John Birmingham - Without warning

Tench hustled in, keen to be off the street. ‘S’okay, I don’t need a drink, Kip,’ he said. ‘Although a glass of water would be nice.’

Barb wiped the last of her tears away and fetched him a glass from the cupboard. She drew the water from a five-gallon plastic bottle on the bench by the sink. It didn’t matter how many times Kip assured her that the water supply was all right, she refused to drink straight from the tap anymore. She handed the glass to Barney, who was abashed to see that she’d been crying.

‘Oh man, I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’

Barb kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Barn. I’m just being silly. Ignore me, I’ll go look after Suzie. She gets lonesome in the dark after a while.’

As his wife disappeared, Kip pulled out a couple of chairs from the kitchen table. ‘You sure I can’t offer you a drink, buddy?’ he asked again. ‘Wouldn’t mind one myself, the day I’ve had. Well, the week, really.’

Barney sat down and said no. ‘I have to keep a clear head, Kip.’ He paused and looked his former boss in the eyes. ‘I’m sort of on the run.’

‘What?’

‘It’s Blackstone, Kip. There’s a warrant for my arrest… Oh man, I hope you don’t mind me coming here. I don’t want to get you in trouble.’

‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous,’ Kipper shot back. ‘You’re always welcome in my house. But what’s going on? Is this another one of his stupid fucking games? I’d have thought he’d learned his lesson after the last time.’

Tench shook his head. ‘The warrant is for sedition and sabotage – for aiding the Resistance. Specifically, for cutting off the power to Fort Lewis last week.’

Kip smacked his open palm down on the scarred oak table that Barb had dragged all the way over from New York. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he swore. ‘Those assholes at Lewis -’

‘Kipper, it’s true,’ said Barney, talking over the top of him. ‘I was part of that. In fact, they couldn’t have done it without my help.’

‘Oh.’

An awkward moment followed, a hot uncomfortable silence broken in the end by Kipper.

‘Well, they’re still assholes… So why’d you do it, buddy? You would’ve known you couldn’t really hurt them – crews had that supply back on within hours. It’s like poking a wild bear with a stick. You’re gonna get your ass bit.’

Barney rubbed his face and leaned forward, elbows on the table, a picture of desolation. ‘I did it because it was the right thing to do, Kip,’ he replied firmly. ‘Even if it seemed pointless and made things even worse for me. And my family. They cut Lorraine and the kids off support – did you know that? After I left the department, Lorraine couldn’t even get the food stamps that everyone else got. We had to live off the neighbours and her family. Church helped too, for a while. Then their stamps got cut off too.’

‘Damn, Barney. I’m sorry… I didn’t know.’

‘You wouldn’t, Kip. You’ve been too busy holding this city together. And I didn’t want to put you in the shit by contacting you. They’ve been watching me pretty closely. I meant what I said when I left: I can’t collaborate with a dictatorship. But I want you to know that I think what you’ve done for the city, for the people, that’s been great.’

‘Oh come on, Barney,’ Kipper said, with a hint of irritation. ‘Don’t piss in my pocket. That was my job. It was yours too. I respect your reasons for going, but I couldn’t agree with them – for myself, you know.’

‘I know. I… Look, I don’t want to sound like a nut, but do you think we could go somewhere I can’t be seen from the door?’

Kipper was nonplussed, but Barney was so agitated and so genuinely concerned that he picked up the candle and led his guest through to the sitting room. He could hear Barb and Suzie playing tea parties upstairs, and thought about calling out that it was almost time for bed. But he kept his mouth shut. Barbara would probably put Suzie down in the next half-hour or so and crawl into bed with her. She’d been doing that most nights since the Disappearance.

The sitting room was dark, and the curtains drawn. A small fire in the hearth threw a flickering glow over the room. Kip blew out the candle he was carrying and placed it on an old plate that was already scummy with melted wax. ‘Welcome to the new frontier,’ he said dryly.

They took seats facing each other across a glass-topped coffee table, covered with Barb’s old magazines. Past editions of New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and the February and March issues of Vogue. None of them would ever be published again.

‘Okay,’ said Kip. ‘What have you got yourself caught up in, Barn?’

Before answering, Tench rubbed his palms on the knees of a pair of jeans that looked like they hadn’t been washed in a long time. ‘Like the arrest warrant says, Kip – the Resistance. That’s what they call themselves. Frankly, I think it’s a dumb name, a bit too Secret Squirrel for me, but there’s a hell of a lot of them out there. Normal people, you know? Some, like me, worked for the city, some used to work for the feds, lots of business people too – but normal, Kip. Really normal people who just don’t like the way this thing, this fucking Disappearance, has been used as an excuse to mess around with stuff, to start cutting off people’s freedoms.’

‘But Barney, we’re not free to live as we did. You can surely see that?’

Tench leaned forward. ‘We’re not free to run our plasma TVs twenty-four hours a day, no. We’re not free to gorge ourselves to death on junk food and Vanilla Coke, no. We’re not free to travel anywhere we want. We’re not free to fill up with gas and drive out to Disneyland. We’re not free from hunger or fear or the threat of being eaten alive by that fucking thing out there, whatever it is. You’re right. None of those freedoms are ours to enjoy anymore. But the basic freedom, Kip – the freedom to say what you think, and to act on it, the freedom to control your own life – that is being taken from us, too.’

Kipper was going to protest, but he had been at the convention when that blow-hard mayor had moved for an amendment to reserve thirty per cent of the congressional seats for the military as an emergency measure. To ensure stability. He’d sniggered when he heard – and then been gobsmacked as one speaker after another rose to support it. And the fact was, the city was still locked down. People were living on handouts and doing as they were told. Food stamps were the new currency. The movement of people and goods was closely vetted by the military. ‘Production Committees’ had been set up to allocate labour and resources where they were most needed. And the local media, although able to work again, was heavily constrained by ‘D Notices’, issued by the Acting Governor but countersigned by General Jackson Blackstone.

‘Barney,’ he said, feeling very uncomfortable, ‘I work with these people every day. Some of them, sure, they’re sons a’ bitches. I wouldn’t trust them with three dollars in change. But I can guarantee you, man, they are not doing these things because they’re all little Hitlers in their hearts – they’re doing it because they’re scared. They’re scared we’re not gonna make it.’

‘We’re not. Not like this. We might survive, but as what? And what about you, Kip? Be honest – do you think it’s a good idea to just rope off a third of Congress for the military?’

‘Well, of course not, Barn,’ the chief engineer admitted. ‘It sucks the big one. But if you’d been there today and seen the chaos on the convention floor… Man, I really don’t know whether that’s the way to go. I just -’