Angels of Vengeance ww-3

by John Birmingham

  They set off again as the trucks rumbled away down the street, belching dark smoke from their exhausts.

  ‘You might be right. But thank you,’ said Miguel. ‘It must have helped. When we first arrived, I thought they might send us back to Mexico. Or, what is left of her.’

  The chill seeped in through his clothes as they walked. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets but it did not warm them much. Icy gusts of wind picked up wet leaf litter that slapped against his legs, sticking to his jeans and boots. He took in the trees that lined the streets. As in many other places, nature had surged into the void left by the disappearance of humanity. He marvelled at the vibrant blue-green specks of moss that grew on the bark.

  As they drew closer to the markets, there were more people in the streets, often carrying bags like them, backpacks and sometimes wheeled trolleys, all obviously intending to load up with groceries for a few days or more. There were very few cars, however. Vehicles were readily available and, with the right sort of effort, they could be made to run again. But even a healthy car would never get far without gasoline, which only the government seemed to have enough of these days. Although many businesses received a weekly ration, it was never really enough.

  No, for people like Miguel and Maive, ordinary people, it was the bus, walking or horseback. He and Sofia still had the horses on which they’d fled the homestead. But most days his mount, Flossie, grazed in a field across the road from the apartment the government had given them. For the last few weeks, the horses had been stabled because of the poor weather.

  He could smell the markets now. Not just livestock, but the tang of fresh herbs and greens, expensive at this time of year, because they’d come out of local greenhouses. One trailer by the entrance offered halal meat roasted on spits for the Pakistanis and anyone else who was interested. The salty sweet tang of kettle corn churned in the cold air with roasting nuts, coffee and mulled wine. As always, a small crowd had gathered around the entrance to the River Market. Another makeshift trailer was set up there with two giant steel pots steaming and slowly bubbling away, tended by a Canadian family, nomad Quebecois, whose mulled wine was a favourite with the locals.

  ‘I wonder if I might tempt you with just one cup this week?’ Miguel suggested, his eyes twinkling with mischief. They both knew the answer already.

  ‘It doesn’t matter that the alcohol has been cooked off, Miguel. I still cannot drink it. It’s against the rules.’

  ‘So is drinking coffee, according to that crazy man this morning.’

  ‘That’s a different rule,’ said Maive. ‘A silly one, best ignored.’

  Still, they waited in line while Miguel bought a paper cup full of hot, spiced wine for himself. He wasn’t entirely sure where the wine for the pots came from. Perhaps they made their own locally. Or maybe it was salvage - always ‘salvage’ in this country. The gringos were living off their own dead. Looking around in the chill air, he couldn’t imagine that the area was good for grapes, though. Trudi Jessup could probably have explained it. She had led him into wine drinking on the journey up from Texas, although he imagined she would be horrified to find him drinking something like this. Trudi took her wine, as well as her food, very seriously.

  ‘After this we can see about a cup of hot cocoa perhaps?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, why not.’

  The actual marketplace was a series of outer brick buildings formed into a loose square. In the middle of that square stood three long shelters fitted with garage doors that were kept shut in the winter months. Merchants willing to pay a little extra for heated stall space were set up within the shelters, while the frugal or the unlucky toughed it out in the elements.

  Miguel found it to be just a little warmer inside the gates than wandering the streets outside. The scent of barbecue in the air warmed him up a notch more as well. Winslow’s Barbecue held one end of the square, serving meat rubbed with a curry-inspired spice that Miguel had come to like. It was hotter than the usual American fare. Under the awning of the barbecue joint sat a jazz band, playing some tune he did not recognise.

  ‘Louis Armstrong,’ Maive noted.

  ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,’ the Mexican admitted. However, as he listened to more of it, he thought it might grow on him.

  They walked up a gentle slope towards a line of buildings strung out along the western end of the market. Maive seemed to know where she was going. Miguel followed her lead, taking in the sights. It still struck him as odd after all this time to see so many different types of people in one place, some of whom were darker-skinned than he was. One group was missing, or at least harder to spot.

  There were not many Latinos like himself at the River Market. Recent woes with the South American Federation fuelled a latent prejudice against his kind that seemed to infect those yanquis who had survived the Disappearance.

  Maive approached a Chinese woman of indeterminate age and began to haggle over the price of some vegetables. Looking around, Miguel had to admit that he regretted having to ground Sofia. She loved coming out to the River Market, shopping for groceries, planning their meals for the next couple of days. More often than not, she’d run into somebody she knew, one of her friends from school or someone from the local militia. She had her own money, just a little bit from a part-time job at the hospital, where she helped look after many of the soldiers who had returned from New York so terribly wounded. Miguel thought it good for her to be able to experience a place like this - somewhere with so much life and colour, where people were happy - after she spent so long in school or studying at home, or working in the rather grim environment of the hospital. Not for the first time, he found himself confused by the way parenthood forced him to do things he really did not want to do.

  The haggling concluded and Miguel drew his head back from the clouds.

  ‘Do you think I could borrow your strong arms, senor?’ Maive asked him. She was holding up two bags. Idaho and sweet potatoes. ‘I thought I would cook up dinner for all of us, tomorrow evening. I’m sure if you read the fine print you’ll find Sofia is allowed to come around for a meal as long as she remains firmly under your thumb.’

  It was almost as if she had read his thoughts, or maybe just his feelings, and knew exactly what to say.

  ‘I suppose having dinner with two old people will be sufficient punishment for a teenage girl,’ he mused. ‘Especially if we sit around talking about how things used to be. Before the Wave.’

  ‘Totes,’ Maive said with a grin. ‘That’s what all the cool kids say, by the way. Totes. So I say it too, just to bug the hell out of them.’

  ‘You would make an excellent parent,’ he replied, taking the thick paper bags of potatoes off her, before quickly regretting having said it.

  He knew the Aronsons had never had children, but he was not sure why. In his village, a woman like Maive, strong and winsome, would be married off and surrounded by a brood of ninos in her early twenties. He did not know her exact age. It seemed impolite to ask, and many people had aged an extra decade in just a few years since the Disappearance. But he didn’t think she could be much older than forty, maybe three or four years older than Mariela would have been by now. His wife had suffered greatly during childbirth. Manuel’s arrival had nearly killed her. It was possible, he supposed, that Maive Aronson was afflicted with a problem not unlike his poor wife, or worse, and because of that had never been blessed with children.

  All of these thoughts raced through his mind in half a second after he had ventured his careless remark about her potential parenting skills. But whereas he might once have blurted out an apology (and then stumbled over an apology for making the apology), a few months in the company of the ‘manbivalent’ Ms Jessup had taught him that American womenfolk could be strangely inured to his oafishness. Trudi had even seemed to find it amusing, and much to his relief, Maive Aronson appeared to take no offence to his suggestion that she might have walked well down the path of motherhood.

  ‘I thought a
joint of beef might be good,’ she said, apparently not even noticing his remark. ‘A rib roast, slow cooked, with all of the trimmings. I could probably live off the leftovers for three or four days. Would mean I didn’t have to cook when I got home in the evenings.’

  He knew she often worked late at Northtown Community College, where she taught English to the migrant workers and, sadly, to native speakers who needed improvement. It would be a temptation for somebody living on their own to eat most of their meals out of a can. He suspected that’s exactly what he would do, were it not for Sofia.

  ‘Then because it would help you, we shall have this meal,’ said Miguel, with mock generosity. ‘Sofia should be free from her shift at the hospital in time for dinner.’

  Maive nodded. ‘How does she like it there?’

  He shrugged in reply. ‘She wanted to join the local militia, but I said no. Not until she finished school. I’m hoping by then she’ll lose interest.’

  ‘Miguel …’ Maive sighed. ‘I hope you’re right about that. She’s seen enough fighting for one lifetime, I think.’

  Over the next half-hour, they went about gathering the rest of the ingredients as well as two bags of groceries for the Pieraro household. Once or twice Miguel lost sight of Maive in the heavy crowds of shoppers, and was only able to find her by scanning the sea of heads on tiptoe. The light, intermittent falls of sleet had thickened up into snow flurries by the time they exited past the Quebecois clan, still tending their mulled wine. The line in front of their trailer seemed to be twice as long now.

  Miguel’s appreciation of the mundane beauty of the scene was broken by a quartet of local militia milling through the crowd with rifles on their shoulders. He did not enjoy the idea of his precious, beautiful daughter one day joining their ranks.

  Miguel carried most of the load: a large box filled with the fruit and vegetables, along with a couple of string bags swinging from his forearms, stuffed with bread rolls, cheese and a few jars of preserves. The weather closing in could not depress his mood, which had lightened considerably after the unpleasantness earlier in the morning outside Maive’s home. She too walked with a lighter step, having thrown off her own lowness of spirit. They briefly discussed catching the bus back, lest they be caught out in worsening weather, but the next one was not due for an hour, and both were enjoying their walk. The simple experience of plunging themselves into a happy crowd of people at the markets, of gathering the elements of a fine meal to be enjoyed the next day, and also of allowing themselves to enjoy each other’s company, had greatly improved their humour.

  Miguel did his best to amuse her with a few carefully chosen stories of his voyage on the big yacht belonging to the famous and Disappeared golfer, Mr Greg Norman. The former vaquero very carefully avoided making mention of his family, and Maive very carefully avoided asking him about any of them. But he knew she had always been greatly amused at tales of his friend the Rhinoceros, and poor Miss Fifi, who had always been very kind - for somebody who seemed happier the larger the gun she was carrying. And, of course, of Miss Jules, who had not really wanted to take any of them on the boat, but who had relented because, in Miguel’s opinion, she was a good person, despite all her protests to the contrary.

  ‘I have come across people like her,’ said Maive as they left behind the hubbub of the market crowds. She blew snowflakes from the tip of her nose as they walked along. ‘Cooper used to know a few people like that - I suppose I should add, through his academic work studying gangs. They weren’t very common, but every now and then he would meet somebody he said was doomed to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.’

  Stepping carefully down off the footpath into a leaf-choked gutter, having to peer around the edge of the large cardboard box full of groceries while doing so, Miguel thought he understood what she was saying. Miss Julianne was indeed someone who had ended up helping others while maintaining she was really only looking after herself.

  ‘Yes, but sadly, it is more common to meet the other kind of person,’ he replied. ‘Somebody who does the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I have met many of them.’

  ‘I think we’ve both met our fair share of those bastards,’ Maive said in a quiet voice.

  She surprised him. It was almost unheard of for her to curse. Miguel hurried on, not wanting her to return to thoughts of Texas and the road agents.

  ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘But they are not worth thinking of. I have known two famous people in my life, did you know?’ He could tell by Maive’s smile that she was more than a little curious.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I did not know Mr Norman when we took his boat. But not many people can say they have sailed on the yacht of such a famous person, can they?’

  ‘No, they can’t, Miguel,’ she conceded with good humour. ‘And the other famous person?’

  He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Roberto,’ he said. ‘That’s President Morales of the South American Federation to you, worthless gringo lady!’

  She’d been about to blow another snowflake from the tip of her nose, but laughed instead. ‘I don’t know that that’s something I’d be bragging about if I were you, Mr Pieraro. How on earth did you meet such a creature?’

  ‘In Acapulco. In the very first days of la colapso, I was caught up there, just before I met Miss Julianne and Miss Fifi. I was running a small security crew for one of the hotels - well, more like a bunch of thugs than a crew. But the hotel employed them to keep the other thugs away from the guests, and they employed me to keep them in line. Roberto was one of those thugs, my second-in-command. He was a terrible man even then.’

  They picked up their pace by unspoken agreement as the snow fell heavier, pushed along by a sharp southerly wind. Miguel was glad he had worn his hat. It stopped most of the snowflakes that would have fallen onto his face. Maive had to keep wiping her eyes clear with her upper arm because of the two bags she was carrying.

  ‘What happened?’ She sounded like a child being told an exciting bedtime story.

  ‘Between Roberto and I? Not much. We did not like each other, and I suppose, had I not left him to it, there would have been blood between us in the end.’

  ‘Maybe it would’ve been better for a lot of people if there had been, Miguel,’ she replied. ‘Have you ever considered how many people’s lives you might have saved if you had, I don’t know … dealt with him, back then?’

  ‘I had never thought of it like that,’ he said, meaning it. ‘You may be right. For some people, that would almost certainly be true. Hugo Chavez might still be with us.’

  ‘Ah. Snap.’

  He wasn’t quite sure what Maive meant by that, but she seemed to be conceding this point, that speculating about what might have been was foolish.

  ‘If it had not been Roberto, it would have been someone else,’ Miguel continued. ‘Some general, some gangster, somebody was always going to take over down there when it fell apart. I was very surprised when I found out it was him, and yet, not at all. He has a political background. Maybe even military. He had the stink of the death squads about him. But yes, for a few days I stood on a barricade with el Presidente, protecting the clothes and jewellery of wealthy holiday-makers without the sense to realise they were not wealthy anymore and they really should have got out of Acapulco.’

  ‘That is a very good story, Miguel,’ she said. ‘And now I have bragging rights because I know someone who knew someone who became a real-life dictator.’

  They were just two blocks from Maive’s home and crossing at an intersection when Miguel saw him. The thin streak of misery and madness; the unhinged Mormon witness he had thrown from Maive Aronson’s front porch that morning. Visibility had dropped so badly, and the man was dressed in a light grey hooded jacket, which served to camouflage him inside the flurries and swirls of snow, but Miguel had laid hands on the loco and recognised him immediately. The strange angular way he held his body, the tension in his neck and back, the way he focused intently when he
saw the two of them.

  The vaquero burned with a righteous anger. He struggled to maintain a tight grip on the hot gust of rage that welled up inside his breast. Maive appeared not to have noticed her tormentor, even though she stood closer to the man. He looked to be talking on a cell phone, which surprised Miguel. He had not thought that a crazy man - and the witness was most assuredly crazy - would have access to such technology, or know how to use it.

  Did Kansas City even have a cell phone service? This madman was the first person he’d seen using a cellular phone in a long time. Only government people seemed to use them now.

  Miguel let Maive chatter on while he skewered her stalker with a malevolent glare. No matter how disconnected from reality this maniac might have been, there could be no mistaking the malignant intent with which the Mexican was fixing him. Miguel wished he could hear what the man was saying on the phone. Almost certainly gibberish, but if he was talking about Maive, that might be important to know, to gauge the depth of his obsession. Unfortunately, the thickness of the snowfall was deadening all sound, even her voice, just an arm’s length away.

  Miguel shook his head and scolded himself. This fool is no threat. He probably believes he is talking directly to God himself.

  If he had been somewhere else, out on the range, say, picking his way through a forest, breaking trail on horseback, he might have recognised the ambush a few seconds earlier. Perhaps he would’ve been able to do something about it.

  But Miguel Pieraro, father, widower, a vaquero‘s vaquero, was not a man of city streets and built-up places. He was most at home in the saddle. Not shuffling along a footpath, his arms loaded down with groceries, carried for a woman who was making him feel more and more every day that he might move beyond the horror and loss he had sustained down in east Texas.