by Lopez, Rob
They stayed on the tracks, passing over I-85. Here they found the first sign of where all those people had gone. Trucks and trailers lay stranded on the highway, caught on their early-morning deliveries to the stores, and the pavement was littered with torn tarps and ripped-open packaging as people had looted these vehicular resources. Amid all the junk, however, paths had been cleared by the tramping feet of refugees. Bags that turned out to be too heavy to carry had been discarded. Empty bottles glinted in the sun. Shopping carts whose wheels had broken sat askew. Heavy coats that would have been useful in the winter were cast aside in the heat of the fall. Bleached bones and grinning skulls remained of those who could go no farther.
The rail line wound its way onward into Gastonia. Passing a half-mile long goods train loaded with molten sulfur and gravel, they pulled into the station. Here, under the shadow of a water tower, they found the first evidence of attempted organization. Large tents lay collapsed on a construction site by the station. Rusted barbecue grills filled with rainwater were lined up. Whiteboards from offices and schools were nailed to posts, though whatever had been written on them had long since washed off. Police tape cordoned off the side streets. This was where the authorities had tried to control the masses of refugees entering their town. Bullet marks on walls showed how this might not have gone according to plan, or they might have been from battles later on. It was impossible to tell. Whatever regulation was attempted here was long gone, the station being completely empty. There was life in the town, however. Lauren caught sight of a face in a factory window, and a furtive figure moved across an alleyway. Slipping the safety off her rifle, she wondered if anyone else had noticed. Up ahead, the Humvee suddenly accelerated and turned sharply right. The Blazer and Suburban followed suit, and the convoy left the station and broke through the police tape, pulling in behind a row of houses and halting. Rick jumped out of the lead vehicle and ran to the back of the convoy, peering around the corner at the station, rifle aimed. Lauren made to get out, but Rick waved her back in. After another look, he passed back up the convoy.
“Did you see the people there?” said Lauren as he came by.
“Yes,” he said simply, his face grim.
Getting back into the Humvee, he waved them on, and the convoy switched direction, heading north.
*
Rick had seen more than just a couple of people. There was someone hidden behind a dumpster, waving a signal to others farther up the street. It was possible they simply wanted a polite chat, but Rick doubted it. Even running on low revs, they’d been heard ahead of time, and it would have been too easy to set up an ambush as they headed deeper into the town, especially if they’d stuck to the restrictive corridor of the rail line. Rick had seen enough of Gastonia to know he didn’t want to explore it further. Not without a platoon at his disposal.
They headed north out of the city. The road climbed gently up through wooded country, the occasional mailbox at the roadside pointing to unpretentious bungalows and small homes that nestled in the trees. With a greater chance of getting snowed in during the winter, such homes might have carried more supplies and maybe a generator for the blackouts. They were still too close to town, however, and too far from a reliable water source, since they’d never been built with that in mind, so they probably wouldn’t have fared much better than their urban neighbors. Modern SUVs and pickups sat uselessly at the end of gravel tracks, and the houses looked empty, their doors and windows open or broken, ragged flags hanging limp from porches. Expansive lawns were overgrown and wasted. This wasn’t farming country, and the only available crop was grass, without so much as a single cow to munch on it. Survival here wouldn’t have been much different than in the suburbs. Nobody seemed to have planted vegetable gardens, and the woods were devoid of any large game. Rick didn’t see anything worth stopping for.
Until they reached the first roadblock.
Scott stamped on the brakes as soon as it came into view. Rick hopped out of the cab to flag the other vehicles and get them to back up, in case they needed to turn around fast.
The obstacle was a mixture of oil drums, logs and furniture. Beyond it were some houses in a large clearing. A figure with a rifle manned the roadblock.
Rick took out his binoculars. The solitary guard was a bearded guy with a ball cap and a plaid shirt that looked three sizes too big. In the distance, somebody clanged on a can, and more armed figures rushed toward the barricade.
“Get everyone out of the vehicles and into cover,” Rick told Scott as he laid his rifle on the seat. “I’m going to go see how things are.”
“I can see from here,” said Scott. “Doesn’t look good.”
“Anyone ever tell you appearances can be deceptive?”
“Yeah, whenever they’re trying to sell me something.”
Tucking his Glock in behind his body armor, Rick walked slowly toward the barricade, his hands stretched out in a conciliatory gesture. All the while, his eyes tracked every detail, assessing the risk. On the other side of the clearing, he caught glimpses of other houses behind the trees, making it a reasonable sized settlement, albeit one with no name. Nor with any real defenses that he could see, apart from the roadblock. He counted eight people armed with guns. They looked out of shape by the time they reached the barricade. Among the buildings and far trees he spotted other figures, half of them children, gawking from afar. Facial expressions ranged from anxious to grim.
“Hey there,” he called, halting about twenty yards from the roadblock.
“You can’t come here,” said the guard with the ball cap.
From a distance, he looked like an older guy, but up close Rick could see he was barely an adult. His skin was pasty, and his beard barely covered the sores on his face. He’d either lost a lot of weight since he’d first bought the shirt, or it was someone else’s.
A middle-aged woman in dirty jeans leaned out to peer at Rick’s fatigues and the Humvee behind him. “Are you army?” she asked.
“Not anymore, ma’am,” said Rick.
He detected more fear than malice, and everyone appeared to suffer from darkened lips and crooked teeth, a sure sign of scurvy. His first impression of a group of rednecks changed to ordinary middle class people, reduced to cartoon caricatures after months of malnutrition. It was likely they’d all once commuted to jobs in the city. There were certainly no retirees in the group.
Probably all dead.
“We’re not taking anybody in,” said a guy whose front teeth wobbled when he spoke. “We barely have enough food for ourselves.”
“Not asking to be taken in,” said Rick. “We just want to pass through. This isn’t a good place to be. You’re still within the radiation zone.”
“What radiation?” said another.
“The nuclear power station at Lake Norman blew. Didn’t you hear?”
Eight perplexed faces looked back at him.
“How were we supposed to hear? Our TVs stopped working,” said one.
“I heard about a nuclear bomb,” said another. “Are we at war?”
“What’s the President doing about this?” said a third.
“We’re not at war,” said Rick, “and I don’t know what the President’s doing. I don’t see it matters a whole lot now. We just want to pass through.”
Hunger sapped their reaction times, and they took a while to process this.
“I’m not dismantling this barricade,” said the guy with the ball cap, gazing at it as if contemplating the amount of work needed. “You’ll have to find another road.”
“Where have you come from?” asked the woman.
“Charlotte,” said Rick.
“Is it any better there?” asked another.
“Wouldn’t be leaving it if it was,” answered Rick. “It’s pretty much the same everywhere.”
“Have you got any food?” said a previously silent person, and Rick caught his first whiff of menace.
“No,” he said. He’d been letting his arms drop while
they were speaking, and he was ready to draw the Glock if needed.
“If you’re army, you should be bringing us some food,” said the woman. “We’ve been waiting.”
Rick watched them carefully. “You been catching your own food?”
“Yeah,” said someone slowly, like it was a dim memory. “Just raccoons and stuff.”
“When you catch your next one, don’t cook it. Eat it raw. You need the Vitamin C.”
“Raw?”
Rick was already backing away. “Yeah, raw. Or cook it light. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
Rick left them to mull that over, his hand now on the butt of the pistol. He knew Scott would be covering him, and one wrong move from the barricade would leave at least one of them dead. Judging by how soporific they were, it wouldn’t take much to suppress them. Then again, it might just make them dumb enough to try something. Reaching the Humvee, he waved everyone back into the idling vehicles.
“Any joy?” asked Scott, his eyes glued to his sights.
Rick glanced back to the pale faces at the barricade. They stared back like ghosts.
“Not a lot,” said Rick.
6
“See, he was stood right here. And she was stood right there, up by the pool. And he says, ‘I ain’t armed’ and she says, ‘I don’t care’ and she shoots him down dead, just like that. He didn’t stand a chance. Not one.”
“And you say he was unarmed?” said Major Connors.
“You know he was, Mr. Connors. You took his gun off him yourself. If he still had it, he could have defended hisself, but he couldn’t and now he’s dead.”
Major Connors gazed up at the Myers Park clubhouse, then down to Barbara, the wizened crone who stood with her hands on her hips.
“He was carrying an automatic firearm, Barbara. I had to take it off him. It’s the law.”
“It was murder, Mr. Connors, and he didn’t do nothing. What’s the law say about that?”
Major Connors turned to a gentleman standing next to him. In contrast to Connors’ squat, robust form, the gentleman had a leaner, more athletic build, with a trace of Santa Monica tan still on his skin, though whatever manicures or designer suits he might once have had were destroyed by the ravages of a simpler life. “Sounds like a hanging offense to me, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Jeffries?”
Mr. Jeffries didn’t appear too sure about that. “Governor Rawlings wouldn’t …”
“Wouldn’t what?” interjected Connors. “Governor Rawlings is dead, so he wouldn’t anything now, would he? You’re the lieutenant governor. That makes you acting governor.”
Jeffries swallowed. “Yes, but it doesn’t make me God.”
Major Connors slapped a heavy hand on Jeffries’ shoulder. It might have been meant to reassure him, but the effect was to bring him down to Connors’ height. “You’re the only one in charge of both the executive and legislative branches of state government. You’re also commander in chief of the National Guard, plus any militia you see fit to raise. I’d say that puts you on a par with God right now. At least in this state, don’t you think?”
“That doesn’t mean I can do what I like. A fair trial is called for, at least.”
Connors gave him a pitying look. “This is a State of Emergency. Habeas corpus has been suspended.”
“That only covers detention.”
“Your powers cover more than that. And where would you detain anyone anyway?” Connors made a show of looking around, as if to prove his point. “Our penal system’s gone. So is respect for the law. If we want to drag this great nation of ours back from the brink, we need to act. And act hard. You’re called upon to show leadership. If you’re not willing to do that, step down and we’ll elect somebody else.”
Jeffries wavered. Standing nearby were the three other special forces operators, gazing at him with undisguised condescension, as if daring him to quit. Barbara too looked at him, her bitter, expectant face demanding action. Jeffries straightened himself up a little.
“You’re right. We need to see justice done. But I insist on a trial. This country was built upon the rights of its citizens. If we are to build it back up, we need to remember our roots.”
“I want to see the bitch hang,” stated Barbara. “She done murder here. I want to tighten the rope myself.”
Jeffries stared at her.
“Thank you for that, Barbara,” cut in Connors. “Rest assured, it’ll all be sorted out.”
“I want to see her legs jerking when she dangles,” spat Barbara. “I want to see her face go blue and her eyes popping out of her head.”
“Again, thank you,” said Connors, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her around. “Now run on back to the others.”
“I want her deader than dead.”
“Uh huh.”
Connors nodded to his crew, who escorted her away.
“The will of the people, eh?” remarked Connors as he watched her go.
Jeffries continued to stare, shocked by the character of one of his constituents. “We have to do this right, Major Connors.”
“Of course, but first we have to get you to Asheville. There, you can set up your government.”
Jeffries looked up to the clubhouse. “Why don’t we just set up here? This looks like a pretty good place.”
“This is a radiation zone. We don’t want to be here.”
“Wait,” said Jeffries, turning to look at Connors. “Didn’t you just send those people here? Why?”
“Because they’re not the kind of people you’d want anywhere else. Come on.”
They walked up the slope and past the clubhouse.
“You’ve got to have a little more faith in yourself,” said Connors. “You used to be a take-charge guy. We need some of that no-bull attitude now.”
“This isn’t the environment I’m used to working in. I’m still a little … daunted by the scale of what we have to do. I mean, look at it. When I was in office, I had advisers and lawyers I could call on, and civil service staff who knew the ropes. I never had to create something from nothing.”
“But this is better, right? How many programs did you try to get running, only to find you couldn’t get them through the General Assembly? Or some civil rights group would protest, and some senator would insist on watering it down with an amendment, and then you’d get told the state couldn’t afford to implement the program for at least five years, and your successor would likely veto it anyway.”
“Those are the checks and balances of democracy.”
“They’re a pain in the ass, is what they are. And you’ve got to quit showing your doubts in front of people like Barbara. These people have to think you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m not good at faking it.”
“You did okay with the cameras on your face during that toilet debate. I mean, jeez, I wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face for that.”
“That was different. I knew how the media would twist anything I said, so I had to be cautious. Hell, I had party advisers coaching me on what to say and, more importantly, what not to say.”
“It ain’t so different now. It’s all theater, and every public appearance is a show. You have to put on a good show, Jeff.”
“Is that all you think this is? A show?”
“When there’s people you’re trying to convince? Sure. And there’s people out there who need convincing. Hell, they want to be convinced, so all you need to do is put that shit-eating smile on your face and tell them everything’s going to be okay, because you understand the problem and you’ve got the solution.”
“I don’t have the solution.”
“You’ve got it, we’ve all got it. This ain’t so hard. Like you said, the country’s built on a lot of things, and it was primarily built on overcoming exactly the same problems we’ve got now. Get with the program. This is just a rerun.”
Jeffries stopped and gazed at Connors. Out in the parking lot were four horses. Connors’ special-forces cad
re were already mounted. On the street was an old farm tractor towing a flatbed trailer, piled high with provisions and boxes. A line of old cars stretched back down the street, all with stores strapped to their roofs. On the trailer and in the vehicles, a multitude of faces looked out. Soldiers, cops and national guardsmen peppered the population, and every vehicle flew a version of the American flag, large or small.
“I don’t understand your confidence, sometimes,” said Jeffries. “Is it real, or are you putting on a show for me too?”
Connors halted and turned slowly. With a smile on his face, he stepped closer to Jeffries and tapped him lightly on the chest with the back of his hand.
“Just get with the program, okay?”
Jeffries couldn’t help but flinch. While the smile was broad and the posture easy, Connors’ eyes were as hard as flint.
7
Josh stalked carefully through the trees, eyes darting up to the branches in search of squirrels. He was off the track that wound up the mountain, but apart from Scott to one side and his father on the other, he saw no sign of life other than the birds flying high over the canopy. All other small game was absent, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why.
Every third tree seemed to have a bullet hole in it.
Whoever had lived nearby had cleaned out the wildlife in this neck of the woods, and judging from the traces of camps and the abandoned, hastily built shelters, a fair amount of the county’s population had attempted to eke out a living in the shadow of the South Mountains State Park. An isolated group of hills away from the Appalachians, it was the first port of call for refugees who were smart enough not to follow the herd along Highway 74 through Shelby and Forest City.