North

by Frank Owen

  Another hiss.

  And the smell of smoke too – quickly hot and acrid in his nostrils. Hank coughed.

  He was familiar with this. He stayed where he was, on the floor, and sent up a sort of prayer.

  ‘Oh, shit. Oh, mighty fuck. Make a space for me, Lord. Here I come.’

  He stood creakily and went over to the door, mindful of his bruises and his abused muscles. He banged on the wood. ‘Hey! Hey! I’m still in here! Someone!’ It was locked. He shouted again, pleading for someone to hear him over the growing moan of the folding structure.

  ‘Please, God, open this door! Please!’

  He tried the door again, expecting the same immovable result, but to his surprise it opened, pushing outward against the unlatched security gate. He stood in shock for a second, then crossed his heart and ran.

  The ceiling of the Senate Chamber was billowing with fire. Bubbles of hot resin and melted plastic fell like God’s judgment from the ceiling. Hank pulled his shirt over his head and fought against the wall of heat. Still the smoke found its way into his struggling lungs and seared them like steak. As far as he could make out, the carpet was already gooey, halfway to melted, a nightmare. Clumps of it clung to his shoes and he slipped and skidded, but kept his balance in the end. He raced on out of the chamber, then paused, trying to remember where the exit was. He knew he had to get down a flight of stairs.

  He went left. The air was clearer that way. And there, high up, perched on a ledge below a painted fresco, was a bundle of striped fur, trying to make itself as small as possible. When Linus saw Hank, he yowled.

  Hank took a breath of the least fouled air, and it cost him. He grabbed a leather-padded chair and leant it against the wall, then climbed up and reached for the cat. He didn’t have time for the coaxing and the gentle voice. He grabbed Linus, expecting to be clawed, but the cat just huddled, exhausted, and let Hank tuck him under his arm like a football. There. One small thing that didn’t have to be destroyed.

  The patrolman made an ungainly hop to the floor and kept on down the first flight of stairs he found. Suddenly it was clear to him what he was looking for. He had to find the women’s bathroom, the same way he’d come in.

  He would have got there too, but he saw that the main entrance was wide open. Strong gusts of cold wind were blasting in now as the heat of the fire forced the air up and out of the building.

  Hank headed into that wind, out of the doorway and down the steps.

  But there was only rubble and a razor-wire fence. The building would come down at some point, and by then he needed to be far away. He paused, panting, then stumbled over the rocky perimeter, feeling along the wire until he found the gap.

  He got onto all fours and crawled, still hugging the cat to his chest. At last he came out into the open street and straightened up, made human again. He hobbled along the asphalt, down and away from the building, as tongues of flame ringed the domes.

  He chose a place to sit and rest overlooking the Des Moines river so he could watch the burning building. It was too impressive to turn his back on. He set the cat down beside him, but it didn’t move, the way rabbits were supposed to freeze when they stared into the eyes of a snake.

  He reached over and dragged the tabby onto his lap, and the two of them watched the Capitol burn, the heat scorching the little hairs on Hank’s arms. Whatever it was, it meant the end of something.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, cat. My name’s Hank.’ The tabby shook, bones sharp and fragile against its fur. ‘You know that song, kitty? “The times they are a-changin’.” ’ Now the domes were collapsing like vaults in a bank heist, sending choking powdery dust to merge with the flames. Hank took another breath of careful air into his damaged lungs.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I think that’s about enough of that. Let’s figure out how we’re going to get ourselves home.’

  52

  It was barely morning when Kurt rolled the Toyota off West Plainfield Road and down the ramp into the decaying underground garage. He found the others and parked. Mario and Sy were quick to escape, as if just being close to an old man, a boy and a woman was sapping their strength. Felix smiled as they ran off to join the rest of the marines, high-fiving them, full to the ears with bravado. Fuckers. That was not a North-versus-South thing; that was people being assholes. Felix had always hated the macho guys. They reminded him of Tye Callahan.

  But you couldn’t choose your fellows, could you? A man had to make do with what he had. Being born Callahan had taught him some things, at least.

  Felix looked around. The parking garage was damaged the way everything was up North, the columns swollen where the metal reinforcing had oxidized. Chunks of concrete lay scattered across the floor, fallen from the low ceiling. The place practically reeked of anxiety and collapse. Perfect.

  It wasn’t full yet. Some drivers had taken the back roads, and Kurt’s team was among the first arrivals waiting for everyone to assemble. A few people sat in groups and examined their weapons, adjusting the straps on their bags, fingering the plastic explosives, feeling the weight of grenades. Felix thought of old-time airports and suicide bombers, the limbo of intention, the way everyone had had to migrate when the United America movement forced the census and everyone had to pack up and head home, whether they liked it or not.

  As far as he could gather, there had been no major hitches during the night journey – just a little mechanical trouble with a Passat, and that had been fixed in fifteen minutes, the driver said. Adams had done his homework, but the cars were old even for the North: a single breakdown was a minor miracle. Felix knew that it helped people to know that they were capable in a real-life situation instead of the dummy runs they’d been doing. Gave a man a purpose.

  The sun was up when the last car arrived. No one besides Adams did a head count. If they had, they’d have discovered one car fewer than had left Des Moines, and one man missing. Adams was banking on them being too preoccupied to notice, and he was right. A leader had to have a plan that not everyone owned, just as he’d kept secret the real size of the Resistance. He figured it was best to keep this secret too. Insurance was what Dyce called the leftover mushrooms in his pocket, and insurance was the word Adams had used in his one-on-one discussion with Otis two days ago.

  Even after the last of the convoy arrived, there was waiting to do. Vida’s meeting with Renard was scheduled to happen at the same time as the Resistance went over the top – eight a.m., so as not to spook anyone, Adams kept saying.

  Felix alternated between keeping an eye on the rising wind outside and watching the man. Sometime during the journey Adams had lost his preacherly gait – or maybe it was seeing the end of Buddy that had eroded him. He was tense now, humming with nerves. Felix counted: Adams had managed to hold off for forty minutes, but he was plainly dying to get it all over with. Felix felt a flicker of sympathy for the guy. As a group they were cornered underground like rabbits in a warren. If Renard really was on to them – and it seemed only a fool wouldn’t have tracked the convoy through the night – all he had to do was toss a grenade in and bring the whole place down on their scheming heads. That would be it.

  ‘Kaput,’ whispered Felix. Years of planning up in a cloud of dust, like Pompeii or one of those Scando volcanoes. And who knew when they would next get a chance? Would there even be any survivors?

  Now Adams was clearing his throat, and Felix focused.

  ‘Right. It’s time. Everybody listening? This is how it goes from now on in. You’ll come up onto the street and the factory will be right in front of you. You couldn’t see it in the dark, but I promise you it’s right there.’ Adams drew a square with his hands, and Felix saw the trembling. ‘Big square building, gray, razor wire every-fuckin’-where. I don’t have to tell you what to look out for; God knows we’ve practiced enough.’

  Felix expected some kind of rallying speech to follow, but it didn’t come. For the first time since he’d met Adams, the man seemed to be out of words. Adams nod
ded at Mario and Sy. They looked to Felix like fighting dogs, primed and bristling, straining against the leash.

  I sure hope you two assholes get the chance to scratch that itch, he thought. It’s now or fucking never.

  And it was only then that the impact of what they were doing rolled over Felix’s head. Adams wasn’t kidding. This was it. No more hiding underground; no more checking the maps and weather boxes; no more jerky; no more whiskey; no more tapes. What had that bought him anyway, except more days to hide away? The pronghorn lived in fear of ghosts, and so did he. And Felix was done being skittish. It was time to turn and act.

  He felt a great calm descend on him. He looked over to the boy. The Weatherman wasn’t any further along the human tree than fifteen-year-old Kurt, with his guns and his blouse and his slow burn for his cousin Bethie. Neither of them had found their place in the world. Lying low and waiting in hope for better times was a shitty way to live. And now here they both were at the gates of the toxic citadel, the poisonous Garden of Eden. There could be no better way to go. He hoped he had lived with as much dignity as he could muster, and he sure as hell planned on dying the same way.

  Felix had no more time to settle his score with the Almighty. He watched from underground as the mortar men went in first, setting their weapons in place along the sidewalk, weighting them, calibrating for the stiff wind. There were no pedestrians in this industrial corner, but still two Resistance soldiers patrolled, on the watch for windows opening in distant apartment blocks, or curious early-morning workers.

  When the mortars were in place, the RPG squad filed up and out into the street. They would take out the innermost walls, the lines of defense beyond the reach of the mortar shells. Now they ran, heads down as they’d been trained, for the outermost rim of razor wire, trusting that it would be gone in the seconds it took for them to reach it.

  There was a hollow thud as the first mortar went up, and then the others followed in quick succession.

  So fast, thought Felix, dazed in the silence that blanketed the city and spread into the parking garage. No one else dared to breathe either. The canals inside his ears protested: they felt blocked. He shook his head from side to side, trying to make the sound come back. But there wasn’t any. Not until the next one.

  And then down they came, mortar after mortar, popping and burning, shaking the concrete columns so that flakes of stone and rust rained down like a plague.

  Adams had his arm raised. When the last of the mortars hit, he dropped it and the Resistance army emerged like cockroaches from under the city, silent but for the pounding of their boots on the thin asphalt.

  The RPG squad moved into place. One after the other they tore holes in the walls that blocked their advance.

  How single-minded they all were! Felix knew that they would wear faces like robots, bleached of all human feeling. The wrongness of it made his heart hammer harder. He was sure he would pass out.

  53

  With every step, they fell further behind. Felix watched the soldiers run ahead: Adams and Sy and Mario in the front line, then Pete and Sam and hundreds more, guns tucked neatly against their backs, focused on what was in front of them.

  At the lip of the ramp, Kurt stopped and grabbed at Felix’s arm to hold him back. Felix shook free and ran on a few paces, then turned back in frustration.

  ‘What’s going on, kid?’ he asked. The boy’s face was flushed, his cheeks pink and his eyes bright.

  ‘You smell that?’ Kurt asked.

  Something acrid. Felix had known no airborne virus that smelt, but then he’d never been this close to the source. It was coming from inside the building.

  As the bombs detonated, the factory was defending itself.

  Why hadn’t Adams planned for that? Felix’s stomach clenched.

  Kurt was nodding, trying to play it cool, but his heaving chest gave him away. At every explosion he jumped a little, and then tried to hide it. The army had come and gone, and the two Callahans looked across the street at the men and women running hard through the strands of wire, trying to cover their faces as they went even as they breathed the toxic air. Adams must be praying that the mushrooms were doing their miracle work deep inside each human cell.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ Kurt asked. He was still panting a little.

  ‘Not one little bit. Why?’

  ‘Just stay here with me a minute.’

  Was he scared? Felix looked out into the morning light, the low clouds moving in over the city and the rising plumes of smoke over the fires. Kurt was still twitching at every explosion, narrowing his eyes to look tough. He has a heart in there somewhere, thought Felix.

  ‘I hear you. Sometimes it helps to hang back a little and get a bit of perspective. Big picture.’ There was real gunfire now, Renard’s men taking aim from their fortress.

  ‘Uncle Felix, what if there was another way? Another option?’

  Felix screwed up his face in confusion.

  ‘Like, it’s not just them or us now, North or South. You see what I mean?’ Kurt ducked as an RPG hit the side of the groaning factory, and Felix half pulled away from his grip to watch it.

  ‘Son, I don’t. Come on, now. Don’t you want to get in there, at least? See what all the hoo-ha is about? This is your big chance.’

  Kurt shook his head, the white hair flopping. ‘Who are you fighting for, anyway?’

  ‘I’m fighting Renard,’ said Felix. He looked at Kurt carefully. The boy was losing it. I should have seen it, he thought. He never sat right with me from the beginning.

  Around them Resistance soldiers were falling – shot, mostly, by Renard’s snipers from inside the factory. They were always going to have the territorial advantage.

  Kurt was insistent, the hand on Felix’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. ‘I’m serious. Those pronghorns. How about we don’t choose a side? What do you think of that? We’re not Southerners anymore really, not since it’s gone to dust, and the North can go fuck itself. Or are you just fighting because that’s all you know how to do?’

  ‘I’m fighting like I used to. Because my whole life I’ve been hanging back and letting bad things happen. I’ve got to take a stand now, Kurt.’

  ‘Me too. Absolutely. Fuck Renard. Fuck him. But fuck Adams too. And fuck you, Uncle Felix. Hell! Fuck me as well! I heard what you said about those pronghorns and about how we all took a wrong turn a long time ago. And you’re right, Uncle Felix!’ Kurt’s eyes were bright; Felix had never seen him this passionate about anything.

  ‘We can get inside that factory. We can get whatever machines are in there to turn the air to poison. And better than that. We can shut down Renard’s magic. With the air gone to shit and no immunity in the tap water, it’ll all be over soon as the mushrooms wear off! The end! Everybody out of the pool! A clean start, like the Great Flood in the Bible. Do you know that story?’

  Felix nodded slowly. Sometimes he forgot that Kurt had never been to Sunday school, never seen a Gideon’s bible in a hotel room, never heard a sermon on the radio.

  ‘Sure. A million times. It always fascinated me. Every useful animal.’

  ‘That’s it! You get it! Only the useful ones, Uncle Felix. This is our chance, right here. It’s not God looking down and judging us, or anything like Adams wants you to think. It’s just you and me. We can decide. Us. The clearest thinkers. The most qualified.’ He thumbed his chest.

  As they watched, a bullet ripped clean through the back of Farrow’s skull near them, as if he’d planned it himself.

  ‘See?’ said Kurt. He was shaking with both fear and elation. ‘No more lessons. He lived by the sword, man.’ Farrow fell face down, silent and professional, his gun tucked neatly against his back.

  ‘You see that? It’s a sign. Let the pronghorns and the giraffes have America. They’re not going to fuck it up,’ said Kurt.

  ‘You’re messed up, son. You know that?’

  ‘I know it. But so what? Who isn’t? Are you with me or not?’

  T
he old man felt around in his ammunition bag and found the pair of patchy apples he’d stolen from the canteen. Wordlessly he offered one to Kurt.

  The boy’s shoulders sagged. He took the apple and turned it around: one side was green, the other red. He stared right into Felix’s eyes, then he bit into the heart of it, and spat it out.

  54

  Dyce was still getting to grips with driving, and the thrill of it. He’d spent years dreaming of horses, the way that they could shrink geography and stretch the known world out to beyond the horizon. But cars! Cars, man. That was real-life time travel. A city that was weeks’ worth of journeying on foot became a couple of hours away. Time and distance got fuzzy in a car. But he couldn’t afford that: not when they were going to meet the man himself.

  He toyed with the upper limits of the truck’s speedometer, watching the miles tick past faster and faster. He had given up on the radio. Sometime late in the night he had tried it, searching for a station he could stand. So far the music was wrong – heavy beats that sounded the same whichever way he heard them, and singers who needed lessons they weren’t getting. He had switched it off. There was a time for music and this wasn’t it. Even if there’d been some decent song on, there was already too much floating around in the air inside the truck’s cabin: thoughts and fears and expectations.

  The women were paying him no attention, lulled into the rhythm that driving allowed. They were close together but did not speak, each occupied with their destination and what would happen there.

  The end, Ruth was thinking. The end of every known thing. She sat straight in her seat, the map book open on her lap, though Dyce hadn’t asked for directions yet. It felt strange to be holding something other than the recipe book, but she’d brought that along too. It was all she had, wasn’t it? Her legacy. Vida’s too. The only real, physical link to the country she had left behind. She stared at the thickening foliage through the window, trying to remember what the trees looked like in South Africa. Were there any maples back home? She tried to conjure up the species she knew, trees transplanted by people who moved on afterward or stayed and put down pale roots of their own: pin oak, blue gum, jacaranda.