by Jo Nesbo
And stayed there until he did.
And I think that’s what Brad had discovered. That you can – by the simple act of abandoning a few inhibitions – get your own way through the use of violence, threats and brute force. The way he got the Winston brothers from the neighbouring cabin to join him in setting fire to Ferguson’s old garage. Because if they hadn’t done so – as the brothers explained later to the police – Brad had threatened to set fire to the Winston cabin while the family was sleeping.
Brad’s hapless attempt to court my daughter Amy further demonstrated that he was a boy given to strong feelings. He had been in love with her since they were small children, but instead of growing out of it as is usually the case with childhood infatuations his feelings just seemed to get stronger each summer when they met. Of course it might have been because Amy grew more lovely with each year that passed, but just as likely it was because his feelings weren’t reciprocated and her persistent rejection only spurred him on. He seemed to feel as though he had a right to her.
One night I was awoken by the sound of Brad’s voice in the corridor outside Amy’s room. He was trying to get her to let him in and she was obviously refusing. I heard him say: ‘This is our cabin, everything in here is mine, so let me in or else we’ll throw you out and your father will lose his job.’
I never told Colin about this – I’ve done and said a few stupid things myself in the grip of a romantic rejection – and I suspected Colin might come down too hard on his son as a way of showing he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing. So it wasn’t the threats made to Amy but the burning of the garage that tipped things over for Colin. Brad got off with a conditional sentence and the award of hefty damages to Mr Ferguson, paid for by his father, after which Colin put him under house arrest. Two days later Brad left for town on the motorcycle he had been given as an eighteenth birthday present. He took a large amount of cash from his father’s safe, and the keys to an apartment in Downtown.
‘Well, at least I know where he is,’ sighed Colin over breakfast.
Three months later Colin told me he’d heard from the police that the apartment had been completely destroyed in one of the many fires in Downtown, that they hadn’t found any bodies inside but that there was no sign of Brad either. Colin had then reported Brad missing and tried to pressurise the police into searching for him, but by that point the police had stopped following up anything other than street violence, arson and murder. We heard from the east coast that in some cities the police had had to barricade themselves inside their police stations as these had become a favourite target of the gangs because of the large numbers of weapons stored there. There were also rumours that in some states the police had stopped turning up for work and were instead operating as highway robbers in order to survive.
After the government had finally declared a state of emergency throughout the whole country and Colin had moved into the abandoned prison on Rat Island with his wife and Beth he told me that he had heard about Brad from other sources. Apparently Colin Lowes’s son was now the leader of a gang of looters who called themselves Chaos.
‘Why the looting?’ said Colin with a shake of the head. ‘If he just came to me he’d have everything he needs.’
‘Maybe this is what he needs,’ I said. ‘To show you he can manage on his own. Not only survive without your help in times like these but be a leader. Like you.’
‘Hm,’ said Colin and looked at me. ‘So you don’t think it’s simply because he likes it?’
‘Likes what?’
‘The chaos. Looting. He likes…destruction.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
And it was true.
As the world crumbled around us, Heidi, Amy and I tried to lead as normal a life as possible in Downtown.
Heidi and I had met when we were both law students and it had all happened so smoothly. It took us just two evenings to realise we were meant for each other, and two years to know that we had been right. So there was nothing to discuss. We got married, and Amy arrived three years later. We wanted more children, but it took another fourteen years before little Sam – now nearly four – appeared.
When the virus came along and the city was put on lockdown Heidi’s firm went bankrupt. She knew it would be tough to find work in a market in which unemployment had risen from five to thirty per cent, and the economic recession had entered what the experts call critical mass, a state in which a descending spiral had become its own accelerant. So following the pandemic, when people were once again able to move about freely without fear of infection, Heidi started offering legal assistance to the poor. She worked from our kitchen and of course was only rarely paid for the work she did. Luckily money wasn’t the biggest problem for our family. Directly before the onset of the pandemic the board of Lowe Inc. had accepted an offer from the country’s largest IT company. For me and the other internal shareholders it meant, in principle, that we need never work again as long as we lived. I had given up my job and spent the next few weeks thinking over what I wanted to do with my life. And in the course of those weeks the virus had struck again and decided what it was going to do not only with my life but with the lives of everyone on the planet.
So I had come to the conclusion that the most meaningful thing I could do was help Heidi to help others.
And from that day on not only our kitchen but also the living room and the library had operated as a kind of centre for shipwrecked souls and weird characters of every description. But by now even the legal system had started coming apart at the seams. Even though the government, the national assembly and the courts continued to operate after a fashion, the real question was how much longer we would have a functioning police force capable of administering the law and enforcing the verdicts of the courts, a jail system that could arrange for the serving of sentences, and even a military whose loyalty could be relied on. The national assembly had given the military leaders extended powers to protect property – at least, public property – and in other circumstances this might have been a first step in allowing a group of senior military figures to take over the running of the country. A junta would, after all – according to the social philosophy in Leviathan – be preferable to anarchy. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead soldiers and officers were recruited to join the private militia established by the wealthy, where they could make five times what they had earned in the regular army.
And those of us who weren’t as wealthy had also started to take steps to secure what was ours. What we thought of as ours. Started preparing for the worst.
But nothing could have prepared me for what actually did happen.
And as I stand here on top of the skyscraper listening out for the helicopter I can still feel the taste of the rope in my mouth, still smell the petrol in the garage and hear the screams of those I love inside the house. And the bitter certainty that I would lose everything. Absolutely everything.
* * *
—
‘Sixteen minutes!’ the lieutenant shouts.
Colin walks to the edge of the roof and looks down into the darkened streets. I can just about hear the sound of a solitary motorcycle. Only a month previously the city was full of motorcycle gangs on the rampage, but now the fuel shortage means most of the robbers are on foot.
‘So you don’t think Justitia is dead, she just has this hole in her forehead?’ Colin asks.
I look up at him. It’s hard to keep up with a mind like his, but since I’ve been used to following the train of his thoughts ever since we first met in junior school I can sometimes manage it. He hears the motorcycle and automatically thinks of his son Brad and his gang, Chaos. They wear helmets with a very striking club logo: Justitia, the goddess of justice, the blindfolded woman holding the scales. Only in this version she has a large, bloody bullet-hole in the middle of her forehead.
‘She’s down for the count,’ I say. ‘But I still
think the rule of law will reassert itself.’
‘And I always thought that was naive. That sooner or later the only ones you can trust are your own close family members. Which of us was right, Will?’
‘People will fight back against your entropy, Colin. People want something that’s better, they want a civilised society, they want the rule of law.’
‘What people want is revenge for an injustice committed. That was what the rule of law was all about. And when that doesn’t function any more people arrange for their revenge themselves. Look at history, Will. Blood feuds, vendettas with sons and brothers avenging their fathers and brothers. That’s where we come from and that’s where we’re headed back to. Because that’s how we feel. That’s what we’re like, as human beings. Even you, Will.’
‘I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. I put common sense and humanism above revenge.’
‘The hell you do. You might like to pretend you do, but I know what you’re feeling inside. And you know as well as I do that feelings will always, always win out over common sense.’
I don’t answer. Instead I look down at the street below, tryping to spot the motorcycle. The roar has died away, but I see a cone of light moving and hope that is it. Right now light and hope are what we need. Because he’s right. Colin is always right.
III
I slow down. Further down the avenue here there are neither people nor any other traffic on the move, but since I’m driving on sidelights only to attract as little attention as possible I need to keep an eye out for holes in the road. It’s crazy, but even though people ran out of petrol long ago they clearly still have plenty of grenades left – the explosions get more frequent by the day.
I brake. Not for a hole but for torchlight. A gang has taken up position at the next crossroads. A car burns soundlessly behind them.
Shit. They’ve spread spike strips across the whole avenue.
I check my mirror. And sure enough, in the glow from the brake lights I see they’re behind me too. They emerge from buildings on both sides, dragging a spike strip behind them to cut off a retreat that way. It takes me two seconds to establish that there are twelve of them, six in front and six behind, that only four of them are visibly armed, that they move like kids and they’re not wearing badges or outfits that might tell me which gang they belong to. The bad news for me is that they must have raided a police station for those spike strips, which means they’ve got guts. Which is another way of saying they’re desperate. The good news is that they’re ranged in a haphazard and not very practical formation, which tells me that either they don’t have much experience, they’re stupid, or they think numerical superiority is enough.
I’m still fifty metres away from them when I bring the bike to a complete stop and take off my helmet. Hold it up so they can see.
‘Chaos!’ I shout, hoping they can see the insignia on the helmet.
‘Shit, it’s a girl!’ I hear someone say.
‘All the better,’ another laughs.
‘Move those strips and let me by and there won’t be any trouble!’ I shout. As I expected, I get laughter in answer. I switch on the headlight. I can see them better now, ethnicities mixed, clothing mixed too. They look like the leftovers of what no other gang would have. Then I take hold of the Remington rifle fastened to the side of the bike and aim at the biggest one, still blinded by the headlight and as it happens standing directly in front of the spike strip. I think back to the last time I used it, how I made a perfect triangle out of the eyes and the bullet-hole. But of course, then I had the target hanging on a hook right in front of me. I pull the trigger, and the echo bounces around the walls of the houses. The guy falls the right way, backwards onto the spike strip, and I accelerate, aim for the open spread of his legs and manage to slip the rifle back into its holster and get both hands on the handlebars again before the front wheel hits him and I’m riding over him.
No shots from behind me.
These days no one wastes ammunition on lost causes.
I don’t know whether it’s a conscious decision to ride past Adam’s house, but anyway I don’t exactly have enough petrol to take any other route. But maybe I need to return to the scene of the crime, to remind myself why I’m doing what I am about to do. Anyway, suddenly I’m there.
Silence. Darkness. I don’t stop, just slow down.
The hole in the gate is still there. The hole I made.
* * *
—
I squeezed the handles of the wire cutters and the teeth snapped through the wires in the gate.
I could feel the eyes of all twelve of them behind me, the smell of testosterone, the scuffing of nervous boots unable to keep still on the asphalt.
‘Quicker!’ whispered Brad excitedly.
I could’ve asked him what the hurry was, told him there was no way the police might turn up.
I could’ve asked if he wanted to take over, told him I worked at the speed that suited me best.
Or I could’ve asked if we shouldn’t just drop the whole business and told it like it was: that it was a bad idea.
As Brad’s second-in-command it was actually my duty to tell him and to try to get him to give it up. I’ve thought about that a lot since then. Whether I could have done anything different. Probably not. Because it was Brad’s idea, and that mattered more than being a bad idea. In the first place he would not have wanted to lose face in front of the gang by admitting I was right. But I could have done what I usually did, which was to present my arguments as though they were just an interpretation of his own, so that when he realised I was right – and as things turned out he knew I was – he could take the credit for it. That was OK. A stupid leader can manage well enough as long as he is able to distinguish the good advisors from the bad ones. And Brad had that ability. Though he possessed only average intelligence himself, he seemed able instinctively to recognise intelligence in others. He didn’t need to be able to understand your reasoning; intelligence was like something that just grew out of your forehead. And it was that, and not my career as a kickboxer, that had led him to appoint a girl as second-in-command of Chaos.
The reason I didn’t even try to oppose him or manipulate him was that I knew this robbery was about more than food, weapons, petrol and a generator that may or may not have been in the garage. That Brad knew these people. That they had something he had to have, and nothing would make him change his mind. So I kept my mouth shut. Because I admit it; I don’t risk my position in Chaos, which is the only thing keeping me alive, for a bunch of rich whites I don’t even bloody well know.
‘There!’ I said, bending aside the strand of wire and slipping through, feeling the wired ends rasp against my skin and leather jacket.
The others followed. Brad stood there looking up at the darkened house bathed in moonlight. It was two o’clock in the morning. If people ever slept these days, then this was the time when they did it.
We took out our weapons. Sure, there were more heavily armed gangs than ours, especially the breakaway gangs of former policemen or soldiers, or former cartel people who had crossed the border. But by comparison with the usual youth gangs we were a heavyweight militia; each one of us with an AK-47, Glock 17 pistol and combat knife. We’d run out of bazooka grenades but Brad and I had two hand grenades each.
Brad’s eyes glowed like those of a man in love. He could almost have been handsome. Maybe he was handsome when he slept. But there was something disturbing about his facial expression and his vibe when he was awake, a fear, as though expecting to be hit, as though he hated you even before you’d done it. And this cold, hard hatred and fear alternated so quickly with what was warm and kind and sensitive that it left you wondering what it must be like to be him from the inside. You really couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. And want to help him. And on that particular evening, with the moonlight falling on his long, dirty-blond hair,
Brad looked like Kurt Somebody-or-other, a rock star whose records my adoptive dad used to play when he got drunk and started yelling that everybody should do like Kurt, write a couple of great songs and then shoot themselves. But he couldn’t create anything at all, my dad, so he just copied the shooting-himself part.
‘Ready, Yvonne?’ said Brad and looked at me.
The plan was for me to take Dumbo and ring the bell at the main entrance while the rest got in round the back. For what it was worth, I hadn’t really understood why we had to wake up a family that was probably sleeping instead of using the element of surprise, but Brad had said that the sight of a Columbian girl and an undersized and retarded lad would make them lower their guard, that that was the kind of people they were. Helpful types, he had called them, his voice filled with contempt.
I nodded, and Brad pulled the balaclava down over my face.
I rang the bell. Must have waited a minute before I saw the little light by the camera above the door go on.
‘Yes?’ said a drowsy man’s voice through the speaker.
‘My name’s Grace, I was in the same class as Amy,’ I said in a tearful voice. I’d got the names from Brad and the acting talent from a Columbian man and woman I never even knew. ‘This is my kid brother.’
‘What are you doing outside at night and how did you get in?’
‘We’ve been taking some food to my grandma, but now there’s a gang in the street down here and then I remembered Amy’s house. We climbed over the barbed wire. Look at Sergio.’
I pointed to the tears we had made in Dumbo’s shirt – although it should have been obvious he hadn’t a drop of Latin blood in his veins.
There was a pause. He was probably thinking. It wasn’t that unusual to transport food and other stuff between households under cover of darkness.
‘Just a moment,’ he said.
I listened. Footsteps on the stairs inside, sounded like an adult male.