The Post

by Kevin A. Muñoz

  Not that we’ve needed so powerful a framework. It takes me only a few minutes to walk from one end of the Little Five to the other. We are insubstantial. And I thought we were a beacon among the barbarians.

  I must take care. I pass old university housing on my right. Then beyond it, what at first looks like a massive parking deck. Closer, I recognize it for what it is: a stadium. One of the entrances lets out onto the street that I’m on, but its original name has been pulled off, leaving only the cleaner surface of the wall behind to tell me that this was once called the Lettermen’s Gate. Hanging above the name is a banner made of tablecloth that reads “Defensive Training Field B” in big red letters.

  I can’t worry about it now. They could be building an army in there for all I know, but I’m here for one purpose only. The Little Five is my post, not the whole former state of Georgia, and I can tackle only one problem at a time. Maybe after all of this is done I can worry about what I’m leaving behind.

  I see more people in the streets south of the stadium. The population is growing denser by the block, and it’s becoming harder for me to keep my distance. There isn’t much cover in this area. My bare feet are sore from the asphalt and concrete. The more I walk, the more exposed I feel. I need to find shoes.

  Eventually I come to an intersection beyond which there is nothing but hills and woodland, as far as I can tell. To the right there are more buildings. I debate the question for only a moment: trees and grass aren’t going to get me any answers. So I turn again, heading deeper into the town.

  A massive building, made of flat red brick and sporting the title “College of Education,” rises to my right. In front, on a patio between two sets of stairs leading to the front doors, is a squat guard house that clearly was not part of the original construction. It looks like a transplanted toll booth from one of the parking lots. That alone would have caught my attention, but something more makes me pause: the guard house window is facing the larger building’s doors.

  I step behind a small enclosed bus stop on the other side of the street to watch and consider. A guard house facing the wrong way isn’t protecting the contents of the building from outsiders. It’s protecting outsiders from the contents of the building. Or—knowing where I am, and why I’m here—preventing what’s inside from leaving.

  A building this size could house a thousand people.

  I close my eyes and memorize the location, tracing my path back to the fence where I entered. I’m going to have to come back here, I’m sure of it.

  Then I move on.

  I pass the university’s veterinary hospital on the left. The larger buildings mean fewer trees, less cover, and a greater chance that someone will notice I don’t belong here. There once was a time when a person could walk into any abandoned house and find clothes, food, tools, books, shoes—anything one might need. But those days are long gone, especially in a town like this. By the time a fence goes up, everything within the perimeter has been scavenged clean.

  I keep to the bushes wherever I am able and continue west until I see another large, repurposed building. A large gray G dominates the red brick wall to the left of the entrance, and under it the old name is still attached: “Coliseum Training Facility.” That explains the oddly shaped, glass-fronted building just beyond, which looks to me like an eyelid and eyeball: the Coliseum itself. Beneath the original name of the red brick building is a newer banner, less hastily raised than the one at Defensive Training Field B. It reads, in bright blue, “Police & Militia.”

  The combination sends a shiver down my spine.

  I am far too exposed. It feels like there are a hundred eyes on me, even though the parking lot across the street from the training facility—the “police and militia” building—is empty except for a dozen city police and campus cop cars.

  And three battery-powered university buses.

  And six moving vans.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I mutter, needing to hear a friendly voice. I recognize one of the U-Hauls: the faded, blood-smeared factoid graphic on the side is identical to the one Norm Ithering drives.

  Answers to old questions click into place. So Ithering’s trading caravan returned to Athens within the last two or three days. If he picked up Randall and Phoebe along the way, then the two of them may be in town. Further, there must be a dozen or more parking lots throughout the enclosed area that makes up the Clarke County community. Some nearer to the main exit toward the state highway, certainly. But Ithering parked his trucks here, nearer to the heart of the town, and directly across from the police and militia building.

  He knows.

  The building with the inward-facing guard house isn’t some hidden, well-kept secret place that the citizens know nothing about. I would bet the HRV and my Remington that the guarded building serves as the quarters for the people abducted by Ravana’s human trafficking network. A modern longhouse.

  Ravana, whoever he is, can’t be a shadowy figure on the outskirts of power in Athens.

  And yet—something about that thought nags at me. In Conyers, Orwell insisted that no one knew who Ravana was. That the ringleader operated through proxies, thugs like Randall and Banderas. Maybe the same is true here. The sort of network that encrypts its communications is certainly the sort that could hide its leaders—even in plain sight.

  If I’m going to get any closer to the truth, I need to get closer to people. I need a solution to my shoe problem. A patch of loose dust underneath a dying bush offers an answer, at least for now. Someone walking through town with clean bare feet might attract attention, but someone with dirty bare feet who looks to be the sort of person who goes everywhere barefoot may not be noticed.

  I cover my feet in red-brown dust, smearing it into my skin, doing my best to look like an old-world hippie. My borrowed shirt is too clean; I dirty it, as well. I unhook the holster from my belt and tuck it into the back of my pants. The men’s shirt hides the SIG easily. Last, I check my gait, and try to move like a person without a destination. Like I’m taking a midday constitutional, not spying on the heart of a human trafficking empire.

  And there it is again: “empire.” An empire at our doorstep, for years. How did I not know about it? How did news or rumors never reach the Little Five? Either I’m wrong about the extent of the network in Clarke County, or they do such a good job of controlling information that no one who leaves the town—

  I feel a chasm open in my gut as I realize with horror that I may have sent Marilyn and Barkov into a trap. Perhaps no one ever leaves the town.

  But no: that would make no sense. Surely people would be missed. Someone would come searching, like we’ve done. We can’t be the first.

  There are a hundred reasons why that is a foolish expectation, but I need to ignore them. Worrying about Marilyn will put both of us in greater danger. So I focus my attention ahead of me, on the glass eye building that was once the university’s Stegeman Coliseum. Some of the glass panes have shattered in the intervening years, and many more are grime-caked, but the ones within easy reach have been well maintained.

  A trio of men guard the front glass doors, which are well-disguised among the massive window panes. The men wear fatigues, civilian knockoffs from a trendy sporting goods store. They look down at me from their perch on the raised platform in front of the building. All three carry assault rifles, the distinctive silhouette of the Heckler & Koch G36 or HK293. German weapons, built also by the Saudis beginning a few years before the collapse, G36s should be rare in the former United States, except maybe in D.C. and Maryland. They would have been illegal for civilian use. So most likely they’re HK293s, civilian weapons, incapable of automatic fire out of the box and not easily converted.

  Not that this eases my mind at all. I can’t think of any above-board reason for fielding the HK293. If you’re in the habit of killing large masses of hollow-heads, you’d want an automatic rifle. I’d dismiss it as being a case of using what’s available, but all three men have th
e same weapon. You bring an H&K assault rifle to the fight on purpose. And you use it against people.

  “Hey,” one of the guards calls out. I’ve been lingering too long, probably staring as I worry. I look around, hoping he had someone else in mind, but he’s looking straight at me.

  The men carry their weapons with decent trigger discipline: barrels down, hands loose, fingers off the triggers. And the one calling out to me doesn’t use his weapon to gesture, which typically happens when you don’t know how to act with a rifle in your hands. But they’re too young to be ex-military.

  “Yes?” I call back, trying to gauge the level of familiarity I should show. Are these men thugs, or do they think of themselves as protectors?

  “Gotta check your arm,” he says, taking a step forward.

  I cross the street, approaching, watching his eyes to see which side of my body interests him more. His gaze flickers in the direction of my left side, upper arm. I roll up my sleeve and present my side to him, hoping that my expression of mild inconvenience is the correct one.

  “You’re good,” he says after he makes his brief inspection.

  I hazard a question. “Why’d you stop me?”

  The man raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious? No shoes, a shirt too big? You look like a runner.”

  One of the men behind him laughs and says loudly enough for all of us to hear, “I told you! Why would a runner be walking back toward the fields? That’s just stupid.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” my inspector concedes. “But you never know.”

  “Sure,” I say, rolling my sleeve back down. I look down at my feet as if to admit that I look suspicious.

  “You need shoes?” the guard asks. “I mean, you’re going to central distribution, right? How’d you lose them, anyway?”

  “Stupidly,” I say, shrugging. “Nothing exciting, though.”

  That seems to be enough of an answer for him. “So you need shoes or what?”

  “I wouldn’t say no,” I reply.

  He turns toward the glass doors, letting his buddies know that they’re on their own for the next few minutes. He stows his H&K on a folding chair behind the laughing man, the first sign of incomplete weapon training I’ve seen.

  I follow him into the building, which looks typical for a modern indoor sporting complex. Men and women pass us by, some but not all of them looking at me and my shoeless feet.

  “Sorry I thought you could be a runner,” the guard says, turning to shake my hand while we walk. “Name’s Calvin.”

  “Sam,” I offer back. “No worries.”

  “It’s just, you know, it happens sometimes. Usually they go to the fences from The Box, though.” He says “the box” as if it constituted the name of a building. Perhaps he’s referring to the college building with the guard house that I passed on the way. “But I figured, maybe you were trying to break someone else out. And they’d be in the fields right now, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say, knowing none of that and hating all of it.

  “Here,” the guard says after a few more paces. He takes me into a locker room bustling with other guards in various stages of undress. They scurry around like rats, and my skin crawls at the sight of them. The guard escorting me stops and points to a rack of mud-covered army surplus boots.

  “Take what fits,” he says. “They won’t be missed.” Laughing, he adds, “Maybe they’ll assume one of the workers took a pair.”

  As I sort through the shoes, I race to process what I’ve seen. After the collapse, many of us stayed awake at night worrying about some nightmare scenario where a band of thugs geared up and rolled over every community in sight. Perhaps an army company with no orders to carry out and no chain of command to obey would decide to claim a pocket of the state as a new dystopian republic. These were familiar fears: Hollywood had taught us they were plausible. Militias were another fear.

  But they never came. We rebuilt, survived, slept soundly in our beds after the first few years. And we stopped worrying about preparing for invasions. With the number of soldiers I’ve seen in the last five minutes, Clarke County could take over most of Georgia in a week. That it hasn’t suggests a different agenda or a very long game.

  I find a good pair of boots and lace them up. They’re rough but familiar. Perhaps a little less comfortable than my Bellevilles.

  “Jokes aside, though, you should probably get some proper shoes at distribution, and turn those in so I don’t get in trouble.”

  “Of course,” I say, standing up. “Thanks for the help.”

  The guard shrugs shyly. “Glad to be of service. I’ll let you out back, across the fields.”

  Calvin takes me around the loop of the Coliseum’s atrium to heavy wooden doors that groan when they open. From here, I can see the fields that he mentioned, and everything I’ve pieced together comes into place in a single vista.

  The “fields” are four university sports fields, converted for growing crops within the city limits. An arena’s land isn’t deep, and the drainage is too quick, but there must have been some survivors from the agriculture college to work on a solution. I see rows of potatoes and corn, a cluster of tomato and cucumber plants. And among them all, like out of some antebellum Southern vista, dozens upon dozens of men and women toil under the whips of overseers.

  We were right. All roads led to Clarke County. I strain to keep my heart in my chest, to avoid the appearance of scanning the faces for the one I’ve come here to find. Calvin can’t discover that I give a damn about the men and women they’re keeping as slaves.

  “Lumpkin Street’s just across,” Calvin says, pointing toward another street and then sweeping his hand across to show me the route. “Don’t go down Rutherford, you’ll get stopped a hundred times a step.” He smiles awkwardly, then adds, “You can bring the boots back to me yourself, maybe.”

  I thank him again. I want to rush like a bull into the midst of the people in the fields. To retch my disgust for Calvin and the rest like him into the tough soil of a university sporting complex. The antebellum echoes are haunting. They remind me that some things never seem to change, no matter how much the world is wiped clean.

  A wall separates the street from the fields, but I pass a heavy iron gate and slow down to look through its slats for the familiar face of Phoebe Weeks. I can only hope that she’s here. It would be better to find her in this place than anywhere else I can too easily imagine.

  The captives’ faces are red and dirty, sheened with sweat. Their clothes are old, some tattered, all marked with soil and grass. On the nearest captives I can see the tattoo the guard didn’t find on my arm: a red letter R inside a black circle. Some of them look at me as I pass by, fatigue barely masking a resentment they have every reason to think I deserve.

  The scope of the horror here is beyond my expectations. But I should have known better. This all began in the codes of Braithwaite’s numbers station. Complexity and secrecy of that caliber demand a sophisticated organization behind them. And such a thing doesn’t exist without need.

  I came here focused only on Phoebe, but I knew there had to be more. I knew, and I ignored. Facing the captives now, I feel the accusation in their eyes. They believe I’m complicit. Maybe I am. Maybe when all of this is done, when Phoebe is safe in her mother’s arms, I will have to come back.

  I’m able to get a better look when I turn left at the intersection and follow the iron fence. Although I can count at least three dozen people toiling on the other side, that can’t be close to the total number of people Clarke County has taken as slaves. The Little Five, which is less than half the size of this community, needs a lot more crop space than these fields provide. There must be more—more land, and more people being forced to work it. Most of the workers in these fields are men and teenage boys, and the few women alongside them are adults.

  I don’t see Phoebe. And I belatedly concede that it’s not reasonable for me to think she would be here. She’s too small, n
ot strong enough for this kind of work.

  An overseer lounging against the fence takes to staring at me as I pass him. He is wearing an H&K P30 semiautomatic pistol on a holster not designed for the best fit. I’m again struck by the odd choice of weapons—but at least it’s consistent. The P30 was fielded primarily by European law enforcement.

  Hustling past the overseer so that he doesn’t get a close look at me, I consider the chances that the Clarke County powers acquired a shipment of Heckler & Koch weapons at the Port of Savannah, either before or after it was shut down when the last of the fuel for the ships ran out. It’s an easy explanation, but one too well-fitted to my former life. Of course, that’s the possibility I’d consider first: I was involved in a number of anti-smuggling operations in the last two years of my service. Perhaps the truth is as simple as having contacts with people willing to exchange an armory for forced labor.

  Once I’m out of view of the fields, I stop in the shade of a tree near a squat Mormon church. The building looks long abandoned, still boarded up as if there were no perimeter fences now to protect it. There is no one nearby to question my presence.

  Calvin told me that the distribution center was nearby, and since I have no other particular destination in mind, I decide to press my luck. I wander down a few corners until I come to the front of an elementary school on the block beyond the fields. It’s a sprawling complex, as elementary schools go, and nothing like the big lunchbox that was my school up north, thirty years ago.

  A covered walkway leads from the street to the front entrance, which is bannered with the word “Distribution” in careful green lettering. Still somewhat hesitant, I walk to the doors and peer in. The interior is soothingly familiar, identical in concept to virtually every other elementary school interior I’ve seen. Murals still adorn the walls, though their paint is fading and scuffed away in places. Pin boards hang in their designated places, but the signs posted there are not the colorful kind from my youth. They look like pages out of a regulation handbook, cranked from a mimeograph.