“Sure,” I said.
“Then you’ll have paid me back,” he said, returning to the stove.
I took another sip from the tea. Jerry was on the other side of the table, tongue sticking out from his mouth at an angle, drawing something on paper. I said to Stewart, “You mentioned something about the radio. What’s going on?”
“Depends on what station you listen to. The local stations, most of ’em run by the militia or their friends, say the UN and NATO violated the armistice agreement and it is now defunct. Now, defunct. That’s a hell of a word. Didn’t think most militia types could use such a word. The local stations, run by what’s left of the state government and the UN, they don’t say much. Just to stay in your homes and listen to the responsible authorities. But when the weather’s right I get the BBC World Service, late at night.”
I rubbed the tea mug, enjoying the warmth on my fingers. “What does the BBC say?”
Stewart reached up to a cabinet door, opened it and took out three thick white plates. “The BBC—and, man, I do like hearing their voices, they sound so civilized—anyhow, the BBC says that the armistice with the militia units has broken down in some counties in Michigan, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire but seems to be holding on in Texas, Idaho, New Mexico, Kentucky and Tennessee. Most other states are still quiet, the ones not really hurt by the bombings. And nobody’s too sure when the armistice might be up and running again.”
From outside I could hear a thrumming noise, which seemed to get louder and louder. Helicopters. Stewart stopped his work and looked up, a spatula in his large hand. Jerry stopped drawing and his eyes grew wide as he looked up at the ceiling. In the corner Tucker even whimpered some. The vibration from the helicopters’ engines made the dishware rattle as they flew overhead. I thought briefly of racing outside and waving a dish towel or something to attract their attention but I knew how fast they flew: they’d be over the horizon by the time I found the door.
Then the sound drained away. Jerry picked up his pen and Stewart looked over at me.
“I guess the armistice won’t be up and running again today,” I said.
“I guess you’re right,” Stewart said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The late breakfast was eventually served: scrambled eggs again—and I sure as hell wasn’t complaining—with a sausage link apiece and toast made from homemade bread. We ate quickly and Stewart raised his voice only once, when Jerry tried to give a piece of his solitary sausage to the dog.
“Jerry, that sausage is special. It’s been in the freezer for months, and I’ll be goddamned if a dog is going to eat it, even if it is Tucker,” Stewart said. “Now, you go ahead and eat, so you can grow up and be strong. And don’t pout.”
And the little guy didn’t pout, just held on to his fork with a pudgy fist and kept on eating. His eyes were shiny and I had a feeling that he and his grandfather had this dog-eating-from-the-table discussion on a regular basis.
The food was hot and went down quickly. I had another cup of tea and when we were finished eating Stewart said quietly, “Now, you go and clean up, and go into the living room. All right?”
Jerry looked over his empty plate. “Can I watch TV?”
“Only if you turn on the VCR and run a tape,” Stewart said.
“Which one?”
“How about The Jungle Book?”
Jerry nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. I’d like that.”
He got up, cleared the dishes and placed them by the sink. When he was done, he said, “Tucker,” and the English springer spaniel followed him. Stewart leaned back in his chair to catch what was going on in the living room. He lowered his voice. “Just want to make sure he’s watching a tape,” he explained. “I don’t want him watching the tube in case one of the militias is running things for a day or so on one of the local cable stations. The crap they put out over the airwaves … You know, racist warfare, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, white power, red state versus blue state … Bad enough things are happening on the ground, then the clowns who seize the television stations have to pollute the airwaves again.”
“I see,” I said, sipping from the tea mug.
“You do, do you?” Stewart asked skeptically. “Tell me, Toronto man, what exactly were you doing, working for the UN?”
I tried to gauge his expression, what was going on in his mind, and decided to hell with it. “I was assigned to an investigation unit, looking into war-crime sites. We were investigating allegations around this county and others.”
“Find much?”
“A little,” I said.
“Bah, whole place is one whole war crime, if you ask me. So, Canadian man that you are, what do you think of our poor misguided country?”
I said, “I’m not sure I can really answer that.”
“Oh, give it a try,” Stewart said. “I read the papers, watch the news. I know that you nice folks up north have always had a strange relationship with us Yanks. Who could blame you? Here we are, overbearing and powerful and full of ourselves, and there you were, peaceful and trying to choose a path that didn’t involve our rough-and-tumble way of doing things. Bad enough to have our kind of nation as a neighbor. When that terrorist attack hit Manhattan late last year and then came the follow-up balloon bombings … it was the tipping point. Hard to believe that one coordinated strike would cause all this chaos, even with that damn EMP effect …”
“Up north, although we didn’t get zapped like you people did, it was hard to understand what was going on,” I said. “The news coverage was spotty and all we heard were the worst of the stories. Exodus from the cities … lack of food and fuel … refugees being shot at by the militias …”
Stewart looked like he wanted to slam a fist on the table. “Damn it, we had years of warning. We should have been prepared for all types of attacks, but we never are. Never prepared for a boatful of explosives motoring its way up to a moored warship. Or some guys armed with box-cutters and knives, flying planes into buildings. Or some group stealing suitcase nukes and detonating them to fry all our electronics. The population looks to its leaders and their leaders fail them, and then the poor, scared, frightened people take matters into their owns hands. But then again, people … sometimes they get the government they deserve, you know?”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I said.
He gave me a wry smile. “You see, a few years back I worked on the planning board for our little town here. I’d retired from a machine shop and thought I’d give something back to the community. You know? And you know what happened after that?”
I rubbed a finger around the rim of the tea mug. “What’s been said before: ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’”
A firm nod. “Absolutely right, Samuel. A little job like the planning board, making sure any new construction comes in and follows the rules. And you’d have thought I was wearing jackboots and a peaked hat with a goddamn swastika on top. We had people coming into meetings, screaming and yelling, I got hate mail and I got phone calls at midnight, wanting to know why I was giving my neighbors a hard time about what they could or couldn’t do with their property. I mean, shit, some people thought owning a piece of land gave ’em the right to store drums of toxic waste on the back forty. So what if it leaked into the ground water, or seeped into a stream that went into a reservoir? Man’s home is his castle, et cetera, and all that crap. So I gave it up, after one term. I’m getting older and I don’t need the aggravation.”
“Why so much anger?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Stewart said. “This isn’t a bad place. Not very rich, mind you, but it was peaceful enough before the troubles. Hell, even had a nice little state park on the other side of the county. Bronson’s Iron Works, one of the earliest mine and iron forges in the state. But when people started dropping out and not caring, when government becomes something to be hated and feared, and when rumors and half-truths are believed, over and over again, well, that’s when the bad times come. And when the bad
times come people want to hate somebody, and when those somebodies are poor refugees from the cities, trying to get some food and a place to sleep, it’s easy to do.”
From the living room came some boyish laughter, as I heard the rollicking tunes from The Jungle Book. Stewart saw that I was paying attention and said, “Thank God for VCRs. I’d hate to try to take him into town now to see a movie.”
I said, “A couple of days ago I saw a road overpass that had been taken out by a bombing raid. That sure looked like something that came from the movies.”
“Yeah, and you know what? Even with the killing that was going on, lots of us were humiliated when the UN approved the intervention and when NATO came in. I know they had their reasons. From state to state, you didn’t know what the hell was going to happen. Some states didn’t have any militias, any trouble, and their governors just used any National Guard units that weren’t overseas to take care of any problems from the refugees. Other states fell apart and couldn’t hold back the militias once they started gunning. And with our power and our nuclear weapons, it didn’t take much to see that the world didn’t want another Russia out there, a country with nukes falling apart, you know? But still, the hell of it, being bombed and strafed by countries who were supposed to be friendly to us. Not that some of the militia units didn’t deserve it, but a lot of innocent civilians, in Idaho and Texas and Kentucky and Tennessee and here, they were killed by those raids, before the armistice.”
I remembered the schoolteacher Gary, and what had happened to his fiancée. “But when the news footage came out, showing homes being burned and so many people being killed and hurt, and some of the rioters raiding National Guard armories and some other military bases, there was a lot of pressure to intervene. It was a bad choice, but I think sitting back would have been an even worse one.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stewart said, finishing off his own mug of tea. “Even now, even with that humiliation, I wish you guys had come in earlier. It could have made a big difference.”
“I know,” I said.
His eyes flashed at me. “No, you don’t know. I don’t mean to get pissy, but you don’t know.”
I just nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I don’t know.”
“Ah,” he said, leaning over again to look at his grandson in the living room. “I can’t help it; I’m sorry. You see, it all has to do with little Jerry over there.”
Something cold started tickling the back of my throat. “His parents?”
“Yes,” Stewart said quietly. “My daughter, Kelly. And her husband, Ralph. She went to school in Manhattan, learning about sculpture. Met up with a nice fella named Ralph Powell. Got married and came back here, opened up a little studio. He worked on-line for some brokerage firm, got to work out of the house. Beautiful little house, beautiful little boy.”
I kept silent, letting him tell the story. He took a breath. “They’ve been missing ever since the troubles. I keep telling Jerry, don’t worry, your mom and dad, they’re on vacation. They’ll come back when they can. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep telling him that. I … I just don’t think it’s going to end right. And you want to know why?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Because in some people’s eyes what Kelly did was a crime. And her crime was to marry a black man from New York City and to have a child with him. And in those people’s eyes that’s a crime worth being killed for.”
I HELPED STEWART wash up the dishes and then we went out to the living room, where Jerry was enraptured, staring up at the colors on the television screen. Tucker was on a dog bed of sorts, snoring fitfully. Stewart said, “You OK, kiddo?”
Jerry still stared up at the screen. “Yep.”
“Tucker OK?”
“Yep.”
Stewart said, “We’re going upstairs for a couple of minutes, so you stay down here, right? And remember, stay away from the windows.”
“’K, Grandpa.”
Stewart managed a smile, glanced at me and said, “Come along. Let’s go upstairs and see what’s going on in the world. Maybe then we can figure if it’s safe to get you out of here.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
I followed Stewart up the narrow wooden staircase, past little framed sketches of skiers hanging on the right-hand wall. At the top we went straight through to a small room filled with radio gear. A quick glance to the left and the right showed a bedroom on either side. With my UNTRAINED investigative know-how I figured which one belonged to Stewart’s grandchild by the toys on the floor. In the small room were three metal tables, each set against a wall. There were a couple of amateur radios set up on two of the tables, and in front of them was an old office swivel chair, its back repaired with some gray duct tape. There were maps on the wall as well, ranging from one of the world to some that depicted the several counties in this part of New York state. Stewart flipped a few switches and sat down. I perched myself on a corner of a desk and watched closely.
“Nice old stuff, huh?” Stewart said. “That’s what saved it, when the balloon strikes came. Old electronics could muddle through better than the newer stuff. That’s how some of the militia units communicated with each other at the start, when they started setting up roadblocks and such. The old gear still worked, while the newer stuff—belonging to the cops and National Guard units—got fried.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a microphone,” I said.
“Don’t need one,” he said, rotating a dial slowly. “You see, Samuel, I don’t particularly care to talk to people. I’m just a goddamn big snoop, that’s all. Used to be I’d get a kick from catching some obscure regional station in China, or an American task force in the Persian Gulf, but fortunately—or unfortunately—the really interesting stuff now is nearby. So I don’t have to worry about getting a weak signal. The thing today is, I take a gander at what’s going on out there, then I can get an idea of how safe it might be before you start walking.”
“All I need to know is how to reach the highway,” I said. “If I get there, then I’ll just hang tight until a UN convoy comes by.”
Stewart turned in his chair, looked up at me. “Where the hell have you been the past few days? Under a rock?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve been running through the woods, being chased by your gun-toting neighbors. And I spent a couple of days at a militia camp, held prisoner, seeing lots of nice touristy things. Like men being shot in the back of the head for the crime of being in this country without your militia’s permission. So I haven’t really been up on the news.”
“Well, bully for you, sport, ’cause things have really gone to the shits for you UN folks these past few days,” he said. “Like I said, the armistice has collapsed here and in a few other states. Which means some of the resettlement camps are under siege, your UN investigators have scurried back to their base camps, and the open highways—like the one nearby that you’re so goddamned keen to visit—have been closed.”
“What broke the armistice?” I asked.
“Some militia leader in another county—probably a used-car salesman in his previous life—was captured by one of the arrest squads working for the War Crimes Tribunal,” Stewart said, adjusting a dial on one of the consoles. “Thing is, his militia unit was under the impression that he was traveling under some sort of protection. Like a get-out-of-jail-free card. So they shot up a UN convoy. Then some other militia units, not particularly liking the armistice in the first place, decided to get in on the action.”
I shook my head. “NATO units and arrest squads versus the militias. Doesn’t seem to be a fair fight.”
“You’re right, but for the wrong reason,” Stewart said. “The militias don’t think it’s a fair fight either. But the way they see it, if they keep on sniping and harassing the UN, sending body bags back to Europe and New Zealand and elsewhere, then the home governments will get tired and bring their boys home. Then the militias can get back to what they do best: killing their neig
hbors who just wanted some help. All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Stewart looked at a small open notebook, made another adjustment. “I like to keep track of the stations I’m listening to. OK, here’s the first one. A militia station, a few towns over.”
He turned up the volume and I leaned forward, listening to a man’s hurried voice.
“ … Heavy casualties at Bremerton. This message is for the Second New York Activists. I repeat, the Second New York Activists. Your message is as follows: Tango, Tango, Bravo, Foxtrot, Charlie. Repeating again, this is for the Second New York Activists: Tango, Tango, Bravo, Foxtrot, Charlie.”
Stewart turned his head my way. “Get a lot of messages like that. Code.”
“Yeah,” I said. “These guys are organized, aren’t they? They set up codes, already in place, just in case. That way, they can communicate without worrying about being monitored.”
“Shhh,” he said, “they’re still yapping.”
He boosted the volume again and the voice said, “Another warning to our brethren near the Finger Lakes district. Armored units are reportedly moving in your direction. Repeating for the Finger Lakes district. Armored units, possibly Polish, are moving in your direction. We’ve got word that these units are sticking to back roads, avoiding the main state highways. All right. And a report in from Vanson’s Volunteers: they successfully ambushed a UN convoy heading along Highway Fourteen. Congratulations to Vanson’s Volunteers. And I’m Lieutenant Henry, reporting to you on Radio Free USA. Pass the news along, patriots, pass the news along …”
Stewart pursed his lips, moved the dial and said quietly, “Not good, hearing those clowns. Let’s see what the UN has to offer.”
A woman’s voice, more modulated and professional than her competition: “ … Food-distribution centers at Hopkinton, New Canaan and Riley have been temporarily closed. Please stay tuned to Radio Pax, Albany, for additional information. At the top of the hour today, Radio Pax will again broadcast those areas under safe UN control. If you are not in one of these safe areas, please be assured that the UN Force in the United States will reach you and your family. In the meantime, if you are under some type of threat or hostility, remain calm. Help will be coming to your vicinity. Retreat to a basement or a secure room. Stay away from windows. Do not travel. Listen to this station for further information. Again, this is Radio Pax, Albany …”
Twilight Page 22
