Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  Doctor Foley eyed him doubtfully while sipping his own cola. “Memphis got hit by a Richter eight on December the 15th a year back. The aftershocks went on for weeks, and there was another big one in January. That was just about the worst part. The aftershocks kept everybody living outside in the rain and cold. Memphis just about got flattened. Nashville and St. Louis were slammed hard too. The whole Mississippi Valley, really, but Memphis was the worst. It was practically cut off from the world. Most of the bridges went down. Barges couldn’t move because the bridge wreckage blocked the rivers. Coal and grain couldn’t move on the rivers, and the highways were cut all over the place too. Bridges, overpasses…they all went down.”

  “All of the bridges?”

  “I’m not sure how many, but enough to stop just about anything from moving.” The doctor smiled wistfully. “Railroads too: they got all twisted up. And pipelines. Most of the pipelines that took natural gas from the Gulf up to the Northeast got taken out, right in the middle of the winter.”

  “Damn…” Carson had never heard these details before.

  “Then without the coal barges on the rivers, most of the power plants shut down—the ones that weren’t already knocked out by the quake. So people froze, and more power plants went down, one after the other. It was like dominoes, a chain reaction. The quake came right after Matilda, so it stopped the hurricane relief effort…what little there was anyway. The South was written off by Washington. Triage, I guess. Then after the second big quake, everything just spiraled out of control. Religious folks called it God’s judgment. The people in Memphis went crazy. It was like a race war up there when the power went out and there was no more food coming in. They were starving in no time, but where could the refugees from Memphis go?

  “We sure couldn’t take them here in Mississippi…we already had enough of our own problems. So we kept them out: we held the line. We could do it, since the state National Guard was already in control down here after Matilda. The refugees couldn’t cross the Mississippi River either, not with the bridges down, and Arkansas wouldn’t take them anyway. Arkansas was almost as bad off as Memphis was, so they couldn’t help even if they wanted to. We were on our own. One problem just fed off the other, it was a cascade of disasters. Anyway, that’s what happened. But I’ll tell you what—martial law beats what we had before it. Beats it by a mile.”

  “And that’s why coffee is so hard to come by a year later? Martial law?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “Well, the economy is a wreck. And not just because of the hurricanes and the earthquakes. We were already in a depression before them. The disasters just put the final nails in the coffin. Here’s how it goes now. Things like coffee can only be sold for an official price that’s set by the government, plus a percentage for ‘reasonable profit.’ That probably comes to something like fifty bucks for a two-pound can of coffee, except I haven’t seen any coffee being sold for months. I’m just guessing.”

  “Why would they do that? Price controls never work.”

  “It was to be fair, so that everyone could afford things, right? Everybody was against hoarding and gouging. Maybe right after the hurricanes and the earthquake, maybe it made sense, for a while. But the price controls never went away, since we’re still in a state of emergency. So now, a year later, who’s going to sell coffee or anything else for the official price? Nobody. And who’s going to bother to import it if they can only sell it at a dead loss? Nobody. That’s why we’ve got no coffee. The government tried to fix the economy and make it fair for everybody, but instead they just about totally wrecked what was left of it. Plus, coffee comes from South America, and they won’t sell it for New Dollars.”

  Carson knew most of this perfectly well; it was the very reason for his latest smuggling venture. He had planned to sell the coffee for a 400 percent profit in East Texas, where there was no martial law and no price controls. He paused, and asked the doctor, “So…what if somebody could get coffee, let’s just say. What would it be worth…unofficially?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe five or ten times the official price. But that would be illegal, because of the maximum laws. You can only sell for the maximum price that’s set by the emergency government. Price controls, like you said. They have an entire new branch of government now called the OPA, the Office of Price Administration.”

  “So, what happens if somebody had something like coffee and he tried to sell it for more than the official maximum price?”

  “Oh, he’d be in a world of trouble. They’d get him for price gouging, profiteering, black-marketing, hoarding, illegal importation…you name it.”

  “Are these price controls only here in the South?”

  “It started here, but now the government sets all the prices, even up North.” The doctor smiled. “They say it’s the only way they can make the economy fair for everybody. Share the wealth. Share and share alike.” Then he muttered, “Idiots…”

  “But the situation in Mississippi is getting better, though. Right? I mean, 80 percent of the state has electrical power now.”

  “Who told you that? Oh—you saw the billboards. That’s just propaganda. Feel-good stuff for the unwashed masses. And I do mean unwashed—there’s almost no soap. Eighty percent with electricity? That’s a joke. Less than half of the state has power connected at all. If you live in the boonies, forget it. Even the towns that have a power connection only get it six or maybe eight hours a day—and that’s on a good day. They have to keep rolling the power around. Rolling blackouts.”

  “What about backup generators?” asked Carson.

  “Sure, they work, but who has gas? There’s no fuel—well, hardly any. Gas is rationed. For civilians it’s $59 a gallon at the official rate. But even with ration cards, it’s almost impossible to find. You have to park your car in a line a mile long and wait just about forever. And when the line moves, you have to be there, ready to move. It eats up all your time trying to get gas. It’s a Catch-22.”

  “Where’s the gas coming from, when it comes?”

  “From Louisiana and Texas, and some from Venezuela and Mexico,” answered the doctor. “But there’s barely enough fuel for the Guard, much less for civilians.”

  “On my way here I saw a lot of people walking, and some people were even riding horses.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it is these days. Back to the future.”

  Carson gave him a slightly conspiratorial look. “Come on, a doctor must be able to make some extra money…on the side. Maybe do some trading for medical services rendered, right? You’re telling me you can’t get gasoline?”

  Foley laughed. “You’re dreaming. The flip side of price controls is wage controls. An Army doctor doesn’t make much, that’s for sure, but I can’t take money for working on the side. Not a single dollar. That’s against the law—that’s a big no-no. Health care is all rationed by the government—to make it fair. Fair!”

  “What about gold?”

  “Gold? You mean, would I accept gold for private medical care? Well, first, it’s illegal to own gold, unless it’s a ring on your finger, and second, if you tried to buy anything with it, they’d hang you. Literally. If anybody offered me gold, I’d think it was a setup, a sting operation. Then I’d have to report it, just in case it was a sting. If I didn’t report it and it was a setup, well, they’d get me for that. You’re screwed either way.”

  Carson paused to let this sink in, and then said quietly, “I saw a man hanged from a telephone pole, back on the highway on my way here. He had a sign that said ‘counterfeiter’ on his chest.”

  “Yeah, the emergency tribunals are tough. They’re run by the Public Safety Commission, and they don’t mess around. Economic crimes like counterfeiting will get you hanged fast. They call it ‘economic sabotage,’ and that’s a hanging crime these days. Black-marketing, hoarding, price gouging, buying or selling with gold or silver, counterfeiting: they say all of that threat
ens the economic recovery. The only way the government can fix the economy is if everybody uses the TEDs, and only the TEDs. ‘Everybody has to play on the same level field,’ that’s the new mantra. And when they say everybody has to play on the same field, they’re not joking. You either play on their field, or they’ll hang your ass above the field from the nearest tree. And that means you use the TEDs and you pay the official prices.”

  “TEDs?” asked Carson.

  The doctor pulled out his worn leather wallet, extracted a $500 note, and held it up. It was bright red, with an engraved likeness of John F. Kennedy. “These are TEDs. Temporary Emergency Dollars. Theoretically, they’re going to be exchangeable at one-to-one for North American Dollars, but you have to get special permission to convert them to NADs. You can’t take the TEDs outside the e-zone. It’s supposed to help the recovery and eliminate speculation and black-marketing. Of course, that’s all bullshit, like everything else they say.”

  “I’m surprised they’re still using paper money at all. What about credit cards, money cards, digital dollars, electronic money?”

  Doctor Foley shook his head. “They’re still around some, but not too many places use them. The electric power is too unreliable. When it goes out, electronic transactions get screwed up like you wouldn’t believe. You see, the phone system is all shot to hell, and the internet is maybe 50-50 at best, even if you have power and the phones are operating. Which they never are, at least not all at the same time. So when you have a credit card problem, getting it straightened out is just about impossible. Most people just use the TEDs now. They’re paper. They don’t need electric power, or phone lines.”

  “What about paying bills, like mortgages and credit cards?”

  “It’s so messed up, you wouldn’t believe it. Lots of folks just don’t pay them. What can the banks do, foreclose on everybody’s house at once? But they couldn’t anyway, because the federal government put in ‘temporary’ mortgage relief, and it’s still going. The banks were nationalized, and then they froze everything in place. They halted payments and collections. If you’re a landlord, you’re shit out of luck. It’s a real can of worms; nobody knows how they’re going to untangle it all. First, they need to get the power back on all the time, and the phone system too.”

  “The power grid is that shaky, huh?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Every big storm, we practically have to start over. Half of Camp Shelton is still out just from last week’s little Category One. Forget the twentieth century, sometimes it feels like we’ve gone back to the nineteenth. I’ve done surgery by candlelight so often…”

  “Doesn’t the base have emergency generators?”

  “Sure, and they work—when there’s fuel. But there’s never enough, and they need it to run truck convoys. If they used it just to power the military bases it might be enough, but then the Guard would lose control of the rest of the e-zone again. Food convoys and security patrols are the top priority. If we don’t show the flag out in the sticks, law and order breaks down in no time. Fuel and electric power are still our biggest problems.”

  Carson paused, appearing to mull over this information. Then he quietly offered, “What about solar panels? Aren’t there any solar panels?”

  “Not enough. They’re the best: completely quiet, and they don’t need gas. If you used your own gasoline or diesel generator at home, you’d be reported by a jealous neighbor in about five seconds. If you couldn’t show the proper gasoline ration card stubs, you’d be in deep, deep trouble.”

  “Even a lieutenant colonel like you?”

  “Even a full bird colonel. General Mirabeau has had colonels hanged for black-marketing. He’s big on making examples. He’s a real hard case when it comes to corruption, I’ll say that for him. He can’t put soap or coffee on the shelves or gas in our cars, but by God, at least we’re all equal!” The doctor looked around nervously after this outburst. “Equally poor,” he mumbled.

  “Who’s General Mirabeau?” Carson guessed he was the stern Creole face on the roadside billboards.

  “You’re kidding, right? No, I don’t suppose you are.” The doctor spoke quietly. “Lieutenant General Marcus Aurelius Mirabeau, the Savior of the South. He who restores the power, feeds the starving and smites the lawless. As we used to say, he’s the head mo-fo in charge. The big boss man of the Southland, all the way across the e-zone from Louisiana to South Carolina. He’s the final authority down here next to God almighty—who is a Baptist, in case you didn’t know. Mirabeau keeps his main headquarters where he’s most comfortable, at Fort Benning, Georgia, but he travels all the time. He can pop up anywhere, and his wrath is legend. His word is law, expressed through the Public Safety Commission and the tribunals.”

  Carson slowly shook his head. “This doesn’t sound like America.”

  “Tell me about it. Maybe you’re lucky you lost your memory.”

  “So anyway, just hypothetically…what would a solar panel be worth around here? A big one, say…120 watts.” Carson indicated the two-by-four-foot size of his panels with his hands. He knew he was taking a chance, being so up front about the panels, but he needed to get something moving. He needed a contact on the outside to work a trade with, and for now, Foley was the only game in town.

  The doctor whistled an exhalation. “Something that big will charge golf cart batteries, or a bunch of car batteries wired together. Then you’d get quiet, secret electrical power from the batteries around the clock. You could run computers all the time, have some reading lights all night—and run shortwave radios at night, when they work better. Solar panels would be worth a hell of a lot of TEDs, I can tell you that. A boatload of money. But nobody could sell them without government permission, that’s the problem. You’d need import licenses, and you could only sell them for the official maximum, whatever that would be, so what’s the point? It’d be a huge hassle if you did it legally, and it probably wouldn’t pay. Remember, in the e-zone we’re guaranteed never to be price-gouged or overcharged. That’s the theory. In practice, it means we just can’t get a lot of things. Sugar, vegetables, milk—stuff we produce locally—that we have, thank God. Coffee, razors, new shoes, solar panels? Forget it.”

  “Doctor Foley…”

  “Please, call me Ken. We’re the same age. The doctor thing gets old. Like us.”

  “Ken…I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You and I, we fought the communists in Vietnam. Now look at us…” Carson stopped himself short. He’d let his mask of false amnesia slip, but the doctor appeared not to notice.

  “I know, it’s terrible. But what can I do, what can anybody do? It’s martial law, so it’s all a military situation…and here I am, right back in the military. You can’t say no—orders are orders! But it’s better now than it was last year. Imagine six straight months with no electric power, none, I mean zero! And not a drop of gasoline. Mississippi was going back to the Stone Age. We were living like savages, drinking dirty water, afraid to leave our houses because of the looters and cutthroats. Never mind Cameroon fever and the avian flu: plain old cholera and typhoid killed thousands. Let me tell you, after living through anarchy, starvation and epidemics, martial law is a big step up. A big step up! As bad as it is now, it’s better than it was. General Mirabeau…he’s a hard-ass, but at least he’s gotten control. It’s harsh, but it’s getting better. We’re organized now. If he hadn’t kept the Tennessee refugees out after the earthquake, I don’t know what would have happened. Once we’re on our feet again, they’ll end the martial law and lift the wage and price controls and drop the travel restrictions. We’ll have elections again in two years, they say—”

  “Ken, listen to yourself! I mean, is this really America? Temporary Emergency Dollars, curfews, martial law, hanging people from telephone poles for counterfeiting? You have price controls but nothing to buy. And everybody is wearing an ID badge, what’s up with that? How long has that been going on?”

  “Hey, the badges are for a damn good reason! Yo
u’d know why if you remembered the epidemics. Once people are vaccinated, the badges are the only way to keep track of who’s safe.”

  “But why does everybody have to wear them?”

  “It’s just easier that way. They can be seen from a safe distance.”

  “Well, the people I saw looked like prisoners in a big outdoor penitentiary.”

  “Look, I don’t like it either. But the Supreme Court ruled that people don’t have an expectation of privacy in public places. The badges are necessary to prevent the spread of disease, and to control the criminal element. It was the only way—”

  “Doc, Ken, do you hear what you’re saying? We fought the communists in ’Nam, we fought them in the Cold War, we beat the Soviet Union, and now look at us! I’m sorry, but it just seems like…well…like communism to me.”

  The doctor coolly regarded Carson through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Communism? Maybe so. I mean, I guess you have a point to a certain extent, but what else could they do? There was no other way to get control and restore order, not when people were starving. And it’s all legal, so there’s no use opposing it.”

  “It’s all legal? Making everybody wear badges, like convicts? Assigning people to jobs and making them work for bullshit Temporary Emergency Dollars?”

  “The Supreme Court has already ruled it’s all constitutional, right down the line. Under the Economic Justice and Democracy Amendment, the federal government can pass any laws it deems necessary to assure an ‘equitable distribution of the wealth of the nation.’ That’s what it says, right in the EJDA. And with martial law in the e-zone, it even goes beyond that, because people were starving, people were dying! The government had to be given emergency powers; there was no other way. So yes, it might seem like communism to you, but honest to God, it’s a lot better than it was before.”

  “I still can’t believe we’ve come to this in America! I can’t believe people don’t fight it.”