by Gary Glass
“Yes. Eight hundred crew. — Come on.”
She transferred him to another Humvee (the one with the camera on the cab) and sent him out through the barricade.
Benford, on comm: “We’re following you on camera.”
Adams: “Proceed up Egan till you get to—”
“I can see the smoke myself,” Marley said.
“Good for you.”
Benford: “All right, Carl. Just let us know if you need any help.”
The fire was in a residential neighborhood on the east side of the city, up in the hills. Even weaving through the abandoned vehicles scattered through the streets, it didn’t take long to get there — still, the fire was already out.
Two fire trucks sat crossways on the lawn in front of a small house, pouring water into a gaping hole in the roof. Plumes of thick white smoke hissed out of it. A dozen firemen were working the site. Half of them looked fully geared up; the rest wore various mixtures of gear and civilian dress. One man on hose was wearing nothing but boxer shorts and boots. Nobody else was there. No family, no spectators, no police, no reporters.
The firemen paid no attention to Marley.
He went up to one of them, who was monitoring gauges on one of the trucks.
“Excuse me. Who’s in charge here?”
No response. He didn’t even look up.
Marley selected a second target — a tall blonde fellow, naked above the waist, standing alone, watching the house. He stepped in front of him, but not too close. The fireman glanced at him. He had the eyes all right. Bright and glassy.
“Who’s in charge here?” Marley said.
The fireman didn’t answer. Just looked away, back at the house.
“Was anyone hurt?”
The fireman looked at him again, curiously, as if he hadn’t noticed him before. “No,” he said.
“Was anyone home?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they now?”
He looked away again, without answering.
Adams broke in: “We can’t see you from the vehicle camera.”
One of the fire trucks blocked their view.
“But we have you on long-range camera. What’s the house number? Is it three-sixteen?”
The house number, if there was one, was obscured by smoke and water plumes, but there was a broken mailbox lying on the ground, knocked down by one of the trucks.
“Three-sixteen,” he said.
“Looking it up… Family’s name is Sipes. John and Penelope Sipes.”
Marley turned back to the fireman.
“This is John and Penelope Sipes’ house.”
No response.
“My name is Marley.”
No response.
“What’s your name?”
No response.
“Typical early onset symptoms,” Marley said. “Unresponsive to personal queries.”
Benford: “We don’t care about that now. How did he know about the fire? Power and communications are cut.”
Adams: “What’s his badge number?”
“I don’t know.”
“On his hat.”
“He’s not wearing a hat!”
Marley turned back to the fireman: “How did you know there was a fire?”
It didn’t look like he was going to respond to this question either, but then he said, absently, without looking at Marley: “Where there’s smoke.”
Marley wasn’t sure he’d heard him right.
“Did you hear that, colonel? I think he made a joke.”
Benford: “I think he ducked the question.”
Back to the fireman again: “But who saw the smoke?”
“Don’t you?”
“I mean, who saw it first?”
“I don’t know that.”
“Did someone come tell you there was a fire in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Alice.”
“Who is Alice?”
“Neighbor.”
“Your neighbor or the Sipeses’ neighbor?”
“Yes.”
“Were you at the fire station when Alice told you about the fire?”
“No.”
“Were you at home?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
No response.
“How did the fire start?” Marley said.
“Propane grill.”
The National Guard encampment lay at the far end of town from the water. Karen and Ally’s first look at the town was shrouded in fog. They walked out of the camp, pillowcases in hand, to find themselves on the shoulder of an empty road. They heard the sound of electric traffic — the dull hum of rubber tires rolling over cracked pavement — and walked toward it.
They soon came to an intersection, a traffic light, and a sidewalk. Continuing, they stopped the first person they encountered and asked her where they might find transportation to Juneau.
She directed them to the marina.
“Should be some floatplanes can take you,” she said. “But they won’t fly today.”
“Where’s the marina?”
“Just keep going. You can’t miss it.”
The street ran straight through the town and ended abruptly — nose to nose with an enormous white cruise ship. (Along the way they’d passed scores of stranded tourists, drifting unhappily through the souvenir shops and ice cream parlors lining the street.)
The marina was close by, faced by the offices of various sightseeing services. They went into each one. Nobody was going out in the fog. Nobody was going to Juneau anyway. And all the regular ferries and flights had been shut down by government order.
So they went into one of the dockside pubs to get some breakfast. It was called “The Real Deal.” They sat at the bar. A sign behind the bar read “Tlingit owned. Tlingit operated.”
“We want to hire a boat,” Karen said to the bartender and proprietor.
“What for?”
“To take us to Juneau.”
He snorted, and glanced up at the television over the bar, playing the news. He shook his head and changed the subject. “What can I get you?”
“Coffee,” Ally said.
“Anybody around here might be willing to take us to Juneau?” Karen said.
“Nobody in their right mind.”
“Anybody else?”
“You want some coffee too, ma’am?”
“Yes,” Ally said.
He went off down the bar, shaking his head, to get the coffee.
The place was busy. He spoke to some of the men at the far end of the bar. They looked at the two women and laughed.
Karen noticed they were the only women in the place.
The bartender returned with coffee. He had a hitch in his step that made the coffee slosh in the pot. He clunked two brown mugs on the bar, saying, as he poured:
“One of the guys says Banger was fueling up this morning.”
“What?” Karen said.
“Says Banger said something about taking some reporters down to Juneau on the quiet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Reckon he’s already pulled out by now. What did you want to eat?”
Karen nearly shouted with frustration: “Banger is a boat?”
“Banger is a damn fool,” the bartender said. “The name of his boat is the Sea Word.”
Karen sprang off her barstool and bolted out the door.
Ally grabbed both their pillowcases and ran after her.
Karen ran along the docks looking for the boat. She heard a running motor and ran toward it, out onto one of the narrow quays. Ally ran after her, juggling the two bags of clothes.
The Sea Word was an old fishing boat dressed up in yellow paint and blue banners to catch the tourist eye. In the chill and damp of the morning fog it looked something like a bedraggled prom queen just waking up on the grass in the middle of the city park.
Half a dozen people were sta
nding on the main afterdeck looking at her quizzically. The engines were idling. A boy cast off the bow line and was heading aft. The captain stood at the controls atop the main cabin.
“Are you Banger?” Karen called up.
The captain looked down from the wheel. He was long and thin and weathered, and stood with his hips at a tilt. He wore a beat-up baseball cap emblazoned with a dove, a cross, and the name of his boat.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Are you heading down to Juneau?”
“You from Juneau?”
“No. But our husbands are there.”
“Lots of husbands there, ma’am.”
“Take us with you.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Full boat.”
“We can pay.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Then he called aft: “Cast off!”
The boy, under a cap just like Banger’s, threw off the aft line, and Banger revved the engine. The water churned up behind the boat and the bow canted away from the quay.
“No!” Karen yelled — and jumped.
Not very elegantly, but with energy, Karen leapt straight over the gunwale. She lost her feet on the landing and came down hard on the aft deck, sprawling like a gaffed tuna among the astonished passengers.
“Merciful Jesus!” cried the boy.
Ally was left standing on the quay, completely surprised, laughing her ass off.
A couple of curious patrons from the Real Deal had followed the women outside and were walking down the quay. When they saw Karen jump, they came running.
Two of the passengers helped Karen up.
Banger disengaged the engines and yelled down: “Are you crazy?”
Karen looked up from the midst of the group on the aft deck.
“I’m coming with you, God damn it!”
“Well, all right then,” said Banger. “But mind you take not the Lord’s name in vain, not on this boat!”
He reversed the engine and slewed the boat back up against the quay.
Ally had tears in her eyes from laughing.
The bar patrons on the quay shook their heads doubtfully.
“You’re a damn fool, Banger,” said one.
Banger waved them away. “This is the Lord’s business, boys!”
“You’re all gonna get yourselves arrested!”
“The Sea Word goes where God wills, and no man prevents us.”
“God wills you to go to Juneau?”
“Wheresoever the people are perishing, that is where the physician goes!”
The little first mate swung open the gate in the gunwale. The passengers reached out to help Ally aboard. She passed the pillowcases over, then hopped aboard.
Banger bawled down from the controls: “Clear away! Look sharp, boy!”
“Ay, sir!” the boy yelled back.
Karen was sitting on a locker on the aft deck rubbing a bruised knee.
“I warned you about abusing the Lord’s name,” Ally said. “See what happens?”
As soon as they were clear of the harbor, Banger turned the helm over to his son and came down to socialize.
“So sisters, your husbands are down in Juneau, are they? Not locals though, are they? Who delivered them up to that den of thieves?”
Karen started her story, but within the first half-minute, the other passengers stopped her.
“Wait! Wait! We have to get this on film!”
A flurry of activity erupted on the afterdeck. Aluminum cases were thrown open, cameras set up on tripods, microphones mounted, reflectors unfolded. The two on-air personalities, opposite in gender but identical in attractiveness, sat down on the bench either side of Ally and Karen, and started dabbing their faces with makeup, and when they finished with their own went to work on Karen’s and Ally’s. They spoke in punchy gasps as they worked.
“My name’s Loretta Mooney,” said the female reporter. “I’m with KTTK Anchorage.”
“Jackson Karnes,” said the other. “KLMB.”
“We’ve been trying to get to Juneau for days!”
“Came down to Skagway yesterday. Trying to beg, borrow, or steal a boat down to the capital.”
“We finally convinced Mr. Banger to take us down.”
“There’s always someone willing to defy the authorities. The trick is to find them.”
“Pretty amazing we found you!”
“Found us?” Karen said.
But they continued talking past her to each other:
“We can do the interview right here on the boat!”
“It’s a great human interest piece!”
“You want to do a joint interview or separate?”
“I think joint.”
“I don’t know if they can get us all in. Bill, can you get all four of us in the shot?”
“We can do a two-camera. Share footage.”
“That’s a good idea!”
“What about the waves? The boat is moving around a lot.”
“Maybe we should stop?”
Mooney looked up hopefully at Banger.
“Yes,” Karnes said, “and we have to keep the spray off the cameras.”
Banger looked from one to the other, lagging a few seconds behind their rapid-fire chatter.
“Can we do that, Mr. Banger?”
Banger scratched his head through his cap. “Lemme see what I can do.”
He sprang back up the ladder to the upper helm and started giving the boy instructions to cut speed, head on to waves…
“Remember this clip released by the Centers for Disease Control?” Mooney said into the camera, then to Karen: “I’m going to cut in a piece from that clip of your husband here.” Back to the camera: “Sitting next to me here are the wives of the two men in that clip, Karen Hanover and Ally Marley. Despite the total quarantine the federal government has imposed on the Alaskan capital, we’re here on a boat with Ms. Hanover and Ms. Marley en route to Juneau. These women are on a mission…”
Chapter 42
Marley stayed a while longer, but learned nothing else. The fireman lost interest and stopped responding.
Marley didn’t want to go back. He hung about, watching them hose down the smoldering house. He wondered where Roger was. And Delacourt. Now she was one of them. Like Ally. Why wasn’t he? — He’d been at the scene about twenty minutes when Benford broke in:
“Carl? Still there?”
He was startled. There’d been no comm traffic for several minutes.
“Yes. What? What is it?”
“We’re seeing some other activity in the streets. I want you to check it out.”
“Where?”
“Downtown.”
Adams directed him back down to Main Street. It wasn’t far.
There was a sparse crowd coming together in the parking lot outside a small grocery story. Marley stopped the Humvee across the street and got out. At first he couldn’t see what was going on, then he realized that the shop was open and a few people were going in and out.
He hadn’t seen a moving vehicle on this side of the bridge in three days, but he looked both ways before crossing, and in both directions he saw handfuls of people walking toward the grocery. There were sidewalks, but they were all walking down in the street.
He crossed the street and started through the scattered crowd. Everybody ignored him.
He soon realized what was going on. They were carrying food out of the store. Mostly fresh or frozen food — or what had been fresh or frozen before the power was cut.
Two or three people at a time went inside and came back out carrying handfuls of shrink-wrapped steak, plastic bags of shrimp, or boxes of frozen vegetables.
Nobody was talking. He went inside.
Benford: “We see you going inside. What’s going on?”
“They’re carrying food out of the grocery.”
“Are they paying for it or just walking away with it?”
“They’re not stealing it, if that’s what you mean. They’re saving it from spoiling.”
>
“Did they tell you that?”
“It’s obvious.”
“What are they saying?”
“Nothing. No one’s talking.”
“Does anybody seem to be in charge?”
“No.”
“See if you can get anyone to talk.”
Marley stepped up next to an older woman who was filling a handbasket with boxed vegetables from a cooler. “Can I help?” he said.
No response.
The only light in the store was what filtered in through the plate glass windows across the front. The air was stale and fetid.
He pointed toward the back of the store. “You know, I think we should get the deli cleaned out. Before it gets worse.”
The woman looked up for a moment, but said nothing, then returned to filling her basket. She seemed to have decided it was a one-man job and that even he could handle it on his own.
Marley smiled and headed for the counter, rolling up his sleeves.
“I’m going to lend a hand,” he said to Benford. “The place is pretty rank.”
“I want you to try to get someone to talk. I want to know what’s going on.”
“I think they’re ignoring me because I don’t have anything useful to say. So I’m going to pitch in.”
The cheese was moldy, the meat was rancid, and the pasta salads stank. Marley retrieved a cart from the front of the store, and broke open a box of trash bags. He lined the cart with a bag to make a tub on wheels, and started shoveling the rotting food into it with his bare hands. It all felt gelatinous and oily. He hadn’t had this much fun with his hands since he couldn’t remember when.
When the cart was full, he wheeled it outside, left it behind the store, and went back and started on another one.
Benford broke in several times to ask him what he was doing.
“I’m carrying spoiled food, colonel. — If we don’t restore power soon we’re going to have real health problems in this city.”
“I thought we already had real health problems in this city.”
“Insurrection is a health problem?”
The third cartful finished the job. He had three carts of rotting food parked behind the building. He didn’t know what to do with them. He sat down on a crate to consider the problem. The bears would come scavenging tonight. That was bad. Or was it? Did the bambies care? Did they feel brotherhood with the entire animal kingdom?