkill. There weren’t even ants yet. Tammy and Roxarne exchanged a look. Her friend shrugged and grinned.
“I ain’t too proud.”
None of them were.
Half an hour later, with the sun low in the west, Tammy looked around their little camp in something akin to wonder. The kids and Roxy had gotten really good at this. The older kids slowly added fuel to the barbecue until there was a decent little blaze going, and a thick bed of coals building up. Two of the mystery cans had given up a pint of creamy mushroom soup and Roxy broke down the fresh groundhog for couple of fistfuls of clean meat. Gamey and tough, to be sure, but clean, she avowed.
Roxy was no girl scout. But her useless shitstain of an ex-partner had been a hunter, and she was used to dressing everything from squirrels to wild hogs. Tammy hoped the mushroom gravy would cover most of the taste. Roxy seared the groundhog bits in their precious five quart camp pot, and for greens they had cattail hearts and dandelions. Nothing great, but it was better than many folks were probably eating tonight. Times was damn tough, Tammy thought, as her mouth watered at the prospect of squashed varmint in tinned gravy.
As Tammy stood in the gloom watching Roxy cook, she prayed. But only to herself. She had never been one for happy clapping or anything. But she had been doing a lot of quiet praying to herself of late. Because if some miracle didn’t happen soon, they would be on foot headed to Elkins, and a bad situation would get worse. Everything they owned would be on their backs, or left behind.
Tammy heard the heavy motor lugging its way towards them, before she saw the headlights in the dusk.
