Fail State, page 19
part #2 of End of Days Series
A policeman swore and struck him again with a truncheon. Benny wet himself and screamed, but it was weak, pathetic cry. Someone hauled him to his feet and dragged him away. His vision greyed out from the pain. Nothing seemed real, he suffered a high-pitched keening in his head, mixed in with the roar of the crowd at the Yee Woo crossroads, directly in front of the Sogo department store. He was hustled along to a black armored vehicle. There were dozens of them parked in rows.
All this for me, he thought. He grinned. Another cop saw his expression and slapped him across the face with his open hand. It stung, and he felt dreadfully humiliated. Benny spat blood. His guards ran him up the steps into the paddy wagon, where another pair of cops waited. These policemen, who wore different uniforms from the Hong Kong police, jammed him onto a narrow steel bench and chained him down.
Benny was stuck. He tugged a little at his restraints, but only a little. They were tight, and they hurt. Within a few seconds another prisoner, a girl, was jammed in next to him. A few minutes passed and a woman called out.
“We’re full! Close the door, and get ready to go.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Start processing these enemies of the people.”
Benny heard that phrase and thought it overly dramatic. Seriously. Who talked like that? All he had wanted to do was to hang out with the hot girl from his economics class. She had insisted it was important to make a stand against the mainland’s warmongering. She had virtually dragged him to the protest. But she was hot, so Benny had gone along. Perhaps afterward she might drag him to her bed?
Well, he didn’t see her in the paddy wagon. And he was starting to doubt the wisdom of making his highly principled but obviously pointless stand against the evil old goats who ran the Chinese Communist Party and who thought they ran the world.
His thoughts were suddenly disrupted by somebody jerking his head back by the hair and shining a light in his eyes.
“Prisoner, look without blinking into the light.”
Benny heard a strange whirr. The guard spoke.
“Scan complete.”
Benny blinked.
“Open your mouth.”
He obeyed, the guard jammed a cotton swab into his gums, rubbed it around, a most uncomfortable experience, and finally withdrew the intrusion.
“State your full name, identification number, and address.”
Benny did so. He thought for a moment about lying, but only for a moment. He was pretty sure the government already had his DNA, and they had just taken it again. He really didn’t feel like another beating. His wrists burned, the zip-tie restraint was tight. His stomach was sour; it was sinking in. He was an Enemy Of The People, now. All because he wanted to get laid. Or maybe even just a hand job. Surely the people could forgive that? The paddy wagon lurched and moved with a snort.
A Sergeant standing in the back of the vehicle spoke up.
“Prisoners of the People’s Republic! Look at me!”
Benny tried, but he had to contort himself painfully to look at her. The Sergeant waited patiently and flexed her knees as the paddy wagon moved.
“Do I have your attention? You there, look at me!”
She pointed, and another guard yanked the prisoner’s head up.
“Good. You can all hear me. This is important.”
She sneezed, which somewhat detracted from the intimidating effect she’d been going for. And she sneezed again, ruining it completely.
The woman sniffed, rubbed her nose and glowered at them. “You are scum. You have no rights, now. You will never see Hong Kong again.”
Someone moaned, another man cried out. The Sergeant flicked her hand dismissively and a subordinate kicked both men, one after the other.
“If you do not do exactly as we say, you will not survive the trip to re-education.” She paused and sniffled. “Not a word from any of you until we get to the camp. And when we do arrive, I will have absolute obedience. Understood?”
Benny said “Shi!”
They all did.
The Sergeant nodded, the paddy wagon rumbled on. Benny sat and suffered. After what seemed like hours during which the only noise was the sneezing of the sergeant and the hacking cough of another guard, the wagon finally stopped. Great, Benny thought. He was totally going to catch their filthy colds out of this. One by one the prisoners were unshackled and led from the back. Benny heard screams and blinked into harsh lights. His turn came and he was hustled up and out. He could barely stand; his legs had fallen asleep.
The guards didn’t care. Someone struck him with a club and although his legs were numb, it still really hurt. Dogs barked and growled. They made him run; blows came from all directions. He fell; more blows and kicks rained down. Someone turned on a hose and sprayed him. Choking and crying he crawled to his feet once more.
Eventually he stood in a brightly lit building with many others in a rough formation. A few officers sat at a table in front, while guards with stubby QBZ rifles stood every few meters around the shivering and bleeding prisoners. Every couple of minutes a guard barked out a name and a prisoner would be prodded before the soldiers at the table.
It took Benny a few minutes to figure out what was happening.
His head started to throb in waves.
It was a People’s Tribunal. Like in the Cultural Revolution.
The three officers were passing sentences.
“Hard labor.”
“Re-education.”
“The Highest Punishment.”
After the sentence was passed, the defendant was taken away immediately. There was to be no second chance. Benny started to hyperventilate. What had he done? What sort of fool was he to have followed that girl down to the stupid protest? Idiot!
It took a couple of repetitions for him to realize they were calling him.
“Ma, Bo! Present yourself!” He was used to his nickname, Benny. Nobody called him Bo.
“Here!” he said.
Two guards rushed in and seized him by the elbows. Another stood behind him with an assault rifle. They duck-walked him forward. He tried to look at the judges, the soldiers, but his vision blurred. They looked at one another, at their tablets, and murmured. He couldn’t hear what they said. Finally, the soldier in the center nodded and signed his tablet.
The three judges looked at him, their faces looked like granite slabs. The judge in the center raised his voice, but it was croaky. He had a bad cold.
“The Highest Punishment,” he coughed.
Benny sagged and cried out. “No! I just wanted to… I just…”
But it was pointless. They did not care.
The judge in the center turned to the officer on the right.
“Have we reached the quota yet?”
“No, sir,” the officer replied. “We will need more of the youngest ones. They are best for harvesting.”
23
Am I a bad person?
James came awake with a start.
Shit! He’d forgotten to send out his newsletter.
The momentary surge of panic recalled exactly the waking nightmares he suffered from three months after finishing his MBA, waking up in a flop sweat of fearful desperation because he was convinced he had a ten thousand word essay due and he hadn’t even finished his reading list.
He had finished the list of course. And submitted his essay early for an A+
Just as he hadn’t forgotten to send out The Acorn, his newsletter.
He’d chosen not to because the world no longer existed in which MBA graduates could profitably write investment advice for a monthly fee of fifty bucks (one month free with a yearly subscription, paid up front). The last copy of The Acorn had pulsed out from his server a few hours before the Chinese attack. There would be no more editions.
He was not that guy anymore. He hadn’t woken up in his apartment in Baltimore, or the hotel room in Washington. He lay on a thin camp mattress, in a sleeping bag, in a tent. Michelle Nguyen lay next to him in her own sleeping bag.
"James?"
She was awake and had noticed him stirring.
"Hey,” He said quietly. “Can't sleep? You worried about something?”
She laughed at that. And he had to laugh too. It was a superbly stupid question. James propped himself up on his elbow. They were lying close together, but they were not actually together, if you get the difference. He had always been that way with women. Letting them make the first move. It felt safer that way. Surer.
Not that there was anything safe about this woman. Michelle was… different. It was not just the midnight blue hair and the acres of tattoo ink staining her skin. She was simply unlike any other human being he had ever met. He couldn’t quite say why, if you insisted on asking him. It was just a truth he felt in his core. He seemed to have known this woman his whole life. Or at least known she would arrive in his life at some point.
And right now, he knew, she was hurting and scared, possibly even terrified.
"James," she said. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure. What?"
A heartbeat passed. Then another. He heard her intake of breath. Like she was standing at the edge of a cliff over a water of uncertain depth.
"Am I a bad person?" she asked.
It was dark in their tent and he could not see her face, but he could hear the need in her voice. She really did not know the answer. She did not know herself.
"Are you crazy?” he scoffed. “No way."
"I didn't ask if I was crazy," she said. "I asked if I was a bad person. I think that Mel thinks that I am. Because of the…"
She didn't so much trail off, as she choked off her own voice mid-sentence. It was as though, having divulged the secret of Jericho earlier, probably breaking about a hundred different laws in doing so, she could not bring herself to talk about it again.
"Hey," he said gently. He reached out for her in the dark, and accidentally smacked her face with the back of his hand. It was not exactly the reassuring gesture he was looking for.
"Sorry," he said quickly, feeling like a complete fool.
But she took his hand, squeezed it and kissed the back of his fingers. The feeling of her lips sent tingling waves up his arm.
"That's okay," Michelle said. "I'm sorry. I’m just feeling very fragile and, I dunno, overwhelmed or some shit. It's not like me."
"I'll bet it's not," James said. “I doubt anything could really overwhelm you.”
They kept their voices low, even though they knew Mel would be awake and on guard somewhere around the camp, probably sitting with Nomi under the stars. Everybody preferred to sit out with Rick's dog when they had guard duty. She was a good companion, and much better at keeping vigil than any of them.
"Michelle," James said, holding onto her hand in the darkness. Her fingers felt small, but strong. At some point she had taken off all the rings she wore when he’d first met her back in Washington. James wondered where she’d put them. “I don't have any doubt that you are a good person,” he said. “None at all. And I know you were doing good things in your job. Remember, I'm the one who sought you out after reading your stuff. I know what motivates you, Michelle. You want to help people."
He could almost hear the smile in her reply.
"And you need to remember, James O’Donnell, that I'm the one who reeled you in with bullshit promises of hot scoops for your newsletter, just so we could recruit you for our own nefarious ends."
"Your promises weren’t bullshit," James said seriously. “And I'm not worried about any of that, but I am worried about you, Michelle. This flu bug they released. It's just… I can't…"
He struggled to find the words.
“I don’t want you to get sick,” he said at last, in a rush, opting to keep to simple. “I don’t want you to die.”
She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on tightly.
“I’ll probably be fine,” she said. “But… but so many people…all dead…”
She trailed off.
James wasn’t sure who she meant. Americans? Chinese? Everyone, probably. He didn’t ask. He just held her for as long as she wanted to be held.
It was a cool night, but not cold. The light material of the tent bellied in and out on a gentle breeze.
He felt Michelle lift her face to his and her hand grip the back of his neck, pulling him down to her. She kissed him and sighed. Her breath was hot on his neck.
“It’s all fucked up isn’t it?” she said.
“I liked the kiss,” he said. “But yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Do you think they were wrong to do it?” Michelle asked. “The plague, I mean. Or the flu, whatever it was.”
“Do you really think they did it?” he asked, deflecting a question he didn’t much want to answer. “You don’t know that it’s not just happening because it’s happening. You weren’t in the room when they made the decision. Were you?”
She shook her head.
“I wasn’t. But I think Panozzo might have been. And I can’t raise him.”
“You can’t get anyone,” James reminded her. “The satellites are toast, remember?”
She shrugged. A very small movement.
Her lips found his again. A light kiss. James was aware of how bristly he must be. It had been days since he’d shaved.
“I think it was wrong,” Michelle said. “They shouldn’t have…”
She didn’t finish the thought.
Nomi started barking, a loud warning bark and a voice called out, “James! Michelle. Get up. There’s people coming. Lots of them.”
The flap of their tent suddenly reefed back, revealing a silhouette against a brilliant star field.
It was Mel.
“Come on,” she urged. “Get your pants on.”
James was already wearing his pants.
He was up and out of the bag with just a few, quick economical movements; another payoff from all those years sleeping out on the range back home. Grabbing his rifle he climbed out of the tent and waited for Michelle. Out under moonlight he could see Nomi bounding about. The tone of her barks had changed. No longer the deep, almost snarling roar of the hell-hound, she was now excited and happy to greet her master on his return.
Rick’s voice reached them from the forest.
“Nomi. Friends!” he called out.
James calmed a little. His heart, which had been hammering at the inside of his rib cage, slowed. He took a moment to breathe slowly and deeply as Michelle crawled out of the tent. She stood up and slipped her pistol into the holster at her hip.
"What is it?" she asked Mel.
"Don't know," Mel replied. "It sounded like trouble at first. I heard gunfire about half an hour ago. Just the usual stuff, I thought. A few pops before it went quiet. Then I heard lots of punters heading straight for us, but that's Rick for sure, and Nomi’s okay now. So I don't know."
All three of them stood by the small tent, waiting. James could hear voices. Lots of little voices. And two women talking loudly. Not arguing, but not bothering with any sort of sound discipline or stealth. For a second he wondered whether Rick had wandered down into the valley and gathered up that school group still camped out by the pond, and then four children burst out of the forest and ran towards Nomi. She barked excitedly and turned in small tight circles, wagging her tail.
"Nomi!" Rick called out from somewhere back in the woods. "Friends."
The children, two of them young teens or tweens and the other two, small enough to be in their first years of schooling, fell on the dog. They squealed and laughed and James imagined that the whole of the Canaan Valley must be able to hear the commotion. He started walking over to where they had emerged from the edge of the tree line. They all did.
"This doesn't feel like the best moment to sit down with Rick for a long chat about biological warfare," Michelle said.
"Agreed," Mel said. "But we do need to talk about it. "
“Agreed,” Michelle conceded.
James almost returned his rifle to the tent, but then thought the better of leaving a loaded firearm around with four children loose in the campsite. Rick appeared from the scrub at the same time as the two women he lead into the clearing.
“These better not be Tinder dates,” Mel said. She sounded dead serious, but James was getting attuned to her sense of humour.
They approached the newcomers cautiously. They approached all newcomers cautiously these days. James scanned the wider night, searching for signs that anybody else might be coming, perhaps somebody using all of this confusion to sneak up on them. He saw Mel doing the same thing. One of the women broke away and joined the children playing with Nomi. She told the children to have a care, and he was pretty sure he heard the deep twang of Kentucky in her voice. Rick led the other one over to the big tree stump where they had eaten dinner. James could still smell smoky fish oil in the ashes of the campfire.
"Might need to put on some coffee, and make up some hot chocolate if we still have any," he said as Rick came up. The woman with him looked young, maybe somewhere in her mid 20s. It was hard to tell in the dark. She had long hair and a slim build and she was dressed practically. Jeans, heavy boots and a hoodie.
"Everyone, this is Tammy Kolchar," Rick announced. "Tammy, this is Mel, my girl, and our friends James and Michelle. They'll make you welcome. You and the kids will be safe here.”
24
I think like a bullet
Doctor Cornwell was covered in blood, but it was the blood of others. She examined Jonas for minor wounds, his second check-up in just a few minutes, while he leaned back against the parapet and stared out over the retarded goat rodeo of Main Street. He was dizzy. What a super massive fucking shit show. Half a dozen fat-fingered muppets had shot themselves or their neighbours in the shock and terror of the firefight. A lot more had been injured in a scramble to get the fuck gone from harm’s way. Even though they had a giant fucking fortified wall between them and danger. Jonas had seen none of it go down. All his attention had been focussed on the assholes trying to kill him, and they were all outside the gate. But now, leaning back at his leisure, zoned out while Doc Cornwell fussed around with triage, he was able to appreciate exactly how fucked up Silverton’s first general mobilisation for the common defence had been.
