Cold Silence

by James Abel

  “Thanks so much, Mrs. Haverhill. Take your paperwork down the hall to the nurses’ station. The helpful folks there will set up a bed.”

  Yeah, except every bed is filled and we’ve got people coming in faster than we can handle them.

  He took a break, which meant that he turned his attention from the endless patients to Joe. He had a cell phone connected into the encrypted emergency med network, and security network. He tried Burke’s office and got the overworked fourth-tier assistant again, who’d been clearly ordered to keep Joe’s and Eddie’s calls away. He tried the Junior Senator from Alaska—a woman he and Joe knew from work there—but the office was shut and the Senator underground. He reached FBI Special Agent Ray Havlicek and got a noncommittal “We’re aware of Colonel Rush’s theory.” He called a D.C. police commander and former Marine, who told him, after checking records as a personal favor, that “Rush is on a special list. We’re to hand him over to the FBI if we get him. And he’s wanted for murder, by us, Eddie.”

  The commander added, somewhat harder, “He shot at cops, Eddie. The way things are out there, things getting worse, no one sleeping, tempers rising, I can’t guarantee that if we find him, he’ll be brought in alive.”

  —

  “Do you think I enjoy seeing so many people suffer?” said the warm, calm tones of Harlan Maas.

  Connecticut Avenue was in slightly better shape than Wisconsin had been. There were two cleared lanes on each side, but traffic remained sparse. I passed locked-up strip malls and apartment buildings with private guards outside, or perhaps they were vigilantes. Traffic lights still worked, sending directions into an anarchistic void. The voice on the tape was soothing, therefore more terrifying. I thought I heard the voice catch, as if the man battled away tears.

  “Do you think I enjoy knowing that we will have a role in children losing parents? Men and women with faces eaten away? Neighbors fighting people who they once considered their best friends?”

  The road—if open—would take me into Maryland at Chevy Chase Circle, a few miles ahead. It would continue through residential suburbs until reaching the ramp to the Beltway, and I-95 North. I passed an apartment building where Army Rangers in biogear were arresting people; herding at least two dozen handcuffed men into a canvas-topped truck. Police and soldiers had opened mass detention centers, Admiral Galli’s TV had informed me. Those arrested would be confined there, possibly for weeks, before they could get a lawyer. And that was if, the announcer said, courts reopened at all.

  “Hopefully within a month, there will be a way to process these people. We can only wait and do our best,” the mayor had said.

  When the Humvee swung in behind me, I was planning the trip: I-95 to Baltimore, then past Wilmington, Delaware. I’d exit on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, avoiding New York City. I’d hopefully figure out how to get gas. If not, I’d come up with another way to move. I’d stay on the west side of the Hudson River at first and make my way to Columbia County, and New Lebanon, New York.

  As for the cult and compound, I’ll wait to see the place first, then decide what to do.

  In the little rectangle of rearview mirror, I saw the boxy Humvee swing onto the road, stay back, and follow.

  Harlan Maas said, “I can’t stop thinking about those poor sufferers; yet we must ask, why were these people chosen? The scientists in Somalia were out to disprove creation. Imagine! Making lies up about rocks and sediments to argue that human beings are descended from apes!”

  What?

  “The actors and directors making that film at Paramount would have mocked my father’s work, if not stopped.”

  It can’t be this, I thought. Who is his father?

  “The air base, where prayers were banned! The sports stadiums! Where thousands ignored Holy Sundays! My friends! The last time I came to Earth, I told my followers . . . Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Don’t you think I know that we have done that? But there was no other way.”

  He thinks he’s Jesus Christ!

  “When I see a little child, a six-year-old boy or girl, sick, I admit it, I ask myself, maybe we should stop,” said Harlan Maas.

  I’ve got to get this tape to the right people!

  The voice began weeping. I heard great intakes of air. The voice composed itself enough to begin speaking again.

  “But this suffering will end all suffering for all of humanity. When the transformation is complete, those hurt will be whole. War and hunger will be memory. As we begin the last phase, I thank you for your faith and love. You are the special ones. You will lead the world into a new age of peace, love, and understanding.”

  What does he mean, “the last phase”?

  Something went wrong with the tape. It snagged and tore. The Humvee in the mirror closed the gap between us, but I did not speed up, despite the urge. My armpits were soaked. I stopped at a light and the sand-colored vehicle pulled up beside me. The soldier in the passenger seat wore sunglasses, and his face—with the helmet on and surgical mask—turned in my direction.

  I reached and tried to remove the cassette from the player. A long, thin trail of snagged plastic film caught in the slot. When the Humvee’s horn boomed beside me, I realized the light had turned green. But the tape was still snagged; the cassette dropped toward the wet carpet as I pressed down on the accelerator. The Humvee fell in behind me again. I saw the front rider on a phone, gesturing toward me, checking on my license plate, I guessed.

  Harlan Maas, whoever he was, hung upside down in plastic, swinging back and forth and knocking gently against my right knee each time I hit a bump.

  Ahead, some kind of portable traffic alert sign was coming up on the side of the road. The Humvee closed the gap again as I approached Chevy Chase Circle, the border with Maryland. Funny thing about those traffic circles. They were designed by Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant, George Washington’s city planner. L’Enfant created traffic circles so that troops could gather there, to repel invaders or deal with rebellious citizens. And now a rebellious citizen, me, approached a traffic circle. The headlights on the Humvee flashed on and off. There was a loud-hailer on top but the soldiers did not use it. There was no way I could outrun a Humvee. I thought they wanted me to pull over. I was preparing to do that, trying to think of a lie to tell them, when I read the words on the electric flashing sign.

  MARYLAND CLOSED TO VEHICULAR TRAFFIC BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNOR. DO NOT PROCEED PAST CHEVY CHASE CIRCLE. VIRGINIA ALSO CLOSED. D.C. RESIDENTS, GO HOME! STAY SAFE!

  To turn back, you needed to go around the traffic circle. I saw a couple of cars—their drivers must have also been trying to flee the city—going all the way around and coming back toward me now. The faces inside these cars were furious or frightened; crying children in one car, a couple arguing in another. On the far side of the circle sat a line of idling Maryland National Guard vehicles, and troops ready to stop anyone attempting to enter the state.

  I took a chance that the soldiers in the Humvee had not been trying to stop me, but to warn me. Nauseous with tension, I took a right turn into the circle. When it was clear that I was going back into the city, the Humvee peeled away and stopped on the far side of the circle, by the National Guard line.

  Little soldier-to-soldier social call, now that duty was done.

  I’d sweated through my shirt.

  Safe, for the moment. But trapped in D.C.

  As I headed back into the city, I had no goal except to get distance from the soldiers. I didn’t touch the dangling cassette until I was a mile away. Then I pulled off Connecticut and onto a suburban-type side street. I was breathing hard, as if I’d just sprinted a mile. I hit the windshield wiper knob by accident, and the wipers slashed back and forth before I stopped them. When I tried to ease the tape from the slot, it ripped again. Three feet of tape dangled on one side, a foot long strip from the other.

  Tape
lay spooled in a mass on the wet carpet.

  What do I do? I can’t go back to the house. I can’t turn myself in or I’ll end up in one of those detention centers, or in a military prison. I don’t even know if the tape is audible anymore.

  High above, I saw a lone jet leave a fading contrail as it angled into the blue, looking more like a vestige from history than a common sight. Looking as far away as Venus. The airport—any place with police and soldiers—would be out of the question. To board a plane, I’d need ID and a ticket that cost ten times the usual price, and even then, I’d need a medical check. Roads would be blocked. Military flight? Private airfield? I sat there thinking, with a pile of prepaid phones on the backseat, and my fuel supply draining away while I didn’t move. I could not fly planes. At a private field I’d need a plane and a pilot. Did I know a pilot? I knew one in Alaska, and a few in Kenya. I had an old Parris Island buddy who’d retired as a major and now owned a small Cessna in Provo, Utah. They were all thousands of miles away.

  I thought harder, spooling some twisted tape back into the cassette. Try to lie my way onto a private air base, if it wasn’t guarded? Hope I find a pilot hanging around? Try to hijack a plane? Was I that desperate?

  It was over.

  Turn yourself in. Throw yourself on their mercy. Give them the ripped-up tape and hope they can fix it, and that they bother to listen to it. There is no other way.

  Doggedly, I told myself there would be no harm in trying to find a private airfield. Maybe a bolt of luck would strike. Then I had a better idea. Not exactly a good one. Just better than anything else I’d considered so far.

  —

  As the Prius reached Anacostia, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who had this idea. The onetime home for the Nacotchtank Indians, on the banks of the Anacostia River, was named for that long-slaughtered tribe. They’d hunted black bear and deer in the woods that once stood here. I drove through an impoverished, ratty wasteland neighborhood famed for its street gangs and high crime.

  Freight trains are still running, the newscaster on WUSA9 had said. I hoped that she was still right.

  Back during the Great Depression, tens of thousands of Americans had hopped freight trains to move around the country. Now as I cruised Anacostia’s commercial strip, I saw more moving cars than elsewhere, and from the packed belongings inside, and nervous faces, I realized that these refugees sought the rail yard, too.

  My GPS flickered on and off. Soldiers blocked some streets. Where to go? I saw several high-end cars circling around blocks, nosing around, backing from one street, gliding across a supermarket parking lot and into an alley. It was as if the cars were animals looking for a water hole, as if the vehicles themselves had a lumbering intelligence. They sought exit from the city in which they’d been trapped.

  I think all us drivers were aware of each other, aware of a competition, but we also watched to see if someone else knew a secret route to Benning Yard. I made eye contact with a male driver I’d passed three times in the last five minutes. I saw a Mercedes packed with young people, displaying American University stickers on the back window. I saw a low-slung white Cadillac Escalade—windows down—filled with tough-looking young men—locals, I think—who eyed the circling cars as if we were a herd of antelopes and they were cougars. I spotted high wires and cranes over a low rooftop. These would mark a rail yard. I turned down a side street in that direction. The street turned out to be a dead end. I turned around.

  For the next frustrating twenty minutes I tried different streets, guided by the smell of boardwalk—rail ties—and by the high, crisscrossing mass of guide wires and loading towers jutting above the lower rooftops. I was tantalizingly close to the rail yard, but every time I tried a route, it was wrong, or blocked.

  I tried one street heading in that direction, and rolled past row houses. At the end, a six-foot barrier of plowed snow blocked the way, forming a cul-de-sac. No way through. The oily Anacostia River flowed by.

  Another street looped into a turn, which took me back the frustrating way in which I had come.

  A third street was occupied by troops ahead, warming themselves around a trash can fire. I turned away.

  I changed tactics. I pulled over on a commercial strip, Eisenhower Place, and watched other cars. Maybe I would learn something from circling traffic. The block featured a rib joint and a seafood store and a 7-Eleven and a funeral parlor. The commercial stores were untouched by looters. The steel grille of the funeral home had been smashed in.

  Go figure. Why loot that?

  The white Escalade came around the corner, passed me, and a block later, made a U-turn and stopped. It idled there, tinted windshield like enormous square sunglasses, side windows up now. Previously, they had been down. I felt eyes on me, who the hell is there? I saw faces looking out from the upper-floor windows of an old brick apartment building. I felt watched by riders and drivers of other cars, as they realized that one of their number had changed behavior.

  The Escalade made a quick left and left the block, spraying snow.

  The admiral’s Glock lay on the seat beside me. I pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and chewed while my eyes went from the view in front to back. I told myself that it had been stupid to put coffee in the thermos. Water would have been smarter. I drank the coffee anyway. I felt a tug at my bladder. Great. The power of suggestion, I thought. Not now.

  The Escalade pulled up beside me, so close that it blocked my door. The front window remained up, smoky and inscrutable, but the rear window rolled down, and sound emerged. It was Pachelbel’s Canon. Strings, not drums, baroque, not rap. I looked into the face of a twenty-something man below a broad-brimmed Nats Cap, with a heavy faux gold chain around his neck, and an M9 Beretta pistol in his hand. The man beside him held an M4. How did they get military weapons? I thought.

  “How much mileage that little car get?” he asked.

  “Fifty. Sixty.”

  “My cousin had one of those. He got hit by a semi in Tampa. Ain’t no use saving miles if you end up a pancake.”

  I had to look up to see them. He could see down into my car, at my lap.

  “What you need all those cell phones for?”

  “Talking.”

  “Hey, you know Captain Grady? Jim Grady? In Metro?”

  “No.”

  I had a feeling it had been a trick question. He turned away and talked in low tones to the man beside him. He turned back, with the same unreadable eyes.

  “How about Lieutenant Trethewey? You know her?”

  “Nope.”

  “You some big talker.”

  I shrugged and said nothing. It was his play.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, not a demand, more curiosity, the music swelling and ebbing, and over the sound of those strings came the high-pitched whistle of a freight locomotive entering or leaving the yard. Opportunity approaching or ending. I did not think I moved my eyes, even changed my attitude. But something must have changed in me enough for the man a few feet away to smile, showing perfect polished teeth. Somehow I’d answered him.

  “Oh, you one of them.”

  I knew what he meant.

  “You want to leave! What you got to trade?” he said.

  “I didn’t say I was leaving.”

  He snorted. “There’s only a few trains going out every day. They unload and there’s empty cars, see? But you can’t get a ride unless you know how. This our neighborhood. We know how. You want to look at the sky, sit, think, cogitate, masturbate? Or you want out?”

  He sat back. He looked like a gang kid, but half the time, he talked like something else. Another car pulled to the curb, across the street. I saw a man and his wife and a couple of kids inside. Somehow that driver had heard that if he wanted to try to leave D.C. on a freight train, he must come here. The man got out of the car, and started walking toward us, changed his mind,
and turned around. He looked pale and uncertain, middle aged and out of place, and the faces behind him were pressed to windows. There were suitcases tied to his roof. The family reeked of desperation. Was the man actually stupid enough to think he could carry so many possessions away?

  I said, “How do I know you’d really get me out?”

  The kid in the car nodded, appreciating the question. “See all these people driving around? They here ’cause someone they know got out already, and told them this is the place. You people our advertising! You and me conversate, and then make a deal and later you tell your friends it worked!”

  “You’re not scared of getting sick?”

  A shrug. “Chances the same if I stay away or come. What’s the difference, Sam?”

  “Why me?”

  “My cousin’s car was the same as yours.”

  “Uh-huh. What if I want to get to a certain place, not just out of D.C.? What if I have a specific destination?”

  “Tell the guys in the yard, and they put the right people in the right cars. Those trains hit Baltimore; cars get divided up, some go to Chicago, some go north, see?”

  I considered. His answers came smooth and fast. Too fast? “You set this system up pretty quick,” I said.

  “Who says we just set it up? This was all in place, Sam. It’s a highway. Now we use the highway for something new.”

  “Why are you calling me Sam?”

  “You Uncle Sam, aren’t you? You one of these government chicken shits on the run. Got left behind when the big boys left. Leave your family? What can you pay?”

  He’s saying that for a long time they’ve been moving drugs or guns or illegals on these trains. He’s saying they . . . whoever they are . . . adapted an existing system to new cargo, if he’s telling the truth.