by Jack Ziebell
Zakorski took the globe. “And with satellites and landlines down they’d be totally cut off from us, I’ve got to tell the General about this. Wait here.”
After waiting for twenty minutes Marius suggested they explore; how far could they wander anyway if the Captain wanted to find them? They entered the main assembly area of the Mountain, with a vaulted granite ceiling towering at least sixty-feet off the ground. In front of them was a hive of activity; soldiers were preparing vehicles, loading them with ammunition and supplies, others were putting on battledress, replete with kneepads and wraparound dark glasses. On one side was a separate cavernous vehicle bay, where a squad was constructing a dozen or so large pens from steel mesh and scaffolding poles.
“What’s going on?” said Brian to a Corporal about to address his men.
“We’re getting ready for war Sir.”
“War? Against who?” said Brian.
“Against the savages Sir, we’re going on the offensive. Orders are to kill anyone perceived as a threat and to capture any women or children, if circumstances allow.”
Brian knew that the people outside could be dangerous, but using military firepower on them in this way was extreme. Everything he and Marius had done so far had been self-defence, using reasonable force, even where that force had been lethal. Going on the offensive was like going on the offensive against the mentally ill; it didn’t feel right. Marius insisted they find Zakorski immediately and they tracked her down coming out of the General’s office. Her face was red and she was holding back tears.
“I tried to stop them,” she said, “you saw the holding pens right? That’s their compromise. Try and save some women and kids, kill the rest.”
“Is there anything we can do?” said Marius.
“Not unless you can get a line to the White House,” said Zakorski, “Also the General wants to see you both. I’ve been ordered to check on the construction. He’s inside.” Zakorski motioned to the wooden door behind her. “Good luck.”
Brian knocked timidly on the door. No answer. Marius knocked much harder and a voice told them to come in.
Inside the General sat with his aide and the Brigadier.
“Take a seat gentlemen,” said the General, “Marius and…”
“Brian,” said the aide before Brain could answer.
“You boys are scientists right?” said the General.
“That is correct Sir,” said Marius.
“Well as you may have heard, we are looking to stabilize the situation outside. We can’t stay in here forever and there are some innocent folks; women and children, who, while they may be mentally lacking, are perhaps not beyond redemption.”
“Redemption Sir?” said Brian.
“Yes, let me rephrase - innocent is probably the wrong word. Whatever innocence those people had is lost. What we want to do is try and rescue the most harmless of what we have left out there.”
“And the rest?” said Marius.
“Anyone who tries to stop us or puts my men in danger will be prevented from doing so,” said the General.
“Consider it collateral damage,” said the Brigadier, looking pleased with his contribution.
“No goddamnit,” said the General, glowering at the Brigadier, “It’s not collateral damage if it’s the enemy you’re killing. They’re not civilians anymore.” He returned to Brian and Marius, “Look gentlemen, I know you know what it’s like out there and this strategy is not up for discussion. I asked you to come and see me because I want to ask your help.”
“Help Sir?” said Brian, wondering what help they could possibly give to such an operation.
“Yes - Marius, Brian, I would like you to oversee the re-education of anyone that we rescue. My men will be responsible for securing them and keeping them fed but I want you to be in charge of the academic side. Anything you can do to speed up their re-integration, as stable members of society, means the more we can take in and save.”
“Didn’t Zakorski tell you about the swathe and the shadow?” said Marius, “I mean shouldn’t our priority be to try and make contact with those parts of the world that may be unaffected?”
Brian could tell the General was not impressed. “What the Captain was telling me is that maybe, somewhere on the other side of the planet, someone in Fiji might be OK? I’m sorry but that seems the least of our concerns right now.”
“But Sir,” said Brian, “The whole of Australia might be unaffected; and they’d be just as clueless about what had happened to us with all communication cut-off.”
The General turned his back to face a large map of the world. “Well good for them, but in case you hadn’t noticed we are in the United States, the country we enlisted to serve and protect. Australia is a long, long way from here, especially for a trip that might turn out to be the biggest waste of time since we tried to teach the Afghans how to be peaceful.”
Brian looked at Marius who gave him a nod, as if to say don’t push it. “We accept, the teaching part that is,” he said, “But one request if you please, General?”
“Go ahead,” said the General.
“May we have Zakorski on our team?”
“She already is. This whole re-integration thing was her idea; in fact she was the one who suggested you. Her team’s been put in charge of food, medical and sanitation for anyone who ends up in the pens. Thank you gentlemen.”
That was their cue to leave and the General and his aide returned to the paperwork on his desk. The Brigadier followed them out and closed the door behind him.
“One thing the General forgot to mention gentlemen,” said the Brigadier, “Is that if you fail, we are not keeping anyone alive as pets. You will have two weeks to prove re-integration is feasible, beyond that we can’t yet justify the loss of resources.”
They walked back through the granite corridor to where the holding pens were being assembled. Sparks flew from arc welding machines and Zakorski was already overseeing the placement of buckets and sponges in each cell. Brian also noticed that several of the trucks and Humvees that had been in the vehicle bay before they went into the General’s office had now gone.
“So that’s the plan,” said Marius as they walked up to the Captain.
Zakorski didn’t look up from her task. “You onboard?”
“Do we have any choice?” said Marius, “We’ll do our best, maybe we can save a few more, maybe not.”
“Phase one is to try and secure our zone of operation; drive people out of the town with what we have. But if that fails the General will move to phase two.”
“Phase two?” said Brian.
“That means going to the air force base and looking for something more nasty to get rid of the population,” said Zakorski.
“Like gas?” said Marius.
“Exactly,” said Zakorski, “There’s all kinds of munitions stored up there, it’s just a matter of finding what they’re looking for and rigging it up to go off somewhere in the centre.”
“Jesus,” said Brian, “From land of the free to the final solution in two weeks.”
Zakorski spoke in monotone, drained of emotion. “They say we’ll need the land to start farming eventually and the population poses too big a risk to the food supply, as well as the risk of disease and aggression.”
“But if we can prove people are capable of getting better, they’ll change their minds right?” said Brian.
She gave him a blank look that didn’t inspire confidence, “We can only try. The first ones will be arriving in a few hours. We just need to keep our heads and think of a way of finding out if anyone else is still broadcasting on the other side of the planet, before…”
Marius looked at her, “Before what?”
“Before things get worse.”
All three fell silent for a moment.
Brian attempted to break the mood. “Right so who wants coffee?”
They both nodded and he walked to the mess to get the drinks; but mainly to give himself a chance to process all that
was happening.
As he carried the coffee back he wasn’t sure how he felt; he was happy to be safe, to have hot coffee and the protection the Mountain provided. Until then he and Marius had been doing what they had to do to survive, but the luxury of safety meant time to think and in theory time to make plans. What shocked him was the calm and orderly manner in which the soldiers were going about their business, seemingly untroubled by the moral implications of what was happening. They had the luxury of following orders; they had a job to do and they were doing it. There were no choices to be made, only tasks to be efficiently completed. Was this it? Even if they could train a few dozen people and reintegrate them, would their fate be to live in a small military protectorate under the rule of a dictator-general? It was still preferable to living outside, at least he could sleep at night without the fear that somebody would creep up on him and do god knows what. The General was right; they had no way of knowing if somewhere in the South Pacific there was an island of normality. Even if he knew for sure that Fiji was OK and Australia was soldiering on, he also knew how difficult it had been just to get to the Mountain, but to get to the other side of the planet? He told himself that for now, like the soldiers, he didn’t have any choices either. He was part of the machine and would do as he was told.
Chapter 26
Tim closed the steel door and slid firm the heavy bolts, feeling himself relax as he did so. He had chosen a room, one of the top floor offices near the stairwell, which had been built as a strong room for embassy staff to evacuate to in case of bomb threats. If he ever had to make a last stand, it would be here, where at least he and Sarah could die together in peace, safe from the grasping hands of the mob. He had removed the conference table and the twenty or so chairs and replaced them with a couple of mattresses and some bedding from the outbuildings. This made a pretty cosy den where he and Sarah could rest, despite the heat and smell. A skylight made of reinforced glass allowed the sun to flow in but now the air-conditioning was no longer running, it was too much. He had stapled some bedding over the skylight as a makeshift shade, which he thought worked pretty well. Another use for the room was that it kept Sarah confined for her safety, while he scoured the building for useful supplies to hoard. He hoped that with time the people outside would either die off, disperse or get better. He didn’t have another plan; just build a nest and hope for the best. He was too tired to do more.
From around the embassy compound he had gathered what he thought was a good stockpile of canned food, water and guns. With enough supplies, if they did end up cornered in the room, they could wait out those besieging them, in the hope that they would lose interest as hunger and thirst took their toll. He piled everything neatly to one side of the room, which would have been big enough to hold thirty or forty people. Each office had water coolers with six or seven five-gallon bottles placed around them, so it had been easy enough to roll the bottles down the hall to their room. In a shipping container outside there were probably two hundred more five-gallon bottles. Even with the three of them they had enough to last several years, provided they used it for drinking alone.
Then there were the guns. He had taken all the rifles, pistols and ammunition he could find and locked them in two sturdy stationary cabinets in the strong room, which he also kept locked when he went out. Despite there only being a small marine contingent to guard the embassy, they had quite an arsenal; an arsenal he was uncomfortable about leaving within easy reach of the cook. He was unsure what other weapons the cook might already have acquired; the thought of the man having anything that could kill troubled him.
While he was gathering supplies, the cook had been making his own plans, if they could be described as such. Mostly they were rants on a theme, which changed by the hour as the cook paced around the kitchen and lobby areas drinking vast quantities of the embassy champagne. He had already talked of reinforcing the car and scouring the town for more survivors like himself, prompting Tim to remove the Niva’s battery in addition to the key. Next he spoke of driving to the airport under the cover of darkness and methodically trying each of the planes. Tim managed to convince him that even if a plane did work, which he was pretty sure none did, neither of them knew how to fly or where they should fly too. The cook was certain that if he could just get to the US Combined Joint Task Force HQ in Djibouti, where he had flown in from on his way to Juba, everything would be OK. But he didn’t know exactly where in Djibouti the Task Force HQ was, nor could he explain why they would be unaffected. Tim explained he had come from near the border with Djibouti and things were equally bad there, plus he was not prepared to risk the journey a second time without a very solid reason for doing so. The cook seemed to only half-listen to Tim’s arguments and was carried away in his fantasies.
“If we could just somehow take the river,” said the cook, who was laying across a steel countertop, bottle in hand, “Get to the coast and get a boat, we could get back to the US - there is no way that everyone in the US is like this, I mean, T-I-A - this is Africa right? This sort of stuff happens here, you know like ebola and AIDS and everything?”
Tim knew he shouldn’t engage but felt compelled, “I’m pretty sure this isn’t a disease Jed, you saw what happened to the electronics.”
“Like hell I did, I had to put out like four fires all by myself,” said the cook, re-enacting this by spraying champagne over an imaginary inferno. “But if it’s not a disease then what is it professor?”
“I don’t know, maybe a weapon of some sort. Maybe. I don’t know. All I do know is that for now we are safe here and until we figure out a better plan we should stay put,” said Tim.
“That’s easy for you, you didn’t have to do what I had to do here.” The cook took another large sip from the bottle. “The sooner we ditch this place the better; I mean how long do you think it will take those people out there to figure out that they can like, climb over the walls and just come in here and do whatever the fuck they want.”
“I think it will take them a while,” said Tim, “But they would have to have a good reason to try and make it over all that razor wire. I’m not sure they’re smart enough to work out what we have here to risk it.”
“You’re not sure they’re smart enough? They seemed pretty fucking smart when they were chasing me. You locked me out, I could have died out there you know?” The cook was still clearly harbouring a grudge.
Tim tried to think of anything to counter the cook’s desperation to leave and deluded optimism about reaching safety. “Look, Jed, listen. You think the US forces in Djibouti are still operational? Where’s the first place they’ll come and look for survivors? At the US embassies; in Addis, Nairobi and here. I mean isn’t that the whole point of the military? If they can, they will be coming.”
The cook put down the bottle on the countertop and glared at him. “And if they can’t?”
“If they can’t, well at least we won’t have died in the desert trying to reach an empty base.”
The cook took another drink, the alcohol soaked gears in his fragile mind trying to process Tim’s logic. After some time, he nodded slowly. “OK Tim. OK for now. But I’m not fucking dying here.”
He felt mildly reassured that the cook wouldn’t do anything rash, at least not for the next twelve hours. He bid him goodnight and started making his way back up to the strong room. Of all the people who could have survived, why did it have to be someone like the cook? Tim had devoted his life to surrounding himself with people exactly unlike the cook: rational people; calm people; educated people; kind people. The cook to him was none of these things and he felt almost as distant from his mentality as he did from the runners outside. If he didn’t feel he might need the car again he might have encouraged the cook to just take it and go. He wished Asefa was there; someone who could ground him, keep him sane, make him laugh, tell him this was all just some bad juju that would come to pass.
He reached the strong room and put down the supplies he had brought up from the food storage
area. He unlocked the door and opened it but as he did a hand and foot shot through the gap. He held the door firmly and pushed Sarah, who was kicking and scratching at him back inside. He saw that she had smashed up much of the room while he’d been away and the supplies he had neatly stacked were strewn across the floor. He grabbed her and held her tightly until after a few minutes of struggle she began to calm down and whimper. She didn’t like being locked in the room but he felt he had no choice and he wasn’t about to tie her up. He unwrapped a KitKat and gave it to her. She looked at it for a moment, smelt it suspiciously and looked at him. He broke off a bar and ate half of it, giving her back the rest. He motioned for her to eat and she did, devouring the entire bar in seconds and then looking to him for more. He used to joke that she would get fat if she kept eating so much chocolate, which had annoyed her greatly. Was she still his wife, would she ever be again? He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, smoking it then holding it to her lips so she could breathe in the nicotine. It seemed to calm her further; he could feel her relax and when the cigarette was finished they sat down. He handed her an open bag of Gummy Bears and showed her how to eat them. She smiled as she picked out the various colours, each of which she proudly displayed to him. While she was occupied he brought in the supplies, locked the door fully from the inside and began tidying up. To his surprise Sarah started to help him, placing the cans in a pile exactly as he was doing. He hugged her and told her he loved her. “Tim,” she replied, but that was all.
That night after he removed her clothes and washed her, she had hugged him and they had made love. He didn’t know if it was wrong but it felt right and for the first time in a long time he felt close to her. They slept entwined and he could just make out the stars shining through the awning. Perhaps they could make this work he thought, before drifting back to sleep.
