John Birmingham - Without warning

‘So. You’ve heard about the council?’ he said, addressing the room.

They all nodded and mumbled that yes, they knew about the arrests now.

‘Did you know you’ve been drafted?’ he asked Basco and Chugg. ‘You’re on the Executive Committee now.’

‘No. Nobody’s told us anything,’ replied Chugg.

Kipper rubbed his neck, which felt stiff and very sore. He noticed he still had a smear of dried blood on the back of his hand. ‘Well, I met the guy behind the coup d’йtat a few minutes ago. General Blackstone.’

‘He’s here?’ asked Barney.

‘Yeah. Hiding down in the deputy mayor’s office.’

‘Did he have any explanation for this morning?’

‘Said it was a fuck-up, and we should get over it.’

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Ronnie, who considered ‘heck’ and ‘gosh, darn it’ to be pushing the boundaries of decent language. ‘He said that?’

‘Close enough,’ said Kipper, as he leaned back on his desk. ‘He pretty much threw everything back on us. Said if we didn’t want the city to die, we’d have to step up to the plate.’

‘And what about the councillors?’ asked Barney.

‘I have no idea. He’s got them detained for protection or some crap, somewhere. I dunno what that means, short or long term.’

‘Well, it sounds like this asshole feels perfectly free locking up people he doesn’t get on with,’ said Tench. ‘What’d you tell him, Kip?’

‘I didn’t give him an answer either way,’ he replied, chewing his lip. ‘And I’m not happy. I’m a thousand fucking miles from happy. But he’s right about one thing: no matter what we think of him, we have a responsibility to the city. We still need to get a handle on food distribution. As of right now, there is no market solution to the problem of empty shelves, because most of the market disappeared behind the energy wave on March 14. Priority number one is food. We have enough in aid shipments coming through, if it’s distributed rationally. If not, this city will die. It’ll tear itself apart before we can work out how to feed ourselves.’

He paused to look around. Heather had closed her eyes on the couch, but he had everyone else’s undivided attention.

‘I can’t do anything about the politics. I’ll talk to the army about letting the councillors go, but we have to proceed on the assumption that they won’t. So, despite the fact that everything has changed, I don’t see that anything has changed. We have a good plan to pull the city and the state through this. We just need to make it work. Which means we are going to need the military’s help, no matter how difficult that might be to swallow for now.’

Barney Tench shook his head firmly. ‘I don’t know about that, Kip,’ he said. ‘What these guys look like to me is fascists. My mom’s family, way back when, they came from Croatia. You only got two types in Croatia: fascists and commies. That’s why Grandpa moved here – to get away from that bullshit. And arresting elected officials, no matter how useless, just because it’s convenient, that’s fascism. And I can’t have any part of it.’

‘So what are you saying, Barn? You’re going on strike? I need you, buddy. The city needs you.’

Barney shook his head. ‘You think I don’t know that, Kip? My family live here. Anything I won’t do for you, I can’t do for them either. But this dictatorial bullshit, I can’t do. I’m sorry, man. Some things are just too important. I’ll leave you a formal letter of resignation before I go. But I will go, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

Marv Basco dipped his head. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Do you think Barney’s right, Kip? Do you think we should all just walk off until the army agrees to get back in its box?’

Again, Kipper felt the weight of everybody’s anxiety and expectations settle upon him. ‘I don’t know, Marv. I got no fuckin’ idea. But I do know that if there had been a truckload of soldiers at South Street this morning like there was supposed to be, a lot of people would have lived, instead of getting shot down. I admire Barney’s strength of conviction, but I can’t afford it. I’ve got half-a-million people to look after, to feed and shelter. Half-a-million terrified people at that, all of them looking over their shoulder at that Wave wondering if it’s gonna decide to gobble them up any time soon. The only reason most of them haven’t bugged out overseas is that nobody’s willing to come in here and get them. If we still had transport out of here, they’d be gone. Hell, I’d be gone. Nobody wants to be here, but here we are anyway, trapped. You ever seen what a trapped, hungry, frightened animal can do to itself, or to anyone who gets too close? It’s not pretty. So, if I can’t get them out of here right away, I can at least do something about keeping them fed and keeping them safe from the things I can guard against, like mass fucking psychosis.’

He paused then, to calm himself down a bit. He was beginning to lose it, raising his voice and barking his words out. He sighed, and shook his head in apology.

‘I’m sorry. But, does anybody else feel like Barney? I need to know right now.’

Nobody answered.

The burning rain had closed in again, early in the evening. The army’s weather guys told him it was down to an isolated pocket of toxins caused by a series of fires that had ripped through Portland two days earlier.

Kipper was glad of the weather in one way. It meant he couldn’t see the glow from the Wave. It was visible at night, high up in the tower, as if the devil had thrown open a furnace door on the far side of the mountains to the south. It was a good thing most people couldn’t see it – that Barb in particular couldn’t see it. He was supposed to go out with some of Blackstone’s people tomorrow to inspect the thing ‘from a safe distance’. Whatever the hell that meant. He didn’t think he’d be telling Barb about that little day trip. Her idea of a safe distance probably meant Guam.

‘I’ll be going now, Kip, if that’s okay with you? I’ll take Heather back to my place. She can sleep on our couch for a while. Poor child, she don’t need to be alone.’

He turned fractionally and smiled at Ronnie. ‘Thanks for staying and helping out, Ron. It was kind of a madhouse here today, wasn’t it?’

‘It surely was,’ she agreed. ‘And are you okay now, boss? Should I be pushing you out this door to your beautiful wife and child?’

‘I’ll be leaving soon, don’t worry. I got no appetite for hanging around here at the moment. It’s just that I have no choice.’

Ronnie frowned at him. ‘Don’t talk like that, Kip. There’s always choices.’

‘Yeah, but sometimes they all suck.’

‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘You sure you ain’t a black man?’

Kipper pressed his face against the cool glass of the window pane, beaded with millions of starry droplets of poison. ‘Barney won’t be the last one, you know.’

‘How’s that?’ asked Ronnie.

‘A town like Seattle, people aren’t going to stand for this takeover. And that’s what it is, Ronnie. A military takeover, pure and simple. And I’m helping them do it. I should be stopping them.’

‘Oh, horse hockey! All you’re doing is keeping people warm and safe and fed and watered.’

‘Keeping the trains running on time?’

‘What trains?’

‘Sorry. I was being obtuse. What I mean, Ronnie, is that I don’t know if I can hold this place together. The council, let alone the city. I wonder if we shouldn’t be planning to get the hell out of Dodge. I mean, look at that thing…’

She kept her eyes on him, rather than looking at the eldritch glow coming from just over the horizon.