Fail State, page 23
part #2 of End of Days Series
The Stop 2 Shop’s parking lot had hosted an impromptu bartering spot for a few days the first week of the trouble, but it looked as if that was done for now too. Torn tarps and collapsed stalls spoke to a bad outcome there. John shrugged and turned back north to 23rd Street, where his humble little split-level waited. He seethed again at the bad luck, the sheer terrible timing of that Zero Day thing on the radio news. While there had been radio news, of course.
It had struck right before his payday, and they never kept a real stock of food in the house; they weren’t Mormons or anything.
His wife was going to be pissed. But what could he do? Go out to the field and steal ears of corn? Raid the grain silos? His mouth pressed into a thin line. It was going to come to that; Scotty Plater was already talking about how Anderson’s farm had no diesel, and this crop of soybeans and wheat would mostly rot.
John still thought of himself as a postman; he had been a rural letter carrier since he left the army seven years ago. On his hopeless mission to the center of town he had stopped by his workplace again. The brick, glass and blue-painted Post Office on the corner of E Street and 24th was shuttered. That sight really caused his balls to shrivel. When the postal service was down, the whole country was down. No doubt about it.
And pretty soon, the only thing to eat this winter would be wheat and corn. His mouth twisted into a sour expression. That was not an exactly balanced diet. John Mather knew a little about balancing his diet because he’d let himself get fat about five years earlier and it was true what they said. Losing weight was eighty percent diet and only twenty or even less how much you burned off moving around.
John was worried they were all gonna find that out for real before too long.
He crossed the railroad tracks and took in the sight of the tall grain silos to the west. From somewhere behind, there came the sound a gunshot. And another. It was fairly distant but John quickened his pace; there was more cover along 26th Street.
This is just awful, he thought. I’m thinking of tactical cover in Wilson. He furrowed his brow as he cleared the field by the tracks. Thinking of cover and wondering about nutrition; in the middle of some of the world’s most productive farmland in the world. Seriously?
He snorted, sweated. This computer war business was as serious as a god damned heart attack.
More gunshots cracked out behind him, and the staccato picked up until it sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.
Cold sweat stained his blue laborer’s shirt, and his grip tightened on his rifle. The gunfire seemed to be back at the Stop 2 Shop. He was sure of it. His breathing picked up as he power-walked north. He began to breathe easier when he was definitely out of line-of-sight from downtown, and the gunfire died down as well. If he never heard another gunshot in his life he would go to his rest a happy man. He took a deep breath and walked along Wilson’s grid-patterned roads, and eventually his own tan and brown house came into view.
No-one was outside anywhere in the street. This was new, too. Before Zero Day there would have been kids messing around, people mowing the grass, couples going for walks, or headed to one of the many local churches. Not now. As he approached his house, a curtain moved in the living room window.
It was Mary, and he knew she would have the family’s .38 close by as she watched. As he climbed the front step, he heard the deadbolt click. The door opened, and there she stood, revolver in hand. He ducked inside with no greeting; she shut the door.
His wife spoke. “No luck, huh?”
John shook his head as his daughter peeked around the corner and hurried to him. “We heard shooting, Daddy. We were scared.”
He gathered Anna in and looked to his wife. If he could run, take his family anywhere, he would. Somewhere, anywhere else. But he could read a map, and he knew his car had a quarter tank of gas. In Kansas, it might as well be empty. The first place stripped bare, of course, was the Texaco out by 70. And who said that any place else would be better? This same situation was everywhere. Even worse in the big cities with all those people packed in on top of each other.
John Mather set his rifle down and he ran his hand through his greasy hair. The village water pumps had failed. From here on out it was rainwater or bust, and it hadn’t rained in a while.
Mary crossed her arms and looked at him. She put down the revolver.
“Post office still closed?”
“Yeah.”
Her blue eyes looked sunken and hollow, “It’s been ten days.”
Mary’s lips set in a thin line. John regarded her silently.
“No-one’s coming to help, are they?”
“No.”
She threw up her hands. “Well ain’t this some shit!”
“Honey, not in front of…”
She put her hands on her hips. “We are going to starve to death in the middle of the world’s biggest fucking farm!”
He couldn’t disagree.
Anna started to wail.
Muhammad could hear the truck long before he could see it. The valley was strange like that, the way some noises echoed and reflected and rolled around the long, snaking folds of the gorge. His body glistened with sweat in the stifling heat. A monkey screeched in a nearby tugaar tree, and the young man flinched as the creature laughed itself out of the canopy, thudding to the ground and noisily chasing away a rival. Muhammad’s shirt was soaked through; his useless cell phone was heavy in a breast pocket.
Maybe, he thought, maybe it would make a difference if he showed the phone to Ali; the screenshot he had taken, the message that said in both English and Arabic that his funds weren’t available. But when thought on it he only wanted to cry out in rage and panic again; thousands of American dollars, all gone. Disappeared. The money his village was to pay for this next shipment of khat that his clan would take to the markets in Mogadishu.
This arrangement with Ali and his people had been respected through generations, through wars and invasions it had remained a constant. Ali would bring the product to the village, the young men would make sure it got safely to the markets in the city. It was, or had been, foolproof.
Muhammad’s mouth was dry, his vision blurry with the sweat that ran into his eyes. Maybe with tears too, if he was being honest with himself. The money was gone, probably stolen by the foreign devils who wrote the phone app. Gone. He should have stuck to cash.
The truck’s motor grew louder and he saw for the first time a cloud of dust rising from the curve in the wadi.
What would Ali say? Muhammad had no idea.
Movement caught his eye, the banged up blue Toyota came around the bend into the village’s sole, unpaved, street.
The usual groups of playing children and gossiping women were nowhere to be seen. The old men did not squat by the well as was their custom. Muhammad stood ready to receive the visitors on his own. Where had everyone gone?
Also, there was more than one truck. Usually,Ali would come with just a driver and some guards riding in the bed. The men would be armed of course. That was only natural. In this part of the world, a man leaving the family hut picked up his rifle as casually as he pulled on a pair of Chinese flip-flops to protect the soles of his feet from jujube tree thorns and the baking heat of the red earth. Men with guns were only to be expected. But on this day, Ali rode into the village with more guns and more men than Muhammad ever seen. Three trucks arrived in convoy.
The Toyota, riding low from the weight of the khat. And two escorting vehicles, both technicals: the gun wagons you saw everywhere in Mogadishu. They spread out. One of the technicals had mounted a Dishka. Muhammad could see the belt with the huge bullets snaking into the gun. A fuzzy-haired Ajuraan man in a brightly coloured vest pointed the heavy, long-barrelled machine gun directly at Muhammad and behind him at the village. His home.
His bowels felt as though cold water was sluicing through them. He did not doubt that with even the briefest pull on the trigger he would be swept away in a storm of blood and the huts behind him reduced to sticks.
The big gun drew his attention, but it was a long way from being the only weapon bristling in Ali’s convoy. The man must have brought his whole crew with him, Muhammad thought. His legs were leaden, although his feet oddly feather light, almost as if he might yet fly away on them. But it was too late to flee. Much too late.
The passenger door of the Toyota opened with a squeal. The panel was dented and the door did not sit squarely within the doorframe. Ali climbed out, slowly. He looked at Muhammad and grinned. But that, lazy, gold-toothed smile did not reach the man’s coal-black eyes. Ali held no weapon. Muhammad’s Star automatic was tucked into his waistband. The hammer dug into his stomach. He sucked at his sweaty upper lip. The little pistol might as well lie in a crater on the dark side of the moon for all the good it would do him.
The men on the trucks regarded Muhammad in silence, their flat, empty expressions amplifying his growing urge to run. Someone charged a weapon; the noisy clatter of a bolt chambering a bullet breaking the silence.
Ali spoke. “Do you have my money, little brother?”
Muhammad opened his mouth, but no words came out. His chest felt as if a great pile of rocks had been heaped upon him, or an invisible giant held him fast in his grip.
Ali tilted his head to the side; his eyebrows came together.
“What is wrong, brother, you cannot speak?” Ali waved toward someone. “Maybe I can help you find the words.”
Muhammad heard a scream. A woman’s voice, one he knew well.
An abrupt movement to his left, revealed a pair of men dragging Muhammad’s wife, Astur into the street. Astur fought, briefly, until one of the men brought a gleaming knife to her throat. Her eyes pleaded with Muhammad. Do something, husband. Make this go away.
Ali spoke in the most reasonable tone, as though they discussed nothing of importance.
“Muhammad. I know your money has disappeared.” He held up a phone. Muhammad did not recognise the model but it looked very new. Ali would of course have the best. “Your little phone has betrayed you, yes?”
Muhammad ran a shaking hand through his hair. He could not look Astur in the eye. But he did finally find his voice.
“Ali! I do not know what has happened! Wallahi—I swear to God—Your money was there, the Prophet witness!”
Ali looked at Astur. Then he turned slowly and looked at the truck. The Toyota that was loaded down with heavy bundles of khat. Over a thousand American dollars’ worth.
Muhammad trembled and fumed but Ali held up his hand.
“Do not utter the Prophet’s name to cover your lies and excuses. Do you see that even when the machines failed I managed to harvest the plant as always?”
“Yes, but…”
Speaking slowly, as if to a small child, Ali said over the top of Muhammad’s protests, “So why is it that you do not have my money? The Chinese and Americans did not make a pile of all the cash in the world and set fire to it, did they?”
“No, but…”
“I have just come from the village of Ibraahim al Galgala and he paid me in cash, as he has always done.”
“But Ali, please, the Barakaat Bank has your money, my brother! They are responsible for this, not me!”
Ali shook his head. When he spoke, he sounded dejected, but mockingly so. “Kullaha, Muhammad, you have no money but you will still pay.”
Ali smiled at Astur, and nodded to the man holding her. It happened so very quickly. The sharp knife opened her throat with shocking ease. Astur’s eyes went wide as she jerked in sudden pain, her life’s blood jetting out of the wound.
Wordlessly, Muhammad screamed and his hand scrambled for the Star pistol. Everything was diamond clear to Muhammad in that instant. The monkey screeched in the tugaar tree. Ali’s face shone with sweat and a sort of delirious glee. Astur’s body slumped to the ground. Muhammad tried to raise his pistol, expected to die before he could put a bullet into Ali’s stupid, grinning face. But his arm would not move. Strong hands gripped him. Someone kicked out the back of his knee. His useless Tokarev pistol fell from his waistband to the red dust. Somebody forced him to his knees. He shut his eyes and prayed. This wasn’t happening. Not to his wife. Not to his village. Small stones dug into his kneecaps. The smell of blood was rich and cloying at the back of his throat.
“Muhammad, open your eyes.”
Something hard tapped him on the back of his head. He opened his eyes.
He saw his wife’s body, and the spreading pool of blood. Tears blurred his vision but he could hear that the flies were already buzzing around her. And then he blinked away the swirl of colour and saw his family. His father. And mother. One of his brothers. Aunty Ahlaam, who was holding his son. His nine-year-old daughter.
Muhammad puked and wailed, then puked again.
Ali waited for him to finish. Then he spoke.
“I knew you had lost my money, Muhammad. You were never half the trader that Ibraahim is. You are soft and foolish. But you still have things of value here.”
Muhammad wheezed wretchedly. “What do you want, Ali?”
“Al-Shabaab needs warriors and servants. The time to rise against the infidel is now.”
28
A walk in the forest
With all of his years on the family ranch, James was the most comfortable navigating through the light forest and occasional patches of open grassland, and he took the lead. For a while he carried his rifle at the ready, but somehow that felt wrong, and even worse, an affectation. He was not a soldier, like Rick. So he went back to carrying the rifle on his shoulder again.
"James, are you all right? Are you having trouble with that? Do you want me to carry it?"
He paused in his headlong march along the rim of the valley. The sun had climbed high overhead into a cloudless sky, and the full heat of the late summer's day beat down on them. It was hard to believe the valley had been so cold just before dawn. Mel, who had been a good eight or nine paces behind, caught up. He could tell she wasn't lagging from lack of fitness. She was breathing easily and unlike him she wasn't sweating much. As she joined him, her head swivelled left and right, constantly checking their surroundings. They had dropped down and away from the ridge line overlooking the vast open amphitheater of the Canaan, to follow a shaded track through open woodland. The trees and the undergrowth in this part of the National Park had not grown to an impenetrable density, but you couldn’t see much further than fifty or sixty yards in any direction. When he thought about the scene they had left behind, and what they were possibly moving toward, he shivered, just a little.
"No," he said. "I just feel a bit… I dunno…"
He trailed off.
"You and me both, brother,” Mel said, with genuine sympathy. In her London accent the last word came out as 'bruvver.'
James joined her in scanning their surroundings. Leaves rustled, branches and tree trunks creaked and small creatures skittered unseen through the deadfall. Mel Baker's face was unreadable, but he guessed that she was no more at ease than him.
"I guess I just don't know the rules anymore," James admitted. "A couple of weeks ago, walking along this trail, if you bumped into somebody you’d have said hello, maybe stopped to chat. But now it's like… Well, I don't know what it's like. Rick probably did the right thing shooting at those guys as soon as he saw them.”
"He didn't just shoot at them, James," Mel said. "He shot and killed them."
She sounded very sad.
James shook his head, but not in denial. You couldn't deny what Rick had done, but could you deny the necessity of it?
“I still think he probably did the right thing. I mean, after what Tammy and her friend told us, and the kids…”
Mel frowned.
"I know," she conceded, but she didn't look happy about it. She interrupted her continual scan of their surroundings to look directly into his eyes. It was not a pleasant sensation. After a while she said, "That was our first fight, you know. The first time Rick and I have disagreed about anything.”
She sighed and shrugged.
“We should’ve been arguing about what movie to see tonight, or where to have lunch, or whether the toilet seat gets left up or down. You know, stuff like that. Not about whether it's legit to straight up murder a bunch of kiddy fiddlers in the woods, or to leave one of them to die of shock, or sepsis. Or exposure, or… I dunno. I really don't know anything anymore, James.”
She had retreated so far into her own thoughts that she seemed oblivious to the wider world and its dangers, and James felt the need to take over her continual surveillance of the forest.
Nothing had changed in the short time they’d been talking.
Towering conifers stood sentry, dark and mute. Starflowers and marsh marigolds bathed in patches of late morning sun where a break in the canopy let the light stream down. Somewhere nearby, he heard ducks and the honking of geese.
"We should keep moving," he said.
"Yeah," Mel nodded.
They resumed the trail, following the directions Rick and Tammy had worked out between them. It could not be far now. Maybe another five minutes.
They did not resume the conversation as they trekked on. Without remembering how it had got there, James found himself cradling the Ruger in his hands. Mel's pistol was still holstered, but when they finally hit the two lanes of blacktop slicing through the nature reserve, she undid the clip securing the weapon at her hip. They stood by the side of the road, listening.
There was nothing to hear, or at least nothing of human civilisation. No engines, no planes in the sky. Nothing. Just the rustle of leaves and the low, eerie murmur of the forest around them. That was unnerving because they knew there were plenty of people hiding out in the reserve. But everyone was laying low.
"This way, you think?" he asked, inclining his head to the north, where the blacktop curved around a gentle bend. Leaf litter and deadfall had covered the road, but not completely. He could see it was starting to build up. There had been little or no vehicular traffic through here in over a week.
