by CW Crowe
"We are getting conflicting reports from the scene. Some people say a bomb was detonated near the security checkpoint, while at least two witnesses have stated that a plane crashed through the roof of the building."
Regina tapped Jason on the hand to get his attention. She held her phone so that they both could see. It showed a long line of people - the security line at an airport. An arrow appeared on the screen, pointing to a young woman. She was pulling a carry-on bag behind her. It was a common type of bag - designed with wheels to make it easy to move through the airport, and of the correct size to fit in an overhead. A red arrow appeared on the screen as the video zoomed in on the bag. It had a line of yellow tape running vertically and horizontally, forming a cross.
Jason got a surprised look on his face, “Is that what I think it is?”
"Yeah Jason, it's the security video from right before the bomb went off."
He started to ask how she could possibly have access to this video, when she cut him off.
"My God," she said. She was now looking at the scene on the TV. More ambulances were arriving. The drop off area was choked with them. People continued to stream out of the building. A cop was obviously trying to get them to move along.
Jason saw what had caught Regina's attention. Just behind the cop was a bag. It was a carry-on. It had yellow tape on it forming a cross.
Regina was frantically tapping the screen of her phone when the TV went blank except for the block showing the anchor in the lower right corner.
Almost immediately, the news anchor's face zoomed to fill the entire screen. She was looking off camera, trying to understand what someone was telling her. "Obviously, we have a fluid situation. We seem to have lost our video feed from the scene."
Until now, she had been cool, her voice silky and controlled. But what she was hearing in the newsroom caused her to discard that professional persona. There was audible talking, even shouting from off camera. "What the fuck are you talking about!" she screamed at someone off camera.
When she again looked directly into the camera, her anger had been replaced by fear.
***
"Let's go," said Regina, standing. She walked off and left him to pay the check. He had a thick wad of bills in his pocket - mostly twenties and hundreds. For a moment, he marveled at how he could trade one of these pieces of green paper for a good meal. That might not be the case for much longer.
He peeled off a twenty and then thought better of it. He put it back in his wad and left a hundred on the table. Benjamin Franklin's face had a look of accusation on it.
Jason’s Plan
The drive back to the main office of R. Martin and Associates, Security Consultants, was made listening to the news on the radio. The closing of all the airports was the number one story, but it was followed closely by the riots that had broken out in several cities. The police had stopped bikers from protesting in Cleveland, but they showed up in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Pittsburgh and a half dozen other cities. The result was fighting and shooting and looting.
"Is this it? Has the shit actually hit the fan?" asked Jason.
Regina didn't take her eyes off the road. "This? No, this isn't it. It will be good for business though, very good; especially the riots - that will make the millionaires beg us to take their money and give them safety in return."
"But that safety is an illusion. You said so yourself."
"Yeah, but it doesn't matter. It'll make them feel better, at least until the eaters show up."
Jason looked over at her. She looked professional, fresh. He felt drained from his night of love making. “That’s the second time you’ve said that. What do you mean?”
She smiled. “Sometimes I forget and use our internal lingo. After the balloon really goes up, lots of people will die. But many will survive and a good portion of them will have one thing on their minds – finding something to eat. We call them Eaters for short.”
He was about to ask another question when she beat him to it, "You never told me what your plan was - how you were going to prevent the shit from hitting the fan. You're no common millionaire, you've got real money now, real power. Tell me, Mr. McCrae, how can it be stopped?" She turned off the radio and listened.
"You really want to know? You might not like it."
"Go ahead, Jason. Tell me. If I faint or something, you grab the wheel."
He almost smiled at that thought. Almost.
"It's . . . it's a matter of numbers. There are just too many of us - too many humans. In 1970 there were about four billion humans on the planet. In 2011, the population exceeded seven billion. We'll hit seven point four billion this year."
Most people couldn't grasp such numbers. He gave her time to think about them.
"Go on," she said with a slight frown on her face.
"I think it's obvious. We simply can't sustain that type of population growth. It can't be done for long. Sooner or later - and probably sooner - something is going to happen and the civilization that allows all those people to live will come crashing down. It's all a matter of the numbers."
"People have been saying the same thing since Malthus in 1798. Paul Ehrilch predicted in 1968 that there were be widespread starvation in the 1970s and 80s. It hasn't happened."
Regina was strong and aggressive and a good lay, but she was like most women when it came to seeing the big picture. "The point, Regina, is not that humanity has survived this long, it's that we can't survive much longer the way we are going. I hope you can see that."
"I'm trying," she said. "When the SHTF happens for real, what will cause it? Riots? Bombings?"
"It could be a bunch of things - the most obvious is economic collapse. Imagine if seventy percent of the population was out of work. Imagine no trucks full of goods arriving at your local grocery store. Imagine what would happen if one did manage to get through. The riots we're having now would be nothing in comparison.
"But it doesn't have to be economic collapse. It could be famine or drought. We've seriously screwed up the climate. All it would take would be a year or two of crops not growing and humanity would be in real danger.
"It could be the spread of some deadly disease - new or old. It could be an asteroid hitting the earth. It could be nuclear winter. There is a super volcano under Yellowstone Park that could end all life on earth. It would certainly destroy human civilization.
"We can't do anything about volcanos, but we can do something about saving the most important thing - civilization. Without it, humans are just animals - hunting and screwing and fighting to survive.
"Right now, civilization is too fragile, too stressed by having to accommodate so many people. I know it sounds harsh, Regina, but we have to get the number of people down. We have no choice."
Her question sounded sincere, "How are you planning on doing that?"
He smiled, the news from Chicago momentarily forgotten. "Two months ago, a legislator in New Zealand offered a bill in parliament that would require all twelve year old girls to use birth control. It could be an implant or an IUD. Depending on the method, every three to five years they would get a new one.
"That's the answer! You can't stop people from screwing, but you can stop them from getting pregnant."
Regina looked thoughtful, "The Chinese tried something like that. It might work here where you have the kids in school and can implant them right there, but in more primitive countries, it'll be hard to get as much participation."
He was getting excited. He'd thought this through. "You're right, here we could compel compliance, but in India, for example, we'd have to use a different tack. There are about 1.5 million Indian girls who turn twelve each year. Suppose we paid each of them a hundred dollars to get protected from pregnancy. Hell, suppose we paid them a thousand dollars each. I know we'd get a majority of them to comply - after a few years, probably the percentage would rise even more."
Regina Martin was silent almost a minute. "Well?" Jason prompted. "What do you think?"
<
br /> She looked at him and smiled, "I think you are an arrogant, naive, shallow thinking, typical do-gooder. You plan is shit, but you do have a spark of an idea here and there."
Jason felt shock. He hadn't been talked to like that since . . . since yesterday, when she'd reamed him out.
"I might be persuaded to tell you about a real plan - one that can really work, but it will cost you."
Here comes the bite. He was used to this. She sold her secure little mansions for twenty million, so she'd probably try to hit him up for fifty million.
He gave his voice an extra helping of sarcasm, "So your wonderful plan - your plan that will work so much better than mine - what will it cost me?"
Her hand reached for the radio. "Everything you have," she said as she switched it on.
The news was still on and it was still bad.
Fallon’s Fight
Today, Fallon wasn't driving a brand new BMW. Instead he rode his Piece of Shit. It was a 1991 Honda Nighthawk motorcycle with some rust here and there and a couple of big dents in the gas tank. He'd paid $800 for it. It ran rough if he went over fifty. He still had two payments to make. The license plate started with the letters “POS” - he remembered God laughing when he got the plate.
He was going to be late for work. His other job was at a dollar store - four hours a day, four days a week. The manager was a tall, prissy thirty three year old woman named Patti who always complained about everything and cussed like a sailor. It wasn't just him; she complained about the other damned employees, her fucking husband, the sons of bitches customers, the shitty weather - whatever.
He expected her to bitch and moan about him being late, even though it really wasn't his fault. Ever since the bikers had rolled into Pittsburgh, the cops were stopping every bike they saw. They soon realized he wasn't a member of any bike club given his Piece of Shit bike and let him go. But he was stopped again, not ten minutes later. Humpty Dumpty rolled and waved his arms at that one.
"We need to talk," Patti said as he walked into the store. "Come with me." There were two customers in line to check out, so she kept it clean.
She led him to the storeroom in back. There were four chairs arrayed around a card table with cheap dollar store boxes from China stacked all around. She called this spot her office.
"Fucking District called and every store has to cut one head. You were the last hired, so it's you."
This was almost too much. He wondered for just a second if she could hear the cackles from God. "But Patti, look. I know I'm late, but the cops are stopping every bike. They got me twice today." He didn't want to plead, but some of it slipped into his voice. He needed this job.
Patti sniffed. "I told the sons of bitches that we can't cut another one. I'm working seventy damned hours a week now as it is. But the fuckers wouldn't listen. They said if I didn't fucking do it they would find someone else who fucking would. Listen Fallon, I don't give a rat's ass about you being late. In fact, I don't think I really give a flying fuck about anything anymore."
She paused and a tear ran down her left cheek. Her next words were quieter. "You go on now. You're better off being out of this hellhole. Here - they said I could write you a check for two weeks average pay. I put in a little bit more - it's for $166. It was over $200 before the greedy motherfuckers took out their taxes."
***
Fallon deposited the check in his bank's ATM. The machine spit out a receipt that encouraged him to apply for a home equity loan. "You've been Pre-Approved!" it said.
It also said his balance was three hundred and one dollars. He took out twenty and went to the liquor store.
He suspected that somewhere, deep down inside, he had the potential to be an alcoholic. He liked drinking well enough, even if he felt like shit the next day. But he loved the idea of joining AA. Sitting around with his fellow alcoholics, and sharing their most intimate life stories seemed wonderful to him. He knew it was strange, but that didn't matter.
He didn't drink too often though - he couldn't afford it. A two or three times a year bender was about all he could manage. He guessed the people at AA would take him anyway.
***
In Pennsylvania, you could only buy liquor at state owned stores. Therefore, the people who worked in the stores were government employees with a union, health insurance, full retirement, long vacations and lots of holidays.
The result was that most clerks and stockers were career employees who worked there for twenty, thirty or forty years.
"Pint of Seagram’s," he told the over fifty year old clerk. Behind her was a large sign that said, "For your protection, if you appear to be under fifty, please have ID ready. We card!"
"That'll be $9.40," she said with a haughty look on her face. She didn't ask for his ID.
Fallon wasn’t yet forty years old. Faintly, he heard a chuckle from God.
***
He drove the Piece of Shit to his lake house. When he'd first been married and before everything turned to crap, he had been doing pretty well. The future actually looked bright. He and his wife had decent jobs and together they made a decent living.
Fallon thought he could trace the exact moment when God started to pay attention to him; it was one night when his wife of less than a year told him how her boss had bought a second home on a lake. "He said it's just a cabin, but the pictures look so beautiful, Fal. It's so peaceful and the water is so blue. Can we get one? Please? Pretty please!?"
She put on her pouty face. She judged he needed a bit more incentive. "I’ll do that thing you want. You know . . . suck on it."
Right then, and for the first time, he imagined God as Humpty Dumpty. He wasn't laughing, though - that would come later.
They hadn't been saving long enough to be able to afford a really nice place, but he found a new development on a lake. The land was cheap because the property didn't come with rights to access the lake itself - that was owned by the county park next door.
But the price was right, and the land was wooded and secluded and cool. He bought a 1967 Airstream Bambi and paid to have electricity run down to his lot and to have a well and septic tank put in. He built a grill of stone outside with his own hands. His lake house was ready.
He loved the place. Sure, it was very small inside with its tiny bedroom and kitchen and bath. And you had to walk a couple hundred yards down to the lake. You couldn't really even see it from the cabin in summer, but it was there and they could enjoy it as much as any other park visitor. He loved fishing there.
His wife, however, was not impressed. "You can't even see the lake and the place is full of bugs and there are probably snakes all around." She went for one weekend and that was it. He never got his blow job.
So, when it came time to divide their possessions for their divorce, she got everything she wanted, and he got the lake house. It was one of the few good things that had happened to him, especially since the real estate company hadn't managed to sell any more lots. Over the years, the dirt road leading to his home had been overgrown so that now it was only a thin trail, too narrow for a car. Only the Piece of Shit could navigate it.
As he drove to the clearing, he studied how the trailer had deteriorated over the years. The siding had lots of dents and was covered in moss in several places. One tire was flat. The wooden steps to the front door were rotted. A window pane had been broken and replaced with a piece of brown cardboard.
Still, it was his home. He owned it free and clear. Without it, he suspected he would have been sleeping on the streets years ago. It was fourteen miles from the center of Pittsburgh. In this part of the world, that put him way back in the country.
He knew it didn't look anything like his ex-wife's place. She'd married her boss less than two months after divorcing him. Fallon was sure she was giving him a blow job whenever he wanted one.
***
Without going inside, Fallon grabbed his fishing tackle and started downhill, towards the lake. There wasn't any trail because he didn't go the
same way every time. There was no need to - you just headed downhill and in a few minutes you would come out of the forest on the park walking trail that circled the lake. He turned right and headed towards his favorite fishing spot.
It was near a rocky outcropping at the edge of the main parking lot. The county did little to maintain the park, so it wasn't very popular. Fallon could see a single car in the lot - an older Ford Escort. The owner was probably out walking the four mile trail around the lake. It was late afternoon and the sun shone brightly on the tuffs of green grass that grew out of the cracks in the asphalt.
He sat on the rocks and baited his hook as he took out the bottle and took a small swallow. The liquid burned as it went down. He knew that, after another swallow or two, the burning would go away. He put the bottle back in his jacket pocket because a ranger drove by once in a while.
He tossed his line into the water and waited to see if he would have fresh crappie or canned beans for dinner. He imagined Humpty Dumpty up there in the sky, watching intently.
In less than thirty seconds he pulled in his first catch. Something was wrong - normally God made him wait at least twenty minutes before he had his first nibble. The fish was small, but two or three of them would make a tasty meal. He took another swig form the bottle and tossed another line in the water.
And almost immediately got another bite. The fish was easily twice as big as the first one; a very lucky catch. Maybe drinking brought him good luck? Fallon had a momentary mental image of himself, driving his own BMW, having achieved riches and happiness through drinking.
He took a couple more small swallows and caught four more fish. He looked at the bottle - it was still pretty full.
He decided to head back and clean the fish. He had enough for tonight and tomorrow. He'd actually been lucky - God's egg face frowned down at him.