Houston, 2030: The Year Zero

by Mike McKay

  Chapter 13

  The going-away party was set on the next day, at the Stolz. Frederick, Arnold, Samantha, and Mike left for the 'Fill at around six in the morning: their synthetic gasoline bombs wanted attention seven days a week. William and Clarice went to the Loop. In Salvation Way, collectors took days-off as they pleased, but had to meet their daily targets. Missing Sunday donations would mean walking extra miles for the rest of the week. The party preparations landed on Elvira Stolz and Mary. Mark had decided to take this Sunday off no matter what, and who cares about the FBI brass.

  Supplied with his shopping list and with forty-two thousand dollars secured in the pocket, Mark walked to the local market, two miles away. Bread at a bakery, meats and sausages at a butcher, beer at a brewer, charcoal at a fuel depot, and so on, – he hated going from one shoppe to another. How easy it was before the Meltdown!

  Well, he disliked supermarkets too. As most males, Mark considered family shopping a waste of time. Every visit, it took Mary at least two hours browsing through novelty items, clothes, cookware and so on, mostly looking at things they never needed. The boys, William and Michael, were deeply entrenched in the toy section. But if Mark visited supermarkets alone, it took him less than half an hour to fill the cart, before proceeding to a checkout. Ten minutes and one credit card transaction later, he would be at the parking lot, loading the purchased goods into his car… Now, Mark had neither a car, nor even a credit card.

  Four years ago, Mark tried explaining a supermarket to his younger kids. Samantha and Pamela had been to a supermarket on few rare occasions, but by the time they were probably too young to remember it clearly. Patrick missed the supermarkets all together, – he was born after the last in Sheldon-Res went under.

  “These shops, – the supermarkets, – they were huge!” Mark explained. “That's why they called them super.”

  “As big as Mister Bell's General Store?”

  “Larger. Fifty times larger.”

  “If the shop is so big, how find the stuff you need?” Patrick asked.

  “The ‘stuff’ was on the shelves. All labeled. They called them ‘sections.’ If you need clothes, you go to the Clothes section, and look in there. You pick what you like and put in the cart.”

  “A delivery cart?” Patrick asked.

  “A shop cart!” Samantha said instead of Mark. “I remember! Those carts – they had special seats for kids! Mom put me on the cart, up high, and pushed. She said, let's check Clothes first. How did you call them, Dad: ‘selections?’ No clothes, just the name. Then Mom said, let's go to Bed and Linen selection. Mommy got two wind curtains.”

  “Wind curtains? You mean: dress curtains?” Pamela asked.

  “Of course, they're for making dresses!” Samantha said. “That's what all the wind curtains are for! So, we went to Kitchen selection. All kinds of pots, and electric machines, so cool… And then, Daddy came, and they started arguing with Mommy!”

  “I remember,” Mark said, “I told Mommy to get rubber boots. Five pairs! It was why we went to that supermarket first place: I got a call about the boots delivery. But while you went shopping at the Kitchen section; it's ‘section,’ Samantha, not ‘selection’, – all boots were gone! I only grabbed one last pair…”

  “Did you grab and run away? Like a stealer?” Pamela asked.

  Mark smiled. “I paid for it! Well, bad people sometimes did exactly as you said: run away. We called them ‘shoplifters.’ The checkout cashiers caught them and gave to Police. Most people didn't shoplift. They took what they needed and paid.”

  “Checkout – same as our school? Like we have to bring the school fee each month, and who can't pay – go home?” Patrick asked.

  “More or less, but they didn't line up people and call their surnames,” Mark said.

  “Why the checkout guys didn't grab the stuff and run away?”

  “There were security guards.”

  “And why the security guards didn't grab the stuff and run away?”

  “Why would they do it? We had plenty of ‘stuff’ around. You need something, – just go buy it!”

  “And what if you don't have no money?”

  “Don't use double negatives, Pamela. It's not proper English. The double negatives are only used in street gangs.”

  “OK, Dad. What if somebody had no money?”

  “Much better! If you had no money, you could go to a bank and take a credit.”

  “What's a credit?” Pamela asked.

  “And what's a bank?” Patrick added.

  “A credit is if the bank gives you money now, and you pay back later.”

  “And why would the bank give money ‘now’?” Samantha made extra-wide eyes. “If you have money ‘later,’ you get what you want ‘later.’ For example, I was in-hurry for my PE class, and somebody nicked my hat and my school tires.”

  “It's ‘school sandals’, Samantha. Don't use ‘tires’, our Mummy may not approve,” Mark said. “More important: you got to look after your things! Why didn't you put the sandals and hat into your locker?”

  “I know, Dad! But I forgot! Besides, our PE teacher doesn't like if we're late! So I asked Mommy: can I get new tires? And she, like: Sam, can you go to school barefoot for a little while? No money for your sandals ‘now.’ Daddy will get his pay and buy ‘later.’ I said: OK, we will buy tires ‘later,’ what-a-prob? And Mommy said: what-a-prob is no such word.”

  The family budget was tight. Mary's father developed a serious bladder infection, so they spent a month-worth of Mark's salary on antibiotics. If ‘what-a-prob’, Mark decided, we can let her go with no tires for yet another month. Besides, it will be an excellent lesson not to forget her things all over the place!

  “Mommy is right. I too don't approve of your ‘what-a-prob’! Why do you need to copy all those street beggars? You must say it properly: ‘what's the problem?’ Or: ‘no big deal.’ But about the school sandals, don't you worry. I'll get you a new pair, eventually.”

  “‘Eventually’ means ‘now’ or ‘later,’ Dad?” Patrick asked.

  “‘Eventually’ means ‘sometimes in the future,’” Mark explained, “I mean, Samantha, it will be ‘later,’ but real soon. Probably, next month. I promise.”

  “Real promise?” Samantha asked.

  “Real promise! Only, if something more urgent than your sandals doesn't pop up, OK?”

  “OK, Dad. I can go barefoot till the ‘eventually,’ and even till ‘later’, no big deal. With no tires – much better. No need to put 'em in the locker every morning.”

  Every morning? Did she say: ‘every morning’? – The agreement with Mommy was such that the school sandals must be worn at all times, with the sole exception for the Physical Education lessons. The PE ran three times per week, in the afternoon, not ‘every morning’. After I buy my daughter those new sandals, I must figure out what exactly they do with footwear at school!

  “I like your example, Samantha. You got the difference between ‘now’ and ‘later’ quite right. So for the credit, the bank gives you money now, but you pay later a bit more, understand?” Mark himself started getting confused. The banks and the credit system were not on his teaching plan for today.

  “I got it!” Patrick said, “Your bank is like a street gang. They can give you money now, but if you can't pay later, they make you a slave for life.”

  “Very close,” Mark nodded. Great. A six-year-old after the Meltdown had more common sense than fully grown adults before the crisis. You should take a credit only in a life-and-death situation, because it can make you a slave for life. Before the Meltdown, getting credit was too bloody easy. That's why the Meltdown had happened first place.

  “The supermarket owners must be very rich to have such a large shop,” Samantha said.

  “They were rich. Very-very rich, in fact. Few owned hundreds of shops, all around the world.”

&nbs
p; “How is it possible, Dad? The owner has to go from place to place for selling his stuff? You can't be in hundreds of places at once!” Patrick shook his head, probably imagining how the tired owner would pedal from supermarket to supermarket on a delivery tricycle.

  “They didn't run the shops themselves. They hired special people, called managers.”

  “Like a scavs' foreman?”

  “Exactly like a Landfill foreman.”

  “Were the managers rich?”

  “Not as rich as the shop owners. Managers had good income, a good house, and a couple of cars… They were an upper-middle-class.”

  “We have good income, a good house, and two cars! Are we an upper-middle-class, Dad?” Patrick asked.

  Mark smiled. “Yes, Patrick. We're an upper-middle-class.”

  Good question, really. Mark's salary at the FBI was far better than most of the incomes in their neighborhood, but Mary struggled to stretch the family budget between Mark's paydays. Their ‘good house’ had no electricity, not counting the nearly dead solar panels on the roof and equally dead Lithium Ion batteries under the kitchen. No running water or sewage, apart from their fifty-gallon shower barrel and a hole-in-the-floor backyard latrine. Their two cars were permanently parked – on bricks, and the house Lithium Ion batteries were salvaged from the Mary's super-compact.

  In 2015, their current lifestyle would firmly place them few notches below the poverty line if not at the very bottom of the social pyramid. But now, in the post-Meltdown 2026 America, they proudly called themselves an ‘upper-middle-class’. If such a thing still existed.

  “What happened to the supermarket owners? Are they now an upper-middle-class too?” Pamela asked.

  “Not sure, sweety. Some are probably much better off than we are. Few – may be worse. You see, the rich people didn't have money as ‘money.’ They kept everything in shares, and bonds, and hedge funds. Such stuff became much less valuable after the Meltdown. So the rich lost their wealth – big time.”

  “OK, ‘hedge’ I understand,” Pamela said, “it's like a fence, only made of bushes. I guess, you can hide your money in the bush.”

  “Bands – is simple too!” Patrick said, “band is like a gang, only in the countryside. What are shares?”

  I should not have mentioned it, Mark thought. Now he had to explain the stock market to his kids. The knowledge they would never need. “Shares are like papers. You give a business your money, and they give you back a paper…”

  “Got it!” Patrick said, “shares are like re-whitened notebooks. Mom says, we should buy only direct from the 'Fill. The paper direct from a business is way cheaper than in Bell's General Store.”

  “No, it's more complicated… Those shares, they were not really papers. It was all in computers… You know what? I tell you all about shares and hedge funds some other time, OK?”

  “I don't like supermarkets!” Samantha concluded with a resolution of a ten-year-old, “if we need bread, you give me three hundred bucks, and I go to Mister Sullivan at the corner. Or I can take my bike and ride all the way to Missis Chang's bakery. It's so fun! Missis Chang always has leftover bread cut in small cubes and dried in her oven, and gives them to kids no-pay. ‘Crunchies,’ she calls them…”

  No-pay ‘Crunchies,’ yet another street-talk word, Mark smiled. His daughter was right, to a degree. The family-owned shoppes had their advantages. At least, Mark's kids did not get the pre-Meltdown dosage of food preservatives, and artificial coloring, and animal antibiotics. In Texas, food supplies were OK. Mary was careful with the money, and the family could afford enough proteins: tofu, eggs, milk or cottage cheese every day, meats or poultry twice a week, and fish or other seafood – once a month. All came absolutely fresh. Their fridge in the kitchen had been converted into a pantry, and their garage freezer served as an emergency water storage. Some neighbors ran little freezers from solar panels to make ice. If Mark wanted a little pre-Meltdown luxury, he issued Samantha or Pamela a plastic box and a fifty-dollar bill and sent them down the street to purchase ice-cubes for his drinks…

  As always on Sunday mornings, the market square was crowded. Before the Meltdown, it was a typical American shopping mall. Now the former bank at the corner was converted into a butcher shop, the former Indian restaurant sold rice and spices, the former Radio Shack served as the local electronics repairmen headquarters, and so on. The larger shops had been separated into smaller, more affordable, shoppes, some measuring less than three feet at the front. Besides the permanent shoppes, there were plenty of vendors with carts, while most of the veggie sellers simply had their produce on the sidewalks.

  At the entrance, a professional mafia of sorts: the older teens organized a taxi rank and lined up delivery boys, with their variety of carts. As Mark approached, the next in line was a two-wheeled contraption with a golf umbrella for a bonus. A Malaymerican boy jumped from a shade, about twelve, dressed only in a pair of shorts, with no trace of shirt or sandals. Considering his nearly-black skin and dirty callous feet, this was the standard working attire.

  “Only sixty dolla'h for any delivery, sir!” The coolie was keen to make an extra buck.

  “Fifty. I know the prices. Besides, we live less than two miles away.”

  “I have an umbrella! Fifty-five, sir! Good price-lah!”

  “It's not raining, buddy. Look, if you don't want to work for fifty, I take the next cart in line.” The last four words Mark said louder, addressing not so the greedy delivery boy, but the older teens in the shade.

  One rank controller demonstrated Malaymerican a fist. The young professional understood the fare was not negotiable and agreed: “OK, sir. Fifty-lah!”

  They started through the shoppes and stalls. Mark crossed items in his shopping list, ordered and paid, while the boy was filling the cart. Within two hours, all the necessary purchases had been completed: thirty-nine thousand dollars in total, or about three weeks worth of Mark's FBI salary. Hell with it…

  Along the sidewalk, a detachment of Salvation Way collectors ran their usual business. Today, the lucrative market spot was occupied by a middle-aged man on a crutch, without his left arm and left leg, three youngsters with no legs, and finally – the local celebrity star, poet, composer, and singer: Jack-the-Rapper. Jack was an Afro-American of difficult-to-define age, and with only short stumps instead of arms and legs. An impressive dread-locked hair, mirror sunglasses, and a thirty-two-teeth smile compensated for the missing limbs.

  Jack-the-Rapper appeared in Sheldon-Res about the same time William returned from Venezuela, but apparently not on the Dumpster. His songs quickly became popular. People had little choice nowadays: the GalvesTube TV, with its re-runs of the pre-Meltdown groups and few remaining Internet sites – with equally outdated music, and maintained on pure enthusiasm.

  Jack-the-Rapper rested in his heavy-duty wheelchair. Roughly painted in the American flag colors, with stripes and stars, this vehicle was also a stage: with two speaker boxes instead of the leg rests and an amplifier located at the back, below the chair's handles. A portable solar panel charged a spare battery.

  Clarice once said that Jack-the-Rapper possessed a secret of finding himself new girls, while discarding the prior ones without scandals. After all, the stars must be allowed freedom in girlfriend selection! The on-duty girlfriend cum sound operator was a Caucasian teenager, in jeans cut-offs, so short, they would pass for a bikini, if not for their Denim. Jack's famous leather vest, with the Purple Heart lost amongst two hundred badges and pins from various rock groups, was trusted to the girlfriend. She put it proudly over her tattered T-shirt with freshly painted JACK-the-RAPPER stencil at the front.

  Two dozen spectators watched the show. Jack just finished a song, and his vest-clad girlfriend was collecting well-deserved royalties. Mark dropped a five-dollar bill into the offered red bucket, then went to the other vets in the line-up and added to their donation buckets to
o.

  “Why did'ya give the others?” the delivery boy whispered grumpily from behind, “cripples are useless. Better pay me sixty-lah!”

  “Shut up,” Mark whispered back, “I'll wait until you return from the Army with no arms and legs. Then, the extra ten bucks will be all yours.” The delivery boy added something else, but Mark did not pay attention.

  “Thank you! Thank you for your kind donations, Ladies and Gentlemen! Change for Vets! Change for Vets! Fix my mike, baby, and make another loop with our bucket. Change for Vets!” Jack-the-Rapper twisted a little, allowing his girlfriend to adjust the hands-free microphone and exchange a quick kiss. Then, the arm stump suddenly pointed to Mark: “What's your name, man?”

  “Mark…”

  “Mark! Your boy goes to the Army, did I guess it right?” Jack was talking through the amplifier, and Mark – without, so the conversation resembled a mind-twisting theatrical monologue.

  “Yes… Two boys, actually. My son and one of his friends. How did you guess?”

  “Mark is sending two boys to the Army, Ladies and Gentlemen! Easy to guess, man. A full cart of booze and schmooze – for a going-away party! So I was told, AFCO dudes were around again, delivering draft orders. What part of our victorious Armed Forces is your boy after?”

  “Infantry.”

  “An Infantryman! Excellent selection! Very refined. I was in the Infantry too. See, how well our modern Kevlars protect the body? Not a single scar at the torso.” He rotated his arm stumps, demonstrating outstanding protective capabilities of modern bulletproof vests.

  “May I ask where you lost your arms and legs?”

  “Mark is asking where I lost my arms and legs, Ladies and Gentlemen! Sure like hell, you can ask. No probs! In Libya, Mark, in Libya. The goddamn jihadists attacked our base with Ricin shells, and we had to fight back. Operation Gas Shield! Or, you heard under a different name? The proper name? We called it: operation Gas Gangrene!”

  Mark nodded. “One guy I know, he lost his son in Libya. In 2020.”

  Operation Gas Shield was the first since the Great War, in which the Americans fought with no air support: something went wrong in Europe, and the aircraft did not fly for seven or eight weeks. Left with no air reconnaissance data, without food and ammunition, and with no medical evacuation capability, the ground troops dug into lifeless desert, and were killed by thousands.

  Initially, the CNN made its usual publicity stunt and sent TV crews to the battlefield. After the operation turned into a complete catastrophe, the CNN was politely hinted they should zip their mouths in exchange for the government subsidies. The actual news arrived anyway: one bit of information after another, in the war tales of several dozen mutilated soldiers who returned to Sheldon-Res from hospitals. Back then, disabled veterans were still treated like heroes; kids met the cripples with flowers and invited them to schools to give patriotic speeches.

  “Yessir! Two thousand and bloody twenty!” Jack rotated his arm stumps again. “I kid you not, of my platoon, four men left! The Navy loaded dead on barges and dumped into the sea. Navy funerals, my ass! The fish also need food, right? And the cripples… Oh, man! Imagine a medevac plane, full of Quads, just like me? They brought us to the airport in two trucks. The Air Force cargo master says: no way! Forty-four patients on your list. The plane can fit only thirty stretchers. And our medic says: these will fit into your plane, Sarge, no probs. With plenty of room to spare. Didn't they tell ya? These are our chunks from the freaking Zuwará hospital. Perfectly stumped! Somebody laughed. Then, all of us, in both trucks, started laughing! All forty-four chunks. Perfectly! Stumped!”

  The listeners remained silent. As much as people were used now to war horror stories, this particular one was a bit off-the-scale.

  “OK, Ladies and Gentlemen! The show must go on!” Jack-the-Rapper continued after a pause, “our next song is called: Three Out of Each Five! Mark! You, sir, please tell the boys to be careful. And – to come back in one piece, not perfectly stumped, like some guys over here, got it?”

  Jack's girlfriend assumed her sound operator position, fingered her heavily scratched iPod, selecting a track, and tweaked the amplifier. The speakers filled the marketplace with synthesizer beat.

  He would rather dig shit at the 'Fill.

  But the AFCO told him: go kill.

  He was called to serve, and he filled the bill.

  Go kill, GI, duty to fulfill.

  He must learn soon enough, these are rules we all play.

  Dig your hole, GI, dig your hole, and stay.

  Don't you stick your head. Sniper fires – you pay.

  Bullet five-dot-four-five.

  Blends your brains – all the way.

  Don't be heroes, stupid. Don't get blown away.

  If you're lucky, you stay alive.

  It's a darn good luck – to make three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Pro-ba-bi-li-ty, man.

  That's your chance to survive.

  If you both quick and smart,

  Fighting war is not hard.

  Kill before they kill you.

  That is modern war art.

  He became so slick. War geek.

  Operation last week.

  Pulled wrong brunch in jungles – and click!

  Now sailing on Dumpster.

  No hands, no eyes, but alive.

  In the port, hugging smiling young wife.

  What a happy new life:

  Coming home – to make three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Pro-ba-bi-li-ty, man.

  That's your chance to survive.

  Shit, exactly how Clarice met William in Galveston. No hands, no eyes, but alive. Mark listened to the song and watched how the legless boy in a wheelchair, hardly older than Mike, moved the shaven head following the rap.

  “Can we go-lah? I can't stand here all day!” the delivery boy whispered jerking Mark's sleeve. Mark nodded Jack in excuse for leaving before the end of the song. Jack-the-Rapper saw it and nodded back as if giving his permission. Mark and the delivery boy – moved on. The insane military march rolled behind them.

  If you have no arms,

  Begging isn't that hard.

  They collect all they need. No greed.

  No shoes for his wife, but he has Purple Heart.

  And they must shut up, and perform their part.

  She gives birth to four sons.

  Who must dig shit at the 'Fill.

  Until somebody tells them: it's time, boys, go kill.

  Freedom to protect, duty to fulfill.

  Only two will come back.

  One on crutches, another in scars. But alive!

  Lucky bastards, – to make three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Three out of each five!

  Pro-ba-bi-li-ty, man.

  That's your chance to survive.