The Big Bang

by Roy M Griffis

  At the door of his shed, Whistler sat on the steps and wiped the dust off his feet. He hung the scrap of blanket next to the door and went inside. He’d only be able to sleep five or six hours. By then the day would be too hot, and the room too stifling. He made sure his Baldwin was loaded before setting it between the bed and wall. He put a Glock under his pillow and then, still naked, lay down on the cot.

  A breeze drifted in from the west and it was cooling him off as he lay there. Out of some old, old habit of modesty, he pulled the near-transparent sheet across his groin. It was one more of those funny but not-funny things, the way we grew accustomed to certain behaviors. He’d just walked around naked in front of Lightning, there was a dead store-keeper under the tool shed, and yet, he couldn’t relax until that thin piece of sheet covered his crank. Well, he had grown accustomed to other new things, too. He couldn’t sleep without a pistol under his pillow anymore, either.

  Damn Caliban, he thought drowsily. Rat bastards.

  And then he was asleep.

  As tired as he was, he shouldn’t have dreamed. But he did. He was dreaming of Before.

  He’d heard so many different things about dreams, all of it contradictory. They were prophetic; they were his subconscious cleaning house. He was all the characters in the dreams; he was only one of the characters in the dream.

  Back Before, he’d had a dream that repeated itself—some kind of Terminator figure was chasing him through a dark dreamscape. Whistler wasn’t one of those people who dreamed in vivid detail. He seemed to generate images that were more about feelings than specifics. That dream was familiar enough, understandable enough after a while to become boring, and he’d sleep right through it. Oh yeah, he was in an unsatisfying relationship, bring on the Terminator trying to catch him. His new boss was a jerk; his marriage was torment, then Hello, Arnold.

  After the Big Bang, his dreams changed along with everything else. There wasn’t a lot of time for reflection after the Big Bang, no sitting around at Starbucks and pondering the existential questions of life, love, and career. Every now and then, after Anne had recruited him to work for Valley Forge, maybe on a long night watch when he was forced to sit in one place and his only job was to be there and be aware, and he wasn’t immediately scrambling to stay alive or find food or fix a broken-down old car or distill more eth; then he had the time to think, and possibly to remember.

  There was a lot not to remember, most of it very ugly. If it wasn’t the end of the world, it was damn sure some kind of dress rehearsal. Things died. That was the sum of it. Death was everywhere. Plants. Animals. People. They all fell, either from the nuclear winter, which lasted nearly eight months, the first time, or from hunger, or from the bizarre plagues that swept irregularly across the population.

  He dreamed of the people from Before. The ones who were dead. Not just his family, not just his friends. How about that Eskimo-looking lady who’d worked the bakery at Albertson’s for years? Why would he dream of her? Or the librarian: older, kind of goofy-looking good-hearted guy with glasses and a gap-toothed smile. Yet he dreamed of them, and others like them, now just memories and soon to be memories of memories.

  Whistler awoke about 2 pm sweating, with a dull headache and an equally dull ache of sadness in his heart. That dream always brought on the blues.

  He sat up in bed, mostly to get away from the sweaty sheets. Over by the sink was a plastic pitcher. He splashed a little of the brownish water on his face and patted it on the back of his neck. Standing, he felt a little better. He was still fuzzy, and there wasn’t anything waiting for him outside that couldn’t wait a while longer. He pulled on a pair of jeans and an “I WON AT THE EXCALIBUR” tee-shirt, and then dropped heavily into the creaking wooden office chair.

  The dream was about failure, he could figure that out on his own. No prophecy there. Even though everyone had come home all right last night, the fact they’d come back with nothing remotely useful made it a failure as far as he was concerned.

  Hell, he hadn’t even given a full report to Valley Forge. The nonsense with Red and Gunny had distracted him. The kids at the Forge had probably moved again, which would make reaching them difficult. They had to keep on the move, the Caliban and the other Caliphates would dearly love to put the Forge out of business. The ’ban favored the sock puppets currently operating in what was left of DC, pretending that they were still a legally constituted government while they danced to the Imams’ tune, but most of the OCs would ignore them. Valley Forge was the closest thing to the real United States that was left, and even that was largely a virtual presence. Anne had mentioned a “raggedy-ass Navy” out of Hawaii once, but she hadn’t known much about it. Valley Forge, at least, kept the idea of a USA alive, encouraging and directing strikes against the invaders.

  If there was one way the Caliban had stepped on their own dicks, it was their willingness to whack their own people when they stepped out of line. It resulted in a populace that wasn’t deeply inclined to independent thought, and it also meant a lot of the best and brightest, the pain-in-the-ass question-askers, ended up minus a head.

  The simple bastards wanted to return to the time of Mohammed. They didn’t have personnel available to keep the complex electronics working…so while they had the edge in numbers and scores of fanatic kids willing to martyr themselves to go to a paradise where they could get a drink and get laid, the Americans still had technicians to run the aging equipment that linked and directed the resistance.

  Whistler doubted there were more than a dozen Caliban planes capable of flight in the whole Caliphate of California, anymore. It was one of the things that made it possible for resistance groups, like his, to keep fighting. Back in the day, a little sat imagery, a little drone recon, and the only warning his boys would get that they’d been found would be the sound of the ranch being blown to splinters around them. Now, as long as they kept moving, kept switching their trails, they had a chance to make the Saudis (and the Malaysians and Syrians and Filipinos and Indonesians and whoever else the Imams imported) pay for what they did.

  The real problem, though, worried at Whistler, like a splinter buried too deep in his hand to reach with a needle, and one that he didn’t feel like cutting out of his flesh. The problem of what they were fighting for.

  On one hand, people like him were fighting for payback. To make sure the Islamic fascists couldn’t walk the stolen streets of America without fearing for their lives, to make sure when they went to their confiscated mansions they didn’t sleep peacefully in looted beds. To share with them the redolent benefits of mass graves. To make those scumbags pay for what they did to our country and our people.

  But what were the kids fighting for, his kids? Were they fighting for their iPods and MTV and wireless Internet? Did they even care about the freedom to go where they wanted, to worship any God or no God if they wished? Hell, what about the freedom to read what you wanted, to think what you wanted, even if it made you a horse’s ass?

  At least his kids, his young men, knew about the flagrant freedoms they’d so lately taken for granted. But how soon will that generation be killed off? He hadn’t buried as many of these boys as he should have, he’d had to leave too many behind in red, ragged pieces at the side of the road while the rest of them hauled ass for daylight. Far too many had died.

  The ones afterwards, they’d be accustomed to this life of less. They’d get tired of the running and the hiding. They’d question it, “What’s in it for me, old guy?” They wouldn’t see the need for dying, for sacrifice, even. They would be slowly settling, assimilating. Would the parents on both sides be the ones who resist that change? he wondered. Will it become Resistance Romero and Jihadi Juliet? Who will become the marginalized fanatics—people like Whistler who claimed allegiance to a country long destroyed? Would they be “Christians,” or just “Americans,” (not so far from Armenians, another group and nation that was wiped out by a country with a long Islamic history) fighting a futile battle for something tha
t’s already gone and probably can never be recaptured?

  “Goddamn,” Whistler said aloud. He was feeling morbid this morning. He’d have to do something to snap out of it. Action, he’d found, was a way to put fear at bay. Fear was what you imagined might happen. Taking action gave you a chance to find out what would happen.

  Likely, nobody was in the communications shed. “Comms bag” was probably more accurate, since it would all fit into one old duffel. They just had a military-issue sat phone, a laptop, chargers for both, a web cam, the scrambler token, and an incendiary grenade. The token was the most important. It was mil-spec, with a battery life estimated to be seven years. It was a small, flat disk of plastic, with an LCD that randomly generated a set of thirteen digits every ten seconds. The thirteen digits somehow synced with Valley Forge’s portable server, and allowed them to link up. They could afford to lose anything to the Caliban except the token. The token was strapped to the incendiary grenade and if they were in danger of being captured or overrun, the pin was pulled while the comms kid held the release handle in one sweaty hand. It was a deadman switch, after that. When the kid was dead, the grenade went off, and there went the token.

  Whistler dressed and made his way over to the main ranch building, squinting in the afternoon sun, his boots scuffing in the dust. He’d have to make the rounds of the blinds, after he had a cup of coffee.

  The kitchen was stifling, as usual. It took up almost one fifth of the floor space of the building, with an island in the middle, large sinks and oversized oven and stove. Someone before them had jiggered the gas lines to work on bottled propane. They had hot meals as long as they could liberate propane canisters from the bomb makers, many of them US military veterans with combat IED experience.

  The windows were open and Cookie was sitting beside one, fanning himself with a towel. He might have been a fat man, once, but now he was just medium. Medium in height, weight, and blondness. He wore thick glasses, though, which sometimes fogged up when he was leaning over the stove or the fire in winter. Whistler thought Cookie had been a butcher before. The man’s fingers were cross-hatched with small white scars.

  “Afternoon,” Cookie said. He had a voice like gravel in a garbage disposal. A scar down one side of his throat. Cancer had taken one of his vocal cords, back Before. Still, Cookie loved his cigarettes and smoked whatever he could get. The kids knew that, and if they could snake a pack of smokes on one of the raids, they could trade it for special treats. Cookie was a magician in the kitchen, when he wanted to be.

  “Coffee?” Whistler asked.

  Cookie snapped the towel toward the stove, where a very old kettle sat.

  “Is it the good stuff?” Whistler asked dubiously. They’d liberated a case of vintage Starbucks from an emir’s convoy a few months back, and had been dribbling it out slowly.

  “Just for you, boss,” Cookie said.

  He ignored the “boss” comment. He wasn’t the boss. He was just the oldest and sneakiest, which meant he knew a little more about distributing death and destruction to the ’ban.

  It was too damned hot to drink the coffee in the kitchen, so he took his mug and walked outside. There was a porch around the ranch house, and he sat on the edge of the porch in a shady spot on the east side. He was about halfway through the coffee when Lightning settled down beside him, soundless as a cat.

  “We’ve been here a long time,” she said, taking the cup out of his hand and helping herself. That was Lightning, no hello, just right down to business.

  “Yep,” he agreed. “If the two dimwits felt comfy enough to drive out here yesterday…”

  “Prophet’s Chosen could get here just as easy,” she nodded, taking a swig of coffee.

  “We’re running out of places to hole up,” he replied, taking the mug when she offered it back. “Where should we go?”

  She was quiet for a while. “We have to take Anselmo home tonight. Let’s go see the Chief.”

  The Chief of the White Mountain Apaches. “They don’t want anything to do with us.”

  “Caliban rides them harder than you white boys ever did.”

  Whistler couldn’t argue that. Multiculturalism and diversity were just words in the Apostate’s Dictionary, as far the Imams were concerned, and the Prophet’s Chosen were sent after the renegade Indians regularly. But in some ways, the Big Bang was the best thing that had happened to the Apache in a hundred years. They’d retained some skills from their wilder days, and more than a few of them were damn fine cowboys and woodsmen. When things went to crap, a bunch of them banded together, bolted from the rez and headed for higher ground. They were tough hombres, and they wanted to be left the hell alone.

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “White Mountain ’pache is like the final exam for the PC.”

  She was quiet now. She could get spooky quiet sometimes. Finally she said, “Something to think about.”

  He would. When she said something, only a fool would ignore her. Speaking of fools, there was Gordon, walking toward them. Whistler looked down at his empty mug. “I need a vacation,” he muttered.

  Lightning queried him with a raised eyebrow. He didn’t reply, just watched Gordon stump over to them. Gordon was one of those people whose “graceful” gland had been removed at birth. He approached them the way he walked through the world: legs stabbing down, driving his feet into the ground, upper body stiff, hands held out from his sides like they were alien objects grafted onto his arms. When Whistler imagined the man in his former life, in a coat and tie selling insurance, he saw a deeply lonely and completely clueless man who couldn’t understand why no one liked him. For a moment, he actually felt bad for the silly son of a bitch.

  Gordon took a stance in front of Whistler. “Lopez was trading with La Raza. You know they talk to the ’ban.” In his own way he was abrupt as Lightning, but for some reason it bothered the hell out of Whistler when Gordon did it.

  “That’s what I hear,” Whistler grunted, offering no opinion one way or the other.

  “Folks need to know there’s a line you don’t cross,” Gordon insisted. Oh, Jesus, if this was how he sold insurance, he must’ve starved. It was like he was reading from a card someone else had written out for him.

  Whistler hated confrontations…what a waste of time and energy. He stood up, brushed his hands on his jeans. “There is a line you don’t cross, Gordon,” he said, looking down at the other man. He knew that word of this discussion would get around soon; in a small camp like this you couldn’t help it. People just talked. It lightened the dullness of routine watches and cleaning weapons. Even so, he lowered his voice. He didn’t need to humiliate the man in front of God and everybody. “Gord, let’s just work together to get the job taken care of, okay? You can’t encourage this kind of thing.”

  Lightning hadn’t moved from the porch. Whistler wondered what it must be to be her, always on the alert, treating every situation like a battle about to happen. She stayed where she was so she could watch all the approaches. She had his back, even here. She spoke as quietly as Whistler. “Keep doing it, and pretty soon we’ll all be at each other’s throat. Caliban would love that…just sit back and let us kill each other off.”

  Gordon’s gaze bounced over to her. She had made him lose track of where he was in his mental cue cards. She smiled at him. It was the kind of smile the Yemenis might have seen on her face when she swiveled the 50-cal at them. “Don’t do it again, Gord,” Whistler told him. “That’s an order. Don’t cross me on this.”

  Gordon stood for a confused minute, his fingers moving restlessly, not sure what to do, then stumped away toward the kitchen.

  “Wanna check the blinds?” Lightning asked, watching Gordon.

  “Yeah.”

  After dark, they loaded Anselmo’s body into the back of an old VW bug and drove to town. The old VWs were used by people everywhere. Easy to work on, simple condenser and points ignition, they hadn’t been fried by EMP in the first days of the war. The roads and streets were littered wit
h the expensive and useless hulks of SUVs and Minivans, all of them inert as boulders. Converting their electronics was a long, arduous process that more often than not produced a lumbering behemoth of a vehicle that shuddered and convulsed its way down the road, with a tendency to backfire flaming flatulence. You never passed an old Bug or any car from earlier than about 1972 sitting unattended on the side of the road. They were in use, and used hard.

  This VW was off-center; one of the tires was larger than the others. It made you feel like you were moving sideways, and you had to constantly correct your course to compensate for the wheel. There was no driving along with one hand on the wheel and a beer in the other.

  Anselmo’s store was on the far side of town. It was a good forty-five-mile drive to town, and then maybe another twenty to the store. The roads were breaking up, unmaintained these last three years, and with no working streetlights, it would take at least two hours to get there.

  “You should wait here, watch the kids,” Whistler said after they draped a blanket over the body bag. Lightning nodded. She had mastered the art of making a nod look like Hell, no! “All right,” he assented. “No telling what stupidity Gordon is going to get up to while we’re gone.”

  “We’ll check on Gordon when we get back.” She shrugged, and then loaded her weapons into the car. Shotgun, pistols, and Baldwin shoved under the body bag. Anybody who tried to jack this Bug would find it had a most unpleasant bite.

  “After we talk to Anne,” he replied, climbing into the old Beetle. He’d sent her a quick message early this afternoon via Valley Forge. She’d been in the county, and would meet them not far from Anselmo’s store. Her cover was that of a traveling curandera. The ignorant called that being a witch, but it was just a folk-healer, herbs and such, and she wasn’t half bad at it.

  Weapons in easy reach, Lightning settled into her seat next to him. “Ready, Miss Daisy?” he asked. She looked at him blankly. Ah, yeah, she was too young to get it. He turned the key, patted the accelerator. The engine coughed and caught. He listened for a minute. It sounded strained to him. “Gotta check the still,” he said. The eth mix was off, and it would make the engine run hot. Fortunately, it was evening, the air was cooler, and they weren’t going far. But if they were running for their lives, bad eth could overheat an engine, seize it right up and deliver you into the hands of your oppressors. Lightning didn’t reply and he didn’t repeat himself. She’d remember. That woman never forgot a thing.