Instinctively, Jeff twisted around, expecting to have been followed but for now those creatures appeared more excited by a Morris-shaped lump twitching in the crud. His fellows were still trickling back over the lip and when movement on the slope ceased, down at the bottom the countless humanlike shapes that frantically wriggled around in the trees now resembled a pit of snakes, there was no other way of describing them. It was yet to be seen if they could climb the steep slope.
Jeff managed to pull his eyes away to ask Terrence, “where’s Deuce?”
Terrence’s capillary broken face was unusually white. He just shook his head.
All along the bank, men were calling out for friends. Occasionally, someone would answer but mostly their cries were met with silence.
Jeff flexed his fingers, tried to get the feeling back, slapped Terrence on the shoulder. “Looks like this could be the day you’ve wanted so long. You need a ride into town?”
He didn’t respond for a while and when he finally moved, it was to pat his jacket for the glass. He brought it out along with the transparent bag of crystal. “Huh, oh, yeah, I’ll be paying someone a visit, for sure, but first thing’s first…” he wandered off in the direction of his mattress. Jeff lowered his head and sighed.
There was a blast of wind and a roar from above and then the overpass was alive with fast moving vehicles, huge things, deafening, dark green, Humvees, army transport trucks, mostly all open-topped with hundreds of pale faces clustered in the back. For ten minutes the caravan continued and then, as soon as it had started, it ended.
And even the foul-mouthed men of the Trench had been stunned into silence.
Because they’d left Redding to fend for itself.
Which meant Jeff’s day was now.
But beneath the overpass, atop a filthy mattress, one man lay still.
One Week Earlier
If the prevailing economic system produces food shortages and mass starvation, there are two options faced by the country in question; either change the economic system or reduce the number of people there is to feed.
Throughout history, many countries, especially those undergoing periods of uncertainty and/or those with hostile neighbors, have often required their youth to undergo involuntary periods in the military. California, being surrounded on all sides by the most hostile of neighbors, opted to oblige high school graduates to a period of service between that of Venezuela (two years) and North Korea (ten years), settling on a sensible and progressive policy of a mere five years. Compulsory military service could, of course, be avoided in instances of physical deformity, low IQ or a criminal past, in which case the youth in question would be fast-tracked for a career in the Party. The kin of high ranking Party officials were also, on most occasions, exempted.
In addition to compulsory military service, it was no secret that the regime also required men to undertake regular stints in the gulag, whether they were willing or not, and had few qualms about how they went about acquiring such men.
In the beginning, back when they were first confiscating all the shit, there was money and property being thrown about all over the place and there were many people doing very well out of it, especially if they’d happened to be a registered Democrat, or had had the brains to register as one when it became clear the direction things were going. Operations covered, college paid off in full, credit card debts expunged, mortgages all but written off (people no longer owned their homes but neither were they kicked out, at least in most instances, if they already lived there), indeed, at the time there were other states that very nearly followed California’s lead, such was the pressure from the voters who could see how wonderful communism was doing. The state of Washington came closer than anywhere else, and almost certainly would have gone through with it had it not been for three hundred miles of Oregon wilderness geographically splitting them from their Californian allies.
After a couple of years, however, things started to change, and people gradually began noticing that the roads weren’t being repaired, operations were being postponed, their children’s educations were not as thorough as their own, which was saying something, grocery store shelves were not as fully stocked as they remembered, power outages became more frequent, trash started piling up, loved ones began to disappear, people were eating their pets, all whilst the forecasts from Supreme Leader Weiner became ever more optimistic.
What happened was that same thing that always seems to happen in a planned economy. They’d run out of other people’s money.
What could be done about it?
They couldn’t cut wages, because that would go against their principles and since the entire country, from the humble toilet attendant to what few doctors still remained all earned the exact same Universal Income, to suddenly reduce stipends would only bring discontent, maybe even riots stretching the length and breadth of the nation, possibly resulting in the overthrow of the regime. It was also too obvious and people might notice. They might have chosen to increase taxes but in the end, someone pointed out that doing so pretty much amounted to the exact same thing. Finally, they decided the right course of action was to print more money, and this did indeed buy a couple more years of fooling the People into believing that their divine ideology was truly working. That was until people began noticing the price of gas, food and just about every other thing was steadily increasing until finally, the point arrived when everyday items became so expensive the result could only be starvation, riots and dissatisfaction.
Certain old hands had long since risked the wrath of their peers by warning what would one day come to pass, but as so often happens in such situations, good advice is ignored as short term comforts are given priority over long term considerations.
Reality, however, didn’t care, and now reality had to be faced.
Somehow, the bills had to be reduced, yet production quotas still needed fulfilling, so inessential workers, such as maintenance men and farmers were cut from the public payroll. Why pay farmers when convicts will do it for free? From then on the crimes on the statutes expanded overnight, with every minor offense, real or imagined, being punishable by hard labor. Hence the gulag, labor camp or the regime’s preferred term, utopian productivity centers, of which, California now possessed many hundreds.
Problem solved. At least, temporarily.
For a long time, the United States had been accused of using slave labor in their prisons and there had been nobody who complained about it more than the progressives in California. Now, ironically, California was showing those half-assed Americans how to do slavery on an industrial scale, and pointing out the hypocrisy was a sure ticket to joining them. In current year California, the smallest infringement was likely to land a man in a labor camp. Stare too long at a surveillance camera, five months. Gather in groups of greater than three, six months for all involved. Food producers taking extra for themselves, friends or family members, a year for everyone. Accused of spying for the United States, never seen again. Being found with the Stars and Stripes, ditto. Caught escaping? There were few tales of any such attempts.
By now, there was barely a man in the Trench, Jeff’s home, who’d completed fewer than a half dozen stints, which was why they kept constant lookouts on the highway to spot the trucks coming to round them up for another few months baking bricks, trimming tree trunks or harvesting fucking corn. When the call came, as it regularly did, it was time to drop the pipe and run, slide, or roll down the slope for the safety of the forest so that only those comatose and unable to fly got taken.
It wasn’t the first time Jeff had fallen asleep, whiskey bottle in hand, only to rouse and find himself several hundred miles away, being screamed at from close quarters by some goon resembling Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Indeed, it’s certainly no way to start the day.
“Wake the fuck up, you God-damned swine.” It couldn’t be real, the awful blurry image, very red, and loud, large eyes of fire, familiar peaked hat of a gulag guard, flag of Calif
ornia with its distinctive grizzly bear and hammer and sickle beside red star emblazoned on jacket. What was that about being loud and red?
“Terrence? Pass the bottle, would ya.”
Jeff received a kick in the belly and had the air driven out of him. “Lover boy’s not here to help you now. Get your ass up this minute.”
Jeff was hauled up and was astonished to find himself in a large open area, what had to be the middle of a forest, barbed wire fences, guard towers, a never-ending row of trucks filled with felled trees, uncountable bleary men in plain white overalls moving, doing shit, straining beneath the immense weight of fucking trees, carrying them into a timber-framed building. If this was where Jeff thought it was, it was a different gulag to the last one. He threw up on the spot.
“Oh, you are insufferable,” there were two guards now, and they each took an arm and dragged him towards a smaller facility, over an iron grill covering filthy water beneath, and then he was thrown against the far wall. “Heads up.”
The jet of water was powerful, and cold, and pinned him into the corner. He tried to slump, to curl up, but couldn’t, and when they aimed at his face it was like being slapped over and over by a giant wet hand, when they hit his belly it was like being repeatedly thumped. The men were laughing. The water had an earthy whiff to it with a slight tinge of shit and was like sustaining a prolonged electric shock. Finally, the jet ceased and Jeff was able to fall to the grill and curl into a ball, shivering. Some white overalls and boots were thrown at him.
“You have two minutes.”
They watched him strip away the drenched clothes he’d not removed in months, laughed at the size of his cock, and then he was yelled at and told to march out. He did, somewhat wobbly, though without help. The boots were too small and hurt his toes. A few minutes later he found himself in the kitchens and even Jeff’s eyesight was immediately drawn towards the largest pile of potatoes he’d ever seen heaped into the corner.
“Now listen here, you motherfucking wastrel, you’re going to peel every motherfucking last one of these motherfucking potatoes and then you’re going to pass them to the motherfucking wastrel over there so he can cook them, and then you’re going to mash them, nice and thinly so they’re palatable to you and your toothless motherfucking friends, and then you’re going to dish them out with a motherfucking ladle, into nice, neat little portions, and you’ll have it all ready in time for lunch, do you motherfucking understand me?” The guard, who Jeff could now see was sunburned in the face, probably fifty years of age, a large muscular brute with hard eyes and a head like a badly baked breeze block, grabbed him by the jaw and squeezed. “Nod if you understand.”
Jeff nodded and was relieved when the guard stamped away, and then another man, a spic in the same white overalls slinked up beside him, holding out a potato peeler. “Here, amigo. Some say it’s better than chopping wood like the rest.”
“Some?” Jeff ground his jaw and could already feel the effects of withdrawal. He needed a drink but there wasn’t going to be anything around here. “Who was that guy, where are we and what the fuck are we doing here?” He groaned at the throbbing pain in his head.
The man laughed. “Well first, my name’s Rodriguez, and I know what you’re thinking, homes, but one thing I gotta hand these people is they don’t discriminate. We’re all equal in misery around here.”
Jeff plucked up a potato and started peeling. “Jeff Harper. Wish I could call it a pleasure.”
“There are over a thousand men in this gulag, just so you know. They each get one meal a day. Half eat at one, half eat at seven. Finish one potato every thirty seconds and we should have enough in time for chow and you won’t have to rush if you need to take a shit. One spud each, along with a couple chunks of beef, and not exactly the best cuts, if you know what I mean.” Behind him, slumped on a large table in the middle distance, was what had to be a full cow. “It’s not quite enough to sustain anyone but it’s all we got and it’s all they get, so just remember that, vale.” He shrugged, it wasn’t his problem. “Remember where you are too, alright? If you chow any extra, just make sure nobody’s looking.” He seemed to be studying the job Jeff was doing with the peeler, frowning. “We’re somewhere in the Mendocino National Forest, Labor Camp 87, we supply timber for all the new camps they’re building.” He inspected Jeff’s first potato and snorted. “Faster, amigo. Much faster. Can’t cut the trees fast enough and there are new men arriving every day, and it’s still not enough. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what that means. More mouths for us.” He jerked his jaw toward the doorway, through which was an enormous dining hall. “And that was Sergeant Stott. Best not cross him, if you want my advice, or his pal Deacon.”
“Mendocino, you say?” Jeff knew it. Had been once or twice hiking and camping before the army. It was one of the larger national parks, south of Redding on the way to Sacramento, somewhat to the west, though the place was that large he could be fifty miles from home or a hundred and fifty. Lots of logging. Always was. Deer, bear, cougars, coyote, rattlesnakes. Not that any of that mattered now.
Jeff soon found a peeling rhythm, even though he knew he was far behind his so-called schedule. Rodriguez didn’t say anything about it, just made the occasional anxious glance. He probably understood, heck, could plainly see Jeff’s physical shortcomings, his rapidly deteriorating body, posture and demeanor, which was doubtless the reason he was thrown in the kitchens, and Rodriguez was nice enough not to give him a hard time over being so slow. Unfortunately, that would only mean there’d be some who weren’t eating today, which wasn’t good after a day swinging axes and lugging around trees. Doing this kind of work, especially at speed, was for the younger kids and Jeff’s dexterity was not what it was before he’d become dependent on alcohol.
Aye, the wetback, undoubtedly, was a good guy but then, what choice did he have? When you’re weak, you have to be nice to people. Jeff tried that, usually, but he still got treated like shit.
There was, he recalled from the old days, such a thing as an electric potato peeler, and who minds a bit of skin anyway? High in fiber. Adds texture to the fries. Jeff couldn’t recall the last time he’d even tasted a French fry. All this root veg, though. It was a crime to condemn it all to mash but when ever more Californians were losing their teeth, runny meals would inevitably become the new national dish and besides, most dentists had long ago fled to the United States. What’s the point in spending eight or ten years in college becoming something fancy like that only to find yourself earning the exact same pay as one of your patients who cuts grass. Jeff soon found himself craving Rodriguez’ job, which was saying something since the man was presently engaged inside a cow’s stomach, his arms bloody to the elbows as he coiled the entrails around a wooden roller. If they switched now, there’d be a chance of meeting the quota, though, in truth, if the commies had ever been efficient at designating labor, there’d be little need for gulags in the first place. He wondered if the camp was filled with dissidents like he used to be back when he gave a shit. Probably. Most likely. Not that they were much good to anyone here.
The shit places monotony forces a man’s mind to wander, but rather that than constant reminders of his increasing nausea, belly pains, head pains and back pains. Fuck, maybe the kitchen had some spirits, or something, ethanol, vinegar, even tabasco sauce might slake the cravings for a few minutes. After several hours, his fingers felt like prunes and the heap of root vegetables barely seemed to have diminished.
At some point Rodriguez came closer, taking a break from slicing the dead animal’s stomach lining into small chunks. “Say, amigo,” he glanced nervously towards the threshold, “coming over … you see anything strange?”
Jeff tossed a peeled spud over his shoulder and reached for the next. “No, man, I was, um, sleeping.”
“Jesús.” Rodriguez had made the mistake of coming too close so he could speak low and paid for it when Jeff’s hot breath washed over him.
“Why?”
And then, as if by magic, a pair of heavy boots augmented as they stamped across the dining hall’s boards and then Stott’s brutal form was lumbering in the doorway. “One hour, you roaches, and your fellow insects start coming in. If lunch isn’t ready, I’m gonna make sure they all know your names.”
Rodriguez flipped in an instant and began darting about, increasing his tempo, and threw Jeff a giant potato masher. “The pans, the pans. Drain them and let’s start.” They began mashing together and the combination of exertion, along with the smell of food exacerbated the growing sick feelings in Jeff’s belly.
No fewer than five hundred weary men were filing into the hall just as Jeff and Rodriguez were squirming beneath the dreadful weight of a large steel serving tank heaped with lunch and which more closely resembled a bathtub than anything meant to distribute food. It was an awkward bitch to carry, both heavy and cumbersome with no designated handles because, as Jeff could now see, it had indeed once been a pigs trough, and the sharp steel edges cut into his hands before they were finally able to dump the thing on the table. Jeff flexed his fingers, straightened his back and felt a particularly painful spasm shoot through his spine. Right about now, he felt positively sick.
The Day After: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller Page 7
