The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

Opposite the kitchen, a curved dining table of an exotic wood traced the circular wall of the silo. Three of its residents were propped in chairs. They looked hungry.

  “The circulation system must have kept working for quite a while,” Willing supposed. “Or the smell in here might be unbearable. What do you say—one more?”

  They curled a third flight down—which entailed nudging one of their worse-for-wear hosts out of the way, about whom they became blasé with unnerving rapidity. Willing would have predicted this: a floor-to-ceiling wine cellar in the round. Or that’s what he inferred, though it was here that previous tourists had concentrated their pillage. Most of the bottles were missing, and those that remained were empty: drained fifty-year-old Bordeauxs lay amid discarded cardboard canisters of Talisker and elaborate wooden corks of top-shelf cognac.

  “I know something about French wine,” Nollie said, raising a broken bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. “This was a good year.”

  “If we’re going to rule out a virus, that was their mistake.” Willing pointed to a break in the grid of cubbyholes: a tall, empty cabinet whose open glass door nonetheless sported a sophisticated lock. Inside, the sections were long and vertical.

  The next floor down was an entertainment center, where three corpses were riveted by a cinema screen of a size that a maXfleX could now duplicate in any teenager’s bedroom. Below that, a lounge area, where several socializers seemed a bit too relaxed. The two floors thereafter were all residential units, each with a private sitting room and bath. These, too, had been ransacked, the dresser drawers yanked out, the mattresses flung. If the scavengers had been searching for valuables—jewelry, gold—Willing bet they scored handsomely. But they hadn’t bothered to take the cash, scattered willy-nilly around the bedrooms like discarded candy wrappers. He picked up a $100 bill, an original-issue greenback—too small to blow your nose in, not absorbent enough to clean your glasses. When the dollar was replaced by the dólar nuevo, like most people he’d been glad to see the back of the old currency, and hadn’t thought to save a sample as a memento. The distinctive flannel texture, the painfully pompous engraving, triggered an unexpected nostalgia. He pocketed the bill.

  Including an enormous backup water tank, the bottom level was for storage. Looters had disregarded most of the contents: gluten-free pasta, running shoes, joint supports, and sea-salt truffles, one of whose assortments Willing opened; the glaucous chocolates were brittle and encrusted, like barnacles. Here also was the trash compactor. The dense, variegated cubes stacked beside it numbered under a dozen. This underground summer camp hadn’t lasted long.

  On the way back up, Nollie spotted a glint amidst the discarded bottles in the wine cellar, and rescued a magnum of champagne, its foil intact. “Whole reason we came here,” she said. “I’m thirsty.”

  When they emerged, Goog was grumpy, and, after their detailed lowdown, jealous. Before sliding into the driver’s seat, Nollie popped the cork. “Can’t remember the last time I needed a drink more,” she said, and took a slug.

  “If you’re going to hit the bottle, you have to put the Myourea in automatic.”

  “Willing, you’re such a pussy drag.” But she conceded, and once she bumped back to the mesmerizing straightaway on I-80 put her feet up. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska played for atmosphere while they round-robined the warm champagne.

  “So was that some nuclear bunker, then?” Goog asked.

  “I checked the dates on the food,” Willing said. “It was all bought in ’33. So they were hiding from worse than nuclear holocaust: other people. Unfortunately for them, they let some of the other people inside.”

  “Were they attacked, then?” Goog wondered. “Robbed?”

  “Nah,” Willing said. “This is America. There was a gun cupboard. Better than even odds they killed each other.”

  “Lived high beforehand, though,” Nollie said.

  “They were rich,” Willing said. “And they were old.”

  “Rich, obviously,” Nollie said. “But how can you tell if a corpse is old?”

  “By their products thou shalt know them,” Willing intoned. “The exercise equipment is a generational giveaway. The bathrooms were stocked to the ceiling with anti-aging creams, tooth-whitening gel, and caffeine shampoo. Medication for hypertension, cholesterol, erectile dysfunction—and not only a vial or two. Hundreds. Wish I could have told Great Grand Man—we finally found out who cornered the national market on laxatives.”

  “And your poor mother,” Nollie said to Goog, “hoarded Post-it notes.”

  Rumors had long circulated about the “über-rich.” In folklore, these pampered fiscal vampires had retreated to fortified islands of sumptuous abandon, paddling in pools, propping piña coladas, while their countrymen starved. To discover that they hadn’t all escaped unscathed—that, if nothing else, they may not have escaped one another—was satisfying.

  Attempting to cross into the Free State on I-80 seemed a little obvious. Opting for the road less traveled by was the whole reason they’d chosen a northerly entry point into Nevada in the first place: most subversive emigrants would take I-70 to Las Vegas. If the degree of fortification along the border varied, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would surely concentrate its discouragements near the renegade state’s largest and most famous city in its far south.

  So Nollie exited the interstate for the secondary parallel roadway, US Route 58, which led into the town of Wendover, whose original municipal boundaries straddled the Utah-Nevada border. At first glance, Wendover seemed buzzier than similar communities en route. Hitherto, motels had been ramshackle, with bedraggled bedspreads and cracked, recycled plastic glasses. Here, more upscale hostelries looked new, with names like Pilgrim’s Rest, Pilgrim’s End, and Pilgrim’s Pillow. They didn’t seem to be referring to religious refugees in wide-brimmed hats. As their party drew farther into town, gaudy restaurants, casinos, and shops proliferated: The Turncoat Inn, The Deserter Sands, and Traitor Joe’s. Multiple establishments made droll allusions to what visitors like Willing most feared: Fission Chips, or Chip Off Ye Olde Block. The Last Chance Bar advertised concoctions christened Brain Freeze and Stroke in a Glass.

  Goog mewled that he was famished. They all were.

  “What about his hands?” Willing asked his great-aunt.

  “This town is so barmy,” she said, “nobody’s going to look twice at duct tape.” Goog’s titular bondage was already loose enough to qualify as a bracelet, and Willing had seen him more than once shove the stretched bangle back on.

  So they stopped at a family restaurant called Final Feast. In reception, a five-year-old was whooping it up in a replica of an electric chair, which gyrated and vibrated and shot real sparks. The menu was designed around the last meals requested by inmates on death row. The John Allen Muhammad: chicken with red sauce and strawberry cake. The John Wayne Gacy came with KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) and shrimp. Or you could choose lighter fare: the John William Elliot was a cup of hot tea and six chocolate chip cookies; the James Rexford Powell, one pot of coffee.

  “This is completely tasteless,” Nollie said, surveying the entrees.

  “How can you tell without ordering something?” Goog said. She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m going for the Ron Scott Shamburger,” Willing determined: nachos with chili, jalapeños, picante sauce, grilled onions, and tacos. “This guy cut out in style.”

  “Howdy!” Like her coworkers, their waitress was kitted out like a prison guard, with a shiny badge on her breast that said BETSY. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll start with a Lethal Injection,” Goog said.

  “Great choice!” Betsy exclaimed, though the brandy, moonshine, and grenadine drink sounded vile. After taking the rest of their order, she asked companionably, “You folks defectors?”

  “If we were,” Nollie said, looking at the girl askance, “why would we tell you?”

  “Only making conversation, honey. Don’t you notice,” Betsy directed to the men, “how th
ese old dears tend to get paranoid?”

  “Is there any good reason to be paranoid?” Willing asked.

  “I know what you’re asking, sweetie,” Betsy said. “It’s what you all want to know. But the crossers never come back. Make of that what you want. We do get repeat customers, but it’s mostly folks who got cold feet at the last minute. Sometimes puts them in a right pickle, ’cause they’ll have used up the reserves on their chip in a big casino blowout. You see them on the street, panhandling for chip transfers to get back home.”

  “You get a lot of these defectors?” Goog asked suspiciously, like the scabbie they sometimes forgot he still was.

  “Oh, the pilgrims have really picked up the economy round here! I’ll be right back with your grub.”

  After their late lunch, they returned to the highway and then pulled over. About a mile down 58, straight like the interstate it paralleled, Nollie’s fleX indicated the border with Nevada. Sure enough, some sort of edifice rose at the end of the road—it was hard to tell from here how high, or to discern whether guards with snipers’ rifles crouched atop it. Willing and Nollie agreed that getting any closer in a populous area was a mistake. Better to steer farther south on small, local roads, and explore the nature of federal defenses in the middle of nowhere.

  “Look, I know we haven’t always got along,” Goog told Willing from the backseat, as dust rose around the car. “That doesn’t mean I want your brain to burn out like a light bulb. Can’t we call a truce? This trip has been a hoot. Turn around, maybe we can dip into Colorado on the way back. I’ll even pay the larcenous fee the platefaces charge to see the Grand Canyon. Really, it’s on me, for all three of us. I promise I won’t turn you guys in. I won’t report the abduction. I’ll even let you keep your yunk pistol.”

  “That’s incredibly generous,” Willing said.

  “I can never tell when you’re being sarcastic,” Goog snarled. “Listen, why risk mental meltdown? The US—it’s not so bad!”

  “Isn’t that what the founding fathers had in mind,” Willing said. “A country that’s not so bad.”

  “Not so bad is better than splug!” Goog implored. “I know it’s rough going for a while, but once you hit the age of sixty-eight it’s a free ride! Just put in your time!”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Willing said.

  “No way,” Goog said. “You don’t know the Bureau like I know the Bureau. These guys are not joking around. You think they wouldn’t stroke out noncompliant taxpayers? In a heartbeat. Hell, it’s amazing they’re not already staging public executions. And not because we’re goons. The regular public—they’ve got no appreciation for how desperate things are. The budget. It’s a biggin’ catastrophe. A miracle we can keep the Supreme Court in sandwiches.”

  After they’d traveled far enough out of town, Nollie cut west again. The pitted dirt road resembled the one that had led to the underground silo. Associations: not good. Goog made unfunny cracks about Nollie’s homing instincts for corpses.

  Yet as they approached what the GPS identified as the end of the world as they knew it, no Great Wall rose up to meet them. Their vehicle did not explode from tripping a landmine. Where Nollie stopped the Myourea and they all got out, two strands of rusted barbed wire stretched limply across the road between listing, poorly anchored posts. The fence continued along a north–south axis in both directions. On the other side, a hand-lettered sign read, “Welcum to the United States of Nevada.”

  Hands on hips, Goog surveyed the notorious border with disgust. “I can’t believe this.”

  “That fence,” Nollie said, “wouldn’t keep chickens out.”

  Ten yards beyond the barbed wire sat a small red clapboard house. On the porch, an old man tilted back in a rocker, smoking. Rarer these days than an SUV, his rollie looked like a real cigarette. Willing waved. The old man waved back.

  Willing advanced to the right-hand fence post. The ends of the wires were looped, and hooked around up-tilted nails.

  “STOP!” Goog shouted, as his cousin reached for a loop. “It makes total sense to me now! They’re happy to let unchipped shrivs like Nollie totter out of the country. Grateful, even. They cost a fucking fortune. But as for all-give-and-no-take taxpayers like you, Wilbur—there’s only one possible reason there’s no wall, and no guards, and no mines: they don’t need them. If you want iron-clad evidence I’m right about the self-destruct, this sad-ass fence is it.”

  Willing unhooked both wires and walked them out of the way of the car—staying in the US of A. Nollie resumed what she insisted on calling the driver’s seat, glided into the land of treachery and secession, and parked.

  The line was now drawn literally in the sand. A dare.

  By God, it was touching: Goog covered his face with his hands. “I can’t watch this.”

  With no further ceremony, Willing stepped into the Free State.

  • CHAPTER 5 •

  WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN A UTOPIA ANYWAY

  The loud cackle from the red clapboard’s porch was startling. Willing had been fairly sure, but that wasn’t the same as certain. So he had stood there for a moment, sizing matters up, doubtless wearing the expression of patting his body down after an accident: being here, and continuing to be here, with an intense awareness of one point in time connecting to the next that one seldom appreciates. Maybe from the outside it looked funny.

  The old man slapped his thigh. “I swear,” he cried, “no matter how many times I watch, it still cracks me up.”

  Despite protestations that he didn’t want his cousin’s head to detonate, Goog looked consternated that it hadn’t. “Okay, then,” he said, only two feet away but still in the USA, “what about the cannibalism?”

  Willing nodded at the old man. “That guy doesn’t look like he’s about to eat me. Now are you coming?”

  “I can’t.” Goog looked shredded. “Where you just stepped—it’s the new Wild West. Whatever it’s like, it has to be primitive. And I have a good job—”

  “I wouldn’t call it a good job.”

  “A lucrative job, then. Perks. Nothing to complain about. And over there—they must lynch people like me.”

  “What’s the young man do?” the old man shouted. He was eavesdropping.

  “Scabbie,” Willing shouted back.

  “Tell him he’s right!” the old man said.

  Ceremonially, Willing took out his pocketknife and severed the sagging duct tape looped around his cousin’s wrists. He rooted in a pocket for Goog’s commandeered maXfleX, and fetched a bottle of water from the car. “If you really have to go back,” he said, handing over Goog’s survival kit, “there’s an airport a few miles from here. You could probably walk.”

  “It’s hot,” Goog grumbled. The fetching of a second bottle didn’t matter. He’d meant, It’s lonely.

  “Tell Savannah, Bing, your parents, and Jayne and Carter I said good-bye. And spread the word that this border scare is treasury.”

  “Nobody would believe me,” Goog said glumly. He was probably right.

  They knocked each other’s shoulders with rare warmth. Willing restored the two barbed wires to their nails. With a wan wave to Nollie, Goog slouched off toward Wendover, where perhaps another Lethal Injection could dull his disappointment—in his country. In himself.

  Meanwhile, Nollie was shooting the breeze with the man on the porch. His old-timer folksiness seemed hyped for effect. He’d got plenty of sun, but up close looked perhaps only a few years older than Lowell, which these days was nothing. The denim overalls were too crisp to be anything but an affectation, and the floppy hat looked crushed on purpose. Given the fields planted behind the house and the cattle beyond, he didn’t spend all day jawing with new immigrants. Sitting sentry at this entry point must have been what he did for fun.

  “According to our friend here,” Nollie told Willing, “that big barricade on US 58 is only plywood.”

  “The town can’t have tourists dancing back and forth over the border in plain
view and their heads don’t blow up,” the codger explained. “Ruins the mythology. Which is a money-spinner. Nobody’s ordering a gi-normous final feast at lunch if they’re planning on supper.”

  “If I wanted to find someone over here,” Willing asked, “what’s my best bet? Vegas?”

  “Where most folks head. Save yourself some trouble, try the internet.”

  “I thought you people didn’t have any internet.”

  He chuckled. “Got our own server. Oh, the Outer Forty-Nine block us from the world-wide-whatever. Don’t think you’ll get all of Google books. But there’s plenty local advice on growing alfalfa. Sites for finding loved ones. If they want to be found.”

  As Goog had warned, the technology was primitive. Their adoptive homeland provided neither satellite connection to http://usn nor the public radio-wave access that blanketed much of the US—a country whose territory began a few yards from here, but which Willing was already starting to think of as far away. Their good-old-boy guide was kind enough to provide the password for his private Wi-Fi. It was unbearably slow.

  “Got it,” Willing announced after an excruciating five minutes. “Jarred Mandible, 2827 Buena Vista Drive, Las Vegas. That was easier than I expected. Though I don’t understand the site I found him on. Something about cheese.”

  “It’s after four o’clock,” Nollie noted restlessly, “and Vegas is three hundred miles from here.”

  “Before you two hit the road,” the geezer said, with a glint of mischief in his eye, “might try a local parlor game while you’re still by the border.”

  Curious, Willing followed the gatekeeper’s instructions, extending his maXfleX over the barbed wire into the land of his old life. The device could immediately contact http://www.mychip.com again. Once more, the codger hooted. “What’s it say?”

  “Zero-zero nuevos,” Willing read. “And zero-zero cents.”

  That earned a second thigh-slap. “Another drama I never get tired of! Only part of that fairy tale about the chip that’s dead on. But they don’t suck the life from your head. Put one foot in the Free State, they suck out the money instead.”