Dyson, following Ed and Della into the living-room, said, ‘We heard the shooting. Then we heard you go out to the front gate in the Jeep. I was trying to get the boys together – armed and ready – when we saw you coming back.’ Ed’s chest was still heaving from their last desperate run. He said, ‘Dyson, I’m glad you did. That blast of scatter-gun fire – well, that just about saved our lives.’
Dyson was carrying the light hunting rifle which he usually used for popping off shots at rabbits and rats. He went across to the window, parted the drapes, and peered studiously out into the night. The Jeep was already alight, and rolling tongues of orange flame were pouring out of its blackened carcass like a grotesque demonstration of fire-eating.
‘There’s a whole lot of them out there, Ed,’ Dyson said, quietly. ‘Twenty or thirty maybe. I counted the muzzle flashes when you were running in. There’s no way we can hold them off for very long.’
Ed said, ‘I’m not going to try to hold them off.’
‘You’re not even going to try to save yourself?’ asked Shearson Jones, in his fat, unmistakable voice. ‘What are you going to do? Let them scavenge the few supplies we have left? Lie low while they rob us?’
Ed turned around. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘those raiders out there undoubtedly outnumber us. They sure as hell outgun us. If we tried to hold them off, they’d either starve us out, burn us out, or simply shoot their way in. Well – you can take your pick, senator, when it comes to the kind of death that you want. But right now, I personally don’t feel like dying at all, and I don’t suppose that a whole lot of the folks who work on my farm feel like it either.’
He turned to Dyson, and said, ‘They got Willard, and they got Jack, and they got that garage-hand you sent out there. I don’t even remember his name.’
Dyson said unhappily, ‘When they didn’t come back with you, I kind of assumed that was the way it was. Damn it, Ed, that really makes me feel like hell.’
‘Me, too, Dyson,’ said Ed, laying his hand on his shoulder.
Dyson said, ‘That young boy’s name was Gerrity – David Gerrity. He was the best we had when it came to stripping a tractor. Well, so Willard told me. I’m only the pilot.’
Ed looked back at Shearson. ‘We’re going to have to make a break for it,’ he said. ‘You can either come along with us, or you can stay behind. That decision is entirely up to you. But we’re going to load our wagons with all the remaining foodstuffs on this farm and head for the west coast.’
‘The west coast?’ asked Della. ‘Surely it makes more sense to head for Washington. They’ll have government there – some kind of law and order. And besides, I want to turn Senator Jones in to Charles Kurnik in person There’s no point in going to the west coast.’
Ed said, ‘My wife and child are out on the west coast. I want to find them. Once I’ve done that, I want to try to get out of the United States, either through Mexico or by sea. Believe me, Della, you only have to listen to the news bulletins. You only have to see what happened tonight to two of my closest friends and workmates – Willard and Jack. There’s no point in pretending that things are any better in Washington. They can’t be. They’re probably worse. And what the hell is the point of holding on to a fraud suspect in a nation where they don’t even have enough police to stop people murdering each other?’
There was a burst of gunfire outside, and somewhere across the yard a window broke.
Karen said, ‘I believe we ought to stick together. I think we’ll have more of a chance that way.’
Peter Kaiser rolled up his eyes. ‘No wonder history has no eminent lady philosophers,’ he said. ‘With the possible exception of Xaviera Hollander.’
Karen looked up at him. ‘Do you want to stay behind?’ she asked. ‘If all the rest of us go to the west coast, do you want to try to make it to Washington on your own?’
Peter looked back at her, and then shrugged. ‘It depends,’ he said sulkily.
Ed said, ‘Dyson – how many wagons do we have? And how many cars?’
‘We’ve got the Chevy wagon you brought back from Fall River. Then there’s the Big Dooley that Carson’s left here when they were shifting tree stumps. And four – maybe five family pick-ups and sedans. One El Camino for sure, and a Mercury Marquis.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed, ‘this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to load the pick-ups and the trunks of the family cars with as much food as we can. We mustn’t forget water and fruit juices, too. Then we’re going to get everybody into their cars and ready to go, and pull out of here in a convoy, shooting all the time. With any luck, we should be able to clear the farm without any casualties.’
‘With any luck,’ echoed Peter Kaiser, sarcastically, pulling a morbid face.
Shearson said, ‘Listen, Mr Hardesty, I may be technically the prisoner of your fancy-woman here, formerly my fancy-woman, but that doesn’t mean I have to take instructions from you. It’s essential that Mr Kaiser and I return to Washington; and if you’re not prepared to come with us, then I’m afraid we shall simply have to go without you.’
‘You wouldn’t get ten miles,’ said Ed. ‘Don’t you watch the television? Haven’t you seen what it’s like out there?’
‘Your concern for my well-being is touching,’ replied Shearson. ‘However, I’ve been looking after myself for a considerable number of years, often through situations that have been a good deal stickier than this one, and I think I can manage without you, thanks.’
Della said, ‘Really, Ed, we ought to try to make it to Washington. I know your wife and daughter are in Los Angeles, but I have to take Senator Jones in to the Bureau. There won’t be any hope of arraigning him if I drag him out to California. He’s probably thought up twenty ways of killing our indictments anyway – unusual and stressful arrest, that kind of thing. We really ought to try.’
Ed looked at Dyson, who shrugged, and then at Karen. ‘Going back to Washington doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ he insisted. ‘The whole city is practically under siege, the way they’re telling it on the news. Right now, we need to get ourselves somewhere with a good climate, fertile soil, in case we have to resettle and start growing our food again from scratch; and somewhere that’s close to the ocean and the border. Sure, I want to go to Los Angeles for personal reasons. But it’s going to be safer, too, to stay in the West. I’d stay right here in Kansas if I could – but it’s dry, and the winters can be hard, and from what’s going on outside, I’d guess that we can expect raiding and looting parties for a long time to come.’
‘Do you seriously think that California’s going to be any better?’ asked Shearson. ‘Los Angeles is burning, San Francisco has turned into a latter-day Sodom, with plenty of Gomorrah thrown in; San Diego’s become a looters’ paradise.’
From outside, there was a crackle of heavy, sustained shooting. They heard upstairs windows break, and the sound of running feet. Dyson Kane went to the window again just as one of Ed’s farmhands came into the room, carrying a shotgun that was still smoking, his face bright with sweat and excitement.
‘Mr Hardesty, sir,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘It don’t look like we can keep ’em back much longer. Jerry’s been hit in the arm, sir, and the rest of the boys ain’t really up to gun-fighting.’
‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is. Dyson – can you get those vehicles loaded up, and parked in a line, ready to roll? Mr Kaiser – Karen – you want to get out there and help?’
‘I’m not doing anything until we’ve settled which direction we’re heading,’ said Peter, folding his arms.
Ed turned to Shearson. The senator gave him a fat, condescending smile ‘The same goes for me, Mr Hardesty; and you know darn well that if I stay, and Mr Kaiser stays, then it’s your fancy-woman’s bounden duty to stay too.’
There was more shooting outside, and a child screamed. Ed snapped at Dyson, ‘Get moving. I want those wagons loaded up before it’s too late.’ Then, without hesitation, he tugged his Colt aut
omatic out of his belt and held it up in front of everybody in the room as if he were demonstrating it to a group of benighted natives.
‘I’m going to make one thing straight,’ he said. ‘On this farm, I’m in charge of everything and everybody. I’m in charge, and I’m also responsible. That’s the way it is, even when we don’t have a crisis on our hands. But right now, we have, and that increases my authority even more. This country isn’t safe for people to wander around on their own, particularly women, and particularly obese senior senators with a price on their heads. Our society’s broken down into tribes, and the way I see it, each tribe has to hold together to survive. This is our tribe, and unless anybody wants to argue about it, I’m the chief. Now, we’re ail getting out of here, we’re all helping to load up the wagons, and then we’re all heading west.’
Shearson, gripping the arms of his chair to support himself, slowly rose to his feet He stood there for a moment swaddled in his bathrobe, breathing loudly and hoarsely with the exertion of getting up.
‘Mr Hardesty,’ he said, ‘my late father once told me never to argue with fools, ignoramuses, or people with loaded guns. Since you fall into all three categories, I don’t think I have any alternative but to comply with your wishes. Mrs McIntosh – shall we light out for Los Angeles?’
Della, furious, stalked out of the living-room ahead of any of them. ‘Well, now,’ Shearson said to Ed, pulling down his eyelid with his finger in a gesture of shared confidence, ‘I seem to have made the right decision. Anything that infuriates an agent of the FBI can’t be all bad.’
*
At the same time that Ed Hardesty’s farmworkers were trying to hold off the raiders who threatened South Burlington, a small and simple tragedy was taking place in a dilapidated frame house on the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The house had once been neat and proud, part of a row that had all belonged to International Harvester workers, foremen and supervisors and chief engineers. Now it was overshadowed by unkempt sycamores, and a rusty rundown Nash was parked in the driveway. This was where the welfare cases lived; the tired single-parent wives with their second-hand strollers and their dime-store dresses; the paraplegic husbands who could do nothing more than nod and shuffle, and whose sick pay had long since run out.
Number 8 was the home of John Frederick Walters, his wife Elizabeth, and their three daughters, Alice, Wendy and Jenna. Alice was the oldest, at six; Wendy was three and Jenna was six months.
John Frederick Walters, who always gave his name as ‘John Frederick Walters’, was thirty one, and a skilled electrician. At least, he used to be a skilled electrician, until 1972, when he was rewiring a house in the better part of Fort Wayne, and the owner came back half-drunk from a business reception, pulled the main switch, and electrocuted him. He was lucky to be alive. But there was a twisted burn all the way down the right side of his chest, and even after months of hospitalisation his left hand still felt a little numb, and he still dragged his left leg in an odd, teetering walk that made people in supermarkets give him a wide berth, in case he collided with their carts. Until the famine crisis on Sunday, he had worked in a Thriftee Superstore on Paulding Road, but it had been burned to the ground in the early hours of Monday. Now he was holed up with his family at Number 8, with no electricity, no telephone, no mail, and only a transistor radio with weak batteries to keep him in touch with the horror that was sweeping the outside world.
He was still sitting in his yellow-papered living-room at midnight on Thursday, listening to an extended news bulletin about the day’s disasters. Thirty-six people had died when their overloaded airplane had snagged power lines over Columbus, Ohio – turning their attempted getaway from the United States into a mass cremation. Anything up to 100 people were feared dead after fire had swept a condominium in Miami from a looted supermarket next door. Washington was almost unapproachable – the US Marines had sealed off every highway from the outside world, and were threatening to shoot interlopers on sight. The President was out of his oxygen tent, but his doctors had told him he had to rest for two or three more days at the least. It was ‘expertly estimated’ that between seven and eight hundred Americans had died during the day from violence directly related to the food shortages.
From the outside world – from Europe, from the Far East, from the Third World – there was awkwardness and hesitation. They stood by while America slowly collapsed from within, like unwilling witnesses to a coronary. The Queen had sent a message expressing ‘the grave concern of the British people’, but the reluctance of America’s erstwhile allies to assist her was becoming increasingly and embarrassingly obvious. Already, trade envoys from Italy, Sweden, and West Germany had made special visits to the Soviet Union, and the dollar was no longer being quoted on the world money markets. The Secretary of State, in a rare fit of temper, talked of alliances that had taken ‘fifty years and one hundred fifty billion dollars to build; and only fifty minutes to tear down.’
John Frederick Walters listened to all this carefully, leaning close to his indistinct radio set. It was a hot, airless night in Fort Wayne, and most of the rioting and looting that had ravaged the town during the earlier part of the week had died down. There were no more supermarkets to break into; no more police cars to burn; and the fear and panic were collapsing of heat exhaustion. Still, John Frederick Walters could hear police sirens howling eerily out over on Tillman Road, and he knew that if he went to the top of the house, to Alice’s room, and opened the window, he would be able to see the Lutheran Hospital burning over on Fairfield Avenue. He had heard it from Old Oliver, his next-door neighbour, that seventy people had died in that fire, suffocated in their beds like fumigated bugs.
He heard the stairs creak. He switched off the radio set and sat up straight, his thin hands laced together in his lap. He was a very thin man altogether – although he had weighed almost 185 pounds before his electrocution. His face was pale as water-chestnuts, and he had odd straw-coloured hair that stuck up at the back, as if it were charged with static. He looked an electrocuted man – as if his brain were still in that black hiatus between switch on and switch off – as if his bodily fluids were in stasis – as if his nerve-endings were recoiling and recoiling from that first fry of voltage.
His wife Elizabeth was standing in the living-room door. Her face was angular and white; her eyes as shifty and haunted as Edith Piaf, or a painting by Munch. She wore a cheap new quilted robe with orange flowers on it, Woolco’s ritziest. The last time he had taken her out was in February of 1972, for her birthday, when they had gone to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, and eaten Chinese.
She said, ‘Jenna’s hungry.’
John Frederick Walters looked at her. He wondered why she had come all the way downstairs at midnight to tell him that. He knew Jenna was hungry. They had scraped out the last can of formula that morning, diluting it as much as they could, and now there was nothing. There were no emergency food centres in Fort Wayne. If you wanted anything at all, you had to drive to Indianapolis, and the Rambler’s battery had been flat for weeks. Besides, what chance did a cripple have of fighting his way through to the food supplies?
‘Have you tried breast-feeding her?’ asked John Frederick Walters.
‘I tried. But there’s hardly anything there. I haven’t eaten in two days myself, John Frederick. I can’t give milk out of nothing at all.’
John Frederick Walters reached for the red Lark packet by the radio. There were two cigarettes left in it and he shook them, wondering if he ought to have one now, or if he ought to save both of them for later. In the end, he slid one out, tucked it between his lips, and lit it one-handed with a folded matchbook. He puffed smoke.
‘There’s nothing left, Elizabeth. That can of franks we gave the kids today, that was it, and from what the news has been saying, we shouldn’t even have risked that. They could go down with disease, die.’
Elizabeth stayed where she was in the doorway, nibbling at her lower lip. She peeled the skin off it in strips until
it bled. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t anybody care? You’d think they’d come around with food parcels. I mean – we’ve got three children here. What are we going to do?’
‘The whole town’s a wreck,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘No police, no ambulance service, nothing. How the hell can anybody expect them to bring around food parcels?’
‘But we’ll starve,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘The three girls will starve.’
John Frederick Walters stared at the burning cigarette in his hand. He felt giddy from nicotine and lack of food. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess we will, unless something happens.’
‘But what do people do in India, places like that? Cambodia? They starve, sure, but they sometimes scratch some kind of a living.’
‘They know how, that’s why,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘They know how to live on a small bowl of rice, how to make it last. They’ve never seen a T-bone steak in their lives, and they’d probably puke up at the sight of it if they did. They know how to grow the damned rice, too. Do you know how to grow rice? I mean, if you do, get out back and get planting. We’re all gonna need it.’
Elizabeth stared at him as if she hadn’t heard or understood a word he was saying. She probably didn’t. She said, slowly, ‘There’s some Alpo I bought for Florence’s dog. There’s a can of that left.’
‘Alpo? Are you kidding? You can’t eat dog-food.’
‘But how can I produce milk if I don’t eat? Can’t you hear her screaming up there? What am I supposed to do? Stand by and watch my children wasting away? I don’t know how you can sit there apd smoke and listen to that stupid wore-out radio and let it happen!’
John Frederick Walters stared at her coldly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess you don’t know, do you? You don’t know that this whole world’s fallen in on us, and because we’re at the bottom to begin with, the entire weight of everything falls on us cripples and incompetents first.’
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