Authors: Walter Jon Williams
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic
Prime Power, as usual, was a problem. The Ranger unit that had liberated Rails Bluff had returned that morning to rubble-sorting duties in Greater Memphis, the military police unit that had replaced them was fully occupied, and all of Jessica’s other units were fully committed.
But the situation in Spottswood Parish demanded instant attention, so in the end Jessica flew in with everything she could scrape together: part of her headquarters staff, a few military police, and a platoon of engineers. They took off in four big Sikorsky helicopters so as to seem a more impressive force. By this point she was receiving distress calls from Spottswood Parish itself, from members of the parish council who had first called the Emergency Management people, then been shunted around the various departments of the federal bureaucracy until at last someone had thought to have them contact Jessica.
Landing at Clarendon, she’d been met by local dignitary— a little white-mustached fellow who introduced himself as a judge named Moseley—who had then taken her to the courthouse, where she’d met Mrs. Ashenden, who calmly announced she’d shot the sheriff dead with her derringer and settled the whole problem.
Jessica thought it smelled hinky. She’d been involved with Army politics long enough to know the scent of a cover-up, and she had the feeling a whitewash was settling very solidly into place here, that blame had been preassigned and that certain people— who very conveniently were dead— were going to take the fall. But she didn’t have enough force to simply take over the parish— not yet, anyway— and she didn’t have enough properly trained personnel to launch an investigation. She decided that for the moment she’d settle for keeping all the locals from killing each other.
She called the field near Clarendon where the helicopters had put down, and she sent one of them to the refugee camp north of town, and told them to wait there and prevent any of the locals from disturbing whatever they found there.
Whatever happened, she could preserve the evidence.
She told the sheriff’s department to stand down. She ordered the auxiliaries to go home. She replaced the deputies at the barricades around the Carnegie Library with her own people.
Which put her own soldiers in the middle, between the library and the locals, and this was something she did not like. She made sure more soldiers were on the way— she called the Old Man and asked him to send her a battalion of MPs ASAP— but that still left a lot of armed people in the Carnegie Library who could lose their patience and start shooting up everything in sight whenever they decided to do so. Somebody needed to talk to them.
And she, unfortunately, was the person on the spot.
According to the locals, the people in the library had been calling out that they’d wanted to negotiate since at least the middle of the night. That, at least, was hopeful. So she had a sheriff’s department bullhorn delivered to her, and she shouted out from behind one of the neighboring buildings that someone from the Army was coming out to talk to them, and then she straightened her helmet and her shoulders and took a long breath and walked around the corner, into the sunlight, and into the sights of anyone in the library who cared to shoot her dead.
She marched down the sidewalk until she was opposite the front door of the library, made a precise military 90-degree turn, and crossed the street and onto the uneven concrete walk that led between live oak to the library door. The library loomed before her, clear in the right eye, a blur in the left. Jessica stopped halfway to the door, by the blackened remains of a burnt-out police car, and dropped into the at-ease position, feet balanced and apart, hands clasped behind her back. She cleared her throat. Her hammering pulse rang inside her helmet like a bell.
If the locals want a massacre,
she thought,
this is where I’m shot dead. And if the people in the library want to make another point, they can shoot me, too.
“Is there a Nick Ruford in the building?” she called.
She hoped that tension hadn’t tautened her vocal cords to the point where she sounded like one of the Chipmunks.
There was a moment’s pause, and then a voice answered, “I’m Nick Ruford.”
“I’m Major General J. C. Frazetta, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I am taking command in this parish as of now. I spoke to your wife and daughter a couple hours ago, and they want you to know that they’re safe and well.”
There was another pause. “Where are they?” asked Nick.
“They are at my headquarters in Vicksburg. They came down the Mississippi on a little boat, and encountered some of my units conducting a search-and-rescue mission.”
When Nick next spoke there was a tremor in his voice, as if relief had almost sent him into a swoon. “And the other families?” he asked. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “I have no reason to believe they are anything other than safe.”
There was a buzz of voices from inside the library. Jessica waited a moment, then spoke again.
“Mr. Ruford, may I come inside? It will make things easier, I think.”
There was more discussion. Jessica distinctly heard someone say, “We don’t let Whitey in our castle !” but in the end the front door swung open, and Nick Ruford’s voice came from the interior.
“Please come in, General.”
“I’ll take off my sidearm first,” Jessica said. She took off her pistol belt, put it on the trunk of the burnt-out car, then walked into the library.
The tang of gunsmoke still hung in the still air. There were about fifteen men in the library, and two women, all armed. All were bigger than Jessica. Not all of them looked friendly.
“I’m Nick Ruford,” one of the men said. He was in his mid-thirties, Jessica judged, with a week’s growth of beard and a pistol on his hip. He stood somewhat behind the open door, and he limped to the door and pushed it shut.
Jessica’s heart gave a leap. She had been hoping not to be shut in with these people.
Instead she looked at them. Tried to make eye contact with each in turn. Allowed herself a slight smile.
“Mr. Ruford’s family has told me what’s been taking place here. That’s why I am placing this area under military control and calling in troops. The first units have already landed. The local sheriff, who may have been responsible, was shot dead last night. His department has been taken off duty. I believe the crisis will shortly be over, and you will be reunited with your families.”
She looked at them, saw wild hope mingled with scornful disbelief.
“I want national media here,” Nick Ruford said. “I want the networks. I want CNN.”
Well that
is smart,
Jessica thought. “I can arrange that,” she said. “I have about fifty of those reporters camping out at my headquarters with nothing to do but bother my people, so I imagine we can send them here to bother you.”
“I suppose you want us to surrender!” one man said. “I suppose you want us to put down our guns and walk straight into jail!”
Jessica thought about this for a moment. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t. I don’t have enough people here to guarantee your safety. I think you’re safest right as you are.” She nodded at the belligerent man. “Eventually, when we can guarantee your safety and reunite you with your families, I hope you will put down your weapons. If what I have heard from Mr. Ruford’s family is anything like the truth, I don’t believe any of you will be charged. I will take you all out of Spottswood Parish on military aircraft, and I will take you to my headquarters. You will have your media coverage. And I will protect you— you have my word on it.”
She still saw loathing on the man’s face. Most of the others looked thoughtful. She looked at them all again, and as she did so a wild inspiration struck.
“And in fact,” she said, “until I can move you to my headquarters, I propose to move my headquarters here. With your permission,” she nodded toward Nick, “I hereby declare this building the headquarters of the Mississippi Valley Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”
*
“No, sir,” Jessica said, “I am
not
a hostage. These kind people let me move my headquarters into their building. I’m carrying on business as usual.”
Indeed she was. She’d persuaded the Warriors to allow her a couple of unarmed communications techs, and she’d moved communications gear into the Carnegie Library, set up a satellite dish on the lawn, and had been in touch with her command for the last six hours, deploying her people in response to the last major quake.
“This is a very singular thing,” said the President into Jessica’s ear. “Are you certain you know what you’re doing?”
“No, sir,” Jessica said. “I’m not certain at all. I’m way the hell off the map, is where I am, and I know it.”
The President seemed amused. “Well, Jessica,” he said. “If you survive, you’ll be a hero. I suggest that you try to live.”
“I will do my very best to follow your advice, sir.”
“I should mention that the Justice Department is expressing a considerable interest in what has occurred there in— is it Spottywood Parish?”
“Spottswood, sir.”
“Yes. The Justice Department would like to handle all criminal investigations.”
“I don’t see that would be necessary,” Jessica said. “I’m sure the Defense Department has all the necessary expertise.”
“The Attorney General tells me that the FBI has the finest forensic investigators in the world.”
“I believe that the Defense Department can match them, sir. After all, we have people that are regularly called to identify corpses found on old battlefields.”
The President paused a moment. “Jessica,” he said, “I suggest you concede this one with grace. After all, they won’t be investigating
you
this time. You haven’t shot anybody yet.”
Jessica smiled. Her argument had been
pour l’honneur du pavillion,
as it were, strictly for the record. She was perfectly happy to hand the investigation over to Justice.
What if we bungled it?
she thought.
“I’ll do as you advise, sir,” she said.
“Very good. You call me if you need anything, now.”
Jessica put the handset of her secure phone into its cradle. She looked up at Nick Ruford, who was sitting on the edge of the reference librarian’s desk.
“That was my boss,” she said. “He wanted to make sure you didn’t have a gun pointed at my head.”
“Well, that’s good,” Nick said. “I’ve had bosses who wouldn’t have cared one way or another.”
*
In the hours that had ticked by, Jessica had been able to make more deployments into Spottswood Parish. She’d put a guard at the broken Bayou Bridge to keep people from slipping out of the parish. Another guard went onto the Floodway. The guards were only of modest value, since people who knew the country could boat out elsewhere, but these arrangements would have to do until more personnel came along.
She wouldn’t be able to accomplish much until the Rangers came from Memphis, which should happen late tonight or early tomorrow morning.
Her guard on the A.M.E. camp reported that the place seemed undisturbed. They’d chased buzzards and dogs off a number of corpses, but were otherwise keeping the place pristine until forensics people could show up. Whatever had happened there, no one had yet had the notion of cleaning it up.
By tomorrow, she figured she’d have Spottswood Parish under wraps.
She’d also sent out for MREs and fresh water. It was the best she could do without setting up a field kitchen in the Carnegie Library. Still, she noticed that some of the Warriors didn’t eat a bite until she demonstrated the food’s safety by eating some herself.
Another call came in, from one of her scout helicopters she’d sent out to look for refugees, one with a mandate to check Spottswood Parish on the far side of the bayou in order to look for the refugees who had fled from the A.M.E. camp.
She received the message, acknowledged, then stood behind her desk, raised her voice so all could hear. “Excuse me,” she said. “I wanted to let you know that your families have been located. They are on the far side of the bayou, and apparently they are all safe. My pilot would like to know if he should attempt to make contact.”
What she did, in the end, was order the chopper to land so that she could put the Warriors and their families in direct radio contact with one another. She stood back from the radio and watched as the heavily armed guerrilla fighters laughed and sobbed along with their wives, husbands, children, and parents.
She felt tears sting her own eyes at the sight. She looked up at Nick Ruford, saw him watching the scene with the expression of a man just dragged by his hair from quicksand. “I really thought we were all going to die,” he breathed.
“Nope.” Jessica grinned. “I bet it’s nice to have a life in front of you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The words sounded heartfelt.
Jessica looked at him. “I served with a General Ruford once,” she said. “He was my teacher at the War College. I don’t suppose you’re related?”
Nick absorbed this, then gave her a sly look. “Sun Tzu, right?” He laughed at her startled expression. “General Ruford was my father,” he said.
“He was a good soldier.”
Nick nodded. “I know.”
“You look a lot like him.”
And then, to Jessica’s surprise, Nick turned away, and sobs began to shake his shoulders.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The damage to stock, &c. was unknown. I heard of only two dwelling houses, a granary, and smoke house, being sunk. One of the dwelling houses was sunk twelve feet below the surface of the earth; the other the top was even with the surface. The granary and smoke house were entirely out of sight; we suppose sunk and the earth closed over them. The buildings through the country are much damaged.
We
heard of no lives being lost, except seven Indians, who were shaken into the Mississippi.
—
This we learned from one who escaped.
Narrative of James Fletcher, Nashville, January 21
The President watched on television as Jessica Frazetta and the people who had been occupying the Carnegie Library in Shelburne City left the building, stepped into school buses escorted by Humvees filled with Army Rangers, and drove to the field near Clarendon where helicopters waited. He watched as the helicopters rose into the Louisiana sky, then descended onto grassy Mississippi soil near Vicksburg. The President watched as the refugees stumbled out of their doors of the Hueys and ran across the downdraft-beaten grass to be reunited with the families. He watched the weeping, the embraces, the celebration, the cries of joy.
He turned to Stan Burdett and his two principal speechwriters. “You boys better write me a hell of a speech,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. President,” one of the speechwriters mumbled.
They and the President sat on couches in the Oval Office, and watched the news on a console television carefully disguised as an antique piece of furniture.
“I want
drama,”
the President said. He waved his hands in the air.
“I want
compassion.
I want a promise of
punishment for the guilty
along with
protection for the helpless.
I want to call for
reconciliation.
I want to appeal to the
angels of our better nature.
When I go to Mississippi, I want to deliver the best speech heard on this continent since Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I want this to go down in history as the Vicksburg Address.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Now get busy.”
“Sir.”
The speechwriters left. The days in which a President scrawled out a speech on the back of an envelope and kept it in his hat were long gone.
Stan Burdett stared for a long moment at the scene on the television. “I can’t believe this happened,” he said.
“I
believe it,” the President said. He shrugged and reached for his cup of coffee. “What does it take to make evil come into the world?” he asked. “A
can of beer and a cheap handgun. That’s all. In this case, we had a psychopathic sheriff who was in a position to enforce his orders through martial law. He was a weak and malevolent man put into a position of power during a period in which the normal checks on his power ceased to exist. His actions don’t surprise me in the least.”
The President shook his head. “Where Paxton seems to have been naive is that he apparently thought he could do it without anyone finding out. That was absurd of him— we have a whole class of people in this country who do nothing but hunt out the things that people want to hide.”
He shook his head. “You’d better have Bill Marcus contact Jessica Frazetta real soon,” he said. “She showed good political instincts here. We need to get her on the campaign trail soon, and run on
our
ticket. Oh— look at this.” He pointed at the television. “This guy’s priceless.”
The Grand Wizard had appeared on the television, gazing firmly at the camera through glinting spectacles. “Omar Paxton was a great American,” he said. “He was a hero. Whatever he did, I’m sure it was for the safety of the good people of Spottswood Parish. But now the liberal media are blowing everything out of proportion and trying to make it seem like Omar was some kind of crazed killer! Well, who got killed, that’s what I want to know. Omar Paxton got killed, and his deputies! They got massacred! Cut down in performance of their duty! The liberal media can say anything they want about the dead, I guess, ’cause the dead can’t defend themselves against slander, but I know in my heart that Omar Paxton was right.”
The news program switched to a commentator, one of the legion of pompous talking heads who provide instant analysis for the media. The President reached for his remote and switched off the set.
“How’s that Grand Wizard for spin?” the President asked. “How’s that for the new party line?”
“That’s vile,” Stan said. “That’s beyond putrid.”
“I bet the Klan gets a thousand recruits in the next week,” the President said. He sipped his coffee. It had gone cold, and he put the cup down.
Stan looked at him. “People say
I’m
cynical,” he said.
“Human evil is bottomless,” the President said. “I suppose we can hope that the same can be said of good, but in my job I don’t deal with good very often.” He looked at Stan, and amusement tugged at his lips. “Do you think if I went to Purgatory Parish, or whatever the place is called, and made a speech eulogizing Omar Paxton and calling for race war, that I couldn’t get a war started?”
Stan looked horrified. “Sir!” he said. “You can’t be serious!”
“No point in it.” The President shrugged. “The experiment’s already been tried, in Bosnia and Rwanda.” He looked at Stan again. “It wouldn’t be hard, though. Plenty of people in rural areas would listen. Their way of life’s been destroyed, and not just by the earthquake. Fifty years ago the U.S. government decided there were too many farmers on the land. Programs were put into place. Congress passed laws. And rural America was wiped out! The farmers— the backbone of the nation, we used to call them, salt of the earth, the yeoman that Thomas Jefferson hoped would guarantee the independence and virtue of the republic— they were all nudged off their own land. Now almost all American agriculture is controlled by a few companies, and folks who work on the land are tenant farmers plowing the land their fathers once owned.
“Why shouldn’t they be angry?” the President asked. “Why shouldn’t they look for someone to blame?” He pointed at the blank television screen. “Sheriff Paxton and that Reverend Dingdong Frankland there,
they’re
the only people helping the rural poor understand what’s happened to them. Their answers are violent and insane and based on a delusional understanding of how the world works, but at least they
have
answers. The only answer the government has for those people is, ‘Hey, you’re redundant, you should have abandoned the land and gone to work in a factory years ago.’ No wonder those people start joining apocalyptic cults. To them, the end of the world isn’t a strange idea.
The Apocalypse already happened to them!
Their whole world was destroyed.”
The President laughed. “And now those poor countryfied bastards have been hit again. Agribusiness won’t be hurt by the quakes, not for long— Congress will make sure that almost all the relief money will go to the big agricultural conglomerates, just the way they’ve done for fifty years— but all the small businesses, and the family farmers, and the small entrepreneurs will be kept living under canvas for months, and when they come out they’ll find out that all their dreams will have been repossessed. Then the
next
generation of Franklands and Paxtons will tell them who to blame, and then we’ll have a heavily armed rural proletariat— the backbone of the nation, we used to call them, salt of the earth— all lynching all the wrong people, the way they’ve always done.”
The President fell silent. Stan looked at him for a long moment. The President shrugged. “Don’t blame
me,
Stan,” he said.
“I
didn’t do it. It all happened practically before I was born.”
“Yes, sir,” Stan said.
The President looked at his friend. “It’s the American way,” he said. “We don’t respect our fathers, we don’t overthrow them, we don’t bury them. We just
forget.
It’s not like there was a hidden conspiracy to destroy rural America— it was all in the open. All the documents, all the policies, all the legislation ... it was all public. People could have read all about it if they’d wanted. But they forgot. The earthquakes of 1811 weren’t a secret, either— people could have read about them if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t know the history. They forgot their fathers. That’s what Americans do— we think about the present, and often about the future, but never about the past. Our fathers have always been dead to us. We just
forget.”
The President rose, put his hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Our job is to help them. That’s why I have to go to Vicksburg and make a speech that will help everyone put all this to bed ... to help them forget. If no one remembers Omar Paxton in twenty years, then we’ll have done our job.”
He straightened, then walked to his chair behind Rutherford B. Hayes’s desk. “Better get busy, Stan,” he said. “And don’t forget to have Marcus call General Jessica, get her political career started.”
Stan rose slowly from the sofa, took a few steps, then hesitated. “I can’t decide,” he said.
The President took his seat behind the massive desk. “Decide what, Stan?” he said.
Stan looked at him blankly. “I can’t decide if you’re crazy or not,” he said.
The President gazed at the papers in front of him. “I’m doing my job, Stan. And if I stop doing my job, I have lots of bright young folks like you to tell me.”
Stan licked his lips. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“It’s much easier when you don’t care. Really it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should try it sometime.”
Stan left the Oval Office in silence. The President frowned at his paperwork for a moment, and then his glance rose to the photograph of the First Lady that sat on a corner of the broad desk. A knife of grief suddenly twisted in his heart, a pain so pure and exquisite that it took his breath away. For a moment tears spilled down his face.
Then the moment passed, and all was tranquil again. It was much better this way, the President thought as he wiped his face. Much, much better.
*
Jason could breathe again. This was the good news.
The bad news was that his journey was over. When he left the Army-run refugee camp near Vicksburg, it would be to join his family, his father in California or his aunt in New York State. He would return to a human environment that was in its essence intact, that nestled in comfortable dominion over Nature, a world that had not been destroyed and ravaged and remade, like the Mississippi Delta. Like himself.
The world to which he would be called seemed alien and strange, its comforts false, its reassurance suspect. It seemed to him that the life of the refugee was somehow more genuine than any other form of existence. It seemed to him now that, whether he knew it or not, he had
always
been a refugee, thrown like a chip into the Mississippi, carried by accident and destiny down its broad, brown expanse.
It seemed to him that everyone was a refugee, if they only knew it.
The deputy’s bullet had broken three ribs and burrowed a long, erratic path along the large muscles of his back. Neither the bullet nor the broken ribs had punctured a lung— his breathlessness was a result of a wrecked rib cage and trauma, not internal hemorrhage. Once he’d had his ribs strapped he was able to breathe again— strange how a tight bandage permitted breath rather than restricted it. Drugs had eased the pain and swelling of his torn back muscles.
The presence of Arlette had healed him faster than any drug. The breath he drew from her lips was sweeter than any air he had known. With his ribs strapped, he could walk with Arlette about the encampment, along the lanes between the ruler-straight Army tents where refugees lived with their families.
Now that the journey was over, Arlette wore her birthday presents all the time. Diamonds glittered in her ears, in the little golden lily in the hollow of her throat. And in her pocket she carried her grandfather’s watch.
Jason knew he had at most only a few days to enjoy his time with Arlette before he was shipped out. The Mississippi had relinquished control of his life, but that did not mean he was free. It meant he was now controlled by adults, adults whose decrees, so far as he was concerned, were as arbitrary and implacable as those of Nature.
Bright green wings flashed overhead, and Jason looked up to see a parrot perch on a nearby awning. In the chaos of the earthquakes and evacuations, the parrot had been set free. It had been living in the vicinity of the refugee camp for as long as Jason had been there. Some of the refugees had tried to catch the bird, but thus far it had evaded them.
“What will you do now?” Jason asked. “You and your mom, I mean.” His throat was still swollen, and he still needed to tilt his head to speak without pain.
“I don’t know,” Arlette said. “I don’t think
she
knows, yet. The house in Toussaint is all right, so far as we can tell, but the country is still flooded, and will be flooded for weeks, and there isn’t any way to get there unless we can use a helicopter.” She touched the pocket where her Gros-Papa’s watch rested. “And— well, it’s not nice there right now.”
Jason took her hand and squeezed it. “I wish we could stay together. Maybe I can talk to my dad, to Aunt Stacy, to
someone
...”
He looked up. “Oh, my gosh,” he said.
His father was walking toward him, striding down the lanes between tents. He wore khakis and a Dodgers cap and a button-down shirt with a sky-blue tie, which was his idea of casual dress. But Frank Adams wasn’t alone: a whole mob trailed behind him, at least two television cameramen, a pair of skinny bearded men with microphones on long booms, a blond-helmeted reporter picking her way in high heels and short skirt past the refugees and their clutter.
Jason was stunned. He stood rooted to the spot while his father came close to him and threw his arms around him. “Careful!” Arlette yelped, wary of his broken ribs. But Frank didn’t put much strength into his hug.
“Hello, son,” Frank said. “Surprised to see me?”
Jason looked at the cameras. He could see the lenses focusing on him, zooming in for the closeup. “Who
are
these people?” he asked. Pain knifed through his throat, and he winced.