Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (9 page)

“They’re all black,” Sadie said.

“They could just be collecting them from corpses they find. To send a message.”

“Some message,” Sadie said, and studied the area inside the fence again. To the northeast, beyond the residential and the downtown areas, the Veterans Memorial Bridge spanned the river. There were armed men on it, and it was surprisingly free of dust.

Near the bridge was a greenbelt and the athletic fields and imposing buildings of a campus the map identified as Franciscan University. Columns of gray smoke rose from various parts of the campus, and even from a mile away they could smell meat cooking. They could also see people tending fires, and sitting behind tables that had been set up to sell various items. What they were using for money, Sadie couldn’t tell.

“That bridge is their cash cow. They’ll hold it at all costs,” Blakely said. “They’re probably charging a heavy toll. No one will argue unless he’s got a big force of his own.”

“His?” Sadie said, but knew immediately the bait was worthless. You could argue about sexism and human rights all day long if you were living in a safe, secure society.

But they weren’t living in a safe, secure society. Now all that mattered was how much force you could unleash against enemies. Some people might be following a “live and let live” philosophy. The Amish or the Mennonites, if any of them were still alive. But Sadie doubted anyone else was living and letting live. Americans weren’t suited for it. She might as well be living in Somalia, where the only people with rights were the ones with guns.

    Sadie studied the Interstate running between the north side of the university and the curving river. The locals had incorporated the earthwork of an overpass as part of the security barrier they’d erected around the downtown area. The interstate crossed the river, but another road ran south along the waterfront. Down there, about three quarters of a mile away, a second bridge had been blown up. It’s twisted skeleton remained in the river, a hazard for any large boats that sought to move north or south.

    “I still say we ought to scout it and find somewhere else to get in.”

    “Uh-uh,” Blakely said.  He’d finished his own scan. As far as he could see, there were no gaps in the perimeter. Between the cameras and the roving guards, they’d get caught. They’d have to fight. Or they’d have to wait until darkness to cut through the fence somewhere. The risk would be lower, but the booby traps would be real, he guessed, and the time they wasted could let the Geiger counter get away. He had to prioritize the needs of the mission—stealth versus speed.

“We’re going right through that road block.”

“That’s dumb,” she said.

“Maybe so,” Blakely said, and clenched his jaw. The girl was about as annoying as anyone he’d ever met. “We’re still doing it.”

    Sadie sighed.

“All right,” she said. She’d already decided that if Blakely started a fight with the locals she’d put her hands up, back away, and say “I’m not with him.”

    Blakely tucked his binoculars into his pack and moved a few things around. Sadie shrugged her own pack onto her shoulders and turned away. They descended the stairs and walked through the open front door of the house and stepped out onto Sunset Boulevard. Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the roadblock.

No one pointed guns directly at them, but the six men standing in front of the two overturned trailers were clearly ready to fire at anyone they took a dislike to.

    The man in charge was intimidating. At least to Sadie.

    He had to be six-six, and he was carrying a surprising amount of muscle for someone alive nine months after the end of the world. His face was smeared with greasy green and black paint. His mottled green camo belonged in an old Schwarzenegger film—as did his massive chest, biceps, thighs, and calves, all of which looked like they were about to burst through his clothes at the slightest provocation.

    Sadie didn’t want to think about where he was getting his protein.

    “State your business,” the musclehead said.

    “Looking for a girl,” Blakely said, staring right into the eyes of the man he’d already begun to think of as the jolly green giant. The guy was six inches taller than Blakely, but he didn’t see why an unexpected stomp to the knee couldn’t even them up.

    “Looks like you got a girl,” the man said, and his eyes scanned Sadie’s legs and belly and breasts and face. “What you need another one for? You greedy?”

    The men behind the musclehead laughed. Blakely ignored them.

    “She came here in the last 24 hours,” Blakely said.

    “Blonde hair, blue eyes, skinny...she’s really pretty,” Sadie said. “A sweet girl.”

    “We don’t care much about how sweet they are,” the giant said, and again his men laughed. “All we care about is what you pay your passage taxes with.”

    “Passage taxes?” Blakely asked. “Last I heard this was America.”

    The men surrounding the giant laughed.

    “Shit,” the giant said, and he looked over his shoulder at the men behind him. “Why does everybody keep saying that? We ain’t been America since 1970.”

“1970?” Sadie asked.

“Here we go,” said a bearded man.

“That was when that commie Nixon took us off the gold standard. That volcano last year was just the last nail in the coffin.”

The musclehead spat out a gob of brown tobacco juice. It splattered on the gray dust, quickly soaking in and staining the ground.

“How much are the passage taxes?” Blakely asked.

“Ten thousand calories,” the giant said with a grin. “Each. Unless you want to trade something else.”

The men behind the giant snickered while Sadie did some quick math.

“That’s all our food,” she told Blakely.

“I know,” Blakely said, his eyes still on the giant. “Which doesn’t work since these clowns are interfering with U.S. government business.”

“Who you calling a clown?” the man asked. He swung his AR-15 toward Blakely.

The giant spat.

“Ain’t no U.S. government,” he said. “So unless you want to turn your asses around and march away, or get yourself shot and that girl there taken in by our protective custody services, it’s 10,000 calories. Each.”

As one, the other men behind the giant swung their rifles around to point at Blakely and Sadie.

Blakely slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Easy now,” the giant said.

“How about I give you something more valuable than calories,” Blakely said, and when his hands came out of his pockets, one of them was holding a hand grenade with its pin removed. “Like a lesson in manners.”

For several seconds, no one moved. The giant and five men behind him seemed as frozen as a winter-bound river. Then they scattered, four of them backpedalling into the gap between the two overturned trailers and disappearing around the other side. Two others turned and ran along the fence line.

Even Sadie put distance between herself and Blakely, stepping backwards quietly until the giant and Blakely were left facing each other ten feet in front of the gap between trailers.

“Should we shoot him, Junior?” one of the men hiding behind a trailer asked.

“No!” the giant yelled.

Blakely smiled.

“What do you think, Junior?” Blakely asked. “You willing to be a little more reasonable?”

“Hell, man,” Junior said. His lip was trembling, and he looked like he was about to cry. “You’re supposed to counter offer. You know...lowball it...three hundred calories or something. This is a free market city.”

“I’m not here to haggle or talk economics,” Blakely said.

“Nobody’s ever paid more than twelve-fifty, and that guy was a idiot. Wouldn’t nobody come here if we was taking ten thousand. Ain’t y’all never been here?”

“No, we ain’t,” Blakely said.

“Shit, the girl can get in with a blowjob,” Junior said. “That’s how the blonde done it. We just give the high end as a test. See what kind of folks we’re dealing with.”

Blakely relaxed a little.

“Now you know what kind of folks you’re dealing with. We don’t want to trade food or blowjobs. What else you want?”

“The grenade?” Tiny said, his eyes locked onto Blakely’s hands. “Can’t have you walking around with it anyway, right?”

Blakely grinned.

“I thought this was a free market city. No big government interfering in your private property decisions.”

The giant looked stumped, so Blakely said: “One grenade it is. But I’ll need you to hold it while I get the pin out of my pocket.”

The giant swallowed, but he held out his hand.

Carefully Blakely passed the grenade to Junior, who put both hands around it to make sure the spoon didn’t pop off.

Blakely stuck his hand in his pocket, moving it around slowly at first, then more and more frantically.  

“Sorry, man,” Blakely said. “Must’ve fallen out of my pocket somewhere. Maybe you can find it. Or get you a paper clip. You got paper clips in your free market paradise?”

    “You got some balls, man,” Junior said, and swallowed. He looked over his shoulder. “One of you assholes find me something for this thing.”

He looked at the other men, who had crept out from behind the trailers but were still hanging back, their rifles slung or pointing down. Junior turned back to Blakely.

“We could use someone like you here. You thinking about staying? Nobody’d harass the girl if she was yours.”

“I’m not his,” Sadie said. “And I’ll kill anyone who tries to make me theirs.”

Several of the men smirked, and the bearded man laughed. Sadie glared at him and his face went serious. He was a bulky guy, and the corners of his mouth were stained brown from tobacco juice.

“You’d beg to be mine if you had a little taste of this here hogleg,” the man said, and reached down to grab his crotch.

Sadie was about to respond when Blakely interrupted.

“We’re just looking for the blonde,” Blakely said. “She’s got something of ours.”

“Hey, there ain’t gonna be no violence, is there?” Junior asked.

“I’m not looking for any,” Blakely said.

“Okay,” Junior said as he stepped aside and pointed at the gap between the overturned trailers. “You’re in. But stay off the side roads and out of the houses till you get to the downtown. We got all kinds of surprises in there.”

Sadie glowered at the bearded man as she walked behind Blakely through the gap in the trailers.

“That was dumb,” Blakely said after they were inside. “Antagonizing them. Now they may retaliate.”

“What was dumb was giving away a grenade.”

“It got us in quick. Fucking around on the perimeter would’ve taken all night.”

“If we have to go chasing her around West Virginia we might need that grenade.”

Blakely smiled.

“What?” Sadie asked.

“Next time I’ll let you give them a blow job.”

Sadie scowled. Blakely laughed.

“And for your future information,” he said, “I’ve got twelve fragmentation grenades in this pack. Not to mention the flashbangs and smoke.”

“Didn’t you bring any food?”

“Yeah,” he said. “In your pack.”

“Asshole,” Sadie said, and walked off ahead of him, mumbling curses all the way.

After four blocks of abandoned fast food restaurants, gas station convenience stores, banks, churches, grocery stores, a dry cleaner, and a tanning salon—they found armed men walking the streets in pairs. Other people walked the streets as well, in rags and makeshift ponchos. They moved aimlessly, or stood in clumps next to barrel fires. The black coal smoke continued to darken the sky to the east.

At an intersection someone out of sight laughed out loud, the kind of crazy guffaw Sadie hadn’t heard in what seemed like forever, as if the laugher had no cares in the world, and a bright future ahead. She stopped. The laugh had come from somewhere down the block of an empty, dust-heavy street. Three houses down, a pink bicycle lay on the dusty yard in front of a two-story home, its front wheel still spinning. The home had shifted sideways under the weight of dust and ash, and was partially collapsed onto the one-story house next to it, like a pair of old drunks trying to navigate a tricky walk to the bar.

The laugh sounded again, a little farther away.

“What is it?” Blakely asked.

“The last time I saw a bike like that…” she said, and thought about the taste of Rice Krispie treats.

As they walked further into town they saw houses whose roofs and yards had been mostly cleared of dust, though the ever present gray particles were still settling on them, slowly bringing the gray back. Where the dust had been removed, Sadie saw dead flowers and grass. A few scraggly green weeds fought for life here and there, getting just enough dust-mottled light to eek out an existence.

“Humans are weeds,” Sadie said, starting a poem she had no intention of finishing, yet thinking that if her grandfather were around, he’d finish it—improved of course. Maybe he’d even commit it to paper.