Fail State, page 25
part #2 of End of Days Series
Muller referenced a few more outsiders, including Chad Moffatt for helping Brad Rausch with constructing the Wall, and some Professor Boylan who Jonas had never heard of, for advising Jacques Loubert’s group on the best seeds to plant for fast-growing returns.
“Since these folks have been working as hard as any one of us, and sharing the same risks, it’s only fair and proper that they get a say on how we meet those risks,” Muller shouted.
Dale laughed softly, leaning over to be heard.
“This is how he beat O’Shannassy last time,” he said.
For the next three minutes Dave Muller argued passionately in favour of a bigger tent, a larger pie, to be shared by everyone he personally welcomed inside. Jonas could only nod in admiration for some really impressive grassroots populism. O’Shannassy tried to argue against giving anybody but registered voters in Silverton a say, but even his supporters went quiet at that. Many of them had been treated by Doc Cornwell’s interns, or stood watch at the Wall or even been trained in basic fire and movement by Wolfenden’s militia. Jonas almost laughed when realised he himself had been used as pawn or maybe a prop. He saw Al Barrett, still sporting a few bandages, pointing him out to other voters and speaking in animated fashion almost certainly in favour of Sheriff’s Muller’s proposition. Barrett waved to him and Jonas gave him a thumbs up.
When the vote to enlarge the town’s franchise was put, it passed easily on the voices.
“Game over,” smiled Dale.
And it was.
Muller carried the next vote on the voices too, riding to victory on the backs of the newly enfranchised.
“Reckon we’re done, here,” Dale said, as the crowd broke up.
“What was the point of all that?” Jonas asked.
“What’s the point of anything?” Dale replied. “If you’re smart, Murdoch, you’d get out now.”
Jonas said nothing for a moment.
Then, “You bugging out?”
“Dunno,” Dale said. “Don’t have transport. I could hike out, I guess. But I haven’t got the gear or supplies. I gave most of my shit to the emergency committee.”
Jonas chose his words carefully.
“Would you get out if you could?”
Dale looked at him.
“Five minutes ago.”
30
A passage to Canadia
One of the first jobs Ellie ever had in the restaurant trade, was also one of the worst. Dish pig at an Outback Steakhouse on 19th Street, Sacramento. She had only been there for three months but they were an intense three months. Ellie thought she remembered the city well, for better or worse. But this was not Sacramento as she knew it.
"Where the hell is everyone?” she asked, leaning forward in the back of the police patrol car.
"Curfew," said the cop behind the wheel.
"Lean back please," his partner said.
"And gardening," the driver chuckled to himself.
"Yeah, and gardening," the other cop snorted. "Now lean back."
Ellie had no idea what they meant by that, and these guys weren't giving up any more information. At least not to a couple of outsiders.
"I think they've got people working the farms," Damo said. He sat next to her in back of the patrol car. They weren't restrained. The cops hadn't slapped handcuffs on them or anything. But they were caged in, and there were no handles to open the doors.
"I don't know whether you saw them as we were coming up the river, but as you got closer to the city there was lots of people working out in the fields. Fuckin’ thousands of them."
Ellie had seen that, but hadn't thought much of it. She’d adapted to the idea that the cyber-attack had melted down so much technology that it seemed only natural that things like tractors and combine harvesters didn't work anymore either. But now she thought about it, that was bullshit. Those things were sturdy analogue brutes. They ran on diesel, not software. Or at least she assumed not.
"Did they used to navigate the big tractors with satellite links or something?” she said.
"Some big places back home, yeah," Damo confirmed. "Dunno much about the local set up though. You ever deal with any of the growers from around here?"
She shook her head.
"No, not much. It’s all big agro-industry combines. Our suppliers were all small indie producers.”
Damo leaned forward and rapped on the cage dividing them from the cops up front.
"Where are we going, mate?”
"Convention Centre," the cop on the passenger side said. "Refugee resettlement runs out of the convention centre. They got ‘em all in there."
Ellie went back to staring out of the window. She was still haunted by flashbacks to the morning. It was surreal. She had killed a man, and now she was riding along in the back of a cop car, but not because of that. She wasn't quite sure where they were going or what they were supposed to do when they got there, but nobody had asked them about the bullet holes in Damo’s boat, or the blood splatter on the hull.
Nobody here seemed even remotely interested in anyone or anything that wasn't from here. Still, neither she nor Damo mentioned the fact that they’d gunned down three or four people just a couple of hours ago. That was not the smart play here.
Ellie wondered what’d happened to the asshole who'd been steering the boat, the one who'd taken a grazing shot and jumped over the side, swimming away. Had he bled out? Drowned?
“You right, mate?" Damo asked.
"I'm good," she said tightly.
Fuck those guys.
There was some traffic on the streets, she saw. Military vehicles, of course. They were everywhere. But there were buses and trucks too, all of them full of people heading out of the city, or empty and driving back in. Everyone looked tired.
As much as she had not enjoyed her first time in Sacramento, she did remember it as a beautiful city, with some nice, well-kept public spaces. It was obvious, as they neared the centre of the state capital, that nobody was bothering with shit like rubbish collection anymore. Or maintaining the parks. Litter collected in drifts against the side of buildings and in the gutters. Manicured lawns had been allowed to grow ragged and weedy. Cars which had obviously been damaged in collisions had simply been pushed out of the way.
They pulled up next to the curb outside the Convention Centre and it was a shit show. A tent city. A couple of thousand people had been corralled inside temporary fencing patrolled by heavily armed soldiers.
"What if they just tossed us in there and drove away?” she said quietly, leaning across the rear seat to whisper to Damo.
"Mate, if they wanted to play silly-buggers they’d have done it back at the boat. Knocked us on the head and taken all our shit. No, they want something."
The cops climbed out first and opened the doors for them. One stayed with the car, taking the chance to enjoy a cigarette. The other ordered them to follow him. They walked the length of the block. The smell from the tent city was gross. Way worse than the bins in any restaurant she'd ever worked. The cop took them in through the front entrance to the centre, led them through a crowd and up to a trestle table where half-a-dozen harried looking civilians worked with ring binders, notepads, pencils and paper. Most of them were busy trying to process hundreds of people who remained docile and compliant under the stony glares of military policemen. Their uniformed guide led them to the end of the table, depositing them in front of a balding middle-aged man in a white shirt that hadn't been properly laundered in a couple of days. He looked up with red rimmed eyes and when he spoke his voice was exhausted.
"What now?"
"Couple of squirters from the river," said the cop. "I got told to bring them to you. Lieutenant de Stasi said to give you this.”
He handed over a slip of paper.
They waited while the man read the hand-written message.
He looked like he would have been surprised, if he had the energy for it.
"Right, okay. I remember this,” he croaked. “Thanks. I'll take it from here.”
The cop left them without another word. How were they supposed to get back to the boat? But before Ellie could say anything the man behind the trestle table stood up, grabbed a plastic cup and told them to follow him.
He took them through a door into a small windowless room.
Another man, for sure another exhausted civil servant given his beaten down pallor, was leaving the room as they entered. The two men exchanged tired fist bumps.
"Sit down and grab a cup of coffee if you want,” their guy said. “I’m afraid it's shit. And there's no milk or creamer. Or anything. But you can have all the shitty instant coffee you can handle until it kills you. I’m drinking so much that won’t be long now. It’ll be a merciful release.”
“We're good," Ellie said.
The man topped up his own brew, tapped out a cigarette, and offered the packet to them. Neither of them were smokers. He shrugged and lit up anyway.
"Please, sit down. My name’s Paul Fenton. I'm the refugee resettlement coordinator.”
“We’re not refugees," Ellie insisted.
"Yeah, I know," Fenton snorted. "If you were you wouldn't be in here talking to me. You’d be locked up in the big open-air cage out there. Come on, sit down."
They joined him at the small table in the middle of the room. It was full of newspapers and magazines, none of them recent. Empty takeaway boxes, junk food refuse and other detritus covered the surface. It didn't seem to bother Fenton.
"Where did you come from?" he said.
"Australia," Damien Moloney deadpanned.
Fenton snorted again.
"You should go back there… mate,” he said, mangling Damo’s accent. "As long as the Chinese don't nuke them they’ll probably be okay down there. Lots of kangaroos to eat."
"We came up the river. From the state park, the lakes," Ellie said, cutting in on him.
“Been there long?" Fenton asked.
“Since the first night," Ellie said. "Why?"
Fenton took a long draw on his cigarette and leaned back. He closed his eyes. For a moment she thought he'd fallen asleep, but he came back to them with a start.
"Sorry," he said. "I haven't had a break. I owe you one for that.”
"You can pay us off by telling us what's going on," Ellie replied.
Fenton smiled, or rather he tortured his facial muscles into something approximating a smile.
"That's easy," he said. "You're gonna go back to your boat. They’re gonna raise the bridge. And you will sail on through, do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not even think about setting foot in Sacramento again."
Damo smiled.
"Sweet as a nut. But what else?"
Fenton nodded.
"I can see there's a reason you're still alive. Okay, the quid pro quo—you remember when we got all worked up about them? Ha, good times—well the quid pro quo, the favour you're doing for us, is that I've got some Canadians nobody wants to feed any more and no way of getting them back to the magical land of Canadia. Or at least I didn't until you rolled up. I give them to you, you take them off my hands, you got your pro, and you most assuredly got your quo. Am I clear?"
"How many of them?" Ellie asked. She was already thinking about their food supplies.
Fenton smiled, “You're in luck, there's only two. Both children. But they’re special.”
“Shit,” Ellie said. "What happened?"
Paul Fenton's ragged smile disappeared completely. He stood up, went to the coffee maker, poured himself another cup and sat down again.
"These two belong to the Canadian finance minister. She was in town for business, brought the kids with her to go to Disneyland afterward, and got caught down in San Francisco."
"Why weren't they with her?" Damo asked.
"She was only expecting to be down there for a couple of hours. She put them into the kids club at the hotel here. Rang on the first day. Said she’d get herself back. We haven't heard from her again. But we have heard from Ottawa. Dad is a big old hunk of Moose cheese in the Mounties. He wants them back. Congratulations. You’re diplomats now. Or couriers. Yeah. Diplomatic couriers, that sounds good. I wish you the best of luck in your new career. Soon as I finish my coffee, and maybe have a little nap, I’ll get you the kids, you can get back to your boat, and be on your way. Just get them to the border, hand them over to the nearest Mountie, or lumberjack or, to be honest, whoever the fuck you want. I just really want these kids off my books and Justin Trudeau off my ass. I wouldn’t have thought Canadians could be such a persistent pain in the ass.”
"That's it?" Ellie said. "You don't want to know about us? We could be like, child slavers or something."
Fenton sipped at his coffee.
"We still have some capabilities," he said. "The cops who stopped you on the river checked the registration and ownership of the boat. That's you, Damian Moloney. Australian-born, naturalised American citizen, resident of Chestnut Street, the Marina, and proprietor of Fourth Edition, described by the Chronicle an abso-fucking-lutely fabulous Temescal bistro. And you would be his infamous and heavily tattooed chef Eliza Jabbarah, resident of Oceanview, San Francisco, where you share a two bedroom bungalow with your girlfriend, unemployed photographer Jodi Sarjanen.”
Ellie gave him her stone face.
“She’s freelance.”
Fenton snorted.
“Yeah we’re all freelance now.”
Damo jutted out his jaw, but said nothing. Fenton raised his hands as if in apology.
“Look. The government is going through a few things at the moment, but we can still do a basic background check. The phone system still works. Did you know that? The old copper landlines, that is. And the State Department, which okayed this arrangement, has better networks than I can access. So we know who you are. We know where to find you. Get the kids home, and we’ll raise the bridge."
Ellie sketched a thin smile.
"Well, if we’re helping you out like this," she said. "What about some fuel and food and…"
Fenton shook his head.
“Don't even bother. We've got nothing for you but clear passage, and you should be glad of that. I don't think you understand what's been happening here.”
Damo said nothing.
"We've been out of touch," Ellie explained.
"Yeah," Fenton said. "I can imagine. San Francisco is a disaster. LA a complete write-off. The fact you're even alive and you got yourself here, it tells me you've been hunkered down somewhere far away from the real world."
They both nodded carefully.
“Yeah, the world," Ellie said. "Can you tell us what's been happening out there?”
Fenton rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.
“Well, we’re at war with China. Did you know that?"
They both shook their heads.
“Figures, I guess,” Ellie conceded.
"Yeah, so that's a thing now. Congress did that. Voted for it from some secure and secret location last week. Anyway, I got no idea how that's going. There’s no cable or network news at the moment. We think Russia fried them. We’re not at war with Russia, but most of Europe is. South East Asia is a free-fire zone. And, here’s this year’s Oscar winner for delicious irony: Mexico has closed the border and deployed its army and paramilitary police to stop any American refugees getting in.”
“What about Oz?” Damo asked.
Fenton shrugged.
“I think they declared war on China after those missiles fell on Darwin. Otherwise, I got nothing. Sorry. What I do know is the Feds declared a dozen cities mandated strongholds. They got military resources. They got funding, such as that is. They got priority for resupply, but there's not much of that. And if you're stuck outside a stronghold, you're on your own. For now. When things stabilize, the plan is to push out and pacify.”
He leaned back in his chair, stretched his back and groaned slightly.
"We got lucky. Port of Seattle has been a basket case for years because it can't handle container traffic. But it does sit in the middle of a gigantic food bowl. And all that stuff comes through here. It meant Sacramento could still feed itself. Small population, at least a quarter of which flew out in the first week when everyone was freaking over a nuclear war. Lots of nutrients in storage at the port. Lots more waiting to be plucked from the fecund earth. So we’re a stronghold. We’ll probably pull through. Probably."
"Especially if you can get rid of outsiders, extra mouths, that sort of thing," Damo said.
Fenton nodded.
"So, you up for this?"
Ellie and Damo exchanged a look. They both shrugged.
"Sure," Damo said. "It'll give little Maxi someone to play with."
They picked the kids up half an hour later. Pascal and Beatrice. A boy and a girl. Twelve and fourteen years old, respectively.
“Maybe not such great play pals for Maxi then,” Damo conceded as they filed into the office where Fenton had left them under guard.
The children looked scared when he told them they would be going home with Damo and Ellie.
“Back to Canada,” Damo hurried to explain. “Not Australia.”
“Our mother said she was coming back for us and we weren’t supposed to leave the hotel until she got here,” Beatrice said. ‘She works for the government and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t do what she says.’
“See what I mean,” Fenton said out the side of his mouth. “Good luck.”
Ellie tried to smile reassuringly. She perched on the arm of the couch where the children sat, thought better of that, and got down on her haunches so that she was at eye level with them.
“My name is Ellie,” she said. “I don’t know your mom, but my friend Jodi has a little boy I help to look after and I know that the thing your mom would want most in the world is to get you safely home. She’s tough, I’ll bet, your mom, isn’t she.”
They both nodded. Pascal seemed to be holding back tears.
“Well, a tough lady like that, and mom who loves you as much as she does, there’s a reason she can’t get back to you straight away. She must be handling some pretty hard stuff where she is.”
