The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Ye-es,” Mrs. Ashenden said, a little vaguely, as if she were picturing to herself a horde of people swarming into her house to look after their relations.

  “Besides the injured,” Omar continued, “the parish seems to have acquired a lot of, ah, misplaced people. Evacuees who were on the road last night when the quake hit. I don’t know how many, but there are hundreds. The Bayou Bridge is down, and the Parish Floodway’s broken, so right now there’s no way in or out.”

  “Mercy.”

  “We’ve got to put these people somewhere until we can get them shipped out, or until we can get the bridges rebuilt. Last time we used churches and the schools, but none of those buildings are safe anymore.”

  “Yes?” There was calculation behind those ice-blue eyes.

  “I thought your lawns and gardens,” Omar said, then added quickly. “You’ve got what—six-eight acres?

  Nice, flat, with grass. We can put people under tents or some other kind of shelter, and we can use your house as an infirmary and your kitchens as a cookhouse.”

  “Gracious.” Mrs. Ashenden seemed surprised. “Don’t you have anyplace else?”

  “I’ve got Dr. Morris to open up the A.M.E. campground, but that’s going to fill up pretty quick. And everyplace else in the parish is either wilderness, under water, or planted in cotton. You know what it’s like around here. I can’t put people in a cotton field, and I can’t scatter them around, because I need to bring food and other supplies to a central point.”

  Mrs. Ashenden absorbed this. “But I don’t have the staff. Not any longer. I don’t have the means to take care of all these people.”

  “Well, Miz LaGrande,” Omar said, “I suppose they didn’t have the staff in the War Between the States, either, but they managed somehow.”

  He saw the glint of duty in her eyes, and knew he’d won. There was nothing more sacred to a Shelburne than the traditions of Southern Womanhood. In times of crisis, the lady of the manor opened her home to those in need, and that was that.

  Omar helped himself to one of Mrs. Ashenden’s macaroons on the way out. When he got into his cruiser, he turned to look at the massive front portico, the four giant pillars—distyle-in-antis—and he thought of Clarendon surrounded by a shantytown, refugees living under tents or blankets, screaming children breaking down the neat hedges and rolling in the flowerbeds, the boiling laundry and slit-trench latrines contributing their odor to the flower-scented Clarendon air… wonderful, he thought. Just like the War Between the States.

  When Omar got back to his office, he dispatched two officers to Miz LaGrande’s to direct traffic, and another two to the A.M.E. campground. Then he got on the radio and told his officers to start moving the refugees to the camps.

  “Sheriff?” came a reply, “how do we know which camp to send folks to?” Omar recognized Merle’s voice.

  “Well,” Omar said, “if they look like an African Methodist Episcopal to you, send them there. And if they don’t, send them to Clarendon.”

  There was a pause. “Ten-four, chief,” came the answer. Omar could just picture Merle’s grin. Omar had actually considered sending all the blacks to Clarendon, just burying Mrs. Ashenden in niggers. But Clarendon was only half a mile from Shelburne City’s town square, and he knew the merchants and landowners would complain if he packed the town with refugee blacks from the inner city. Best to keep them well out of town, in their own place.

  Wilona put her head into the office. She looked exhausted, deep circles under her eyes, lines of worry at the corners of her mouth. Omar signed off the radio, then went to Wilona and put his arms around her.

  “You okay?”

  “Just tired. I’m worried about our house, with all these strangers around.”

  “The neighbors will keep a lookout.” He kissed her. “I’ve been to Miz LaGrande’s.” She brightened immediately. “Yes?” she said. “Did you talk with her?”

  “I had tea,” he said, “off the second-best china.”

  “Well,” Wilona frowned, “the Wedgwood was probably in storage, to keep it safe.” Omar grinned. “That’s what Miz LaGrande said.”

  She brightened again. “So what did you talk about?”

  “We’re going to set up a hospital at Clarendon, and put a refugee camp on the grounds.” Wilona’s eyes widened. “It’ll be just like the War!” she said.

  “I think the crisis has passed,” Omar said. “Why don’t you go down to the squad room, lie down, and get some rest?”

  “I should go to Clarendon,” Wilona said. “I should offer to help Miz LaGrande with her work.” Omar looked at her sourly. It was as if Wilona was planning on nursing the wounded of the Confederacy.

  “You’ve got plenty enough to do.” he said. “We’ve got a busted house, and if that isn’t enough there’s plenty to do here.”

  “But I could help at Clarendon!” Wilona said.

  “It’s not going to be a tea party,” Omar said. “It’s going to be a refugee camp with screaming babies and sick people and bugs. Probably there will be a fair number of criminals, too. No place for white gloves and pearls.”

  Wilona seemed unconvinced. “I think it could be lovely.”

  “Wilona,” Omar said. “What is it you came in here to tell me?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Tree Simpson needs you in the council chamber.”

  The room where the parish council met was a court room when the council wasn’t meeting there. Tree—short for Trelawny—Simpson sat on the council. He ran one of the parish’s two pharmacies, was a middle-sized man with a little grizzled mustache, and looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “We’re not getting the Bayou Bridge replaced anytime soon,” he said. “Every portable or collapsible bridge in the U.S. of A. has already been deployed into the disaster area.”

  “How about an evacuation?” Omar said.

  Tree only shrugged. “I couldn’t get ahold of anybody who had the authority to do a thing. I got someone who said he’d put me on a list for someone in logistics, so that at least we could get sent some food.”

  “Joy in the mornin’,” said Omar.

  “The rest of the council are getting food supplies together. Paying with personal checks. At least we’ll be able to feed our guests later today. Oh.” He looked up as he remembered something. “The governor’s declared martial law in several parishes, including ours. If that makes your job any easier.”

  “Could be,” Omar said.

  There was a tap on the door, and one of Omar’s special deputies stuck his head in the door. “Sorry, Sheriff,” he said. “But I thought I’d better tell you there’s been a shooting.” It was clear enough what happened. The drifter had been digging through the fallen remains of Ozie Welks’ storeroom. He’d run when Ozie had challenged him, trailed bottles of Miller Genuine Draft behind him as he fled, and then as he paused to hop over Ozie’s straggling barbed-wire fence, Ozie blew the back of his head off with the shotgun he kept on the rack in his pickup truck. The most natural thing in the world, shoot a stranger who was trying to steal your stuff. That’s what you carried shotguns for.

  The stranger was a little man, white, with a wrinkled cotton shirt and a porkpie hat. He was maybe fifty, with a homemade tattoo on the back of one hand. Even in death, he still clutched a bottle of Jim Beam to his breast.

  “That’s a looter, all right,” said David, one of the first on the scene. Wearing one of his father’s spare uniforms, he looked more official than most of the special deputies, whose uniform consisted of a star and a gun worn over civilian clothes. David poked at the bottle of Beam with the toe of his boot. “Got the evidence right in his hand.” David looked at Ozie with an admiring grin. “That’s a good shot, Ozie.”

  “Some ol’ drunk,” said Ozie. “Couldn’t live without the hooch for another minute.” He had come back from helping a friend rescue some furniture from his collapsed mobile home, and he’d found the drifter looting his bar in broad daylight.

  “Any ID on the
body?” Omar said.

  David shook his head. “We checked.”

  Omar looked at the looter. Sweat trickled down the sides of his nose. He let his gaze travel over the road, the cars pulled off the highway during the quake and then abandoned by people heading into town.

  “One of those cars is probably his,” he said, “but there’s no way to know which one.”

  “Shall we take the body to the coroner?” asked one of the deputies. Who, come to think of it, was Tree Simpson. Tree had been appointed when the last coroner, a tire salesman, had been electrocuted in his bathtub.

  “Bag it up,” Omar said. “Show it to Tree. Then we’ll shove it in the potter’s field.”

  “Dang,” David said. “That was a great shot.”

  Ozie looked grim. “I’m going to have to put up with a lot of shit on account of this, ain’t I?” Omar shook his head. “Not with a looter. Not at a time like this.”

  “Good.” Ozie wiped sweat off his stubbly chin with the back of one arm. “Maybe nobody’ll miss this boy at all.”

  Omar glanced up as a pair of cars drove by, each packed with families heading for Clarendon. The cars slowed, and Omar felt himself being scanned by the eyes of strangers. The Klan Kop, Komplete with Korpse.

  He could feel their little tiny refugee brains drawing conclusions.

  Strangers, Omar thought, refugees. Wandering around without supervision. Bound to get into trouble, and one of them had just got shot by a local. And unless Omar got things under better control, this body wouldn’t be the last.

  He walked to the car, unhooked the mike from the radio, and spoke to the guards he’d sent to his two refugee camps.

  “Once people get into the camps,” he said, “I don’t want anyone to leave unless they can tell you the name of the local resident they’ll be visiting. Unless they know somebody here, there’s no place for them to go.”

  He held the microphone to his lips for a moment, saw the corpse lying by the vine-covered barbed wire. The Louisiana heat beat on his head.

  “Tell them it’s for their own protection,” he added.

  Bill Clemmons knew it was going to be bad when he saw the flies. He was carrying government food home from Cameron Brown Park in a wheelbarrow, and when he passed the BMW that his neighbor Charlie Johns had been living in, he saw clouds of black flies floating in and out of the open door. Thousands of them.

  Bill hesitated while sweat tracked down his nose. He knew well enough what the clouds of flies meant. He was tempted to let it be someone else’s problem.

  But it was his problem. He couldn’t have that next to his own house, his own family. What went wrong? he wondered. What had gone wrong with Charlie Johns? He was too smart to die like this.

  Bill started pushing the barrow again. He’d deliver the food, then he’d walk back to the park to inform the authorities about the corpse lying in the BMW.

  By late afternoon Omar had a head count. Two hundred thirty refugees, mostly black, on the A.M.E. campsite. Four hundred and forty-three, mostly white, crammed into Clarendon’s parklands, a stench unto the nostrils of Mrs. Ashenden. Thirty-one badly injured people had been moved into the house itself, where they could fulfill her Civil War fantasies—maybe, Omar thought, she’d feed them off the Wedgwood.

  And then of course there was the dead man occupying a body bag at the coroner’s office. Omar didn’t know how many natives of the parish were without homes, but it was well into the hundreds. Many had taken refuge with friends; others were camping or living in their cars. Omar couldn’t just round them up. After all, they were voters.

  The strangers were all hungry. The parish had done what was possible to get food to them, but there wasn’t that much food in the parish to begin with, less than a week’s supply. Fortunately Judge Moseley had been on the phone to the Emergency Management people, and they had promised for the next day a helicopter supply mission, food, tents, and medical equipment. Omar had just been to the A.M.E. camp to tell them that help was coming tomorrow. His reception hadn’t been very cordial. “There are some damned angry niggers here,” Merle grinned as Omar got out of his car. The camp inmates, Merle implied, wanted assistance now, and they weren’t taking any shit from Klan Kops.

  Omar went into the camp and tried to talk to Reverend Dr. Morris, tell him that the government was shipping in stuff tomorrow, but that everyone would have to sleep in their cars tonight—but there wasn’t just Morris, there was a whole wall of black folks, all of them talking. All the white people in the camp—and there were a few—were probably in hiding. Some of the blacks looked like aliens, with dreadlocks or strange headgear or crazy, incomprehensible speech. All of them seemed to know who he was. “You can’t scare us, cone-head motherfucker,” one big man chanted, the deep voice repeating the words over and over, sometimes varying his rhythm, mother fucker alternating with mother fucker. There were at least two people with video cameras, hoping to catch Omar in some brutality. Adrenaline flared through Omar’s veins as he tried to shout his message over the sound of the crowd. He felt his fingers tingle as he thought about his pistol, thought about the flap holding the pistol in the holster. He thought about firing the pistol into the air just to get everyone to shut up. He repressed the thought. These people could be armed, he thought. They could shoot back.

  He delivered his message and left. Taunts rang in his ears as he stalked away. Merle stood by his car at the gate, his easy grin turned taut on his face. “Figured I might have to pull you out of there, boss,” he said, and showed Omar the Ingram Mac-11 he was holding concealed behind his car door. The thing fired eighty zillion rounds per second, Omar knew, and not a one of them accurate.

  “Jesus,” Omar said. “You would have shot me along with all the others.”

  “The first burst would have gone over their heads,” Merle said.

  Omar was not comforted. He looked over his shoulder at the angry crowd, the video cameras that were still trained on him. “Put that gun back in the car.” he said, “if you don’t want it on the evening news.”

  “I’m gonna need more boys here for crowd control,” Merle said.

  Omar pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. Anger snarled through his nerves. “You’ll get them,” he said.

  “Make sure they’ve got shotguns at least,” Merle said. “These aren’t our niggers we’re dealing with.” Omar rolled his cruiser carefully over a barely-filled-in crevasse as he drove down Main, then turned onto Courthouse Road. Anger still shimmered in his nerves, though weariness was beginning to beat it down. The courthouse lawn, with its stubs and torn stumps of blackjack oak, looked strangely bare in the slanting western rays of the sun. A wrecker, with a crane on the back, had been backed onto the courthouse lawn. Probably yanking stumps or hauling wood away, he thought.

  He would sleep in his office tonight. After sixteen hours of coping with one emergency after another, he didn’t think he could face the wreckage that was his home.

  The parking place that had been reserved for the sheriff and other parish employees had been filled by a truck full of building scrap from the collapsed Robbie’s Barber Shop across Courthouse, so Omar turned the car around and parked next to the courthouse lawn. He got out of the car, crossed the broken concrete sidewalk, then stopped in surprise as he saw who was standing by the wrecker under the cracked plinth of the Mourning Confederate.

  Micah Knox. The biggety bantam Crusader stood among a knot of strangers, a camouflage baseball cap cocked back on his burrcut head, the long sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled down to his wrists. And standing next to Knox, looming over him almost, was the tall figure of Omar’s son, David. David looked up and grinned as Omar approached. “Hey, Dad,” he said.

  “Hey,” Omar said.

  The wrecker had been backed up to the Mourning Confederate, Omar saw. The bronze statue had pitched head-first off its plinth during the morning’s earthquake and stuck in the soft ground like a spear. A cable had been wrapped around the statue, and the crane o
n the wrecker was about to lift the Confederate and set it upright.

  “Micah said it wasn’t right that the statue should just be left there,” David said.

  “Not in Liberated America,” Knox said.

  “I agreed with him,” David said, “so I got ahold of Judd Criswell and got him to bring his wrecker.”

  “Micah?” Omar said. He looked from David to Knox and back. “You know each other?”

  “Since this afternoon,” David said. “Micah and his buddies came in on a boat this afternoon, down by the Bayou Bridge.”

  And David and his partner patrolled down there, Omar knew, looking out in case refugees managed to get across the bayou.

  “We were pretty grungy,” Knox said. “We’d been on the river almost a week.” He grinned at David, fiddled with a gold watch chain looped between a front and back trouser pocket. “Dave here took us to your house so that we could get a shower.”

  “And they cleaned the place!” David said. “Set the furniture up, tidied up the broken glass. Nailed the ceiling panels and the box siding that come loose.”

  Knox grinned, bounced up on the tips of his toes. “Five people,” he said. “Working for an hour, while Dave was off on his patrol. It’s not as nice as Wilona would make it, but it’s a lot neater than it was.” Omar looked at the strangers. “Who are your friends, Micah?” he said.

  “Crusaders brave and true,” Knox said. “We keep in touch through the Internet and arranged a rendezvous. They’re all happy to be here in Liberated America.”

  He introduced them. They were all bigger than Knox. Some looked like serious streetfighters that Omar would hate to encounter in a barfight situation. They were all young and wore combat boots and bits of military uniform. Their ears stuck out from short-cropped heads. Two had bad acne, and all displayed lots of insect bites. None of them seemed particularly happy to be in Shelburne City, liberated zone or not.

  “Where’ve you been?” Omar asked.

  “Arkansas, mostly. We met up there, before everyone started evacuating. We just wandered around, then got a boat when we got caught by flood—” His restless hands touched his cap brim, his belt, his shoes. His voice turned louder. “Hey, you know Omar, this quake knocked ZOG for shit. No Feds anywhere. No FBI, no DEA, no judges, no marshals, no military. No Equal Opportunity Commission. Just the people, for a change. It’s like the frontier all over again.”