by Rod Rayborne
It had become obvious to Rodriguez that the brass had suspected that a full scale attack on the country was coming and had, in the days prior, secreted away personnel and materials, not just in southern California, but around the rest of the country as well.
The tanks, trucks and gear that had survived in the affected cities were hardened. They were undamaged by the EMP.
Rodriguez sat wedged between other men, his head bobbing and rolling as the truck bounced over the broken pavement, following a cleared path opened for them by heavy earth movers equipped with massive shovels. Cars and trucks had been pushed to both sides of the road with ease.
They'd been deployed to assist Zeta Company in a possible engagement with a militia of Constitutionalists in the Anaheim area, said to have migrated down from the central valley and points east, as per Colonel Beckman's radio broadcast. They were headed for a meeting at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Each of the soldiers carried on his or her person, an M4 carbine, four grenades strapped to their belts, a Sig Sauer sidearm and enough ammunition to take down one hundred armed insurgents each.
Rodriguez looked at the men sitting opposite him in the truck. Though they all looked as tired as he felt, it was another similarity they all shared that had Rodriguez on edge. As in the auditorium, all of those in the truck he rode in and ten of the other sixteen trucks behind their own, were persons of color. Hugely disproportionate, considering most of the soldiers who'd come from the southern California region were white.
Yet, instead of sitting in the back of a room, now they road point, the first to engage the 'hostiles', as the protestors where being unambiguously called. Some of those around him had noticed the disparity between the races as well, whispers of discontent drifting between the huddled men before they were loaded aboard the trucks. Cannon fodder some had said, low.
The order had been given; all resistance was to be met with lethal force. If any of the insurgents voluntarily surrendered themselves and their weapons, they would be taken to one of the camps set up to receive prisoners. Those who refused to lay down their arms were to be removed from the gene pool with great prejudice.
The convoy rumbled south along 57 behind the earthmover unimpeded for mile after mile. In places where the road was simply too damaged to be navigable, the shovel carved out bypasses, defaulting back to the freeway when possible. Cars were pushed along guardrails, some tumbling over the sides to fall thirty feet to the pavement below.
The signs were up. Martial Law. Stay in your homes. Or Else. Still they saw people standing about in clusters, silently watching the procession roar past. From windows and rooftops in some areas bed sheets had been tied together and hung imploring help, begging for supplies or warning outsiders to keep away.
Now as the convoy swept past, the soldiers saw people dressed in filthy clothing, coming out of the surrounding buildings, sullen faces grimly watching them, some wrapped in bloody bandages or holding broken lumber or tree branches for support. There were no wild cheers or happy smiles. No one waved or called out to them. No one tried to intervene. There were too few of them, too many of the others.
Their lives had been shattered in the unending international grapple for power. How it had started was irrelevant, only how it had ended had any meaning at all. And it hadn't ended well. Not for them, at least. Now they simply stood amongst the bodies and fallen buildings, watching the soldiers trying to reassert their dominance once again.
For their part, the men in the trucks watched the little knots of ragged survivors warily. In a city with a population reduced by more than 90%, those who remained looked more like refugees than once proud Americans. They sensed the mood; their indignation had turned to something else, something darker, foreboding, bitter. This was the reality of post war America.
Instead of cheering crowds, they were met with suspicion, disgust, hatred. These would become enemies in the not too distant future, rag tag bands of 'freedom fighters', they knew. Like the Constitutionalists they were moving to confront, these people would one day join forces, less well organized than the military but by then far more desperate. They would fight with them somewhere and when their supplies ran out, fight with each other. Scratch and claw for a chance, however slim, to live just one more day, one more hour. It was coming.
They turned down another wide avenue in a business district. Six lanes with no room to wait in the middle between the yellow lines. In one place a broken main spewed water diagonally in an arch that splashed the soldiers as they drove through it. In the heat it was refreshing, the men opening their arms to welcome the brief soaking. Minutes later their clothes were already dry.
Passing one intersection, movement fifty feet down the street caught Rodriguez's eye. He saw several people scatter like rats as the army thundered by, merging into the surrounding buildings, quickly lost to sight. On a make shift spit they had hurriedly constructed in the street between the wrecks, hungry people had tied a dog to cook over an open fire built up with what flammables they could find. Chairs, tables, broken up bookcases and piles of the books they once carried, other fine wood furniture from a nearby home store. The dog was long, stretched tightly on an iron bar resting on four others, overcooked. Looking like a charcoal sculpture, the scene told Rodriguez that the grocery stores in the area had already been depleted. The people were becoming menacing, feral. Bad times ahead.
The convoy moved around a corner towards the north and the Buena Park neighborhoods were lost to sight. Other neighborhoods came into view with more of the same small groups of survivors. From the top of the Capital Records building an American flag had been erected from a tall pole, upside down. It was filthy, torn and spotted with holes. Exhausted looking men stood next to it, silently watching the convoy moving past. No one spoke.
We could turn this around, Rodriguez thought. Instead of putting down another insurrection, we could be passing out supplies, setting up stations to assist people with their medical needs, distributing fresh water and food. Winning hearts.
The announcement was passed down the line. They were hitting Pasadena in five minutes. Get ready.
Rodriguez thought back to three months before. He had been on vacation, grunt worker, took his wife and son to Disneyland for the boy's second birthday. He had enjoyed the magic teacups, little Anthony did, the tree house and the haunted mansion. But what he loved the most, what consumed most of that afternoon was Splash Mountain. They'd ridden it again and again. Waiting in line more than an hour and a half each time. It was worth it just to see the happy smile on Anthony's face.
By 5:00 p.m. he was asleep in his mother's arms. They walked to the parking lot, exhausted themselves, Rodriguez's arm around Delia's waist. It had been a good day. Anthony wouldn't remember it but he hoped it would reside just outside his consciousness like a warm summer afternoon, one of those happy golden years, igniting a small touch of joy one day far into the future whenever his thoughts drifted back to his childhood. It was good.
Delia had left him a month later. Taken little Anthony with her. Why she had gone or with whom, he didn't know. Their relationship had been good up until that point. At least he had thought so. He came home from work and found the house cleaned out. There was no note. He was 22. He joined the army.
The convoy rolled down exit 2 and onto Gilbert Avenue. Three miles to go. The men ran last minute inspections of their gear and their persons. Safeties were checked, helmets tightened, savage glances to the left, the right. Then they looked at each other, eyes quickly dropping, jaws clenched, brows furrowed.
They could hear a disturbance as they neared their ETA. They saw a few stragglers on the streets ducking into buildings, baseball caps on weary heads, shot guns and .22's hefted towards them by angry mobs as they closed the distance to the square where the crowds had congregated. Some of the men, some of the boys alongside them, stood and stared as the convoy rolled by.
They weren't prepared for the size of the response. They should have known better
, Rodriguez thought. It's not too late, he whispered to himself. Run, run. Throw down your guns and go. Take your boys with you and go. But they wouldn't, he knew. They were angry. They were stubborn. They were proud.
The convoy moved in a great circle surrounding the convention center, a square mile of once prime real estate reduced to shattered buildings and buckled concrete. To the left, Rodriguez could see heavy black smoke rising from Disneyland. The sky above it thick with dreaded anticipation.
The convoy rolled to a stop, a circle bristling with assault weapons and grenade launchers. They were ordered down from their trucks, walking shoulder to shoulder where the men were many, farther where they were few. More like a police line than soldiers marching into battle, not a man of them didn't frown, not one who wouldn't have given anything rather than be there now. They walked forward, arm in arm, while those before them fled into the grounds around the center. Almost 2 million square feet of meeting space, one of the biggest convention centers in the world, it once hosted science fiction conventions and the 2020 International Peace Conference. For all the good that did.
Now it looked like an encampment of Indians surrounded by General Custer. Cheap nylon tents of every size and hue had been set up along the central avenue beneath the burnt husks of countless palm trees, standing among them, shirtless men holding rifles.
A voice could be heard amongst them, a man on a bullhorn somewhere near the center, hidden by untold numbers of his compatriots. He was shouting something about pride, about freedom, about justice. The men and women in attendance stood, like those who faced them, shoulder to shoulder, six and seven rows deep. Many of the men needed a shave. Most looked exhausted but grim and determined. They were dirty, some without shoes. Some without weapons of any kind, looking for all the world like a beaten army at the end of the civil war. They extended like that around the front and sides of the great glass structure.
When the soldiers had completed their encirclement of the crowd, the square grew quiet. They faced one another, guns to shoulders or just cradled in their arms as a mother might hold a newborn.
"This is Staff Sergeant Paul Davis of the First Battalion of Los Angeles. You are ordered to drop your weapons."
The crowd stared at the soldiers, whispering to one another. No one lowered the guns. Then Davis spoke again, this time more forcefully.
"This meeting is illegal. Martial Law has been declared. Except for purposes of trade, you must remain in your homes. Drop your weapons! You're surrounded and outgunned. Put down your weapons and you'll be escorted to a nearby holding facility to be processed. Food and drink will be provided. Resistance is hopeless. Drop your weapons now." No one moved. No one breathed.
Somewhere far away a sound was heard, a tinkle of glass perhaps or the vagrant cry of a child. A moment passed. Two. Then a single pop. Low, barely audible. Where it came from no one knew. Perhaps just a door clicking shut in one of the surrounding abandoned buildings, the result of a quiet breeze passing through blown windows in an empty room. But it was enough.
Immediately both sides began to unload their magazines and barrels into one another. The noise was deafening, explosions ripping into the crowds, throwing bodies high into the air, pizza sauce slathering torn limbs like a chicken BBQ at a church potluck. People fell on both sides, tears of terror, of agony, washing away days of grime from their faces. Then the tanks opened up. The grenade launchers, the barefoot, those wearing dirty jeans and makeshift back packs growing silent.
Still the firing continued until the voice on the bullhorn screamed to stop. The man who had first been exhorting the angry crowds to action. Standing amongst his fallen comrades, his friends as he had called them before the shooting began but now standing alone, surrounded by bloodied knots of the crowd that had filled the avenue moments before, protected by the hastily completed wooden stage from which he had been urging the crowd. Around him bodies were sprawled. Moaning, blood soaking into the dried concrete. The men left standing were shaking, some looking back at him for guidance.
"Stop! Please! Stop!" Again, except for a few low groans, the square grew quiet once more. The man was ragged, sweat pouring down his lanky body, leaving greasy trails that soaked the waist of his khakis. He looked not more than twenty years old, a spotty beard just hinting along his jaw line and chin.
He stared about at the remnants of his army of civilians. Then he looked out at the soldiers still standing, many with tears streaming down their faces. Expressionless, he dropped the bullhorn. It clattered off the platform and bounced across the pavement, rolling to a stop against a dead man's shoeless foot. Unexpectedly, he raised his arm to the soldiers and saluted. Then, before any could react, he pulled a small gun out of his jeans pocket and holding it to his right temple, pulled the trigger.
The battle lasted three minutes, thirty-two seconds. Just three minutes, thirty-two seconds. From his vantage point near the spot where the fighting had been fiercest, Rodriguez was bent over a soldier lying with a hole torn through his thigh. He heard a pop and turned to see a man fall from a stage.
Chapter Sixty Two
G ordon kept a close watch on the street and buildings around them as they walked by for any sign of trouble. Something about the girl by his side awakened his protective instincts, a fact he was sure would land him square in a hot stew were he to admit it to Sofia, he had no doubt. She was a courageous and independent woman with a stubborn streak a mile wide. If he had asked her how she thought she could manage without him in the world they found themselves in, she would have asked how he thought she had managed up until then on her own. And she would have been right, he grudging admitted to himself. Still, she'd somehow managed to see no one before he showed up. That was bizarro lucky. He doubted she could have held her own against a band of thugs, out for a good time. But he kept that thought to himself.
There were more people out this day, some collecting food items from already depleted grocery stores, others finding more durable goods to their liking. Not that any of it would work, at least not those with delicate electronic components, but he didn't waste his time telling them that. He'd seen no more soldiers since that night at the grocery store nor anything else in the way of authority. He wondered if the government had collapsed and people now were truly on their own. At least till the next leader came along, he thought. If there's a vacuum, someone will be sure to try to fill it. Some 'boss' or 'warlord'. Someone. If there was profit to be made off other people's misery, someone would be sure to try. That was a given.
When it was time to find something to eat, Gordon tried to get Sophia to dump a few of the books she'd filled her pack with, to no avail. She was insistent that food was all about them in stores and indeed it was, depending on the neighborhood, in varying degrees of fitness for consumption. Canned food was still available, but the fresh food had spoiled days ago in the heat. Unless it was properly cooked, even the packaged edibles he considered sketchy. That left only canned goods and liquids, something he knew Sofia resented. But remembering the empanadas she'd eaten two days before, she quietly decided to go along with his canned food diet. What else could she do?
As they walked, she held onto one of his arms, massaging a bicep unconsciously. For his part, he found himself gazing appreciatively at her more and more, quickly looking away whenever she chanced to glance in his direction. Like she had in the mall.
She had looked at him doe eyed, asking his opinion about something. No woman had ever cared what he thought about something before. Anything at all. Most of all, his former wife. His thoughts meant absolutely nothing to her. Sofia was different. At least, so it seemed.
This girl was gorgeous, a find for any man. That she seemed to enjoy his company now could only be ascribed to the fact that she hadn't met anyone better. When she did, it would be Sayonara to Gordon. Thus he held himself in abeyance. No point courting certain humiliation.
As they walked now, Sofia had inserted her arm around his again, merrily chatting about the future, as
though they were strolling down the Champs-Élysées on a crisp spring morning. His skin tingled at her touch, something he struggled to ignore.
"I want to see Sicily. I've always wanted to see the Nile. Sicily, Crete, Capri. I like their white cities, running down those hillsides. The Pacific ocean..."
"Atlantic. Really, the Mediterranean, but who counting?"
"That's what I meant. The Atlantic. I'm not an imbecile."
"I know."
"Geography has never really been my thing. No harm, no foul."
"That's my motto."
"Anyway, I want us to go there. It's beautiful this time of year. We can sail on a fishing boat. Everyone is so dark skinned because it's on the equator. It's hotter there, you know?"
"So I've heard."
"Yes, well, it's a good place to get a tan. I think it's by France somewhere. Or is it Brazil?"
"Um..."
"Well, it's over there somewhere."
"Yep."
"Will you go with me? We could have it all to ourselves. Like Adam and Eve. King and Queen."
"How do we get there?"
"In a plane, of course. How did you think we'd get there? Swim?"
"Might be faster."
"Are you serious? I don't know how to swim. I'd drown."
"Me too."
" You don't know how to swim either?"
"I do, but not that far."
"Neither do I. So a plane it is. How long do you think the flight would take?"
"A while."
"Yeah, that's what I thought. We could watch some movies. Long movies."
"Sounds like a good idea."
She smiled and squeezed his arm. The she leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. He felt a surge of electricity race through his body.
