Without warning

by John Birmingham

  They’d started walking again, slowly, passing under the branches of an ancient oak tree that covered a street corner in front of a small, darkened art gallery.

  ‘What do you mean, “worse”?’ asked Monique. ‘How can that be so?’

  Caitlin laughed, although it was more of a bitter little cough, really. ‘Well, those guys at the hospital, and me, for that matter, we have our ways. You’d think them wrong, barbaric even. But if you understand the game and its rules, you can at least act with some sense of things playing themselves out right, one way or another.’ Which was why that splatter-fest at the hospital was so fucking out there, she thought. It simply should not have gone down like that.

  Caitlin stopped again, this time fixing Monique with a hard stare.

  ‘But the Disappearance, you cannot underestimate how much that is going to fuck things up. I have to get out of Paris, out of France altogether. And so do you, if you want to survive. You ever read the English philosopher Hobbes? You’re French, right – you read philosophy with your croissant in the morning, non? Man exists in a state of nature – a war of all against all? That’s what modern society cured, at least so it didn’t interfere with the lives of people like you. People like me, on the other hand, we were still out there, getting bloody with it. But Monique, listen to me – we’re all outside now and a hard fuckin’ rain is gonna fall. You need to find shelter.’

  ‘How bad do you think it will be?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m a pessimist,’ said Caitlin as they crossed a road where the traffic lights seemed to have failed. ‘I think it’ll be totally fucking medieval. Pogroms, food riots, blood in the streets. Maybe that’s just me. Whatever. But, your friends, they’re not gonna miss much in the next little while.’

  ‘The living will envy the dead, you mean?’

  ‘That’s a bit too Metallica for me, but yeah, if you like. Economies are going to collapse all over the world. Not just slow down, or go a little wobbly. They will collapse like the Twin Towers into smoking fuckin’ rubble, and anyone standing around underneath is gonna get smashed flat. Modern society is too complex to survive a shock like this. A simpler world, yeah, no worries – people would grow food in their back gardens, cart water from the well, live harder and closer to the bone for a few years. But you got, what, fifteen million people in the greater metro area of Paris? How are they going to move around, how are they going to feed themselves and their families in two weeks when the stores are empty because there’s no more gas at the pumps?’

  Monique tilted her head and gave Caitlin a quizzical look. ‘But why would…?’

  ‘Why will the gas run out? Think of where it comes from, Monique. Think about what’s going to happen there now that the evil global overlord is no longer around to oppress everyone into behaving themselves. Think about what’s going to happen to the evil world financial system now that the planet’s greatest debtor nation has winked out of existence and won’t be meeting its mortgage payments to anyone. Think about what happens when you take the lid off Pandora’s box and everything that we forgot about in history comes spilling out to bite you on the ass. Do you know how unusual it is in human history, for children to be able to grow up in a place like this?’ She waved her hands around to take in the city. ‘Never knowing the fear of someone riding over the horizon to steal their family’s crops and burn their hut to the ground, and all as a prelude to being snatched up as slaves for the rest of their miserable fucking lives – that’s normality, baby. That’s life as it has been lived by most human beings through most of our history. That’s what I’ve been fighting against my entire adult life, variations on that theme. That’s what America protected you from. And now she’s gone. And you are all alone in the world, Monique. Except for me.’

  By now they had reached the edge of Montparnasse Cemetery, a vast pool of darkness in the city of light. Monique’s lip was pushed out, giving her the appearance of a petulant child. She obviously didn’t want to hear any more, but neither did she argue with Caitlin.

  The assassin checked their position, relying on memory now rather than the GPS device. They were on the far side of the graveyard from the safe house. It was time to get to work.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘We’re going in here, and I’ll go ahead and check out the situation at the apartment. See if it’s been tumbled. If they’ve got my number they might be rolling up the whole network. Are you going to be okay if I can stash you somewhere for a few hours?’

  Monique looked alarmed. ‘A few hours?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Caitlin assured her. ‘I have a lay-up point near here, something I set up myself. You’ll be safe there, but alone. I need to look over the place, otherwise we could be walking into something like the hospital all over again. Will you be okay with that? Are you strong enough?’

  Monique shivered as she contemplated the fields of the dead stretching away from them into the dark. ‘I will try,’ she promised.

  ‘Cool,’ said Caitlin, slapping her on the shoulder. ‘That’s all anyone can ever ask. Let’s go.’

  * * * *

  Two vans had mounted the kerb outside the apartment, a no-parking zone, and lights burned inside the third-floor flat. Four or five men moved about inside without any pretence at stealth, turning the place over. Three hundred yards away, stretched out on a cracked, weed-covered gravesite overhung by an ancient elm, Caitlin was able to observe them unmolested. She had no scope or binoculars, but that hardly mattered. Their very presence was enough to alert her.

  The apartment was an Echelon safe harbour, a first sanctum known only to her and her controller, Wales Larrison. He should have been waiting for her there. Indeed, he may well have been. He could be tied to a chair somewhere inside right now, taking the first of many beatings that lay in his immediate future. Caitlin had no way of telling unless she was willing to stake out the scene for much longer than was prudent. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing as a new wave of dizziness and nausea rolled over her. She couldn’t leave Monique on her own at the lay-up point further back in the cemetery for too much longer, and she couldn’t interdict the search of the safe house in her current condition with no back-up, minimal equipment and no idea of what sort of opposing force she’d encounter.

  ‘I’m sorry, Wales,’ she mouthed silently, before slowly crawling backwards into the darkness of the cemetery.

  She didn’t know whether her illness was affecting her judgment as badly as she knew it had affected her physical abilities, but Caitlin was annoyed and not a little perturbed to find herself feeling scared and lost. The shooters at the hospital were state-sponsored muscle – of that she was sure. And the team at the apartment looked like pros too. From what little she could glimpse, they were taking the place apart in a precise, methodical fashion. If she had to bet on it, she’d lay down good money that they were French secret service, probably the Action Division of the DGSE, the designated point men for securing the Republic against the intrigues and depredations of Echelon.

  What the hell they were up to, what greater scheme they served, she had no idea. It was obviously related to the day’s events – such frontal assaults on a ‘sister’ service were almost unprecedented – but she could not be sure how.

  What she did know was that her control cell was compromised and she would need to get herself to safety. To a US or British military facility somewhere on the continent. Across the Channel, to friendly ground. Or, as a very last resort, to one of the diplomatic missions of Echelon’s member nations, the old, English-speaking democracies.

  As soon as the last idea occurred to her, she dismissed it. If the French were aggressively rolling up Echelon cells, they’d be staking out the embassies and consulates.

  No. She was on her own.

  * * * *

  ONE WEEK

  21 MARCH, 2003

  * * * *

  16

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  ‘I don’t want you going out there again, Kip. You look sick.’
>
  Barb looked worse than him, he thought, but it wouldn’t be worth his life to point that out, of course. Her eyes stared at him from within dark hollows. She’d had little more than an hour or two of sleep a night for the last week. The old bathrobe clutched nervously just below her throat was dirty and her dark hair lank and greasy. Nobody had been allowed to run water for three days now, because of the contamination. They were living on what they had stored in pots and bottles and the old clawfoot tub upstairs in the half-renovated bathroom. Kipper needed to get into work to see if he could change that today.

  ‘Barb, I’m not sick. I’m fine. They’ve been checking us every day. Army doctors, guys who specialise in chemical war and stuff – we’re fine. We got those bio suits, but we don’t even need them anymore.’

  Unfortunately, she would not be dissuaded. ‘Kip, you have a family to look after…’

  ‘And I am looking after them,’ he countered, with some irritation. ‘I am the guy who can turn on your taps again. I am the guy who makes sure the power is there when you flick the switch. Me – nobody else. It’s my job, Barb. I have to go.’

  He wondered why she was so much worse this morning? The pollutant storms were clearing out. The toxic soup he’d had to brave on Tuesday to get into the city had been truly scary. The army had sent some sort of pressure-sealed armoured vehicle for him, something they were going to fight Saddam or the old Russians with, and all of the troops were suited up in NBC gear.

  ‘This is insane, James.’

  Uh-oh. He knew he was in trouble when she called him that.

  ‘We should be thinking about getting out of here,’ Barb continued. ‘Not hanging around. Deb and Steve flew out for New Zealand yesterday. They’re not coming back. They’re too smart. But your martyr complex is going to see us die here. Isn’t it?’

  He controlled the anger that threatened to flare up between them, reminding himself that Barb had nothing to do but sit in the house, like the rest of the city, staring out of the windows at toxic rain. She must’ve been going batshit by now. And, he remembered at that very moment, she was also premenstrual.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, as calmly as he could without shading over into anything that might be mistaken for a patronising tone. ‘Deb was born in New Zealand, so they could do that. They got out on a government charter. There aren’t any other flights leaving, because no airlines will fly in here anymore. So leaving isn’t an option. Yet.’

  ‘But it’s got to be, Kip. We can’t feed ourselves. We’ll starve soon.’

  ‘We won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all those freeze-dried camping rations down in the basement. The ones you gave me all that grief over when I bought them cheap, remember? We’ve got at least two months’ worth.’

  She shook her head and her eyes hardened. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. The city is starving. They’re going to have to evacuate people before long. You know that, James. You must have been talking about it at council.’

  He tried to speak but she rode in over him.

  ‘And when it happens, we’re going, mister. All of us. To New Zealand or Tasmania or fucking Bora Bora. Anywhere but here.’

  ‘D-a-a-a-d-d-y!’

  Suzie, who appeared at the kitchen door to complain that Bear in the Big Blue House wasn’t on, saved him any further escalation. None of her shows were on. Jo-Jo’s Circus, Little Einsteins, The Wiggles, they had all disappeared off the screen days ago. And every day she grew more upset with their absence. The only TV and radio now available carried Emergency Broadcast System updates, warnings about dangerous acid levels in the rain, information on food and gas rationing, handy hints for post-apocalypse homeowners about fortifying their neighbourhoods and establishing citizens’ watch committees, and pleas for information on ‘saboteurs and subversives’ in the so-called Resistance. None of which impressed the hell out of a little girl who was bored and terrified in about equal measure.

  ‘I want my shows back, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Can’t you make the army men put them on?’

  ‘Can’t you watch a video, sweetheart? How about one of the movies I brought back?’

  ‘I’ve watched them all a million times,’ she complained, in a rising whine. ‘It’s not fair.’

  He looked to Barb for help, but she wasn’t giving him an inch. She simply folded her arms and raised one eyebrow. Very much aware that she’d be dealing with this all day, Kip didn’t dare find fault with that response.

  ‘Tell you what, princess,’ he said as he dropped down to her level on one knee. ‘I’ve got to get to work, but I promise I will bring home some new videos, ones you haven’t seen yet. Okay?’

  ‘Can you get Piglet’s Big Movie?’ she asked, suddenly brightening.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, without thinking. ‘Piglet’s Big Movie. No problemo.’

  He felt, rather than saw, Barb tense up beside him.

  ‘You run along and get dressed for Mommy, now. And no playing outside yet. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘But D-a-a-a-a-d-d-y…’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow. No promises.’

  As she scampered away he rose to his feet again with a feeling of trepidation.

  ‘Kip, you already made a promise you can’t keep.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The Piglet movie. It’s not on DVD. It was supposed to be on at the Cineplex this week. She’s been looking forward to it all year. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?’ With that, his wife turned around and stalked off down the hall.

  Damn!

  Kipper stood in the kitchen, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to breathe slowly. Blood was rushing through his head and he desperately wanted to say something stupid, but long, hard-won experience kept him quiet. He knew he should follow Barb and work things out, but he also knew that doing so would involve him in at least an hour’s worth of apologies he didn’t feel like making and maddening, circular discussions of his manifest failings on the home front. He was already late, and couldn’t afford to miss the convoy out to the dam on Chester Morse Lake. Plus, he had to check on the food-aid distribution centres that were kicking off their operations this morning. One of them had been raided by some anarchist fools late last night. Kip hadn’t gotten back to sleep after the cops had called him about it. There’d doubtless be interminable meetings about that today.

  So he simply did not have time to get caught up in domestic trench warfare. It wasn’t just a job anymore – people’s lives rested on his decisions.

  He knew he’d regret it before the day was done, but Kipper grabbed his car keys and travel pass and walked out through the kitchen door. The headache that had been building eased off a little as soon as he stepped outside and sucked in some fresh air. Well, not fresh, exactly. He could still taste the sharp, chemical tang in his mouth, in spite of the prevailing winds carrying away most of the pollutants from the south over the last twenty-four hours. A gigantic low over the Bering Strait had drawn up enormous volumes of ash and smoke from the conflagration in the Los Angeles Basin while a weird, contrary ridge of high pressure to the east had held the lowering toxic clouds over the Pacific Northwest for two days.

  Seattle’s chief engineer squinted into the morning sun for the first time in days, and tried not to think about what his family had been breathing into their lungs. He’d sealed the house as best he could – better than most would have managed – by rigging up an airlock and filter chamber in the spare room at the back. Barb had initially been none too impressed at the sacrifice of their best cotton sheets and the new Panasonic air-con unit they’d bought last summer, but the appearance of the towering, septic fogbank on the southern horizon quickly brought her around. When the power supply allowed, he maintained a rough overpressure by running the reverse-cycle heating and keeping the fireplace in the lounge room stoked at all times. Hopefully it would be enough.

  Kipper stepped off the porch and started down the wet concrete pathway to his vehicle, the same F-100 pick-up he’d driven in from the a
irport a week ago today. He felt both guilt and relief at leaving Barb and Suzie behind. The house was large and comfortable, like most on Mercer Island, but it had felt like a cell while they’d been confined inside during the worst of the fallout period, as thousands of tonnes of toxic waste from the burning of LA had hung over the entire city and its surrounds. Barb’s immaculately maintained garden had turned brown and died as though soaked in defoliant. Stopping at his front gate to survey the rest of the street, he could see they weren’t alone. Mercer Island was a high-tone enclave, and Deerford Drive, perched on the edge of the lake and snuggled up against Groveland Park, was one of its better addresses. Truth be known, it was all a bit precious for Kipper, but Barb’s family were Manhattan royalty – or had been, he reminded himself grimly – and she was used to moving among ‘a better class of person’. ‘People like us,’ she would tease, smirking, knowing that the rude inhabitants of the cheap seats at a Larry the Cable Guy show were more Kip’s sort of people than any of their opera-loving, sherry-sipping neighbours.