Fail State, page 15
part #2 of End of Days Series
"Nah mate, that's a Tesla," Damo explained when Maxi pointed it out. "It got hacked and drove itself in there."
There were long stretches of water where they saw nothing and no one. Just wilderness. Karl said this had been a state reserve or a national park or something, and Jodi could believe it. It was a beautiful landscape in its natural form, but it felt desolate and haunted as well. The boat made noise of course. Not just the engines, but the splash and ripple of water. And there was birdsong too. And the whispered passage of the wind. But Jodi was used to the quiet roar of a great city, and this felt eerie to her.
"Maybe you and Max should come in off the deck," Damo called down from the little wheelhouse.
Ellie appeared from out of the shadows. She had gone down below to shower and change. She waved them inside.
"Come on, we better do as they say," Jodi said. She saw why when she stood up.
There was a small settlement up ahead on the left bank of the river. People with guns stood on a boardwalk observing their approach. Max was still sitting, colouring-in his castle. With no time to argue, Jodi just gathered him up in her arms and carried him inside.
"Hey," he protested. "My castle."
"I’ll get it," Jodi said as she deposited him inside and out of sight. "You stay here please. Do as I say."
He attended to the change of tone in her voice.
"Yes mom," he said.
Jodi hurried out to grab up the colouring book and the crayolas. She stayed bent down low, but none of the people on the bank raised their weapons or moved much at all. They swiveled their heads slowly as the Lasseter's Reef swept past at a stately pace.
"Scouts or an outpost I reckon," Karl said, coming up next to her. "See, they're calling it in."
He pointed out one of the watchers talking into some sort of backpack radio set.
"Probably giving the folks up ahead fair warning."
Damo's voice came down from the wheel deck.
"Hey Karl, can you hop down to the radio room, and see if anybody’s trying to raise us?"
"Sure thing, buddy," Karl said.
Jodi followed him down there. When the FM and AM radio stations had gone quiet, and all of the satellite TV links dropped out, they had still been able to use the boat's maritime radio to collect a few snippets and nuggets of information about the outside world, mostly from ham radio operators.
The comms room, as Damo called it, was a small cupboard-sized space full of electronic equipment of such dense and confusing complexity that Jodi worried she might screw something up just by walking too heavily past the door. Karl didn't seem bothered at all. He swung himself into the small swivel chair in front of a tall stack of receivers or transmitters or whatever they were, pushed a few buttons, twiddled a few knobs, and took up a black plastic handset that reminded her of an old-fashioned telephone.
"Don't intend to say nothing unless someone says something to me first," he explained.
The words were only just out of his mouth when the radio crackled into life. Karl frowned and fussed about with the dials, eventually finding what he wanted.
A male voice, distorted by static, crackled out of the speakers.
"Unidentified marine vessel, you are approaching a federally designated stronghold zone, please reverse your course."
Karl put the handset up to his mouth. "Sorry, can't do that, sir,” he said. "I'm just the hired help. The fella you want to talk to is up top, driving the boat."
The other voice came back.
"Unidentified marine vessel, please reverse your passage up river. This is Sacramento border control. You are not authorised to enter the city."
"Well son, we're not looking to enter the city," Karl replied in a drawl. "We’re just sort of looking to slide on through if that's all right with you."
"Unidentified marine vessel, you will be stopped and boarded by armed officers."
"Sacramento, we ain’t unidentified. You can call us Lasseter’s Reef."
"Lasseter’s Reef, you will be stopped and…"
Karl wasn’t paying attention. He covered the handset and leaned over to Jodi.
"Miss Jodi, could you run up to Damo and let him know what’s going on?"
She nodded and hurried back topside to tell Damo.
"Karl’s talking to to someone from Sacramento," she called up. "They say we have to turn around. Or stop. And they say they’re going to board us."
"What? All three?” Damo asked. But he kept moving them forward.
Jodi didn't know whether to stay with Damo or return to Karl. In the end she stayed. If Damo wanted her to go back down and relay messages he would ask. The countryside had changed again. On the left bank she could see paddocks and fields and rows of dark green leafy crops stretching away. Dozens of people worked in those fields. Maybe hundreds now that she looked.
On the other side of the river, however, a golf course hugged the banks. Sprinklers spat jets of water high into the air, keeping the greens lush and healthy. Right next to the golf course though, a vast open scar lay upon the land. The soil there was grey and lifeless, and she could see the giant trunks of fallen trees scattered across the wasteland. Maybe it was another housing development?
"Here we go then," Damo said, dragging her attention back to the river.
It felt like so long since Jodi had seen the city or even more than a handful of people at one time that her mind sort of locked up at the sight before them. A bridge reached over from one side of the river to the other. It was one of those old mechanical drawbridges, where an operator could raise or lower the midsection to allow river traffic through. At the moment it was low, and there was no way Damo’s boat was getting through there. He didn't seem bothered by this in the way he had been instantly on edge this morning, when those guys had turned up at the lake. He pulled a few levers on his control panel, flicked a few switches and eased the engines back until they were merely idling.
Two speedboats in the livery of the Sacramento Port Police Department had blocked the approach to the bridge. One of them began to motor toward Damo's boat.
"They reckon they're going to board us."
It was Karl, just up from the radio room.
"Figure as much," Damo said.
Ellie came back from the front of the boat. Her expression was sombre, except for a small crease at the corner of her mouth.
"I guess shotguns aren't appropriate this time."
"Not unless you want to get picked off from the bridge," Karl said, ducking low and pointing up.
Jodi followed his gesture, her heart skipping a beat when she saw two teams of riflemen on the bridge.
"Snipers," he explained.
A voice crackled through a bullhorn.
“This is the Sacramento Port Police. Prepare to be boarded. If you are armed, lay down your weapons. If you are carrying weapons, we will shoot on sight."
Damo patted the holster at his hip. He took out the pistol and lay it down. The shotguns stood in their rack just behind him. Nobody was armed.
“Ellie, mate, we got no front of house staff," he said. “You reckon you could go greet our guests?"
She smiled, a genuinely warm expression, and Jodi found her heart melting. It was the first time Ellie had smiled since the horror of the morning attack. If she could smile, Jodi told herself, everything would be all right. It might take a while, but it would be all right. In the end.
"Where's Maxi, she said suddenly, terrified that he might try to repel the boarders as he had seen Ellie and Karl do earlier.
"I'm here, mom," he said.
Jodi spun around. The trip-hammering of her heart slowed as she spied him sitting in a corner of the wheelhouse, colouring in his book again.
"Okay, good. Just… stay there, okay. It's not pirates this time."
He rolled his eyes at her.
"I know that, mom. It's the police."
Jodi turned to Karl and Ellie.
"Do you think… Do you think we might be in trouble for this morning?"
Karl shook his head.
“Nope. I think these fellas got bigger fish to fry than us, Miss Jodi.”.
The police boat came alongside and an officer threw up a rope which Ellie caught and tied off. A second rope came over the side and she did the same again. Jodi sighed, her heart swelling with pride. When had Ellie picked up these skills? She moved as naturally around the decks of Damo’s boat as she did through the chaos of a working kitchen. Jodi meanwhile was only good at taking photographs and being a mom, and there were plenty of days when she doubted herself on both of those.
The policemen climbed over the side of the boat. They were dressed up like soldiers in battle helmets and black body armour and they carried very heavy looking weapons.
One of them, a woman, barked out a question.
"How many people on board?"
That surprised Jodi. They all looked the same in their bulky armour, and they all wore dark or mirrored sunglasses.
"Four adults, one child," Damo said.
He was still at the wheel.
"Drop anchor," the woman ordered, and Damo did as he was told, pressing a button that released the anchor chain. It rattled away and hit the water with a loud splash.
"Now cut the engine."
Again, he did as he was told.
The silence that came over them felt massive.
Boots thudded to the deck and more police officers climbed on board. They were all pointing weapons and without thinking, Jodi moved in front of Max to shield him.
"Who's the captain?"
Damo raised his hands and very carefully came down to meet the boarding party.
"That's me. Damian Moloney. Master and Commander of the Lasseter's Reef."
"You were told to turn around."
It was the same woman, and she did all the talking. She must be in charge, Jodi thought.
"We don't want to go into the city," Damo said. "We just want to go through and keep going out the other side."
"Not possible," the woman said. "Sacramento is a federally mandated stronghold. Only authorised personnel in."
“And out?" Damo asked.
The woman looked annoyed, but Damo pressed on.
"I mean, would you let us pass through if we offered to take a few punters with us? A few hungry mouths you don't have to feed any more.”
The woman said nothing.
Damo opened his mouth to speak again but she held up a hand.
"Just shut up for a moment, Crocodile Dundee,” she said. The police officer stepped as far away as she could, walking all the way down to the back of the boat. One of the other officers went with her. They huddled together and talked for a few moments.
She spoke to somebody on her radio. Conferred with the other cop some more. And returned.
"Right. The boat stays here. You come with us," she said, pointing at Damo.
“I want to take someone with me. My sous chef.”
“Your what?”
“Ellie. I want to take Ellie with me,” Damo said.
20
The Horror Clowns McGuigan
When she tripped and went down, running in the dark forest, Tammy Kolchar had Wynona thrown over one shoulder and Bobby Jr. tucked under her arm. “No mommy, nooo,” her daughter called out and everything turned treacle slow and scary movie bad. As if it hadn’t been scary enough before, with the horror clown twins and their retarded cousins Darryl and the other Darryl chasing them with guns and crazy big knives. One second she’s running through the forest, holding onto her little ones for the love of sweet life itself, trying to keep up with Roxarne and her kiddies, who were all big enough to run for themselves. And the next second it’s like she’s taken this step and the world itself wasn’t there any more. Just a big hole for her foot to go into and then her leg and then she’s falling and falling and falling in the dark and holding tight onto Bobby Jr. and Wynona, and then starting to let go because she’s worried she’s gonna land on them and crush them dead. Just like Rudi Kanetski did playing football with his toddler two years back. And then Tammy is holding tight on to them anyway, like with mad retard strength, because she’s remembered they were running on top of a hill and there was a steep fall away into a valley and if she lets the kids go they’ll fall for sure and she’ll never see them again and…
She hit the ground and it was mercifully soft, almost squishy, excepting for a small rock or something that punched into one hip like a stone fist. Both children wailed in fear and shock, but not in pain. A mother got to recognise the different cries she heard from her children and the good Lord knew that Tammy Kolchar had heard plenty this last week or so.
Falling down drove all of the air from Tammy’s lungs and made her whole body ring like a bell, if a bell could ring with pain, and as she tumbled through the dark it was all she could do not to wonder what the fuck had she been thinking when they lit out like bandits from Dillonvale?
Turns out she didn’t know from bandits and outlaws. Not one little bit.
Things had gone sideways hard in the ‘vale, and then things had gone the same way pretty much everywhere, and it had been a matter of some perplexity and regret to Tammy—and probably doubly so to Roxarne who got dragged along with her—as to whether they had done the right thing or not. It was Roxarne who kept her sane. She always said that no matter how much trouble they seemed to be in, it couldn’t be as much trouble as she had when the Blockbuster closed down and she lost her job, and her useless fucking boyfriend stole the last forty-three bucks they had and got drunk and gift-wrapped a light pole with his Honda. The light pole fell down and crashed through the front window of the Dillonvale county offices and of course the Honda wasn’t insured for shit and even if it had been, he’d been stumble-ass drunk so that was that.
“And that was real trouble, honey.”
Or at least such was Roxarne’s understanding of it until they camped in the little roadside park half an hour outside of Dryfork, West Virginia, them not being allowed into Dryfork proper, on account of the townsfolk there standing off all comers, and doing so with guns and no small measure of bad manners. That was a hell of a thing which had been happening more and more too. Tammy could understand why, shivering whenever she recalled that dead city and the vast plain of a million broken people where they’d almost come to their own end. Things were hard all over and folks would keep to their own if they could.
Tammy Kolchar surely would but they had almost no gas, and the Oldsmobile got real thirsty as the needle dropped down that end of the gauge. Their money was all but gone, but that didn’t matter so much as the hard truth of having almost nothing to spend it on anyways. Nobody anywhere had stuff to sell. Not at any sort of reasonable price.
There was a coin operated gas fire barbecue in the little park, and a shower block, which was a mercy. They could at least clean up and stay warm in the unseasonably chilly night. But they had been hungry and tired and running out of all hope when the camper van pulled in and the McGuigan twins stepped out. Followed by the cousins Darryl and Darryl.
Those McGuigan’s were a sight.
Giant beach ball shaped fellas each with a shock of red hair that’d terrify Ronald McDonald himself. Their mobile home rocked on its axles as they stepped down and introduced themselves. And their cousins, the double Darryls, they weren’t any easier on the eye, but they were as thin as the McGuigans were not, and they had an unsettling air of outlaw skeeviness and methlab cunning about them.
But they also had food, they said.
Steaks and burger patties and, for a wonder, not-too-stale bread which they were of a mind to share with fellow travellers, wanting nothing in return.
“Men always want something,” Roxarne muttered to her an hour later, as the children gorged themselves and the McGuigans told of their adventures on the road since the Chinese “attacked the Navy and the Walmarts”.
And Roxarne wasn’t wrong. But where Tammy and Roxarne might have contemplated enduring the usual slobbering grunts and dogged thrusting if it meant keeping their little ones safe and well fed, the McGuigans and at least one of the cousins Darryl soon enough revealed that they did not possess the carnal appetites of normal men.
It happened during the dessert course, for which one of the Darryls produced a Sara Lee poundcake from the refrigerator of the mobile home. Two of them, in fact, which was not a surprise on account of those McGuigans looking the sort of boys who could inhale a whole poundcake each on their own.
"Hey kids, who wants cake?" the Cracker Barrel Darryl asked as he reappeared from the darkness with a foil tray full of butter cake held in each dirty paw. Tammy thought of him as the Cracker Barrel Darryl, because that was the T-shirt he was wearing. His cousin, the other Darryl, was definitely the more stylish of the two, seeing as how he wore a proper collared shirt, although he had torn off the sleeves to let out his ropey little arms, and for that she detracted a few dress-up points. They both wore camo pants which was of no never mind to her because half of Dillonvale did too.
The kids were mad for the promise of cake, naturally, except for Bobby Jr who had been quiet and careful all the way through dinner. It reminded Tammy of the way he got when his daddy, the bigger Bobby, got his drink on and let his temper loose.
But neither McGuigans nor Darryls were serious drinkers, not like Bobby's old man had been, and they had no temper to speak of. If anything, the shared dinner was a little weird and uncomfortable because of the way they kept making each other laugh at their own jokes. The little kids thought they were hilarious, and Jakey almost threw up, he was laughing so much, when the slightly bigger McGuigan lifted his shirt and made a face of his enormous belly, with his bellybutton doing for a mouth. And of course upon discovering he had an appreciative audience, he just had to take his shirt off all the way and make the children almost sick with hysteria by grabbing up each jiggling man boob and turning them into fun-time characters as well.
