“My guess is there are well over twenty-five million people in our region. We are close to Interstates 81, 66, and 95. These are going to be prime migration routes. That is, until they aren't, which should be any day now. We are on the edge of the largest tribal migration in human history. Only postâWorld War II Europe comes close.” She paused.
“It's going to come in waves. This is all based on the assumption that the grid stays down for at least two weeks. What I see happening now is the early wave. People âin the know' have started to bail. We are seeing that currently. If they are in a position to know, then they probably have a place to go and the resources to get there. The next wave will be bigger. The people will be desperate, hungry, but still semicivilized. The third wave, and anything thereafter, will be ugly. Very ugly.
“Our first waves of migrants will be from the BaltimoreâWashington megalopolis. Their route will be either south or in our direction. Our direction takes them into the Midwest. They will try the interstates, but the sheer volume of traffic, roadblocks from the state, plus car wrecks,
and what have you will cause people to take to the side roads. Any questions or comments so far?”
“Other than we are fucked?” This was from Diesel.
“Oh, you have no clue,” replied Night. “Because right behind that will be the waves from the Philadelphia and New York City areas. Maybe even Boston. You see, it's winter and these people will all try to go south. Sure, some will head toward the Midwest. They'll run into the Chicago migration. About the time they hit Richmond, I think they will run into determined resistance. Like a wave, they will bounce off and flow backward. Oh, this is going to be fun.”
I didn't like how her voice was becoming shrill. “Night, what happens if the power comes on in a couple weeks?”
“G, think about it. By then the situation will have spun out of control. How would the Feds be able to start up the distribution system? Would you want to drive a truck filled with food anywhere without an armored escort?”
“Actually, it might be fun.” I looked around. No one seemed to agree with my assessment. That included Night.
“The power won't go off everywhere,” she continued. “What was that old sci-fi book?
Hammer's Fall
? Some places will stay up. Some nukes will be waiting and ready to flow power. I don't know enough. My guess is it won't be so bad in some places. I just don't know. I do know that we may see a million people or more head this way. Do you have enough bullets for all of them, G?”
She was angry. Why at me I had no idea. Nor did I have a reply that would make her less angry.
I shrugged. “I'll do what I always do, Night. Fight until I kill them all or they kill me.”
From the back of the room came the sound of Freya's laughter.
Â
I spent the night at the station. I woke after a couple hours' sleep on a pile of BDUs, feeling less than refreshed. I headed for the bathroom, but seeing Frank slip in before me changed my mind. He may have been an okay person, but he could peel the paint off a wall. The man must have had a steady diet of toxic waste. I went outside instead. Max was walking toward the station, coming from the direction of Shelli's, and I decided to catch him before he went in. He did not look happy. For the first time I could see faint lines on his faceâbarely discernible, but there.
He saw me, so I stopped and waited for him and smelled the moisture in the air. I also felt how the flow had changed.
I have a talent for being able to feel the currents of emotion in an area. For me, it's the ability to recognize changes in what people are feeling versus what they are displaying, usually before they know it themselves. I don't think it is all that unusual. Being receptive to it and trusting it is where most people stop.
Today felt different. Very different. What was usually flowing was now coiling. What I normally saw as transparent wisps of color were now darker, uglier, opaque shapes. I summarized it for Max when reached me: “There is some weird shit in the air today.”
“Yeah, I think the outflow has picked up a notch.”
Nothing else was said. We started walking toward the tollbooth. We climbed up into the bed of the same truck I had sat on with Freya.
As people approached the tollbooth, they rolled down their windows and shouted questions at the guards. Our guys just yelled back, “Move on. Just keep going. There is help further along.”
I looked down Main Street. The guys in the militia were standing by and sitting on their cars, weapons prominently displayed, grim looks on their faces. I saw one of them flip a driver off in answer to his shouted remark. It was kind of ironic. Not all that long ago, we would have greeted this much traffic with smiles and grandiose cash flow projections on the part of the business owners.
Without looking away from the traffic Max asked, “What do you think?”
I knew what he was asking and I was tempted to answer him the way the world expected me to. I didn't.
“It's time to go. This is going to go bad soon. When it doesâwell, everything here is going to get washed away. If we move now and we move fast, we can surf the front of the first wave and maybe come out untouched.”
Max nodded. “Yeah. It's not like I haven't thought of that. Shelli isn't going anywhere. It's âDo or Die' right here for her. I drove over to the farm late last night and talked to Tommy. Same thing. Plus, do you feel like we owe these people something?”
“The only people I owe are Night, you, and Ninja. I don't really give a shit about this town or its people. It's just a stop on the way to somewhere else for me.”
“You ask Night what she wants to do?”
“I don't have to. I know.”
“Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, we might as well gear up and get breakfast while we can. This is going to get messy.”
Â
We held the line for three days and nights with only minor problems. I told everyone working the main lineâwhat had been Main Streetâto paint their faces. I wanted them looking
Mad Max
crazy.
Some of them really got into it. But did they just stick with black and green? No, they had to be individuals. We had skull faces, a clown face on one guy that was downright creepy, and a whole group that looked like American Indian meets KISS. I think there were even a couple of Celts or Blue Face people. I didn't ask.
We had minor problems with the migration: cars overheating, running out of gas, or just breaking down. If the owners did not have gold or goodies, then they were moved on. I didn't care if they claimed to be congressmen, neurosurgeons, or the second coming of Alexander the Great. They walked out of town and kept going. I didn't have time to vet anyone, and I figured that there would always be time later to sort out the surgeons from the sturgeons. If there was a later.
People were slapping themselves on the backs and talking shit about how good we were doing. They weren't feeling what I was feeling. I am not a coward, but I felt the steadily increasing pressure of badness building. I wanted to take Night and get the hell out of town.
The farm had already reported incidents in which three people had been shot. Granted, Hawk was fast on the trigger. I told him to leave the bodies there for now. Let them be a warning. If they got too rancid, we could throw some lime on them.
Yet flood of migrants kept coming, and the crowd mix was changing. For the first few days, people had plans
and preparations. They had somewhere to go. They were interested in one thing generally, and that was getting where they planned to go as quickly as possible. The current wave seemed to be people who were running only because they felt that somewhere else had to be better than where they had left.
I would go down the line when it wasn't moving. Nobody wanted to go far from their cars in those first days because they had all they owned inside. But after the third day, that began to change. In fact, I started noticing cars that didn't match the drivers: the Volvo with Juan, Rico, Marta, and Tito inside and a Harvard sticker in the back window. When I walked the line, I would talk to people. Actually, people would complain to me, and then I would ask questions. I had hoped that the cars would move smoothly and steadily past us. It didn't work that way. Someone always had to stop and talk, or break down, or both.
Most of these cars were overdue for servicing, because the owners hadn't been able to afford the upkeep. When they broke down, getting parts was a problem. There were not a lot of parts available, at least not new ones. So we had to make repairs with used parts. Then there was the gas situation. People had been joking for a while that the quality of the gas in Mexico was better than in America now. Some folks converted their cars to run on other fuels. That worked in an urban area, but out here in the sticks it was harder to find alternative fuels.
Food was its own problem, and what people told me was not good. The Zones never had a lot of food stockpiled, but there had always been food available. Even outside of the Zones, food had still moved, just not
as much and often at a higher price. But that began to change. The rich and well-connected could still shop at stores that accepted the currency backed by the International Monetary Fund. The rest of us, though, began to experience chronic shortages, with only certain items available. One month everyone had potatoesâbut only potatoesâbecause they miraculously appeared everywhere in quantity. I like potatoes, so I was happy. People who didn't like potatoes were not, especially since their trade value was low.
Skipping a meal was one thing; everyone was used to that. Eating food that could best be described as marginal was okay because it filled your belly. People starved, but not that many of them. The ones who did starve were usually old, sick, or unable to hustle their daily bread for some reason. Now things were worse.
By Day Three, there was nothing left on the shelves to buy or steal. The trucks didn't deliver because the warehouses were not getting shipments. Warehouse weren't getting shipments because no one was guaranteed of getting paid. We were long past accepting checks or “Net 30.” Who was going to sell a truckload of anything on credit when you couldn't count on the buyer still being in business the next day, let alone thirty days from nowâor be certain the truck would even arrive at the warehouse with a load at all?
What I was hearing was fear morphing into panic. People living in the Zones had relied on government help for so long that when it stopped, they reacted as if Christmas had been canceled. When the full realization hit that the government was no longer able to provide any help, the Zones were going to go nuts.
Hell, they were already starting to. Airdrops of expired MREs did not inspire confidence. People told me the big camps were getting restless.
That's what had flushed these citizens out ahead of everyone else. Watching “those people” going on a rampage was not what they had signed up for. The problem was the Feds had concentrated too many of
those people
into small areas and then made them totally dependent on the government's largesse.
They had gone along, sucked it up, skipped getting high, and taken the shit, but now where was the payback? Where was the food?
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
On Day Six the line broke. It failed because the community failed. It may have been due to maliciousness or it may have stemmed from sheer stupidity. When it comes to my fellow man, I never rule out either one. After five solid days, everyone was getting burned out. It was cold. The hours were long, and the people were increasingly obnoxious. You could see the attitude of the locals change from “Oh, those poor people; I am so glad I am not one of them” to “What a bunch of assholes.” I had already been there on Day One, but that was my default mode.
What broke the line was a couple of dumb shits doing exactly what we told them not to do. We had told both the militia and the patrols, “No food or drink in front of civilians.” We explained why. Everyone nodded their heads. Everyone understood. So what motivated two dipshits to have a picnic on the hood of a car in front of the migrating hordes, I will never know.
Not only did they have a picnic, they also invited a local woman to join them. My guess is that these dickheads thought she'd be so impressed by their manly, carefree
behavior and wealth, that it would lead to them getting their knobs polished.
It didn't work out that way. The sea of humanity saw the steam coming off that food. Even more, they rolled down their windows and caught a fragrant noseful. They slapped those cars into Park and bailed right there.
It was immediate chaos. Even inside the station, I felt the change like a bolt of lightning. I grabbed my old BAR and a belt filled with magazines and hit the door. About the time I cleared the threshold my radio was talking to me about a “problem.”
I made it to the tollbooth in record time. But the word that we had food and were giving it out had already spread at the speed of sound.
Meanwhile, the two idiot patrolmen had started arguing with the crowd. It was their food and they did not have to share. Less than a minute after it reached the yelling stage, somebody fired the first shot.
All this brought the migration to a halt. People got out of their cars and heard that it was a disturbance about “Food!” Since we had a line of cars that stretched for miles at this point, who knows what people were telling each other by the time it traveled a few hundred cars back.
The situation deteriorated rapidly. Bursts from M-16s and small arms echoed along the main line. I found out later that the militia had gotten spooked, thinking they were going to get overrun, and had just cut loose. That triggered a chain reaction among our people. They slaughtered civilians like so many cattle in a chute.