Without warning

by John Birmingham

‘Guess that commo puke didn’t have to worry about shooting himself in the foot after all,’ he thought aloud. ‘I must be at 3rd ID’s main camp.’ Now where that was exactly, he had no idea.

  The ground was rockier, harder, than he remembered from that last big post. It made walking a little more treacherous for someone with his injuries, but it also meant that there was marginally less grit and sand in the air. From the lowering position of the sun, he estimated the time as being quite late in the day, maybe 1600 hours or more. His watch was missing. There was only room enough for foot traffic in this part of the base, and it was heavily congested. Everyone was fully armed, as though expecting the enemy to appear around the corner at any moment, but people made way for him as he shuffled off in the direction of the mess tent.

  It was slow going. His whole body was stiff and every movement seemed to threaten new rips and tears in those parts of him that had already been sundered apart and put back together. Melton desperately wanted to know what had happened while he’d been out of it. What had become of ‘his’ platoon? Who’d lived and who’d died? And what had gone down in the wider world? The little he’d picked up from Shetty and Deftereos wasn’t reassuring. He had the impression of a world that had already tipped over the brink and was now falling towards destruction.

  It took him a while and a good deal of discomfort to cover the short distance to the mess and he felt worn out when he’d done it, but satisfied too, as if he’d proved to himself that he wasn’t a total cot case. Pushing in through the flyscreen doors, he found about half of the tables occupied by service men and women whose working routines obviously had them out of synch with the bulk of the camp. He recognised Marines and army personnel, and some foreign uniforms, possibly Australian special forces. There was even a table of USN sailors looking very much out of place. The hum of the room was subdued, with many of the diners watching a television that hung from a pole near one end of the space. Nobody appeared to be enjoying the show – some sort of news broadcast.

  Melton was desperate for information, but also weak with hunger. His appetite had come roaring up as he’d shuffled towards the mess and its familiar smell of fried meat, grease and instant coffee. He was salivating heavily now, and his stomach actually seemed to twist itself into a knot in an effort to move him towards a fold-out table where a female on KP duty smiled at him.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ the specialist asked. Melton couldn’t read her name-tag. It was covered by her body armour. ‘We got some burgers and fries that are sorta fresh. And you look like you need feeding up.’

  He shook his head but smiled. ‘You got any soup?’

  She turned towards the giant metal pots sitting on a big field oven behind her. ‘Got some beef stew in one of them, sir. I could add a bit of water if you like. That’d almost be like soup, wouldn’t it? Just chunkier.’

  ‘Chunky is good,’ said Melton.

  The Army specialist even helped him over to a table where he could watch the TV, which surprised him. No one was ever cheerful to be put on KP duty.

  A minute or two later he was sitting on a poncho liner she’d loaned him, trying to ignore the sharp pain from his butt sutures while dunking a bread roll into the thick dark stew of chuck steak and vegetables. His Ranger buddies would have given him a ration of shit for accepting the snivel gear, but his ass hurt, and as far as he was concerned, he wasn’t a Ranger anymore.

  ‘You ain’t a Ranger with that haircut.’

  Melton turned to see an air force sergeant, at the same time noticing that the remains of his Ranger tattoo were clearly visible on his left shoulder. For some, those would have been fighting words, but Melton just wasn’t wired that way. The sergeant inhaled a chilli mac and green beans with a good-natured grin as Bret reached his hand over to shake.

  ‘Reporter these days. Bret Melton, Army Times - or I was until last week,’ Melton said. ‘But no, I’m not in the army anymore.’

  ‘Sergeant Anderson – Michael Anderson,’ the man replied. ‘But you can call me Micky if you want. You look pretty badly shot up there, Bret – mind if I call you Bret? You get caught up with the Marines?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope, 5-7 Cav. At An Nasiriyah.’

  The sergeant nodded sagely but said, ‘Didn’t hear about that. But then, there’s been a helluva lotta fighting here and there. They’re still patching my C-130 back together after all the fire we took from the Iranians on our way here. Co-pilot didn’t make it. Hell of a ride, I’ll tell you. Two burning and two turning, and I don’t mean jets. Your guys, the ones you embedded with, they okay?’

  ‘Afraid not. We got caught in a bad spot. They mortared the shit out of us… I don’t even know how we got out.’

  The realisation had just struck him. He really had no idea why he was alive. Shetty hadn’t explained how the two of them escaped, only that they’d been blown into a building of some sort. A shop or something. One of the other platoons must have fought their way over to drag them out. Hadn’t they lost air support just before the mortars started to fall…?

  He found himself slipping away into reverie and consciously pulled himself back into the present. ‘Sorry, Sergeant… I mean, Micky. I’ve only just woken up. Been out of it since we got hit. But no, I don’t think many guys made it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anderson said quietly. ‘But at least you weren’t with the Marines at Abadan. Man, what a fucking mess.’ He didn’t explain further. Another forkful of chilli mac effectively silenced him.

  Melton gingerly dunked his bread into the rich broth of beef stew and tried to focus on the TV screen. He recognised BBC World’s business news presenter, Dharshini David, on the screen. Her normally dark, full lips seemed pale and pressed tightly together, and her eyes were haunted and nervous. It was hard to hear what she was saying, but a tagline rolling across the bottom of the screen and a small picture window hovering beside her head gave him the impression that there had been a massive banking collapse in Europe. The little video window carried footage of black-clad riot police, whom Melton recognised as French CRS, baton-charging a huge crowd laying siege to an old colonnaded building. He assumed it was a financial institution that had run out of money. The scene switched to London, where even bigger crowds waited, a lot more patiently, outside a large Barclays bank in the City. A man in a dark blue suit made some sort of announcement to them and they reacted with catcalls and jeering, but there was no violence. The presenter then threw to an interview with a frightened-looking woman who was nursing two children.

  ‘Any idea what that’s about, Micky?’

  Sergeant Anderson glanced quickly over his shoulder at the television and shrugged. ‘Something about the banks falling over.’ He grunted in disgust. ‘Welcome to my world. I haven’t been paid yet – not that it matters, since my ex gets half of it. Or… she used to, I suppose.’ He stabbed at his food. ‘But at least I’m not going hungry.’

  Yet, thought Melton.

  * * * *

  23

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  He could tell there was a problem from a couple of blocks away. Two women, one of them covered in blood, ran past his truck, hair streaming behind, eyes bugging out. Kipper nearly gift-wrapped a telephone pole trying to follow them in his mirror. When he looked up and saw the danger, he jerked the pick-up back onto a safe course with one wrenching pull on the steering wheel. He could see more people running towards him, many of them pounding up the middle of the road, which was free of any vehicles save his own. With his heart beating quickly, Kip pulled over and wound down his window, immediately becoming aware of a distant siren.

  He hopped out of the vehicle and tried to flag down somebody to ask what had happened. It had to be a problem with the food bank, but nobody would stop. A couple of young men abused him when he tried to block their path.

  ‘Get out of the way, you crazy old fuck! D’you wanna get killed too?’

  And then he realised that the crackling, popping sound he could hear was gunfire. Shit.


  Kipper jumped back into his truck, but before stomping on the gas, he redialled Barney, who answered on the second ring.

  ‘What’s happening, boss man?’

  ‘Something’s gone wrong, Barn. Very fucking wrong. I’m about two blocks from Costco and I can hear shots and there’s all sorts of people running past me. Some of them bleeding.’

  A string of oaths burst out of the earpiece.

  ‘It sounds like the cops are coming, but get on the phone anyway. Make sure they get here before the army – those assholes should have been here already. If the army turn up now, they’re just as likely to kill anyone they see moving… Oh, and send some ambulances, too. I think we’re gonna need lots of ambulances.’

  At that moment, a weeping woman ran past, holding up one hand from which a couple of fingers had clearly been removed by a gunshot. Kipper had no idea how she kept going, given the amount of blood she was losing.

  Tench didn’t answer. He’d already hung up.

  Kipper’s head was reeling and he felt distinctly ill. This was his fault. The food banks had been his idea, a way to ensure that the aid shipments coming in from across the Pacific were distributed in a rational, effective manner. It wasn’t the sort of thing he should have been involved with; as the city engineer, he already had a full dance card handling the utilities. But the elected councillors had frozen like rabbits on the road and they’d let him run with the program. He’d personally negotiated the use of the Costco facilities with company management, who’d assigned dozens of their own stock-control specialists to the job and cleared their warehouse space of any non-essential items. He and Barney had been expecting all sorts of teething problems on the first day, but nothing like this.

  Heather. An image of his nervy intern sprang up unbidden: a big pair of Bambi eyes staring out at him from under a short blonde bob, as her hands twisted in her lap like small white otters, constantly moving over and around each other.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered, stamping on the accelerator and punching the horn. The F-100 leapt forward, scattering the mob immediately in front of it.

  Many of the people running towards him still paid no heed to his truck, however, in their desire to flee whatever had happened at Costco, forcing him to slow down some. By the time he made South Bradford Street, the crowds were thinning out, with most people having already escaped the scene. He rolled down his window and listened for gunfire, but heard only screams and cries and the growing wail of sirens.

  Kipper threw the pick-up onto the footpath and into the parking lot at the northern end of the giant wholesale warehouse. Immediately he saw bodies, a lot of them lying still, and people who were so badly wounded they could not flee. But no shooting. Costco warehouse staff were everywhere, easily identifiable by their brightly coloured vests, many of them tending to the injured. Of the army, who were supposed to have provided a security detail, there was no sign. Nor of the cops and other emergency services, although he could hear them on approach.

  Kip turned off the engine and stepped down warily. His senses seemed to be unnaturally alive, and even though this part of the city was a grey industrial area, he could never recall seeing colours so vibrant as the red and blue of the giant Costco sign high up on the building. His hearing too was amped up, with every cry and moan disturbingly clear. Small stones crunched on the tarmac beneath his feet; the engine block of the F-100 ticked loudly as it cooled down. And he gagged as the smell of violent death flooded his nostrils.

  Barney Tench’s car, an old mud-splattered Chevy CIO, came flying up the road and screeched to a halt under the tree at the entrance to the lot. The squeal of his tyres caused some people to jump and shy away a few steps. Barney climbed out and raised one massive hand, pointing towards the warehouse. Kipper saw Heather standing there, a small, forlorn figure in blue jeans and a Minneapolis Twins sweater. Even from a distance, Kip could see she was shaking violently. The two men hurried over to her, picking their way through the carnage.

  ‘Heather! Yo, Heather!’ Tench called out.

  She didn’t seem to hear him at first, but her slack features became animated when she finally recognised her colleagues. She immediately burst into tears as Kipper folded the quivering young woman up in his arms.

  ‘It’s all right, kid. Everything’s gonna be fine. It’s all right.’

  He didn’t attempt to question her for at least two minutes. Barney stood by and occasionally patted her shoulder, but obviously felt the need to be doing more.

  ‘Kip, I’m gonna see if I can scare up somebody from the company,’ he suggested. ‘See if they can tell me what happened.’

  ‘Good idea,’ agreed Kipper. ‘I’ll be here. You got the cops and the ambulance, right?’

  ‘Done deal.’

  In fact the first squad cars were already screaming to a halt at the edge of the lot, disgorging officers who emerged with guns at the ready, but unsure of where to aim them. Barney kept his hands held up in clear view and walked carefully over towards them.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened, Heather? Can you do that yet, darlin’?’ asked Kip.

  A small, tentative nod was all he got in reply. Her whole body was still shaking uncontrollably. As she pushed away from him, she rubbed at her arms, folded them, and started rubbing again. ‘There was m-maybe a thousand people here, when I got in at six,’ she began, unsteadily. ‘They all had transit passes and ration vouchers, just like we planned.’

  Heather stared around the car park as if seeing it for the first time. Her face contorted and Kip was sure she was about to start crying again, but she got it under control. Her voice was small and seemed forever on the edge of breaking into a thousand little shards.

  ‘Th… they were just fine, everyone waiting their turn, until these three pick-ups arrived.’ She pointed with a shaky hand at a couple of abandoned trucks a hundred yards away. Kipper could only see two of them, but didn’t interrupt her. ‘A-about a dozen guys,’ she stammered. ‘All armed, and they like, just pushed in.’

  Kipper shook his head. ‘What about the army, the cops – where were they? There was supposed to be a platoon of soldiers here to help out.’

  Heather volleyed back his headshake with one of her own, throwing in a nervous, exaggerated shrug for good measure. ‘I don’t know. But these guys, like I said, they just started pushing their way to the front, and some people are yelling at them, some are just getting out of the way. And this one guy, some big guy in a lumber-jacket, a big red lumber-jacket, he just steps in front of them and puts his hand up like a traffic cop or something.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kipper. ‘Go on,’ he added in a quiet voice.

  ‘Well, one of these jerks, from the pick-ups, he had like an axe handle or something, and he just butt-swipes this dude with it. Totally wipes him out. He goes down and then the shooting starts.’

  ‘The pick-up truck guys, the looters, they started shooting people?’ asked Kipper, his voice rising.

  ‘Nope. They got shot. Or at least the one with the axe handle did. He dropped the lumberjack dude, looked like he was about to start pounding on him with that club, next thing you know, somebody blew him away. Two or three shots – I’m not sure. But there’s blood everywhere, people screaming and then the real shooting started.’

  Kipper felt as though he was going to vomit. There had to be more than a dozen lifeless bodies lying around in the parking lot. There’d probably be more in the streets beyond. Where the fuck were the army guys? They were supposed to have been here-they’d insisted on it, in fact.

  ‘How about you, Heather?’ he asked her. ‘Are you okay? You got a little blood on you, darlin’. You’re not hurt, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know where all the guns came from,’ she said, ignoring his concern. ‘But once they were out, it was like everyone was armed. Everyone was shooting. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was a little girl… standing just near me… She was screaming and crying for… for her mom… and…’ The young woman br
oke down completely now, as the morning’s blood and horror overwhelmed her.

  Barney reappeared with a police officer, an older-looking man with sergeant’s stripes. ‘You in charge here, sir?’ the policeman asked, almost accusingly.

  ‘What? Yes, no… well, I…’ Kipper pulled himself together. ‘My name’s Kipper,’ he said. ‘James Kipper, city engineer. We were starting our food aid program here this morning. The city’s running the program, with help from Costco, here at least, but the army were meant to be doing the site management and security. So, no, I’m not in charge. Nobody was, by the look of things.’

  The cop took in the scene with unalloyed disgust on his face. ‘You know, the fucking city could have just used us. This wouldn’t have happened on my watch, I tell you.’

  More cops were arriving and the first of the paramedics were charging around, doing triage.

  ‘I don’t make these choices, Sergeant,’ Kip replied. ‘I’m like you – a civil servant. We do as we’re told.’ It sounded weak and worthless as it came out of his mouth, and he immediately regretted speaking.