John Birmingham: Without warning

His theatrics, combined with the almost instant viral panic that seemed to run through everyone, a couple of fender benders in the parking lot, followed by the inevitable blaring of horns, the trilling of alarms and increasingly ugly screams of abuse – it had all been enough to upset Suzie so badly she was shivering, begging to know where Daddy was, and whether it was ‘Mine Eleven’ happening again. Barbara Kipper soothed her as best she could while pushing the child into the back seat, where her stuffed panda, Poofy Bear, might at least provide some comfort.

She popped the hatch and transferred the shopping bags as quickly as possible, with no idea of how she was going to get away from here. The lot was a gridlocked nightmare, with people increasingly desperate to leave, backing and crunching into each other, while more turned up every minute, presumably to panic-buy a year’s worth of discount Pop-Tarts and Cheeseburgers In A Can – the specials of the day.

A short distance away, two men were squaring up for a fight. An actual fight. One was huge, enormously obese, while the other looked tall and fit. God only knew what they were pissed at each other about. Perhaps the big guy got the last of the cheeseburgers. They circled each other, feinting and throwing out air punches, and then, much to Barb’s surprise, the thinner of the two bent over and charged the other guy like a rhino, head-butting him in the gut. They went down in a tangle as police or maybe ambulance sirens seemed to be closing in from somewhere nearby. Barbara shook her head in disgust and threw the last of her groceries into the hatch.

Having unloaded the cart, she didn’t dare push it back to the collection bay, for fear of leaving Suzie alone for even a moment. She could have killed Kipper at this point. He would choose this of all weeks to disappear into the mountains.

As soon as she voiced the thought in her mind, her heart lurched forward. Disappeared.

No, he wasn’t gone too. He was fine. He’d left a hiking plan with her and the park rangers, and as soon as she’d called them they said there was no way he would have been anywhere near the edge of this… effect… event… whatever it was. It was on the far side of the mountains.

She began shaking anyway, an uncontrolled shudder that seized her whole body as dizziness threatened to steal her legs from under her. Biting down on a knuckle until she drew blood helped to focus her mind away from the terror that wanted to swamp her. The pain was something sharp and real, something on which to focus. And as soon as she did, Barb was embarrassed that she’d let herself get so frantic. She gathered up the broken pieces of her cell phone and tossed them into the front passenger seat before moving around to the driver’s door. She was going to hit the shopping trolley if she backed out, but really didn’t care. Getting Suzie away from here was more important.

‘Is Daddy all right, Mommy? Is he okay?’ she asked as soon as Barb had the door closed. It shut out some of the chaos and madness but meant that Suzie could see without any distractions just how disturbed her mother was.

‘He’s fine, sweetheart,’ she said, as calmly as she could manage. ‘His friends from work are phoning him and sending a helicopter just for him. To bring him home. He’ll be back later, don’t worry.’

‘But what if he got eaten, Mommy. I heard a man in the store say everyone was eaten. Everyone.’

‘Daddy is fine,’ she repeated calmly, even as her head reeled with the insanity of it all. ‘And nobody was eaten, Suzie. I don’t know what’s happened, but nobody was eaten. That’s just silly talk. Now strap yourself in, sweetie. This is going to be very dangerous.’

The young girl snapped her seatbelt to show that she’d already done so, and Barb apologised for not noticing. She keyed the ignition (which worked perfectly, like those of all the other cars in the parking lot) and slowly but resolutely backed out of her parking space, pushing the trolley aside with the rear bumper. A few more scrapes and scratches, then.

The view out of the back window was bedlam, with people swarming and vehicles everywhere. Barb gritted her teeth and kept moving, even as she butted up against shoppers who didn’t move out of her way. Some hammered on the window – one guy punching it so hard it cracked, causing Suzie to squeal in fear. But Barbara Kipper refused to stop, believing that to do so would see them trapped. She was only making a walking pace, but kept going. Not for the first time was she grateful to be driving a small car in this parking lot. Whereas SUVs and sedans soon got themselves jammed together, almost like broken teeth on a zipper, she was able to thread, very slowly and determinedly, through the crowd, until she made it to a small hedge line at the edge of the lot and gunned the little Honda right on through it. The car didn’t like it much, and the scratching of branches on the paintwork was hideous. She almost certainly knocked the wheels out of alignment while mounting the kerb, but she was suddenly able to press the accelerator and break free onto Harvard Avenue. They bounced and hit the road with a terrible, metallic crunch. But at least they were out.

As they drove away in the heavy traffic, Barb was certain she heard the pop of gunfire. She couldn’t help but keep looking at the phone, wondering if Barney had got through to Kip.

Somebody must have tipped off the ragheads, because they were wailing up a storm. Long ululating cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ rolled around the dusty confines of Camp X-ray, drifting over the razor wire. General Musso heard them as tinny voices emanating from the speakers of a nearby computer in the situation room of the Naval Op Centre, at the southern end of the base. ‘Operation centre’ was a grand title for such a modest facility, a demountable hut with heavy grey air-con units rumbling away at the windows. It was a relatively mild Caribbean day outside. Late winter in Cuba was almost but not quite balmy. The brigadier general knew he could probably run up and down the nearest of the scrubby, low-rise hills that surrounded this part of the base without raising much of a sweat. But the room was stuffy. Dozens of laptops had been plugged into the existing cluster of workstations and they were all running hard, dumping waste heat into a space that was already overcrowded, with at least three times as many occupants as normal.

Having given up on the computers in frustration, Tusk Musso leaned over the old map table, gripping the back of a swivel chair, biting down hard on the urge to pick it up and throw it through the window. He was so angry – and, just quietly, so weirded out-that there was a fair chance he could have heaved that sucker all the way down to the water’s edge. The bay was deep cerulean blue, almost perfectly still, and the chair would have made a satisfying splash. Unfortunately, Musso was the ranking officer on the base today and everybody was looking to him for answers. Guantanamo’s naval commandant, Captain Cimines, was missing, apparently along with about three hundred million of his countrymen, and a whole heap of Mexicans and Canucks into the bargain. And Cubans too, Musso reminded himself. Let’s not forget our old buds just over the wire.

‘What are the locals up to, Georgie?’ he rumbled.

His aide, Lieutenant Colonel George Stavros, delivered one brief shake of the head. ‘Still hopping around, sir. Looks like someone really kicked over their anthill. Our guys have counted at least two hundred of them bugging out.’

‘But nothing coming our way yet?’

‘No sir. Santiago and Baracoa are still quiet. A few crowds building, but nothing too big.’