Without warning

by John Birmingham

  They entered the elevator, which Kipper had tried to shut down without success – the city councillors had baulked at that power-saving measure. Jed punched in the number for the Engineering Department’s floor, before smiling graciously and using his arm to bar the way of a young woman who’d rushed up behind them to share the ride. ‘Sorry, darlin’. Do you mind?’

  She did, but there was nothing she could do about it as the doors slid shut.

  Kipper bristled at the impoliteness. ‘That wasn’t very nice, Jed, and it was wasteful,’ he chastised the lawyer. ‘And what are you crapping on about anyway? You already said you were going down in that vote this morning. Blackstone is gonna get his congressmen, whether the rest of the army wants it or not.’

  Jed put a finger to his lips before gesturing around the elevator. Kip sighed with exasperation, but after last night he wasn’t so quick to dismiss paranoid speculation about surveillance.

  The lawyer nodded. ‘Well, you’re right about one thing, Kip. Not all of the military wants this situation. Ritchie and Franks are dead against it.’ Culver looked around as if addressing an unseen audience. ‘And nobody in uniform is arguing in favour of it, of course. But in the end they’ll accede to the wishes of the people.’

  ‘But people don’t want this,’ Kipper said. ‘Some people maybe, but not everyone. This is just fear and craziness.’

  ‘Well, fear whispers loudly downstairs, my friend. Come on.’

  A bell dinged as the elevator came to a stop. Kip made to step out and head for his office but Culver grabbed his arm and directed him towards another room.

  ‘I had this one swept fifteen minutes ago,’ he said quietly, pulling the door closed behind them.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Found this…’ Jed pulled a small electronic device from his breast pocket. ‘Don’t worry, it’s been disabled.’

  Kip stared at the tiny piece of technology as hackles rose on his back. ‘Sons of bitches.’

  ‘Nah, amateurs, Kip,’ Culver corrected him. ‘Rank fucking amateurs playing at big boys’ games. Now, come to the window. I want you to see the sort of view you miss when you work indoors all the time.’

  The chief engineer followed Culver to the window and looked down on his city. It was a relatively clear morning, the first in a while. A few grey clouds scudded out near the mountains to the east, but otherwise the sky was clear, save for two army helicopters holding position over the bridges across Lake Washington. And then he saw them – a sea of colour, a teeming, seething mass of humanity, streaming onto the bridges and heading for the city centre.

  ‘What the hell?’

  The crowd had already swept past a small army roadblock at the eastern end of the bridge and were beginning to string together a long procession that took up every available lane.

  ‘The wishes of the people, Kip. I didn’t think they were being heard downstairs either. So I invited them all here to have their say.’

  The engineer was speechless.

  ‘You’re a local – how long do you think it will take them to walk that distance, Kip? To get them here, I mean, beating on the doors of the Municipal Tower?’

  Kipper shook his head. ‘Not long, I guess. If they’re allowed.’

  Jed Culver snorted. ‘If they’re allowed! What, did I wake up in Soviet Russia this morning? They’re American citizens down there, Kip. Your neighbours and friends. Nobody tells them what they can or can’t do. And sure as shit, nobody tells them how they’re gonna govern themselves.’

  Kipper pressed his head to the glass, which felt cool against his sweating brow. ‘How did you do this, Jed, without anyone knowing?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Without Blackstone knowing, you mean? I had some friends – some of them friends of yours, actually.’

  ‘Hey buddy, sorry to keep dropping in like this.’

  ‘Hello, sweetie!’

  Kipper spun around to find Barney standing at the office door. And next to him was Barb, holding Suzie on one hip.

  ‘Holy crap, Barn, they’ll fucking lock you up, man! And Barb…’

  ‘Daddy said the rude word!’ squealed his daughter.

  He pulled up, realising he’d just dropped an F-bomb in front of his six-year-old child. Damn.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Daddy shouldn’t have done that, darlin’. It’s just that he was a little… surprised. And kind of upset.’ The bomb diffused, Kip turned to the two adult visitors. ‘So, what’s going on here?’

  Barney was peering out of the doorway and back along the corridor, where his former co-workers had begun to gather and point at the slow-moving crowd snaking across the bridges. One or two saw him and waved. He smiled back before returning his attention to his old friend.

  ‘I told you last night, Kip, that there were a lot of people involved in the Resistance. Some whackjobs, for sure – you know, commies and anarchists, just like you hear all the time – but a shit-load more decent folk. Guys who used to work for the media, the telecom companies, the government. Moms and dads.’

  Barbara nodded as she carefully lowered Suzie to the ground. ‘You run along, princess,’ she said. ‘Find some paper to draw on. See if you can find Ronnie, she’ll help you.’

  ‘I like Ronnie!’ Suzie cried before dashing out of the office.

  Kip stared at his wife. It was as though he didn’t recognise her. ‘You too, Barb? You were part of this?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kip, yes. Well, I’m not sorry for being part of it, but I am sorry I had to keep it from you.’

  ‘But why?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Couldn’t you trust me?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘It wasn’t safe, honey. If you knew I was helping Barney and the others, how could you have come in here every day and faced off Blackstone? You’re a lot of things, Kip, but you’re not a liar. You couldn’t have done it.’

  Kipper turned on the lawyer. His head was an angry swirling mess of emotions. ‘You knew about this, Jed? About my family being involved?’

  Culver nodded. For once he wasn’t smiling. ‘I’ve had contact with a number of opposition cells,’ he admitted. ‘Your wife’s was one.’

  ‘You had a cell?’ he asked Barbara. His voice rose with incredulity.

  Barbara sniffed. ‘You make it sound like a spy movie, Kip. It was just me and some of the moms from school, and some of our friends. People I could trust.’

  ‘Jesus Christ…’

  ‘They’re down there, Kip,’ she added, pointing out of the window. ‘They’re coming. Because they have to.’

  Barney walked over from the door and looked down on the massing crowd. ‘We’ve been waiting for this, Kip,’ he said. ‘Waiting for the right moment when those assholes downstairs would go just a bit too far. I thought they’d done it when they locked up the councillors, but people were still frightened out of their minds back then, willing to give up anything just to feel safe. That just isn’t so, now. They’ve had enough and they want their country back. The little bit they have left, anyway.’

  Kipper was stunned. Never would he have imagined the day turning out like this. He had kept his opinions private, but he’d been expecting a bleak and wretched day.

  ‘We need your help, Kip,’ Barney went on.

  ‘Mine? What do you need me for?’ He waved a hand at the window. ‘Looks like you’ve got it all locked down.’

  Culver answered his question. ‘We need you to shut off power to the city, and to Fort Lewis. And we need it done now. We have to knock the legs out from under these idiots before they have a chance to get to their feet.’

  ‘But they’ll have their own back-up plans,’ he protested.

  ‘Everyone has back-up plans,’ Culver smiled silkily.

  ‘What about it, Kip?’ Barney Tench implored. ‘You saved this city once. You can save your country if you act right now.’

  ‘Come on, honey,’ added Barbara. ‘You know what’s right.’

  Kipper turned back and gazed out of the window. The crowd looked to b
e hundreds of thousands strong. He could see them bunched up at the bottleneck of Faben Point, a great mass of people emerging from the suburbs. He could see a similar crowd heading over the Evergreen Point Bridge to the north.

  Telephones began to ring all over the floor, as voices rose in confusion, surprise and even awe. His secretary, Rhonda, came bustling down the hallway and into the room with Suzie trailing behind her. She looked surprised and delighted.

  ‘Barney!’ she cried out. ‘And Barb!’

  ‘Hey Ronnie.’

  ‘Hiya Ron.’

  She turned her attention back to Kipper and said, ‘I’m sorry, boss, but it’s General Blackstone’s office on the phone. They desperately need to talk to you and the other department heads. What should I tell them?’

  Kipper smiled.

  * * * *

  EPILOGUE

  * * * *

  ONE DAY

  The killer awoke, to find a stranger by her bed.

  No, not a stranger, the guy who had saved her. The civilian in the room on the top floor. She could see him clearly now, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes.

  ‘Where am I?’ asked Caitlin, her voice cracking in her dry throat.

  ‘London,’ replied the man. ‘A special hospital. They had to operate on you.’

  ‘My friend the tumour,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’m not a doctor so I don’t know. Or a relative, so they won’t tell me.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Name’s Melton,’ he said. ‘Bret Melton.’

  Caitlin tried to lever herself up but found she had no strength in her arms at all.

  ‘Well, Bret Melton, thank you for saving my sorry ass. And to think I might have popped a cap in yours.’

  He seemed to take that without offence.

  ‘You probably saved mine, Miss Mercure. I holed up in that joint after my vehicle got hit by an RPG. I was pretty much out of it, just trying to get as far away from the street as possible. If those guys had been even half competent they’d have checked and found me unconscious up top. Probably would have cut my head off.’

  ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘And my name’s not Cathy Mercure, by the way. That’s a cover. I’m sorry they felt the need to tell you that. My name is Caitlin.’

  Melton took that without obvious concern, too.

  ‘In my experience,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘ladies who sneak into snake pits and twist the heads off vipers can pretty well call themselves whatever they feel like. You should know, by the way, that I’m a reporter. I’m not going to write about you. Not even going to ask what went down in that house. They made me sign a piece of paper that says I lose my nuts if I do. But I just wanted to get that out there for you.’

  Caitlin felt a wave of lassitude steal through her body. She was aware of great damage that had been done. ‘Thank you, Bret,’ she said weakly. ‘But it’s all right. I’m retired now, a lady of leisure, as of two minutes ago.’

  ‘Okay then.’ He nodded and they lapsed into silence.

  Her eyelids fluttered heavily, and she felt herself drifting back towards sleep. ‘Bret,’ she said, ‘did they get him? Did they get my guy?’

  His voice seemed to come from far away. ‘I don’t know, Caitlin. They got a lot of guys.’

  She forced her eyes open. For the first time she noticed the window off to the side of her bed. It opened onto a garden scene, although the trees were leafless and the grass had all died off.

  ‘What are you going to do, Bret?’ she asked. ‘Will you go home?’

  He shrugged again. ‘What’s home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She started to fade out again. ‘I don’t know.’

  * * * *

  ONE WEEK

  They buried their dead according to whatever beliefs the departed had lived by. Gathered on the heavily damaged boat deck at the stern of the Aussie Rides, the surviving passengers and crew said their prayers or quiet goodbyes for friends and loved ones who hadn’t made it.

  Julianne had never known Fifi or Pete to be in the slightest way religious, but while tidying Fifi’s quarters in the days after the last battle, she found an old Gideon’s bible, stolen from a motel somewhere, annotated by her lost friend’s large, childlike script. The story of Noah and his ark had come in for a lot of attention. That’s just like us, except for all the animals, she had written. Elsewhere, Please Lord, smite that asshole Larry Zood was followed in a different-coloured ink by: Damn! This prayer shit really works!

  It was evidence of a secret, inner life that Jules would never have imagined of Fifi Lamont, and she asked Miguel to add a few Hail Mary’s to the endless rosaries his extended family were sending skyward for old Adolfo, the only casualty their party suffered. Dead of a heart attack a full day after the gunfight.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus…’

  Grandma Ana smiled and nodded sadly at Jules and then at the two bundles that had been her friends, and she realised that Miguel’s family, who had been praying in Spanish, had changed to English without her noticing. The Mexican matriarch waved a thin brown hand at Pete and Fifi’s bodies, indicating that the change was for their sake. Out of reflex, an earlier, more cynical Julianne Balwyn would have smirked and rolled her eyes at the idea of an omniscient God needing a translation, but now, on this bright and cold morning, Jules let the tears come freely as the age-old prayer to the mother of Jesus was whipped away on a freshening southerly breeze.

  The sea state had dropped down to a long, rolling swell and only a few wisps of cirrus cloud spoiled an otherwise perfect sky. Time at last for a burial. Eight bodies lay wrapped in sheets and blankets on the large, bullet-pocked diving platform at the stern. Fifi and Pete, the last two bundles on the starboard side, she had placed there herself with a lot of help from Shah and Mr Lee. The gravity and sorrow of the moment was undercut somewhat by the frozen stiffness of Pete’s remains. He’d been lying in the largest of the galley freezers for over a month, and Jules wasn’t sure she’d have been able to contemplate moving him had Shah and Lee not helped.

  ‘Mr Pete, he would have loved this,’ said the old Chinaman, as they struggled with his body. ‘Would have laughed his giveilo anus right off, yes.’

  And he would have, thought Jules, with a private smile and an involuntary hitching sob.

  Fifi, though, she would’ve been really pissed off. Of all of them, Jules thought, her Oregonian friend had most easily dealt with everything that had happened. Perhaps because she’d been alone and fighting for herself most of her life. Mute and numb, staring at the inert swaddle of sheets in which the redneck princess was wrapped, Julianne could not help indulging in a small, bitter moment of self-loathing. If she had been smarter, if she had in any way been worthy of the trust everyone had placed in her, Fifi would still have been with them. Still grinning and shining and lighting up the face of everybody who encountered her.

  ‘… Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen… Hail Mary, full of grace…’

  She was shaking – a slight tremor at first, something she didn’t really notice until it had spread through most of her body. She shivered inside her thick, dark oilskins, and her throat felt so tight she could not swallow. Beside her, the three surviving Gurkhas quietly sang a funeral song for their fallen comrades. Thapa and Birendra, which seemed to magnify the power of the Mexicans’ rosary chant. Her American passengers mumbled along, all of them having made it through except for Denby Moorhouse, who lay next to Birendra on the diving platform, shot down after saving her life during the battle. His mistress – ‘the boob job’, as Fifi had once called her – had found a black cocktail dress somewhere for her mourning outfit, creating an incongruous effect under a yellow rain slicker. The young woman dabbed at dramatically running mascara, but, regarding her from within the depths of her own misery, Ju
les thought she was going through the motions of grief, rather than its reality. The presence of Jason St John’s hand massaging her arse did detract somewhat from the air of decorous remembrance she was trying so hard to create. Moorhouse’s former squeeze had already moved cabins to take up with the trust-fund delinquent, much to the chagrin of his sister Phoebe, who was now refusing to talk to him.

  Jules sighed at the petty, meaningless nature of it all.

  One would’ve thought that people could have put aside all the silly wretchedness and just pulled together, but no. They couldn’t. Her father would have said it simply wasn’t in their nature. He was an old villain, there was no denying that, but in his own strange way he had a good heart, and he never stole from anyone who couldn’t afford it. There was even a spark of noblesse oblige in him, and he made sure that all of his children were raised to think of themselves as no better than anyone else. Because, as he so often told her, ‘In the end, Julianne, we’re all just as bad as each other.’