Fail State, page 18
part #2 of End of Days Series
For the longest time he simply stood, not moving.
Next to him, Dale serviced the targets below. A workman, doing his job. As the assault rifle crackled in short, three-round bursts, the hot brass casings flew up and away. One bounced off Jonas’s cheek, burning him. Causing him to flinch. He turned towards the other men of Silverton, now stood fast on the Gate. Sheriff Dave Muller, drawing his sidearm calmly, without flourish or pretension. Comptroller Wetsman, both hands gripping the top of the parapet, even his bandaged hand, the muscles jumping and twitching all along his jawline as he ground his teeth together. Darren O’Shannassy, all the arguments with Muller put aside for the moment, as he stepped forward, pushed Wetsman down out of the line of fire with one meaty arm as the other brought his shotgun to bear. And further down the firing platform, other men, some of whom he knew, and some he did not, all reacting in their own way at their own pace. Some fired back, standing tall. Others crouched and trembled but did their best.
Bullets chewed through the parapet, turning rail sleepers and house timbers to deadly splinters. More bullets caromed and sparked off the car bodies of the blockade, and crashed into the few unbroken windscreens and windows, shattering them.
Jonas had no idea when he’d started shooting, but his was own gun was out and kicking in his hand.
He fired again and again.
Fuck knows at what. He just wanted to make sure it wasn’t his ass getting blown into protein confetti.
Reality kept coming apart and putting itself back together in weird and extra forms. It shattered into mirror shards of things he saw and things he knew and disconnected moments of utter mayhem and absurdity.
Somewhere, people screamed.
Dale Juntii, flexing at the knees, fired with the regularity of a Swiss clock, even as a dark wet stain spread from his crotch down both legs of his jeans.
Dave Muller, side on, like an Olympic pistol shooting champion, was taking careful pot shots with his service revolver.
A revolver?
Like a cowboy.
That was odd.
Screams punctuated rock music from a ghetto blaster.
Leo Vaulk, on the far side of Dale, cursing and rolling around on the raw pine planking, shot wildly from guns he held in both hands, but he fired high into the air, directly above them, making Jonas wonder if bullets came back to earth at the same speed that they left it.
That would be dangerous.
But not as dangerous as the terrible, thumping explosions which seemed to shake the entire structure of the Seattle Gate as though a Norse God had come down from Valhalla or fucking Midgard or wherever they hung out, just to punch seven kinds of shit out of the world. Two of the car bodies lifted up and fell down with a crash. Another explosion seemed to shove one sideways. Men screamed. Jonas felt his knees go weak. Why had he climbed up here? He truly could not remember. Surely not because he was afraid of somebody thinking he was afraid? As if that made any sense, which it totally didn’t. So he just kept his head tucked in, and kept shooting, and waited for it to be over.
And then it was quiet again.
"All clear," somebody yelled.
The somebody turned out to be Sheriff Muller who helped Jonas to his feet, and clapped Juntii on the shoulder and gave Leo Vaulk a kick in the ass by way of celebrating the unexpected fact of their survival.
They were alive.
Jonas could not explain it.
What the hell just happened?
He could not tell from the all the screams and shouts behind and below them. Although what anybody safely tucked away behind the gate had to scream and shout about, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like the bikers had been lobbing mortar rounds over the…
He stopped.
His reasoning ability suddenly returning from the cloud cuckoo land where it had fled.
His legs were rubbery but strong enough to carry him back to the parapet where he looked out over the herringbone blockade of old car bodies and was stunned to find them in smoking, ruined disarray. Men in camouflage uniforms moved swiftly through the wreckage, occasionally stopping to deliver a double tap, or a three-round burst to some shivering corpse on the ground.
"Fucking grenades," Juntii said with something almost like glee in his expression. "Out-fucking-standing, man.”
Jonas slowly put it all together.
Joe Wolfenden’s militia outfit had flanked the bikers by taking a path through the woods. They had fired down on the attackers from above and slightly behind. And they had thrown grenades. Or maybe fired them from a launcher. At least three that Jonas remembered.
The shock of the explosions was still reverberating through him. Numbing and exhilarating all at once.
"You’re bleeding," someone aid.
One of the interns from Doc Cornwell’s surgery.
"Huh?" Jonas grunted.
"Flesh wound," the young man said. "Maybe a splinter. Hang on. Let me clean it."
Some things happened with cotton swabs and disinfectant. It hurt. Stung. But he was alive and he could enjoy the stinging and throbbing and frantic euphoria of not being one of the bodies down there on the tarmac.
A single shot cracked out.
One of Wolfenden’s guys making sure of a kill.
"Dude," he said to Dale Juntii. “You pissed yourself.”
Jonas wasn’t judging. If all the protein bars and powder hadn’t given him constipation he totally would have shit his pants.
Juntii laughed. "That’s how I know I’m good," he said. "Every firefight, I piss myself. And then I get to wash my shorts cos I’m the motherfucker who’s heart is still beating. Every time. The day I don’t piss myself, I’m a dead man."
Jonas finally thought to check for casualties among the defenders.
Oh.
Howard Wetsman was dead.
Doc Cornwell was raging and hammering at him, trying to punch some life back into his heart. But Jonas could see it was hopeless. He’d caught a round, a big one in the chest, right over heart. He was done.
Cornwell was crying and seething all at once.
"You idiots. You fucking idiots," she cried. She was covered in Wetsman’s blood.
"Where’s the others?" Jonas asked.
"What?" Juntii said.
"The other bikers?"
"We got ‘em all, partner."
"No. No we didn’t," Jonas said. "There was more. Muller said there was more.”
Or maybe Wolfenden said that?
He tried to remember who had said there were more bikers somewhere.
He was sure of that, just not who said it.
Two hundred of them.
Was it him?
Had he said that?
Jesus. Why couldn’t he keep a thought straight in his goddamned head?
22
(Interlude)
Private Kewayne Mosser looked imposing in his battle-rattle, but he was starting to shake and he really needed to pee.
The plaid-shirted red-faced man across from him was yelling. “Hey motherfucker, why don’t you let us get what we need?”
Kewayne said nothing. His grip tightened on his rifle, an M4A1. He glanced to his left and right, the guys in his squad flanking him. At least there was that, he thought. He wasn’t facing these pissed off civilians alone. He had gone through combat training out on Yakima Range where his squad was tasked with clearing villages; but the role players there always yelled in Arabic.
This was a lot like that, except no-one here was dressed in bedsheets, and this was no drill. The crowd of hundreds, maybe more, surged in front of him in the parking lot. The people wanted into the Walmart off of Bridgeport Way, a little south of Tacoma. His platoon had been ordered to secure it against looters; the Lieutenant had briefed them as if it were a combat operation. Kewayne was new to the service, but he didn’t have any trouble feeling the ugly vibe of the crowd. Their shouts were a roar; a powerful animalistic smell assaulted his senses. This was bad.
Kewayne’s hands were clammy and his pulse raced. Some plaid-shirted dude got in his face, shouting. Almost screaming at him. Spittle flecked Kewayne’s protective goggles.
“I’m getting in there, asshole, and you can’t do shit! You got rules. I’ll fuckin’ bet your gun ain’t even loaded!”
The man advanced on Kewayne as if to shove him over, or perhaps to brush him aside. Kewayne did as trained, he jabbed the man in the sternum with the muzzle of his rifle, hard.
The plaid-shirted man cried out and clutched at his chest. He fell. Kewayne had struck him with full force. Another man bent down to help him.
Kewayne knew this second man, a priest. His mind flashed back to a detail when he had first arrived at Fort Lewis. Kewayne had helped pass out donated toys to needy children. This priest had supervised the give away. He was a nice man.
Someone screamed. The man writhed upon the ground. The crowd recoiled for the briefest of seconds, and above it all Kewayne heard a hoarse command. One he had never seriously expected to hear. Not even on a battlefield. It was Sergeant Kominsky.
“Fix…Bayonets!”
Automatically Kewayne undid the snap on the sheath and with a tug the M9 knife came free. Mechanically, he snugged it into place, a firm pull produced a metallic click as the squad’s naked steel was exposed along the line. He tried not to think about what he was doing. Better just to do it.
An unnatural silence fell as the crowd glowered at the soldiers. Kewayne could smell their hot sweat, mixed in with his own stink and the diesel exhaust of the idling Stryker fighting vehicles behind them.
Kominsky called out again, this time addressing the crowd. “You will disperse! We have orders to secure this facility!”
Someone called back, “What, so you can eat while our families starve? Fuck you, fascist!”
Another shout, high and panicked. “Weapon!” It sounded to Kewayne like Peabody the SAW gunner.
Kewayne saw it, too. Without thinking, he moved his safety lever to “fire,” shouldered his rifle and covered the target. A man in gaudy urban fatigues filled his sights. The tip of his red targeting chevron rested upon the target’s head. A woman partially obscured him. The man disappeared in the roiling crowd before Kewayne’s trigger finger could find its rest.
He had no idea who fired the first shot.
But someone did.
An icy hand seemed to reach down and grab the young soldier, as a series of images played across his field of view. A woman in a yellow shirt falling. A man’s head wrenched violently to the side, his glasses spinning through the air. Someone trying to turn and run, shot down. He registered a flash, a whisper past his ear. Return fire. These people were trying to kill him. The thought slammed home in capital letters, and Kewayne started to engage targets, too. Shiny brass flipped from the side of his weapon.
Horrible screams, grunts, the roar of gunfire. Kewayne knew that they would die if they were overrun by the crowd. He simply reacted, along with his squadmates. Within seconds they had suppressed the incoming fire. Kewayne changed magazines, concentrating on the task. Not thinking about why.
From behind, he felt a hard smack on his body armor. Kominsky screamed in his ear.
“Fuckin’ cease fire!”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
Someone was babbling. “Jesus Christ! Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” Over and over again.
Kewayne watched the civilians run away. The lucky ones anyway. In front of him, a pile of dead and wounded heaved and writhed, or lay still; their bodies twisted unnaturally, their faces slack. The ones he could see, anyhow.
His eye settled on one victim as he heard the Lieutenant, yelling at someone, maybe into a radio.
With a terrible certainty Kewayne knew he had shot this man while trying to get the urban camo dude. It was the priest. The man had stepped into the line of fire, holding his hands aloft, as if in prayer. As if he had been blessing the men who threatened him and his flock. Dark blood stained his cassock and clerical collar. His arm jumped, twitched, as his soul raced to eternity.
And Kewayne had pulled the trigger.
Mahmoud sat in his tiny office in the back of the stifling tailor shop. The days when tourists would drop in were over for good. The tourists had disappeared along with businessmen searching for a stylish ensemble at a reasonable price. Mahmoud rubbed at the zebibah on his forehead, then sighed when he heard more gunshots outside. It would not do to rush into the street and attempt to flee, as so many were trying to. That simply added to the chaos out there, of which there was already an overfull sufficiency, in Mahmoud’s opinion.
No, he would stay in his shop on the Al Madbah, here in downtown Cairo. It was a humble establishment, but it was his. For fifty years with his own hands he had measured, sewn and cut his way to a modest sort of security.
Ha! Security?
What was that?
The distant and muffled chatter of automatic weapons fire mocked the clacking of his old sewing machine. It reminded him of his one awful year as a conscript when he was but a youth; a stupid boy in a bunker facing the Jews. How glad he had been to leave that madness behind. He had made suits for Jews in the decades since. Americans mostly, but some Europeans. An airline magazine once listed his little shop as one of the secrets of old Cairo and he had feasted on the profits of that for many years. He did not care how anyone worshipped their God if they were true to themselves and their faith. Even the Jews were people of the Book, after all.
Mahmoud sighed again and lifted the cup of tea to his mouth. He took a sip, savoring the taste of the real black leaf, then placed the cup back on the piecework table. The old tailor regarded the cup; the liquid within was the last water in the shop. The machines that pumped from the Nile had stopped, along with all the other ephemera of civilization. It was all so fragile, he thought. So easily taken. And they had been such fools to trust it.
Cairo was thousands of years old when America was born. It had not lived or died by some light switch or computer back then. But now it was to perish because such things no longer worked? It was madness.
But Mahmoud had always known this. All was dependent upon the will of God, and if he withdrew his favor from this world, then he did. What would happen, would happen.
A gunshot caught his attention; it was close. He heard someone screaming. Outside on the street the rumbling, thumping sound of heavy foot traffic was constant. Everybody was trying to get somewhere, some refuge, anywhere but Cairo. Without water, the massive city by the Nile was a necropolis in waiting.
Mahmoud knew this.
He had witnessed for himself the impossible traffic snarl on Cairo’s already famously clogged streets. Where, he wondered, did the people think they were going to go? To Alexandria, to get on a ship? Perhaps to Suez, to cross into the barren Sinai. Downriver? He shook his head. A flood of people would be stripping the farms along the river bare. And after the farms were gone?
Nothing. Red land, as far as the eye could see. Egypt lived and died by the Nile, and Cairo with its dead pumps sat at its head, the delta that reached toward the Mediterranean.
Mahmoud picked up his cup again and thought of the sea. He tapped the delicate glass with its few remaining drops and thought. He prayed. His son had begged him three days before to pile into the family car and head toward Port Said with the others. He was firm in his refusal, and as he pointed out, he was old. It was only right that he give up his seat for a child to have a chance. A strong grandson like Omar, that boy was the future of the family. Not Mahmoud. He was the past, and he trusted that God would know his own.
He sipped carefully, then he picked up his prayer beads and ran them through his fingers, going through the dhikr without really concentrating. Mahmoud thought that perhaps he could be forgiven for thinking of his absent family, and the two hundred kilometers to the sea. Two hundred kilometers under normal conditions, that is.
Another gunshot outside. Closer.
Although the narrow front of his shop’s steel roller curtain was down, he could tell from the quality of the light through the cracks that sunset was coming. Usually it would be time for the evening prayer, and Mahmoud would either go to the mosque or spread out his rug in the shop. The imam’s voice reached all corners through the loudspeakers on the street.
He shook his head. Today there would be no loudspeaker. There was no electricity. And getting to the mosque would be impossible. Too many people, too much violence. An old man like him wouldn’t stand a chance. What did it matter that he was a hajji, or that he had memorized the Holy Quran?
His mouth twisted. Of course it counted, he thought, and he cursed himself for a fool. Prayer mattered more to him now than ever, even when he was under the guns. They were not even Jewish guns. Instead the Iranians had come and all of their hirelings. His fleeing family, they were in the hands of God. It was the least he could do to pray.
Mahmoud spread out his mat, took off his sandals and knelt in the direction of Mecca.
He prayed.
When he was done, he rolled up the humble rug and put it away. He returned to his seat in the near darkness and felt for his precious last sip of tea. He allowed himself a drop, he could tell from the weight of the cup that it was nearly gone.
His wife was gone too, long before. And now his family as well.
He heard laughing, swearing. Things breaking. He furrowed his brows. What, would the jackals come into his shop as well? There was nothing worth having, unless the thieves wished to be well-clothed.
Even though Mahmoud was a man of immense faith, his mouth still went dry when he heard the sound of the padlock on his rolling steel curtain being cut. The curtain slammed upwards, a brick flew through the plate glass window. A harsh beam blinded him.
He did not fear death. But he did fear the dying.
Benny Ma’s vision exploded in black blooms and stars. He tasted blood; his body twisted and fell. He was distantly aware of hitting the ground. He heard a noise like thunder and screaming. Swearing. Someone stepped on him and wrenched his arms behind his back, something sharp wrapped around his wrists and he heard a “z-z-z-i-p” sound. His nose burned with pepper spray, his mouth filled with vomit and leaked onto the blacktop and cobbles.
