Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  Bob Bullard finished his glass of iced tea and rose to leave. “I’ll get right back to you, after I talk to the White House. Then I’ll get my helicopters, and my UAVs.”

  “Perhaps you will. Just bring me authenticated orders—in writing—and we’ll talk about it again. Orders from my chain of command—the president, through the JCS. You know who they are, don’t you?”

  8

  Almost two weeks had passed since the arrival of the stranger. Phil Carson was napping on the sofa near the wood stove after a tasty dinner of canned pork and beans. A book lay open across his chest while he snored softly. The iron stove warmed the living room and kitchen, and it heated their water and cooked their food. It also provided a substitute for television as the center of their indoor lives. The stove door was often left open, the glowing coals comforting them.

  They were eating better the last few days, since Carson had given Zack two gold dimes to take down to the free market, which was held on the former Wal-Mart parking lot outside of Corinth. The purpose of the trip was to collect information on conditions in Mississippi as much as it was to buy a variety of canned food and other needed items. The roads were dry and the trip took only an hour and a half each way on his mountain bike. Zack had tied a plastic milk crate to the bicycle’s rear cargo rack to bring home his purchases.

  These days State Road 72, which ran parallel to the Tennessee border, was safe enough for a daylight expedition. On the road Zack wore his ID badge visibly, as the law demanded, clipped to his jacket collar. He was not hassled at the permanent Guard checkpoint at the big intersection by the town of Walnut, or at another temporary one halfway to Corinth. The Guard soldiers had no badge scanners, and merely looked him over, asked a few basic questions about his home and his destination, and allowed him to proceed. The few cars and trucks on the road were given closer scrutiny at the checkpoints.

  Like most of the other shoppers and traders, Zack slyly concealed his ID badge while he was in the actual free market area. He reclipped it so that it hung down inside the upper left pocket of his camo hunting jacket. If questioned, he could plausibly say that this was to prevent it from being accidentally lost while riding his bike. He cautiously showed the tenth-ounce gold coins to the clandestine moneychangers lurking under the trees, just beyond the Wal-Mart parking lot. Their ID badges were also hidden, and for good reason. Trading gold or silver could be a hanging offense, depending on who caught you and if there was a push on to stamp out black-marketeering. That day there were no Guard soldiers stationed around the free market, which was a sign that the martial law currency regulations were being relaxed—at least for the time being.

  The best offer had been 450 TEDs for both gold dimes, which Zack accepted, exchanging them for nine of the red-and-yellow fifties. He was also offered 350 pink-and-blue North American Dollars. These bills were also called ameros, but to Zack Tutweiler they were just NADs, a slang word for gonads. Instead of portraits of dead presidents, the NADs featured famous landscapes in their central position. The Grand Canyon, Canadian Rockies and Mexico’s Mayan pyramids were on different denominations. The NADs were harder to spend in Mississippi (you were supposed to use only TEDs in the emergency zone), but they were needed if you traveled to the North, to the federal states. At least that’s what the moneychangers told him.

  Zack’s father had said that the NADs would eventually replace the Temporary Emergency Dollars in the South. People were beginning to hoard them, in case the red TEDs were suddenly replaced, as the blue bucks had been, and the old greenback dollars before that. Paper money being devalued or even becoming worthless overnight was a constant threat. When paper currencies were switched, you took whatever the government offered at any rate it set, which could be ten or even a hundred to one. If you didn’t exchange your paper money within the official grace period, it became totally worthless, which was why many folks were beginning to accumulate North American Dollars whenever they could. Zack had no use for the NADs. He was only interested in money he could spend easily here and now, in Mississippi, so he took the 450 dollars in red Temporary Emergency Dollars.

  Nobody bothered with the old blue or green dollars, which were given away to small children to play games of pretend. Some adults folded them into intricate origami birds and flowers and gave them away as curiosities, or even tried to sell them as art.

  Four hundred TEDs had filled the plastic crate on his bike rack with canned goods, a bottle of lamp oil and a few other items. An additional thirty TEDs bought Zack a huge pork sandwich (with a side of Texas fries and a large apple cider) from a barbeque joint being run outside a former gas station. This was, he thought, fair payment for his long and somewhat risky bicycle trek to Corinth and back. He returned before dark with the food and the information, which Carson extracted detail by detail, asking him many questions while they ate their pork and beans.

  ****

  That night, while Carson slept, Zack dressed head to foot in his rainproof hunting camouflage. Then he took his compound bow and slipped out of the house. Leather gloves protected his hands and especially his fingertips. He only used the trigger release when hunting, for super accuracy. Tonight in the dark, distances would be close and speed would be much more im-portant, so he would just use his fingers on the string. Four arrows were clamped in brackets along the right side of the bow, feathers down. A fifth arrow was nocked and ready to launch. Nine more arrows were in a leather quiver on his back. Without electric lights, the interior of the house was already dim, so his eyes quickly adjusted to the blackness outside. Somewhere above the low overcast, the new quarter moon was setting, providing no light for night stalking. No stars were visible above the gloom.

  In the past year spent without electric power, Zack had become so attuned to the lunar cycles that they were as familiar to him as the rising and setting of the sun. With only minimal use of oil lamps for nighttime indoor lighting, he had developed uncanny night vision. The subtle distinctions in illumination resulting from different combinations of moonlight, cloud and tree cover became in their way more important to him than the more obvious difference between day and night. With sufficient moonlight, Zack could easily find his way. Without it, he was blind. Batteries were too rare and expensive to waste on regular flashlights, except in a dire emergency. He also knew that any drones flying above them could quickly zero in on artificial light sources.

  Zack’s secret weapon for these dark times of the month was a tiny red LED flashlight no bigger than a finger, which would run almost forever off a single AA battery. It cast only a faint puddle of dim light, but this was sufficient for him to follow familiar paths without tripping or walking into stumps or logs. The penlight was attached with rubber bands to the front of his compound bow. Where his eyes looked, the light and the bow followed in synchronization. Outside that small circle of faint illumination, the entire universe was utterly black.

  Zack Tutweiler had spent the last year following game trails at all hours and under every light condition, so it was not hard for him to find his way. The steady drizzle dampened the woods and quieted his footsteps. Wet leaves didn’t rustle, and sodden sticks didn’t snap beneath his boots. Even so, he walked into Tennessee carefully, ever mindful of his father’s fate, creeping along fences overgrown with weeds, streambeds, wood lines and windbreaks. Skills developed in stalking wild game hid him from the eyes of terrestrial watchers, unlikely as they were on a cold, wet night. He wondered if the drones with their deadly missiles could fly in the rain, or see him through the misty clouds that hid the moon and stars. His father had said no, but his father was dead.

  Moving cautiously along a circuitous path, it took him two hours to reach his destination. Zack gently placed his bow on the ground and prepared the signal exactly as he had seen his father do it, while holding his LED light in his mouth. He tied a strip of red cloth to the top strand of a barbed wire fence, where in daylight it could be seen from Tennessee’s State Road 57, which ran parallel to the state line two
miles north of Mississippi. Thick woods provided good cover on the south side of the fence. He made his final approach in a stalking crouch, arrow nocked and ready to draw. On the far side of the fence, grassy weeds along the shoulder of the road grew almost as high as the top strand of wire, and he wondered if they would obscure his signal from view in the daylight. He knotted the strip of red cloth securely, letting it hang down a foot. He had cut the strip from his dead brother’s pajamas, a talisman intended to include poor Sammy in his stealthy night work.

  This place was one of the “dead drops” his father had used to communicate with some of his Tennessee trading partners—and some others who probably were involved in more than illegal commerce. It was slow and cumbersome to communicate this way, but safe and sure. His cargo was contained in a black plastic container small enough to conceal within his fist. According to his father, it had once held old-fashioned picture film, the kind used before digital cameras. Zack knew only that the little cylinder was easily hidden and perfectly waterproof.

  His hand-written report of his father’s death and the arrival of Phil Carson was already folded to nut size and jammed inside the black film can, along with a meticulously copied duplicate of Carson’s list of names and addresses. The film can went into a hole at the base of the wooden fence post beneath the signal rag. He had watched his father load the dead drop, and he had been briefed on the procedure. He would return to another location in two days to look for another signal and a hidden message giving a reply. Zack had now done his father’s secret night work. He wondered whether his father was in a place where he could watch over him. He hoped so. He wondered again about his mother’s final destination, and if she had rejoined his father in heaven. Had she indeed killed herself and taken the life of his baby sister? If so, would God ever forgive her for it? Just how much earthly suffering could He expect anyone to bear? Zack headed toward home wondering about these mysteries, resolving none of them, and arriving as dawn was breaking. There was at least some consolation in carrying on his father’s night work.

  Carson was already up, crouching by the iron stove in the middle of the kitchen, feeding it small chunks of wood. “No luck with the hunting?”

  “Nope, not this time.”

  “Looks like you went stalking, instead of sitting up in your tree stand.”

  The old codger was observant. Zack had to be on his guard. “Well, I thought I’d try something different. It didn’t work out.” Did it matter if Carson was suspicious? Or was he merely curious, in an innocent way?

  “Yeah, well, you’ll do better next time. One way or the other, I’m sure we won’t starve.”

  ****

  “Jenny, why didn’t you go to the swap meet?” The two seventeen-year-old girls talked on the porch of a modest one-story house. It was chilly but dry outside for a change. The visitor was a short redhead, wearing green-framed eyeglasses and dressed in jeans and an orange University of Tennessee sweatshirt.

  “I’m supposed to stay behind to watch the house. And besides, you know I’ve got nothing to sell or trade.” Jenny McClure was almost a head taller than her visitor. She was wearing baggy gray sweatpants and several oversized men’s sweaters piled on top. Tussled straw-blond hair spilled over her shoulders. In the front, her hair was cut in bangs that stopped just above light cinnamon-colored eyes.

  “That’s no excuse, girlfriend. Come on with me, we’ll have fun.”

  “I don’t feel like walking two miles for nothing.” Jenny yawned and stretched, extending her arms and rolling her shoulders.

  “Jenny, the sun is shining, and that’s a rare thing lately. Come on, Hope Baptist puts out soup and fresh bread on Saturdays. That’s worth a little walk, ain’t it?”

  “Not to me. Anyway, I can’t. I told my uncle I didn’t want to go to church just to get free soup, and he said, fine, stay home then. If I don’t go to church, I can’t go to the market. It wouldn’t be right. And I still have to fetch today’s water. Twenty gallons, that’s my job.”

  “Oh come on, he doesn’t own you, you’re not his slave. Don’t make me walk up there by myself. Listen, if you go, the boys will check you out—they always do. Then I might get noticed just by accident. I’ll take your rejects any day.”

  Jenny blushed, trying not to smile. Her friend Sue Bledsoe wasn’t exactly pretty, that was true enough. Pretty or not, she was unfailingly cheerful, considering the hard times. She’d lost her chubbiness over the last hungry year, but she still wasn’t pretty, with her curly red hair, round face, and an overabundance of freckles. Cute maybe, sort of. Not that looks counted for much anymore. What mattered were practical things like food, firewood, and gasoline. Especially food. Jenny’s blond hair and eyes the color of wild honey wouldn’t fetch any of those items—not unless she was willing to trade more than a pretty smile. Sleeping with somebody might win her a few good meals. It might buy her temporary protection under the roof of some single man, but that was about all.

  Now Jenny had enough protection, here at her aunt and uncle’s house on Ben Duggin Road. The road ended in a loop, where a developer had built twenty modern homes on one-acre lots. The rest of Duggin Road was taken up with a mixed lot of trailers, small farms, and older homes. Uncle Henry, a former Marine Corps captain, was a popular leader of the neighborhood defense team. Their house was well situated near the end of the loop, which was almost a half mile back from County Road 144. No one could come into their isolated neighborhood without passing scrutiny at Duggin Road’s single entrance. A palisade wall of ten-foot-high sharpened pine logs had been erected on either side of Duggin Road where it met the county road at a T intersection. The opening was the width of one vehicle. At night, a junker panel van filled with dirt and topped with barbed wire was pushed across the single narrow entry and chained in place at both ends. No stranger casually approached Duggin Road. As long as Jenny was under the protection of her aunt and uncle, she had no need to meet any other men, and certainly not teenage boys with only one thing on their minds.

  So she replied, “Boys? I don’t care about any boys—not unless they’ve got rich daddies. Rich enough to get me right the hell out of Tennessee. What good are boys? Anyway, it’s not too bad here. I get fed. I’m just so tired of being cold and hungry and dirty, that’s all.”

  “Well, who isn’t? You should count your blessings. You’re lucky you had kin here, folks willing to take you in. Lots of refugees didn’t have anybody at all.”

  “Somehow I don’t feel lucky. Not with all that’s happened.” Like losing her family after the Memphis earthquakes, for starters.

  “You’re alive, aren’t you? You’re not the only one who’s suffered. Jenny, I refuse to let you drag me down. It’s too nice a day.” Sue Bledsoe lifted her arms and forced a wan smile. “Make hay while the sun shines, didn’t you ever hear that? Well, it’s Saturday, the sun is shining, and everybody for miles around is going up to Mannville for the swap market. Come on, try smiling once in a while—it’s free and it doesn’t hurt. Have some fun when you can. Life goes on, Jenny McClure, and you have to keep living too.”

  “This isn’t living—this is just surviving.”

  “Welcome to reality.”

  “Reality sucks. I’m too dirty. My hair is revolting…and I smell like a hound dog.”

  Sue Bledsoe stared at her friend for a moment and then said, “This was going to be a surprise for later on, but look what I found.” She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a few coins. “Two quarters and three dimes. Old ones—real silver.”

  “Where’d you get all that money? You steal it? Who had it?”

  “Nobody had it. I found it.”

  “Oh, sure you did,” exclaimed Jenny. “So, who’d you have to sleep with?”

  “Get out! No, really, I found it. I was getting firewood. I was taking apart an old shed in the woods back behind our place. I knocked down a glass jar that was hid up in the rafters. It busted on the ground right between my feet.”

  “And t
hat’s all that was in it?”

  “No, the jar was full of change, but the rest wasn’t silver. These were the only silver ones—and believe me, I checked every single coin. The newest were from 1970, so that’s probably how long the jar was up there. From 1964 on, they’re just fakes painted silver—you can tell by their brown edges. These old ones are real silver all the way through. Come with me to town, we’ll splurge. We’ll get something good to eat; oh, we’ll have a fine day.” She slipped the money back into her pocket.

  Jenny knew that a genuine silver dime could sometimes buy a small can of vegetables. A silver quarter might buy a can of soup or ravioli, according to her uncle. But that had been months ago, and canned goods were getting hard to find at any price. Her uncle used to have some old silver coins, but they had all been spent. “I don’t want charity, Sue. I’ll come, but I don’t want you to think it’s just because of your silver. Okay?” She reached out and took her friend’s hands in her own.

  “Okay. Just wash your face and brush your hair. Maybe throw on some of your aunt’s perfume.”

  “Have you got your gun?” asked Jenny.

  The redhead pulled her Tennessee sweatshirt up a few inches at the waist, revealing the butt of a revolver. “You better believe it. I don’t leave home without Mr. 38.”

  “All right, I’ll get ready. Come on in, it won’t take me long.”

  For Jenny McClure, bathing was a once-a-week proposition at best, but fortunately her last bath had been only two nights before. Their washing water came from the roof, so with all the recent rain there was plenty of it. To bathe properly, she’d have to get the fire going in the kitchen stove, heat a big pan of water to boiling, and then pour that boiling water into a tub of cold water. The process would take too long. Instead, she took a basin of drinking water into the bathroom to wash up at the sink. Drinking water came from one of the subdivision’s communal wells and had to be carried home in jugs, one of her daily chores. The new wells had been dug by hand, after the earthquakes had destroyed most of the old ones belonging to each house. Without electricity to run their submerged pumps, even the wells that had not cracked were useless.