The Big Bang

by Roy M Griffis

  Whistler reached into the body bag. All of Lightning’s hard work to get his hands clean this morning was going to waste. He lifted the pitiful remains and said, “Move the bag, put it at the foot of the table. You’re gonna need to burn that bag when we’re done…the Chosen will torch this house just for you having it, you hear?” Bennie nodded, and slipped the bag from beneath his uncle’s body.

  He laid the body back on the table. “Bucket. Water. A blanket.” The nephew turned, barked some orders over his shoulder. Whistler had prepared a few bodies for burial in his time. There wasn’t a lot he could do for most of Anselmo, but he could wash off the blood and dirt, maybe stitch some of the skin back on his face.

  When he was finished about an hour later, Anselmo looked like a cross between a mummy and rag doll. His body was tucked up neatly in a blanket that tended to disguise his missing limbs, and there were thick blue stitches across his face, holding it together. It didn’t look much like the cheerful man had in life, but he didn’t look like a hundred and fifty pounds of raw meat anymore.

  Bennie had puked once quietly in the corner, and now he was swabbing that up. Whistler did a last wipe-down of the table with some water, bundled all of the rags into the body bag, and carried it over to Bennie. He took the bottle of tequila, poured it over their hands, tossed those rags in the bag. “Remember, you have to burn this,” he said, handing it to the nephew.

  “’Kay,” Bennie said numbly. He opened a back door, set the bag outside. “I have to get Tia Victoria.”

  Whistler nodded. “I can come back, you want some private time.”

  Some of the old tough was reasserting itself. “No. You wait. We’ll talk soon.”

  A shadow went by the window at Bennie’s back. Lightning. She’d been out there for a while. He didn’t like that. She was tough, but she wasn’t invulnerable. The desert could get damned cold at night. Besides, he didn’t like being ordered around by this hood. “I’ll wait another thirty minutes, then I’m gone.”

  Bennie didn’t reply, just walked back into the front room. Whistler composed his face, and followed him solemnly.

  The crowd of relatives was larger; there was barely space to walk. Small children, faces solemn and eyes sunken from malnutrition, lanky teen-aged boys, coltish, graceful teen-aged girls, more hard guys in their twenties and thirties, and the older men and women, prematurely aged by years of hard work Before, and further burdened by the even harder years afterwards.

  Anne was there, too, a short woman with black hair and pale skin, dressed for travel in hiking boots and flannel shirt, a large backpack at her feet. She sat beside Victoria, the widow, empathy radiating from her dark eyes. She spared one glance for Whistler, and then refocused her attention on the bereaved woman.

  He found an empty space along one wall and hunkered down there like the older guys, the farm workers. The men nodded at Whistler. He nodded back. The hard guys slouched and posed, more interested in looking tough and cool. That was okay. You reach a certain age, or a certain attitude, you see the wisdom in resting when you can, so you have the strength and energy when you need it. Whistler had a feeling he was going to need both before the night was over.

  Bennie took his aunt’s arm, helped her to her feet. Anne was on her other side, and together the two of them walked with her. Out of respect, Whistler stood up when she passed. The low chatter in the front room fell away. For a long moment, expectant silence rippled across the room. Then there was a wail from the back.

  He hated that. The sounds the survivors made were usually worse than those made by the dying and wounded.

  A nearly bald man to his right spoke up. “Her kids were in L.A. when we got hit. He was the only thing she had left.”

  There was nothing to say to that, so he nodded. Everybody had lost something or someone in the Big Bang. Then Bennie was standing in front of him, face dark with rage. “Let’s go outside and talk.”

  Going outside made sense, Whistler knew. If he was going to be shot, the cleanup would be easier, and Bennie and his boys wouldn’t have to further upset their Aunt Victoria.

  He kept his hands loose at his sides as he walked out to stand on the front walk. The Volkswagen was to his right, and the house was to his back. At least he’d be able to keep everyone in front of him.

  Bennie got right up in his face. There were maybe five or six of the hard guys out there with him, but it was hard to tell since Bennie took up so much real estate in Whistler’s immediate line of sight. “Tell me who did this,” he said, quivering with anger. The muscles in his shaven head bunched.

  “Got to ask you a few questions, first,” Whistler said evenly.

  He never even saw the hand coming that grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall. A knife appeared in Bennie’s other hand, close enough to shave Whistler. “I want names,” Bennie snarled.

  “Uh-uh,” said a voice from the night, and that was followed by the unmistakable sound of a shell being racked into a chamber. Shotgun. Thanks to the movies, it was the universal call sign for “Think real hard about your next move.”

  Bennie froze, breathing hard. The tough guys turned. Just over the big man’s shoulder, Whistler could see Lightning behind the bug, the barrel of the Baldwin across the roof pointing at Bennie and the shotgun pointed at the hard guys. “Your uncle just died,” Lightning said reasonably. “You want to make your aunt cry some more?”

  The knife stayed where it was. “Whaddya wanna know?” Bennie spat.

  Whistler lifted a slow hand, loosened the grip on his throat. “Somebody said your uncle was trading with the ’ban.”

  The knife was lowered grudgingly. “Auntie Vic would have cut the nuts off anybody who traded with those cabrones. They killed her kids. She hates the ’ban.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Whistler said. He couldn’t see the knife now, and he wanted to be sure he knew where it was. Lightning could take care of the hard guys, but if Bennie got belligerent, he was Whistler’s problem.

  “This looks cozy,” an even voice said, off to his right. Anne had joined them in the front of the house. She was a short woman, but she stood with authority. “Can you put away your knife, Bennie? We all came here as friends.”

  Bennie didn’t move, trying to do the emotional calculus. Impulse control and math, both of which he’d been terrible at all his life. He wanted somebody dead, but that black bitch had the drop on him and his posse.

  Anne’s voice took on a harder edge. “Whistler didn’t have to bring your uncle back. He had to get past the Prophet’s Chosen to get here. Now put the knife away, kid.” Whistler noted she was well clear of Lightning’s line of fire. Anne might not want bloodshed, but she was realist enough to be ready to drop them where they stood. Unlike Bennie, her emotional math was clear and simple: anyone who was not against the Caliban was as good as working for them.

  Bennie’s hidden hand moved, and then he stepped back from Whistler slowly. Lightning might kill him, but Anne…she might not cure them anymore.

  Whistler kept himself from rubbing his neck. He coughed, then turned his head and spit. “Why would somebody do this to your uncle, Bennie, if he wasn’t trading with the ’ban?”

  “It was money,” a new voice said. Auntie Victoria was standing beside Anne. Hellfire, might as well get the rest of the family out here and it would turn into the OK Corral. “Those two, they wanted to close down our store. Selmo wouldn’t do it.”

  Hellfire, Whistler thought again. Just a strong-arm job. Red and Gunny, stupid bastards, pulling them away from the real fight for this petty nonsense.

  Bennie looked at his aunt. “You knew who did this?”

  “I don’t want you doin’ bad things no more, Bennie. You’re like my son, now. I don’t want to see my son go to hell for being a bad man.”

  Anne said calmly, “We’ll take care of it, Bennie. Prometo.”

  The nephew wasn’t ready to let go of it, yet. “La Raza will take care of it.”

  One of the ha
rd guys added, “Yeah, we get rid of them, then we get rid of the rest of you white pigs.”

  Anne shook her head. “Who are you going to kick out first? The Castilians, the ones who came from Spain and invaded Mexico five hundred years ago? Then you get started on the Aztecs? Because you know what they did to the local people, the remains of the Mayans? So you, and whoever is left settles down out here in the middle of nowhere, and you can wait for the Apaches to come. Because they were here ten thousand years ago. If anybody owns this land, it’s them.”

  Bennie and the tough guys weren’t even trying to keep up with her history lesson. They’d made up their minds, such as they were. “At some point,” Anne went on, “we have to stop blaming about the past, and deal with what’s happening now. Deal with the invaders who are killing our friends and neighbors.”

  “Like the putas who killed Uncle Selmo,” Bennie said sullenly.

  Maybe Tia Victoria had a little bruja in her, because she was standing beside Bennie before he or Whistler even saw her. She looked up at her nephew, her face blazing with fury. Then she slapped him. “What about the people you hurt, the people you killed? You, and them,” she gestured at the tough guys, “they turned our barrio into a toilet. You saw people pissing all over everything, so you just joined them. Selmo, he was more of a man than you. He didn’t make the world a worse place, he tried to build something, he helped people. You want to honor your uncle, you be like him.”

  Bennie held his hand to his face where she’d slapped him, shock on his face. Victoria reached out and took Whistler’s hand. “For bringing my husband home, I thank you. Gracias, Señor Whistler.” Then she turned and walked back into the house.

  In a level voice, Anne said, “I think we’re done here.”

  Bennie nodded. He gestured, and the tough guys headed into the house, still looking darkly at Lightning. Her face never changed as she moved her weapons to follow them. Whistler put his hand on Bennie’s arm. “I will take care of this, Bennie. I have to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your aunt needs you now, son,” Whistler added.

  Anne looked up at the kid with compassion. “And we’re going to need you soon. We’ll need your leadership and your courage.”

  Bennie just nodded again and Anne let it go. He stopped at the front door. “Thanks,” he said, not really looking at anyone. “For my uncle.” He closed the door quietly behind him.

  Lightning kept the weapons ready. “Time for us to get on home,” Anne said. Her backpack was in the dirt by the Bug. She climbed into the backseat with her gear, and Whistler got behind the wheel. Lightning waited until the engine was running and Whistler had unrolled her window and opened the passenger door before she slipped inside, with the barrel of the Baldwin out the window. “That mouthy one might be stupid enough to come after us,” she said. No one in the car questioned her judgment.

  Whistler backed away from the house for nearly a hundred yards, spun the wheel, and they bounced off into the night.

  Anne talked as he drove. It was dangerous for all of them to be together for very long. The pain merchants mustered by the Prophet’s Chosen could get a stone to speak, whether the stone knew anything or not.

  “We’ve got a big push coming soon,” she told them. “Valley Forge has identified five main centers of control.”

  “All in big cities,” Lightning observed dryly.

  “Or close to them,” Anne agreed. “The point is, outside of those cities, they have garrisons and patrols, but they don’t really have the citizens under control. Yet. They’ve just been exploiting the chaos and civil breakdown since the Big Bang.”

  As she spoke, Whistler found himself marveling a little at her. She’d been this frou-frou lady, dressed in suits and getting fifty-dollar manicures Before. All of that went away when the Chosen had torched that school. Her two daughters had been inside, died in one of the horrible nine million ways. Now here was Anne, risking death every day, dedicated to driving the Caliban into the sea. You can never tell about people. Hell, look at that actor, Baldwin, and what happened to him.

  “How are we going to do it?” he asked.

  Anne paused before answering. He knew she was calculating how much she could tell him. Couldn’t be too much, otherwise if the Chosen caught him and began to peel him like an onion, no telling what he’d spill. “We’ve got a line on their weakness,” she said carefully. “What you two need to know is we’re hurling everybody at them this time.”

  “Bennie, too?” Lightning asked, her eyes scanning the road ahead.

  “Lots of Bennies. And the Apache are throwing in with us.” That was news.

  “When?”

  “Soon. Valley Forge will let you know.”

  Good. He’d still have time to deal with those two skid marks, Red and Gunny. He would have to. You don’t give your word to a man like Bennie lightly.

  Lightning turned in her seat, spoke suddenly. “Have you seen Lonesome George?”

  In the rearview mirror, Whistler could see Anne nod.

  “How’d he look?”

  How could he look? Whistler wondered. His wife a prisoner, his daughters lost and probably dead, his country under the boot of invaders who considered the citizens already damned and in Hell and therefore worth less than a good stock animal. “He looked tired. But he was proud. Proud of you all.”

  “I want to see him, just once before I die,” Lightning said.

  “You’ll see him soon on Valley Forge. He’s going to give the order to attack.”

  Whistler thought it was time to start making arrangements for the boys who would be left behind. It wouldn’t be a will, exactly, more like a bunch of suggestions. This wasn’t going to be a skirmish, a hit and run. They were going to go up against the enemy in their strongholds. The odds of coming home were against him, and he’d never been a lucky gambler.

  “I should get out here,” Anne said.

  They were on a deeply lonely stretch of the interstate, so dark even the stars seemed dim. Whistler eased the Bug onto the shoulder, left the engine running. Before Anne climbed out, she thumped him on the back of the head. “You watch your ass,” she told him. Lightning stood by the open passenger door. “And you take those herbs,” Anne told her, and hugged her.

  Lightning got back inside the car, and Whistler dropped into gear and pulled away, leaving their leader standing by the side of the road, briefly bathed in a red glow from his taillights. In the rearview mirror, she looked almost demonic.

  “How’s she do that?” Lightning wondered, not really looking for an answer. She was talking about the way Anne got around the country, contacting each cell, giving them orders and information, without really having a car or way to get there.

  “Maybe she really is a witch,” he suggested.

  “No more than I am.”

  They drove in silence for a while, each with their own thoughts. Finally, Lightning spoke. “Too late to go see the Chief.”

  He’d been thinking the same thing. A wise man didn’t stop by the Apache stronghold at night without plenty of warning and with good cause. There was something else, though. “Red and Gunny.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Rather do it at night.” The less people knew who the militia was, the better their chance of staying alive and keeping word from reaching the ears of collaborators.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tonight?”

  She nodded. No more words were necessary.

  The next morning, the townspeople found Gunny and Red hanging from the lamppost in front of the old post office. Both men’s hands were bound behind them and they were blindfolded. A red “C” had been painted on each man’s shirt, and a printed warrant of execution for actions supporting the efforts of the Caliban was pinned to their legs.

  None of the citizens moved to cut them down. As a public service, they’d be left to hang for at least a day before being taken away and burned.

  No one mourned their passing.

  After taki
ng a cold bath and scrubbing themselves roughly, Whistler and Lightning fell into his bed without a word an hour or two before dawn. His bed was small, but they curved themselves against one another and made it work. He’d covered the windows before they’d gotten into bed, and he hoped they’d sleep a long time.

  He felt her shivering, and put an arm around her. She clutched it tightly, and slowly drifted off to sleep. He was glad she wasn’t one of those people who covered their fear with stupid wisecracks. He was sure she never felt fear going into battle. He did, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. It was a hell of a life, but at least he wasn’t one of the walking dead, stumbling through their days without hope or action. He wanted to make sure he lived before he died. And if he died fighting the ’ban, at least he was doing something.

  Molly (2)

  She went a little crazy. Okay, she went a lot crazy. When she looked back on it, she wondered if it was because she was hiding out in the dreadlocked woman’s house, sleeping in her bed, for pity’s sake.

  Jake and Hank wouldn’t let her go out. They had the quaint notion that the Prophet’s Chosen would be looking for her after the near-riot she had caused. Hank, a man with no apparent acquaintance with tact, added, “Hell, if it ain’t the Chosen, then it’ll be those old biddies in the black coveralls who want your hide. They only get one chance to party a year, and you done up and ruined it for them, girl.”

  Since she had plans of her own, Molly was willing to heed their suggestion at first. But the enforced idleness ground at her. Jake and Hank both had jobs: Jake worked as a garbage man while Hank did something in maintenance. They brought her food, found some clothes for her, but when they were gone she didn’t even have a cat to talk to. Anything edible had been hunted down the first winter after the Bang, when the bridges were blown and the plagues had marched through the City by the Bay like a viral Sherman on its way to the sea. Molly’d eaten cat, dog, probably even parrot. There came a point in hunger when you didn’t ask anymore, you just asked, “Any more?”