A raised eyebrow. “Trouble?”
“There was a food riot at the Green River refugee camps. The state controls the town and the army the camps, and nobody took responsibility until five people were dead. Then I got a call from Hill Air Force Base threatening martial law in Ogden if we can’t control the streets.”
“And how do we do that,” Parley said, “when they’ve called up half the Ogden PD for the war? Tell them we’ll restore order if they give us a Bradley and fifty thousand rounds.”
These days Parley spoke as if he’d been upgraded from an elected attorney general to head of secret police for some banana republic. Jim never knew if he was serious or not.
Turning from his brother, Jim made his way to the window and opened the blinds. Beyond the Jersey barriers, the sandbag bunkers, and the armored half-track parked in front of the stairs with its guns turned down the hill, Salt Lake itself looked normal. Light traffic inched along State Street and up West Temple, past Temple Square and up the hill to the university and the neighborhoods at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. Most of the businesses were still open. Didn’t look much different than last spring, in fact, before a third of the population lost their jobs.
And at least the food was still coming in—for now. But when it stopped? The gun nuts that made up his loyal constituency—those same legislators and their followers who had clamored for the former senator to take over when the previous administration resigned under federal pressure—would march on the capitol building and burn it down. Demand that the fire breathers in the legislature secede and hang ’em high if they didn’t. A nightmare.
“Where were you this morning?” Parley asked.
Jim didn’t turn from the window. “Church Office Building. Meeting with the brethren.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “You know how it is. The LDS Church is led by octogenarians. Not exactly light on their feet. The prophet himself is sick again. Don’t know if he’ll make it.”
“All we need from the church is for them to pass the word,” Parley said. “Get the bishops to speak from the pulpit against rioting and disorder. If we can’t manage our own house, the Feds will do it for us. What about the mayor? Was he there?”
Jim stared at the third man. “What’s going on here, anyway? Who is this guy?”
“You don’t recognize me?” the man said. He had a slight Hispanic accent. “Maybe you know my voice.”
“Lazario?” Jim said. “What the hell happened to you?”
“A barbecue gone wrong. Too much lighter fluid. About eight thousand gallons of it, in fact.”
Jim wasn’t altogether pleased to see his old mission companion from Bolivia. He hadn’t seen Lazario Alacrán since the presidential campaign broke up two years ago and he laid off his entire staff, save a few fund-raisers to retire campaign debt. The campaign failure wasn’t Alacrán’s fault—he’d expertly directed opposition research and quietly found work-arounds for campaign finance limits. The man knew how to game the system. It was the same way he’d played in Bolivia all those years ago when the two men were young missionaries wheezing up the streets of La Paz at twelve thousand feet above sea level.
Alacrán always had an angle. He perfected a repertoire of anecdotes—heavily embellished when they weren’t outright fabrications—that induced the proper spiritual feelings in the city’s slum dwellers. When investigators balked, Alacrán told them what they wanted to hear.
No, you don’t have to give up beer. The Word of Wisdom is just advice.
Only wealthy families have to pay tithing.
LDS Church members get preferential access to American visas. Why do you think I speak such good English? I was born right here, but the church sent me to Salt Lake for an education.
Jim squirmed when the lies started flowing, but the man got results. Month after month the mission president would push the young elders forward as the example all the rest of the mission should follow.
Alacrán proved equally adaptable after his mission. He somehow finagled one of those same visas to the United States, prospered with a shady import-export business, extracted millions from rich donors on behalf of the McKay presidential campaign, and landed on his feet no matter how far he fell. Let the world’s last crumb of bread be consumed, Alacrán would no doubt find a lost warehouse full of Twinkies and Ding-Dongs and set himself up as king.
Under better circumstances, he even looked like a survivor, with a wiry body and a weather-beaten face. The kind of guy who can hike fifty miles across the desert living off grasshoppers and his own filtered urine. The burned face and the gauze-wrapped hands diminished this impression at the moment.
“I thought you were in California,” Jim said.
“Nope,” Alacrán said. “That state’s going down the crapper.”
“The whole country is. Maybe you’re better off going home.”
“To Bolivia? Are you kidding? I like it better here. So many opportunities.”
“Opportunities? What are you talking about?”
“So it’s a disaster. Doesn’t mean we can’t make money, collect power. It’s a salvage operation.”
“Sounds dangerous.” Jim eyed the man’s burns. “Playing with lighter fluid, was it?”
Jim sank into the chair behind his giant mahogany desk. He glanced at his brother to see Parley rolling a gold-tipped Montblanc pen between his thumb and forefinger, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Okay, you two,” he said at last. “What are you playing at?”
“Lazario says the gig is up,” Parley said. “After what he tells me about events close to the ground, I’m inclined to agree.”
“You mean total collapse?” Jim shook his head. “No. We’re winning the war. Soon as those bastards reopen Suez and Hormuz.”
“And why should they?” Alacrán said. “Until the Yankees resume food aid.”
“We can’t, or we’ll starve. Our friends up north, too. And if we don’t keep Canada fed, there goes the rest of our oil.”
“So you’ve decided the Arabs can starve. Do you blame them for shutting off the spigot?”
“Fine, it’s a war. People will die, sacrifices will be made.”
“Don’t forget the rebellions at home,” Parley put in.
“They’ll end as soon as the weather turns.”
“The soonest that happens is spring,” Alacrán said. “And that’s assuming the damn volcano shuts its pie hole. What if it doesn’t? Or what if it doesn’t matter, because the damage is already done? Look what has happened in one summer. You think we can survive a second year of global crop failure?” He shook his head. “Think how fast things have changed. Used to be, half the food in this country was never eaten, we had so much of it.”
“He’s right,” Parley said. “Six months ago we were turning corn into gasoline additives. Now we’ve got half the Southwest in refugee camps. The other half is descending on the Midwest like a plague of locusts, looking for food and jobs.”
“And that’s the States,” Alacrán added. “You want to know what I’ve seen in Mexico?”
“Not really,” Jim said.
His chair creaked as he leaned back. He’d considered all of this before. Thought about it every time he saw the protests, every time he saw hostile faces watching his motorcade in the street, wondering if those men carried guns tucked into their belts. And feeling like he was standing in front of a huge, crumbling earthen dam, as raging floodwaters turned it to mud.
“You said you’d seen things,” he said to Alacrán. “What kind of things?”
“Have you been to the Green River camps lately?”
“Yeah, just a few weeks ago,” he said.
“Wasn’t that the end of August?” Parley asked.
“I guess.”
“Three thousand refugees in August,” Alacrán said. “Tops. You’ve got fifty thousand now.”
Jim felt irritated. “I know that. The state still polices the town, you know.”
A smil
e came across the Bolivian’s face. “And doesn’t set foot in the camps, unless invited there by the army. General Lacroix is building a major military base in Green River. Military police patrol the camp, but they only care about political dissent. Drugs, prostitution, even rape and murder are around every corner.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“That’s Utah. Nevada is a hellhole. I was in Vegas two weeks ago. Half the city is pouring out as fast as they can as thugs and gangsters take control of one block after another. But the airport is still open, and billionaires take private helicopters to hotel islands along the strip. To gamble. Can you believe that?”
“See, how bad could it be?”
Alacrán laughed. “You don’t get it, Jim. For a man who once ran for president, you’re naïve.”
“Tell him what you told me about Cache Valley,” Parley said.
“What about Cache Valley?” Jim demanded.
“The Department of Agriculture is about to take it over,” Alacrán said. “Morgan County, too. Maybe even Rich County. Too much black market activity in agricultural goods.”
“But that’s a third of the state’s food,” Jim said. “What do they think this is, Soviet Russia?”
His brother gave a grim shake of the head. “The USDA has already got armed men in Monticello and Manti.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re making stuff up.” Jim took a deep breath. “You know our problem? It’s the two of you. Instead of trying to stop this thing, you keep kicking at it, trying to knock it all over.”
“Jim,” Parley said. “It’s going to fall over whether we want it to or not. At this point, only God could keep millions of people from dying.”
“Then let’s help God do it. Instead of helping the other side.”
“Only maybe that’s God’s plan all along,” Parley said. “You ever think about that? If this is the sifting of the wheat from the tares, you know what that means, right?”
“It means the tares are going to burn,” Alacrán said. The smuggler didn’t sound particularly upset by the prospect, and the religious language sounded even more cynical coming out of his mouth than Parley’s. “But you know what? There are always survivors. Keep yourself alive, put yourself in the right place at the right time, and you come out on top.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Jim said. “In case you didn’t notice, you’re sitting in the office of the governor of the State of Utah.”
“Until that phone rings,” Alacrán said. “And you pick it up and it’s the army. One call, that’s all it would take, and you’re out of office. Waiting in line with the rest of them for a chunk of stale bread.”
“Don’t think they’re not tempted,” Parley said. He rolled his pen back and forth over his knuckles. “If it can happen in Nevada and Arizona—Wyoming, too—it can happen here. Utah would make a nice, contiguous stretch of land under military government.”
Jim’s gaze drifted to the two-by-three-foot map of Utah pinned to a corkboard on the far side of the room. It was shaded with colors and marked with crosshatches. Red Xs marked half a dozen refugee camps along the rail lines—federally controlled territory—with the big camp at Green River. More red at the major military bases and the army proving grounds. Yellow for the abandoned or partially abandoned towns on the Colorado Plateau, on minor highways, far from major rail or interstate, and largely inaccessible due to fuel shortages. A green swath ran the length of the state, marking the population centers in the north, down along I-15, through Beaver, Cedar City, and St. George. Safe territory, although the final stretch from Cedar City to the Arizona border was probably optimistic. More green around the major power plants, the coal fields of Carbon County, and the reservoirs in the mountains. Other small towns sprinkled in green as oases of self-sufficiency, hunkered down until the food and fuel shortages resolved themselves.
The problem was the yellow. It had doubled in size in the past six weeks. Fifty percent of the state was now lawless, and that yellow part grew day by awful day. It had nearly engulfed the southern half and was now biting at the population centers to the north.
“Listen,” Parley said, interrupting Jim’s thoughts. “Say you’re right. Things quiet down. You hold the line, keep Utah civil when half the country panics and flies apart. Keep the refugee camps from meltdown. When life returns to normal in a few years, they’ll beg you to run for president. Nobody will care anymore that you have polygamist cousins.”
“Do you really think so?”
“But meanwhile, let’s prepare for the worst. Make sure we’re ready to stay alive on the other side. To thrive.”
“And how do we do that?”
“It’s a contingency plan,” Alacrán cut in. “Nothing big, only a few operations to consolidate power in the hands of the governor and his allies, before the Feds snap it all up.”
Jim felt himself moving past some invisible line, beyond which he would not be able to step back. A point of disloyalty to the government, a point of selfish pursuit of his own survival at the expense of his people and his state. No, that was wrong. It was about building strength. What could he do as a puppet of the federal government? Nothing.
“Go on,” he said at last.
Parley crossed to the window. “When a great empire collapses, it is replaced by fifty or a hundred little kingdoms, each one led by men strong enough to seize power and to hold it against other kings, governors, and warlords.
“We’re practically an island,” Parley continued. “Surrounded by deserts and protected by mountain ranges. Thank Brigham Young for that. That’s exactly what he was thinking when he led the Saints west. And when the federal government pulls out—or we drive them out—”
“Are you kidding?” Jim interrupted.
“What?”
“Drive them out? You’re talking war with the United States. That’s nuts.”
“Of course it’s nuts,” Parley said with a shrug. “We’re talking worst-case scenario. Things have pretty much collapsed by then. The army goes rogue. That kind of thing.”
Jim blinked at him then sighed. “Fine, then what?”
“Assuming all that,” his brother continued, “we have to hold Salt Lake, Ogden, and Provo. That’s the bulk of the population right there.”
“Millions of people in Utah,” Jim said. “We produce what? A third of our own food.”
“Less, once you take away fertilizers, fuel for tractors, and so on.”
“Exactly. No way around that.”
“So? A population reduction is inevitable.”
Jim stared. “Chilling how calmly you say that. Makes the hairs on my arms stand on end to hear you toss out the death of millions of people like we were talking about roadkill.”
“We’re in overshoot,” Parley said. “Once you strip away modern agriculture, look around, and realize we live in a desert, suddenly it feels like we’re living on Easter Island before the collapse.” He shook his head. “We can be sentimental, or we can be practical. There’s no room for both.”
“Anyway, there’s another problem,” Jim said. “The instant we declare independence from Washington, every rural town in the state will declare independence from Salt Lake. We’d need an army. And that means weapons.”
“Agreed,” Parley said. “Feds pull out, we’ll move to secure the army proving grounds. The air force base. Take what’s left from the National Guard armories.” He nodded at Alacrán. “Lazario diverted some weapons from the arms heading south to Mexico. Assault rifles, grenades, even machine guns.”
Alacrán had been staring up at the colored-in map of Utah but looked over at mention of his name. “And I’ll get more, so long as you’re willing to pay.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Jim said. “You’ll be collecting every step of the way, won’t you?” He turned back to his brother. “Weapons aren’t enough if it comes to war between the cities and the countryside. The cities will have two million people. The rural areas a tenth that, but they’ll have the
food.”
“Only until we take it,” Parley said. “And then we’ll own it, we’ll control the land and the labor.”
“And how will we take it when our soldiers will be walking skeletons? If the Feds pull out, it will only happen at the end. Only after they’ve fed our boys into their army, stripped us of anything of value, and left us in the desert to starve.”
“And what if we get your army its food?” Parley said. “What if you found yourself with the biggest food stockpile west of the Rockies?”
Jim leaned forward. “What are we talking about?”
“Thirty-five hundred tons of wheat. Eight hundred tons of beans and rice. Eight thousand head of cattle, and three thousand hogs.”
“That’s something,” Jim said. “Not enough to stop your—what did you call it?—overshoot problem, but enough to feed an army.”
“Two small problems,” Parley said.
“Only two?”
“First, the Department of Agriculture guards this stash. It’s not a big force, which is part of the reason they haven’t managed to ship it out yet. Maybe a dozen armed men, is all.”
“Still, we’re talking about the Feds. Stealing that food puts us in open rebellion.”
“Only if we’re caught.”
“Your second problem?” Jim said.
“Raiding the food stores will make dangerous enemies.” Parley rose to his feet and moved toward the color-coded map. “But that’s worth the risk, because all this food is stored in one central, well-protected valley. The perfect spot from which to launch expeditions against rebellious towns on the Colorado Plateau.”
Even as Parley stretched his finger to the green, hundred-square-mile circle south of Panguitch, a sick lurch rose up in Jim’s gut. Anger. Jealousy. Thirst for revenge. Fear of vengeance.
“Blister Creek,” Jim said, voice hollow. “Jacob Christianson.”
CHAPTER SIX
When Jacob returned to the cabin after his meeting with his sister and Officer Trost, he trudged inside on lead feet and found his wife teaching two girls how to use an old-fashioned loom by pumping the treadle with their foot and passing the shuttle by hand. Fernie excused herself when she saw him. Jacob eased her wheelchair down from the porch and then pushed her over the rocky ground, down to the meadow by the creek. A pair of milk cows stared at them with big brown placid eyes, before returning to their grazing. Jacob helped Fernie out and the two sat in the shade of a cottonwood tree.
The Gates of Babylon Page 5