by Judd Vowell
Most reports soon told of the “inside” story. The organizers of the revolt, as yet to be named, had multiple conspirators inside both the government and military. High-level elected officials overtook their counterparts and allowed the revolutionaries access to government buildings. Thousands of members of the military turned and fought against their generals. The number of people involved was staggering. It became apparent rather quickly that perhaps this attack had not been planned for mere months. This level of destruction had taken years to design.
14.
T raversing through woods and underbrush was difficult for all three of us, especially Henry. But it provided a sense of invisibility. The world had become hopeless, and that made other humans unpredictable. Part of me was looking forward to walking on a flat surface with no rocks or vines or thorns to contend, but I was also wary. I knew, like Henry forewarned, that we needed to find people we could trust. I also knew how hard that was going to be.
We arrived at the highway just after lunch the next day. Excellent time, considering. Coming out of the woods just thirty feet away from the road, I noticed its vastness. And its emptiness. I instructed the kids to stay at the edge of the tree-line while I did some surveillance. I crept to the edge of road, crouching the entire way. The absence of maintenance had allowed the grass to grow to four feet or more over time, and I was able to use it as cover.
The surface of the roadway was sun-cracked and pot-holed, and any painted lines that may have once been there were completely faded. Nothing but a dull gray streaking across the landscape, with clumps of brown grass and green clover speckled throughout. The few cars and trucks I could see had been left behind long ago.
I had packed a pair of binoculars that I found in my father-in-law’s hallway closet before we left. Probably hadn’t been used since some bygone sporting event, before high-definition big screens had changed the way we watched football and baseball from the upper deck. I reached into the side pocket of my backpack for them. Just wanted to confirm the emptiness I had assumed. I looked west, then east. As far as I could see, no one. Only pavement and tall grass splitting a 200-foot wide gash through deep forest, dotted randomly with abandoned vehicles.
I eased back to the kids, described what I had seen. “Nothing up there, guys. Just us and the road. You ready?”
“Ready,” Jessica said in her classic go-get-’em style.
“Yep, ready,” Henry said. “But let’s stay aware of our surroundings, make sure nobody sneaks up on us. Right?”
I knew they had heard the stories. Henry had stayed abreast of everything that had been happening. Certainly more than I could imagine for a kid his age. He had been able to tune us in to the underground broadcasts very early. Information had been spotty in the first weeks, but there was enough coming through to keep all of us on edge.
“Right, Henry,” I confirmed. “Same formation as always. But remember, if we do see someone, they may be harmless. And they may be able to help us. After all, that’s why we’re here. So, defense only, guys. Got it?”
They nodded. I couldn’t believe the pressure I was putting on children.
“We travel east.” Coach-speak time again. “Keep your head on a swivel.”
15.
( Partial video clip from speech filmed at underground ANTI- rally. Posted by user @progressispainfull on Twitter one week before the global shutdown. Speaker presumed to be Salvador Sebastian.)
“...the time has come for a natural purge and a new beginning. Our leaders have lost their way, and most of the people of the world are following them down an inevitable path. A path that can only lead to self-destruction. We aim to bring that self-destruction now, on our time-table. If we control the destruction, we control the reformation.
“You have been patient. For that, I thank you. Change on this scale takes time. It takes years, sometimes decades. For your patience, you are soon to be rewarded.”
16.
J essica and Henry’s diverging lifestyles made our house feel a bit schizophrenic at times. But it also made it feel like home. I always found it amazing how unalike the members of a family could be, and yet still remain family. We were no different. Especially the kids. They had a connection so obviously formed in the womb, like so many twins do. Sometimes Meg and I would laugh that they had their own clique, and we were most definitely not cool enough to be asked to join. When they were toddlers, we would wake just enough to hear them scamper through the hallway before dawn, off to build some architectural disaster or dress themselves as characters from their favorite cartoons. There were even times we listened in on their secret language, trying to decipher the strange words and sentences. To no avail, of course.
They both excelled in school, much more than we could have ever hoped. Meg and I were smart, each in our own way. She was resourceful and headstrong, whereas I considered and conserved. We, like all parents, assumed our children would inherit the sum of our parts. And they did. But they also became something greater.
They called a family meeting the summer after their third grade year in school. Pretty sure that was the first one they had ever called. First of many. It was obvious that there had been some private conversations between them before they approached the two of us. They had a presentation.
Meg and I were blown away. I looked at her when they finished, she at me. Neither of us knew what to say. So we “took it under advisement.” That sounded parental. The kids had asked to transfer to a specialized school system. They weren’t pleased with the education they were getting at our local public elementary. And to be honest, we weren’t either. But what kind of kid asks to go to a tougher school, desires a more difficult life?
We did take it under advisement. We wanted Jessica and Henry to be challenged, too. And more than anything else, we wanted them to be happy. But there wasn’t enough time left in the summer to consider enrollment in a different school for the upcoming year. That would buy us a few extra months to weigh our options. We spent countless hours re-budgeting our lives to make private school work, but we couldn’t find a way. The middle class squeeze seemed to be affecting us more than it ever had in the past.
The other option was the magnet schools, which focused on educating kids at a higher level than the norm. There were a few available to us, with each one specializing in a specific type of learning. If a child excelled in math, there was the School for Engineering and Analytics. For creative kids, it was the School for Art, Music, and Theater, and so on. After some intense research, we discovered it was a well-planned and well-executed program.
As we discussed the schools over the fall of that year, the four of us began to get excited. Meg and I were the proud parents, having conceived such superior beings – parents always take too much credit. More importantly, Jessica and Henry would be able to give their brains and souls the exposure and workout they so desperately craved. And we wouldn’t have to move from our district as long as the kids qualified for the programs. But there was that one thing, the apprehension that we all felt but didn’t express. The twins would most likely qualify for different schools, and that would mean that they would be separated.
◊◊◊
The separation anxiety that we all feared was unfounded. The kids were stable, strong, confident. We had raised them to be all of those things, and we knew they were. But the fear still hung in the house air. After all, they were so young. And to us, so dependent on each other.
We had planned on a final family meeting in the winter to discuss the possible separation and finalize the applications. We needed to have them turned in by March 1st of that year. But it was February 14th when everything changed. Valentine’s Day. The last morning that we didn’t know about the cancer that was eating Meg alive.
17.
T he first day and a half hiking the highway was uneventful. We passed three sets of fellow journeymen, all walking west. The first group was older, borderline elderly. Two couples who looked to be in their seventies, but easily coul
d’ve been 10 years younger. With the low supply of available medications and limited access to food and water for the masses, the collective aging process had grown faster by the month. They walked slowly and carried little. I felt a bit of sadness when I saw them.
The second group was a family, not unlike our own. A father and two children. But they also had their wife and mother, the missing link for us. I gave a slight nod to the man, feeling a kindred spirit passing. There was the sadness again. A different kind though. God, I missed Meg.
It was the final group of travelers that scared me. We encountered their smell before we could see them. The smell of uncleanliness, sickness, death. I told the twins to hide in the tall grass just off the road as they approached. Then I laid down on the asphalt and pulled out the binoculars.
They were a large crew, comprised of mostly men and a few women, who lingered behind. They moved slowly and haphazardly, as if they were a group of drunk college kids finding their way home from a late-night bar binge. But I knew better. This was the reason I had wanted to avoid the open road from the beginning.
Once I realized what we were facing, I rolled myself into the grass next to Jessica and Henry. I filled them in quickly and succinctly.
“Nine men, three women. Hunters.” I stared at them deeply to make sure they understood. “No sounds, no movements.”
As the group got closer to our position, the smell became almost unbearable. “Don’t cough,” I told myself. I shot the kids a look to convey the same message to them. They were loud, like I imagined a band of pirates may have been centuries ago. Their speech was base, their laughter guttural. I put my hand on my pistol, just in case.
Like the travelers before them, they weren’t carrying much. Two of the men had homemade backpacks, loaded with who knows what. People like that needed very little to survive, if you considered it survival. All of the men had weapons, most of them shotguns. A couple had rifles. And I assumed plenty of small arms. They were known to hunt for their sustenance. Deer, rabbit, squirrel. But the animals had been getting scarce, and smarter. There were stories of cannibalism on the roads and at the rural homesteads. Desperation had turned the worst of us into something even less: sub-humans.
I watched closely as they passed, making sure to move only my eyes. I remembered clearly one of my father’s early lessons. “The best fight is no fight at all, son.”
Once they were a hundred yards or more past us, I raised to one knee and pulled the binoculars to my eyes. They showed no sign of recognition. I was pretty sure we were safe. I turned to the kids to give a thumbs-up. They had done well, but this was no time for back-slapping. There was a slight decline in the direction we were heading. Once we made it there, we would be out of the hunters’ hindsight. I leaned over.
“We stay in the grass and low,” I whispered. “No matter what, do not let your heads rise above the tops of the grass blades, understand?”
They both gave me one nod, like soldiers.
“If you hear anything behind you, anything at all, you stop and drop. We stay invisible, ok?”
Again, one nod each. I led the way, crouched as low as my 6-foot-3-inch frame would allow. I kept my ears alert and my hand on my gun.
Even as our distance between each other grew, we could still hear the raucous group. If they were hunting, they sure didn’t care about scaring off any animals, which frightened me even more. We had almost reached the out-of-sight point in the road when we heard one of the men yell above the din.
“Shut up!” Not everyone listened, as the talk and laughter continued. “I said, shut the fuck up, dickheads!” Then silence.
The kids did exactly as I had instructed. Straight to the ground. I did the same. After a minute of nothing, I raised my head enough to barely see through the foliage. With the binoculars, I could make out the group looking around, sniffing the air. They reminded me of a pack of hounds searching for the scent of a fox or raccoon. Then the fear that had become relief as we neared our escape came rushing back as the men turned and looked directly at me.
18.
T he Sleeping Giant, a London-based progressive blog, was the first to report an exposé on the leader of the ANTI- movement. Apparently, he had reached out to them, looking to extinguish the bevy of rumors about him that had been circulating. It was released as a serial piece. It read like a goddam Steinbeck novel. What the world learned from the report made Salvador Sebastian more popular than ever:
ANTI-Authority – Leader of the New Unknown
Part One: The Soil of Cuba
The story of Salvador Sebastian began 100 years before his birth, in the rural farmlands of western Cuba’s countryside, where Salvador’s great-great-grandfather Juan found himself abandoned and alone at age 13. Many orphans like Juan made their way for Havana, for the city streets to beg and steal. But most of them never made it, swallowed up by the land around them. Young Juan thought better of himself. He saw the land as something to conquer, to tame. He found work at a local farm. There he learned the fragile process of growing the world’s best tobacco. He also saved enough of his earnings to buy his own plot of rural Cuba. And at 16, Juan dug trenches into his purchased piece of earth and planted enough tobacco to sell and survive on his own. The next growing season, the heavens opened and the soil was rich. His tobacco crop quadrupled.
Juan’s hometown of Vinales was located in the heart of Cuba’s most fertile ground. By his 21st birthday, the enterprising young man had acquired 20 hectares of land for growing his perfect plant and had farmers working for him. By age 25, he was cultivating all three types of tobacco used in making the cigars for which his country was known. Growing the wrapper, the filler, and the binder allowed Juan to maintain control over the quality of all parts of his product. And the Sebastian product was gradually becoming one of the most renowned in the country.
Juan married and had two sons, and each of them was raised in the family business. In the small town where Juan had started his family, schooling was secondary. But he made certain that his boys would become well-rounded men. Ernesto and Rolando spent nine months of each childhood year in the fields, learning soil and leaf and harvest. Each year’s three months of tobacco offseason were spent in a home classroom, built and run by Juan. He taught them economics and history, the subjects that he had spent teaching himself at night as a teenager. They grew smart and experienced, and soon had ideas of their own concerning the cigar company that their father had founded.
Ernesto and Ronaldo enjoyed great success over time, taking advantage of the high standards that their father had instilled in the farmhands and cigar-makers who worked for him. They purchased adjoining tobacco farms aggressively, understanding the importance of investment. Years were lean as money was spent. But as each season yielded bigger harvests, the Sebastian empire began to take hold. By the turn of the 20th century, the Sebastian Tobacco Company was one of the top five Cuban cigar manufacturers.
◊◊◊
The second Juan Sebastian in the family line was born in 1907. He was the last son of Ronaldo Sebastian, the last grandchild of the great Juan who had started it all. He was born two months before his namesake’s death into a newly famous and wealthy family. His father and his uncle Ernesto had built the Sebastian Tobacco Company into the largest cigar exporter in Cuba. Nearly half of all of the cigars they produced were shipped to the United States.
Juan had two brothers and four sisters, plus five more cousins from his uncle. Ernesto and Ronaldo gave their children more than they ever had, and this proved to be their undoing. Juan’s generation of Sebastians grew up with servants and waiters, imported clothing, and monthly trips to Havana. Their fathers tried to teach them tobacco, but it was in vain. They never had respect for the business, the employees, or the money.
American companies had begun to move into Cuba in the first years of the 20th century, taking advantage of the country’s ripe industrial landscape and cheap labor force. And high American tariffs were making it more and more di
fficult for Cuban businesses to export their goods and turn a profit. Add the Sebastian grandchildren’s mismanagement, and it was a recipe for disaster. By the mid-1920s, the Sebastian Tobacco Company was barreling toward collapse.
As his siblings and cousins bickered over control and direction of the fledgling empire, Juan contemplated and thought. He had always been a thinker. He studied hard in school and rejected the passive lifestyle created by his surroundings. He was his grandfather’s grandson, at a time when the Sebastian name needed him most.
19-year-old Juan acted on his own when he negotiated the merger with the Americans. If he had gone to his family for permission, it would have never been approved. But when he brought the deal to his fellow Sebastians, no one resisted. It was the only way forward.
Juan was named President of Cuban Operations for the newly-formed Sebastian and Cole Cigars, and he retained 51% ownership for his family. He gave positions to a few of his family members, but most took a payout and quietly retired to the Cuban countryside. The company rose to cigar prominence again, a second coming of sorts. Tens of thousands of acres of Cuban farmland were developed, and tens of millions of cigars were exported. But Juan’s only son saw a bigger future for the family – a future across the Straits of Florida, in the greatest land of opportunity that the world had ever seen.