John Barnes - Directive 51

“Where’s Jenner?” Larry asked.

“Near the mouth of the Russian River, north of San Fran. Plenty of time to explain once we’re on our way.”

Mensche looked thoughtful. “My daughter, Debbie, is a screwed-up drug addict who has never finished any schooling or held a job, and she’s doing three-strikes time at Coffee Creek.”

“Oregon?” How to spot a Fed, Bambi thought. We know all the big state pens.

“Yeah. Up till this week, she didn’t write or call and didn’t want me to. Her mom would go over from Nevada a couple times a year to see her and send me short notes about her, mostly just that she’s healthy, and not getting out anytime soon. I—well, I’m worried, because I just hope someone remembered to do something for the prisoners when things started to crash, even if it was just to leave doors unlocked. I worry about that. I want to know she’s okay—”

Bambi nodded. “And I’ll get you almost halfway to Coffee Creek. And Quattro can give you a lot of help too, and he will if I ask him.” She reached out and touched his shoulder. “We’ll find out what’s happening with Debbie and make sure she’s okay.” She glanced back at Carlucci. “Well, there you have it. Roth goes because she belongs to the Feds, and we can’t leave her here with a Baron of San Diego who intends to be the Duke of California someday. Larry goes because it’s a one-way trip, and it gets him closer to his family.”

“Why are you going?” Carlucci demanded. “And how?”

She smiled at him, focusing her warm Miss Used to Do Beauty Contests Beam into his eyes. “Well, I had enough trouble with the old tyrant when I was just his daughter; I’m not sticking around to find out what it’s like to be his heir and vassal. And somebody’s gotta sail the boat.”

Despite what the rest of the country knows in its bones, some of the people in Washington are responsible sorts who are capable of forethought; they began to leave when the electricity stopped coming back up, while some cars and trucks were still running. Their disappearance made things inconvenient and difficult for the less foresighted, who, seeing things deteriorate quickly, left soon after, making things still worse for the remaining people with even shorter time horizons.

Around midnight, a tipping point was passed. National leaders and government personnel had withdrawn into safe places like the DRET compound at St. Elizabeth’s. Ordinary citizens had fled, if possible, knowing what was coming.

At two A.M. the people left were the completely immobile, the stupid, the stubborn, and people without foresight or impulse control.

Crowds in the street were hungry and looking for excitement. The remaining inventories of booze and bling in stores and warehouses were unguarded. Nearly all police had deserted; hardly any of the unlucky people left in ordinary residences were capable of defending them. Some of the boldest and most impetuous of the street crowds broke shop windows; no one stopped them from carrying off liquor and jewelry (white crusts and foul odors around the electronics kept them mostly untouched). Bartenders and bouncers died; doors and windows broke; the cornered innocent died with nowhere to run; recalcitrant defenders burned in their refuges; and authority did not show up.

When the remaining population in the streets fully understood this, like a hot room flashing over when a window breaks, like an auction stampede when the last lot is up, destruction and violence spread through the city.

Washington was still the capital. Federal law-enforcement people and military units moved in and backed up the few surviving city forces; units of the Maryland and Virginia Guard joined them, and not long after dawn, the rioters had been swept into a few large holding areas, fire lanes cleared to isolate the big fires, and a sort of order restored, especially in the area close to the National Mall.

Tens of thousands of bodies lay in the wreckage, or unburied in the streets. Some blocks burned for days, unattended. Countless old people, children, bedridden patients, people whose powered wheelchairs had stopped running, and the few brave people who would not desert them, died buried in rubble, smothered in smoke, or roasted alive. Great scars of tumbled buildings, toppled poles and posts, and broken concrete slashed deep into the heart of the great city. And in a few large auditoriums, stadiums, and office buildings, tens of thousands of people who had formed the mob, or fled one mob and been caught up in another, or just gone out to see what was happening, were held there by the guns of the guards, waiting in hunger and despair for whatever might come. The horror was: nothing did.

Midmorning of the next day, when he was briefed on the situation, Peter Shaunsen, Acting President of the United States, asked three questions: Was anyone interested in being on the rebuilding commission? Could some of the fire lanes be cleared and paved into boulevards or malls to beautify the city? And what was being done to ensure that everyone who was not dead was able to vote?

A Secret Service man who was at the meeting skipped his next shift to walk over to see Chris Manckiewicz at the Washington Advertiser-Gazette . He expected to be fired when he returned, but no one even asked about his absence, so he just picked up his gear and went to his post.

Ysabel was “not what you could call a natural sailor,” Bambi said, not for the first time, to Mensche. The Pacific is choppy in the fall, but nonetheless, most people got some kind of sea legs after a day on the sea.

Bambi had adjusted to the constant retching noises from the girl hanging over the railing. As they had worked their way north, the waves got a little bigger, heralding a storm forming far up toward Alaska, but the prisoner seemed no worse, or at least she had no more to expel.

“At least she’s not a flight risk right now,” Larry Mensche pointed out. He had turned out to be a natural sailor; she’d taught him to hold a course by the compass, allowing her to get long naps all along the way, so that she was in much better shape than she had expected to be.

“I can see why people like this,” he observed. “But I’m guessing this is perfect weather, right?”

“About as perfect as it gets in the fall, yeah.”

A strange urking noise from the rail made Mensche scuttle forward and slap Ysabel’s back a couple of times, clearing something that hadn’t quite come out right, then wipe her face with a damp cloth, surprisingly gently. When he returned, Bambi said, “Considering how much of a pain in the ass to the whole world she’s been, you’re pretty nice to her.”

“She looks a lot like Debbie,” Mensche said. “So… even if it doesn’t make any sense—”

“Naw, it makes all the sense in the world.” Bambi squeezed his arm, and he nodded, appreciating the support. One more point for the man, he can tell the difference between the pretty chick being his buddy and copping a feel. “Hey, chances are that if your daughter needs the help, someone’s taking care of her. Remember that’s half the stories on KP-1—people looking after each other, communities banding together to make it through, all that. She’s probably swinging a shovel on a road crew and getting one big bowl of soup a day, but she’s got somewhere warm to sleep and she’s safe, bet you anything.” It sounded lame to Bambi even as she spoke it; she had to think, If the guards just locked them down and walked away, how long before—