by John Shirley
“So—what you want me to tell FEMA? I mean—you people haven’t been in touch with ’em, I take it. I need to tell them something.”
“Tell them we’re all right. Don’t need their help. Now that you’ve taken the injured out. We’ll take care of this our way. Those people—it’s all a shuck to set up a dictatorship, Chief.”
“What is?”
“FEMA. All they do is come in and tell you what to do and can’t do. You can’t get in your own house. And they keep local people from volunteering, going in. They got this whole plan, see—”
“Oh sure, all that, I remember you believed that stuff. I don’t have time for it, Lon. You don’t want FEMA, well—I’ll tell ’em that. But look—you have a town hall meeting and decide you want them there, why, send someone through to Deer Creek, we’ll tell ’em. Get the National Guard out here for you, the whole shebang.”
“Not going to need them, Chief. That simple. We’re keeping the peace. We’re in better shape over there than you’d think. And I’d sure appreciate, like I said, if you didn’t make any announcements about all this. Let me do that.”
Chief Fetzer stared at Ferrara for a long, doubtful moment. Then he shrugged. “Sure thing. Anyway—I’ll give it some time. But I’ll check back, in, I dunno, three or four days.” And he turned back to the crews moving the stretchers.
Three or four days. They’d have their hands full with these injured. There’d be time to do what needed to be done. He could send word in a couple of days that all was well too.
Mario came back, and Ferrara could see by the slump of his shoulders that he hadn’t found his son.
And Lon Ferrara, his brother trailing after him, went back to the hills, taking the long way back to what was left of Freedom. Not ready to confront the men on the other side of the pass yet.
Ferrara wondering, as he went, if he could trust Dickie and his Sand Scouts.
Maybe, maybe not. But he wouldn’t need them forever. Still—if it was true that “Jorge,” whoever the fuck that was, and some of those Crystal Mexes had his Thunderbird, maybe his beer too, he could use Dickie to help him get them back. And if that worked . . .
“You’re going to walk right up to that door, Nella girl,” Dickie reminded her, standing on the sidewalk close by her, in the twilight. The Grummons had gone to Dickie’s “ranch” at the eastern edge of town, in a hollow of the steep hills, where Chuckles and a couple of the other guys might be holed up. Supposed to recruit them.
Dickie was here with Sten and the Ferraras and his men, standing near the black pickup. “You’re gonna knock and you’re gonna ask if Jorge’s there . . . .”
“Do I have to do anything with them?” she asked. Shivering as the wind shook a little cold, thin rain from the lowering clouds.
“Do anything?” Dickie looked up the street to the Mex’s place as he spoke, slapping the big .45 into the palm of his left hand, over and over, as if slowly clapping with it. “Like sex, you mean?”
“Not unless you want to have sex with dead bodies,” Sten said. “Ha.”
“You just get out of the way, when someone opens up,” Dickie said.
The big black Ford pickup was parked at the corner, almost a block down from Jorge’s place. He and three of his buddies, split off from the VVs, Dickie said, were staying in the fading white one-story bungalow, trimmed in green shutters and half hidden behind squat fir trees. To one side of the bungalow, not touching it, was a wooden, paint-peeling, slightly-leaning garage that looked older than the house. There were only a few other houses on the tree-lined, potholed street. It was in a run-down outer corner of Freedom, almost in the shadow of the crumbling sandstone bluffs that hemmed in the town’s northern side.
Ferrara was standing with Steven and Cholo and Mario, at the back of the truck. His mouth clamped shut, lower lip stuck out as he looked down the street the other way, Ferrara glared toward the gravel road that led to his brewery, or what was left of it. They could just see the charred tops of the buildings on the other side of a stand of pines and nearly leafless poplars.
“I think I got it figured, Mayor,” Dickie said, just loud enough for Ferrara to hear.
Ferrara came over and Dickie whispered out his plan and Ferrara shrugged. “Like I said, this is you showing us you can handle shit, Dickie. Go for it. We’ll back you up. Try not to hit my car, it’s probably in that old garage.”
Dickie nodded. “Be a shame to nail that old Thunderbird. Come on, Mike, Nella.”
They walked slowly, quietly up the street, watching the house as they approached it. Nella could see a glimmer of light between two half-open green shutters. As they got closer she heard Mexican music playing, with accordions and guitars and people saying “Haii!” She could hear the sound of a generator running behind the house. They knew it was there. It was part of Dickie’s plan. He loved to plan things out, and make them happen, like an army general.
They got close and Dickie nodded to Nella, then signaled the others to wait by some fat decaying oak trees that made the sidewalk buckle up with their roots.
Her mouth was dry, but apart from that Nella didn’t feel any real fear as she walked up to the house alone. She had wanted to live, when she was in the wave, dragged out of the motel. Now she didn’t seem to care much anymore. It might be good to live—and then again, it would be okay to be shot down. Just as long as she went quick. Lately she went back and forth between those two feelings like the waves that had swept her to and fro in front of the motel . . .
She went up the steps. Seeing Sten, out of the corner of her eyes, sneaking around, hunched down as he went, to the left side of the house. Going to the back, where the generator was. Music thumped from inside. Haii-yi! She waited . . .
The music switched off suddenly—and the light too. So Sten had turned off the generator out back. Voices speaking Spanish, inside. Hushed, urgent voices. She heard a faint sound that might be the back door of the bungalow opening, men talking back there. They were blundering out to see what was wrong with the generator. Just like Dickie figured.
She knocked on the door, hard. A little paint came off it when she knocked. She waited. No response. She knocked again, harder.
Footsteps. Whispered voices. “Quién es?” someone called, through the door.
“Is Jorge there?” she called through the door. “My girlfriend said he might want a date. I don’t have any food, my motel was all swamped in that wave, I got no place to stay, she said I could trade with you guys, you know?”
“What girl sent you?”
“Consuela!” There was always a Consuela, wasn’t there?
Soft Spanish argument on the other side of the door.
Then it started to open. She backed away, as if she was scared. Saying, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea . . . ” Why am I being such a good actor? she wondered. Why do I care if this works? But it was best to please Dickie. Who was now easing up into the yard to her left, moving low up to the wall beside the door, under the front window.
A good-looking young man peered out at her. He wore a long blue-plaid shirt, buttoned up to his neck, hanging down untucked to half cover his jeans. He had shoulder-length wavy black hair, a VV tattooed on the side of his neck with a skull that looked like it was from El Día de los Muertos. He held a 9 mm pistol down at his right side and tattoos twined his slim arms. “I don’ know you, puta,” he said. He looked her up and down. “I don’ think we want any of your—”
Gunshots from out back of the house. Yells of pain.
She ducked to the right and Jorge—she knew it was him—was raising his gun, starting to close the door, but Dickie stepped onto the front walk, was already firing his .45 through the open door as he came, three shots fast, pop pop pop, and Jorge shouted agonized dismay in Spanish. As Nella backed up she saw him staggering backwards into the shadowy house, falling . . .
Dickie rushed in, firing at someone else. Muzzle flashes at the windows. Nella saw a man limping toward the street from the side of
the house, his teeth bared white in the twilight, a pistol in his hand, his right leg streaming blood. Sten pursuing, firing his pistol. The man turned, as he went, stumbling, firing toward Sten, missing. Cholo and Steve fired handguns at him from the oaks, the guns cracking, flashing in the dimness, the man’s body dancing around with the impacts. The gangster sobbed and fell, tried to crawl. Sten ran up behind him and shot him through the middle of his back. He writhed and Sten shot him again.
“Took that Mexican a fuck of a long time to die,” Sten said as Cholo and Steve came up.
The gangster was motionless, now, face down.
Nella almost fell backwards, tripping against the edge of the cracked sidewalk. She steadied and saw Dickie come out of the house, grinning at Ferrara, giving a thumb’s up. Ferrara was walking slowly up, the shotgun in his hands, looking a little awestruck. Trying not to seem too impressed.
Mario trotted over to the garage, opened it up. The Thunderbird was there. And cases of Doublehit Ale.
“Ah,” Ferrara said, brightening. “Good job.”
Steve looked around at the other houses. Not a movement, not a peep. Not a sound from anywhere. “Jeezus. No one even looking out a fucking window.”
The men gathered in front of the house, their eyes bright, flashing their teeth in grins. Ignoring the dead. Ferrara telling Mario to move the Thunderbird into some kind of town storage shed. Everyone talking excitedly.
Nella waited over by the sidewalk. She didn’t want to be near them when they were excited by killing. She didn’t want to have sex with anyone.
“Caught two of ’em out back at the generator,” Sten was saying. “Dumb fucks.”
Steve was looking down the street. Seemed to be listening, shaking his head in wonder. “No sirens. Nothing!”
“That’s right,” Dickie said, looking over at Nella. Winking. Pleased with himself. “And there won’t be any sirens. Ain’t it glorious? Sheriff’s dead. No other police. None going to come at all. This is freedom, dude. Welcome to freedom.”
TEN
“Man, I’m tired,” Russ said, settling onto a couple of wrestling mats, impromptu mattresses piled in the corner of the echoing gymnasium.
Dad and Brand hunkered down near Russ. Pendra was stretched out on her back, one arm thrown over her eyes, seeming to nap. Russ sat with his legs drawn up, back against the wall, looking around at all the people in the gym, most of them sitting or stretched out on wrestling mats, sleeping bags, futons cadged from deserted homes, a few talking in groups near the door. Hundreds of people. He was feeling more hopeful and the others seemed more cheerful too, now that they’d made contact with Deer Creek, and gotten the injured out. Laughter was heard, now and then—for the first time in days.
The fire chief from Deer Creek had decided that the injured would be carried on stretchers through the gap in the road blockage. There was still a big shaky pile of debris to one side—they couldn’t force large vehicles through. But people could walk through and be picked up by the next caravan from Deer Creek.
A few of the uninjured had gone along to the hospital with their children, their spouses. But most every survivor not badly hurt was still waiting here in the Freedom High School Gymnasium, or in the more intact houses. That seemed to be what Deer Creek wanted—they didn’t want to be overwhelmed with refugees, all at once. At least they had power and running water in Deer Creek.
But there were more Coleman lanterns, brought by Deer Creek’s caravan of trucks; stacked boxes of canned food, bottled water, first aid kits, carried by DCFD to the gap in the tsunami’s blockade. Not quite enough room to safely get trucks through, yet. The goods had been passed through, then trucked in to the gym.
It was getting toward evening and the light, from the row of windows near the gym’s ceiling, was dimming. Getting hard to see the painting on the gym’s wall, opposite the row of high windows: A cartoon sea lion grinning rakishly and balancing a basketball on its nose. The Freedom High Sea Lions had been the school’s basketball team, once upon a time.
Russ leaned forward, rubbed at a persistent ache in his lower back. They’d spent the morning helping out at the debris barrier, setting chains, clearing part of the debris after some of it was pulled down. The afternoon they’d spent moving the injured through: a long, slow, arduous, emotionally stressful process—the injured crying out with pain every time they were jarred.
Everyone in the gym had helped move the injured, and they were all dead tired. Russ just wanted to get to Deer Creek, find somewhere more comfortable to rest. “So how long we got to wait here?” he asked.
Dad looked at Brand and shrugged. “Any thoughts on that one, Brand?”
“I don’t know—Chief Fetzer and the sheriff were kind of fuzzy on that.”
“They’re fuzzy?” Pendra said, face still under her arm. Not asleep it seemed. “What color is their fuzz?” She sat up, groaning. “My shoulders hurt.”
“They ought to hurt,” Russ said, grinning. “You and Lucia carrying that huge woman on that stretcher. She must’ve weighed three hundred pounds, at least. I don’t know how injured that woman really was, either. She probably could’ve walked to the ambulance.” They all suspected the big lady had been malingering to get out of Freedom. “Here comes Dr. Spuris. He was really pissed off when they told him they didn’t have room for him on that trip.”
Dr. Spuris didn’t look angry any more. He looked afraid. His mouth was slackly open and his eyes seemed sunken as he stalked up to Russ’s dad and Brand. “You two—I want to talk to you. You’re a couple of organizers for this . . . ” He gestured flutteringly around at the people in the gymnasium. “ . . . this thing!”
Russ’s dad looked genuinely surprised. “We are?”
“Just tell me what the hell is going on! I walked up to the gap, to see if the people from Deer Creek were coming back for us—and there were armed men out there, with barbed wire across the road, telling me no one else is leaving town!”
At first, the razor wire was hard to see in the failing light. But then, as Russ walked up Seaward Road, with the unofficial deputation from the gym, the bonfire roared up big and bright and teeming with red sparks when one of the armed men tossed a match on the gasoline-soaked pile of debris. Broken wooden chairs, driftwood, and a large, intact wooden doghouse were all heaped seven feet high in the gap they’d made in the tsunami’s barricade. The flame leaped up, towering over them all, a single enormous blue-yellow flame that rippled with a rumbling and crackling sound; it hissed and sucked at the sky, delineating the antipersonnel wire across the gap.
“Theatrical,” Brand muttered, as the group stopped a few strides from the armed men at the bonfire. Russ’s father, Brand, Russ, Jill, Dale Carter. Russ felt the heat of the fire on his face as they got near; his eyes watered when the smoke shifted, whuffed past him. About fifteen others from the town gathered behind Brand and Russ’s father, including Pendra, close behind, and Dr. Spuris.
Jill squinted at Ferrara and his men and shook her head in disgust as if they were unruly drunks in front of a bar. She was still wan but more or less cleaned up, wearing scavenged clothes: jeans that were too short for her, a designer leather jacket someone had salvaged from their house. Rudimentarily washed in seawater, her hair was tied back in a long stiff ponytail.
“Christ, Ferrara, what now?” she asked, only half aloud. “What’s all this about?”
The razor wire, behind the bonfire, was stretched across the gap in the great barricade of debris: an X-ing of taut, crisscrossed antipersonnel razor wire. The wire, the shotguns, rifles, pistols in the hands of the men back-lit by the bonfire—Russ thought it was a pretty clear message.
He counted eleven men, all of them wearing long black firefighter coats, trimmed in traffic-cone orange; each of them sporting a gun. One of the men stepped forward to meet Brand and Russ’s dad, who were carrying flashlights—Dad gesturing for Russ to stay back. But he couldn’t do that. Pendra was watching. He stepped up beside his father.
&
nbsp; The people behind the deputation eyed the guns and stayed several paces back.
The wind had dropped some—but now it returned, carrying the charnel reek from the beach and the smell of brine from the sea, whipping up the bonfire so that it roared and exhaled gassy fumes. Barely feeling the warmth of the fire, Russ zipped up his coat, buried his fists in his pockets.
“Well, Ferrara,” Brand said, stopping just a pace from the mayor. “I’m sure you’ve got an explanation for blocking up the pass. I mean, for Christ’s sake—razor wire? Your idea of a safety measure?”
So that’s Ferrara, Russ thought. His hair looked dyed, Russ decided. Even his eyebrows. He had two days growth of beard that showed gray. He had short legs and a long body and a way of holding his head tilted to one side. He held a pump shotgun cradled in his arms.
“What I’ve got,” Ferrara said, “is a declaration of emergency and a plan for this town, all in one. There are people looting, for one thing. They’ve got to be stopped. For another, all you people are getting set to just abandon the town—that’s what I’ve been hearing.”
“From whom?” Russ’s father asked. “You haven’t been around to hear anything.”
“Doesn’t matter if I’ve been right here with you or doing my own thing. We’re just not going to let this town fall apart.”
“We, huh,” Brand said. “Isn’t that Dickie Rockwell back there? I seem to remember the highway patrol was looking for him.”
“That was awhile back,” said one of the men, stepping up behind Ferrara, grinning at them. A pistol in his hand pointed casually at the ground. A lean, sardonic young man with long hair snapping in the wind like the flames from the bonfire. “All that false accusation blew over. I am . . . an innocent man.”
“Blew over from lack of evidence?” Brand asked mildly.
“Naw, just a big misunderstanding. We’re here to help, dude. We’re the emergency militia.”