by Ginger Booth
“Neighborhood militia,” Wiehl replied. “They’re supposed to keep the peace and stop looters in their areas. But sometimes they get to fighting each other.”
“They seem to be labeled by religion,” Kalnietis prompted. “Though we don’t see any here near the hotel.”
“Here we’re protected by the Pittsburgh PD,” Wiehl quickly assured us. “The militias don’t tangle with the police department. Full SWAT teams, Army surplus armed personnel carriers, practically tanks, armor. Very well trained. The regulars, I suppose. The police are controlled by the city council and the chamber of commerce. But the other neighborhoods are policed by the militias. There were too many fights between different religions within mixed militia units, so they separated the units by sect. But sometimes the units fight each other. It’s a big mess.”
“Was this Major Beaufort’s idea?” I asked. If so, it seemed like a bad one.
“I don’t think so,” Andy Wiehl said. “I think it started, and he couldn’t stop it. I don’t understand the Resco model, really. All alone, what could he do?”
He could call in fire and brimstone the likes of which the local fruitcake sects could hardly dream of, I thought. But I held my peace. Besides, if the Resco chain of command was as fractured in Penn as Emmett seemed to think, maybe Wiehl was right. Maybe Dane Beaufort was all alone here, with no markers to call in for reinforcements. The nearest garrisons belonged to Ohio. His CO, Colonel Schneider in Harrisburg, was far away without a clue, to the point that Beaufort pulled the plug on their communications. Emmett, on the other hand, had an intact command chain and friends galore. I wondered what Emmett would do.
So far, Emmett was off to visit the neighbors.
“But what exactly are they fighting for?” Kalnietis followed up. “Are these religion-specific neighborhoods?”
“No,” Wiehl said. “They’re becoming more so, because of the fighting. But Pittsburgh was a normal American city. Different faiths side by side, except for a few neighborhoods. Like the Muslims. Dane moved them into a suburb for their own protection.”
Kalnietis continued, “So the militias fight to win their own sect more land? More resources?”
“Well,” Wiehl said reluctantly, “I think they fight to kill each other. Because they think the other religions are wrong, and they’re right. About God. I’m sorry, I’m not very religious. I go to church now, of course. But only because they make your life hell if you don’t. The Unitarian Universalist church is quiet. My wife gets involved in the church functions. Not much else going on these days. I just nap in the back on Sundays, myself.”
“So you’re a ‘Prot’?” I asked.
Wiehl waved head and hand in vehement denial. “I have nothing to do with the militias.”
Good to know. Apparently the Cats-Prots-Jugs labels applied to militia units, not civilian beliefs.
“Did anyone win last night?” Gianetti asked.
“There’s nothing to win,” Wiehl replied, face wide open. “I imagine a few lost. They died.”
-o-
To study God, I teamed with the Devil. Or rather to study indigenous religion, I hit up Brandy O’Keefe of IndieNews. I slid into her booth at the hotel breakfast buffet and gave her my biggest smile.
“Brandy!” I crooned.
“Dee, darling!” she crooned back. “I’m surprised you’re not hiding from me, sweetie. My viewers want to know all about your little troubles in paradise. Separate rooms?”
“Emmett and I are tight,” I lied with a double wink and nose scrunch. “Couldn’t be better. Split rooms because we’re working different schedules at the moment. And professionalism. You know.”
“You don’t lie well, do you?” Brandy critiqued.
“I know. It’s part of my charm,” I replied. “I had an idea you might like to collaborate on. Wouldn’t that be fun? Girls’ day out?”
“I’d prefer an exclusive on your breakup.”
“Oh, well, if you’re busy,” I said. “Catch the fireworks last night? I sure am glad I have armed guards to escort me. Didn’t bring my camera woman, though. But I suppose I could find someone local to hire.”
Brandy’s producer and camera guy raised hungry eyebrows. With martial law governments as our underwriters, PR News paid better than Indie. Well, except for me, until yesterday. The armed guards were also a potent bribe.
“I’m listening,” Brandy allowed sourly.
“You’ll love it,” I assured her. “Pure human interest stories, sure to get past the censors.”
“Joint story, Indie and PR?” Brandy clarified, eyes narrowed.
I shrugged. “We share the footage to do with as we want. And the censors have the last laugh. Let’s just see what we catch, and then decide how to split the stories, alright?”
She shrugged acquiescence. “So what’s the story?”
Chapter 16
Interesting fact: Vatican Council II, held between 1962 and 1965, decreed a number of revisions to Catholic religious practice. Most visibly, it declared that Mass could be celebrated in ‘vernacular’ language, such as English, instead of the previous pure Latin. Women were no longer required to cover their heads in church. A number of vestments were simplified, especially the more ornate nun’s headgear.
“I have the capacity here to wash 160 full sets of bedding, and six towels per room in a single day,” Mrs. Wiehl – Vivian – bragged proudly, showing us the heart of her hospitality empire. “We also provide wash, dry, and fold service for our guests.”
Brandy and I widened our eyes, equally horrified at the idea of washing 160 sets of bedding and towels, used by strangers. Ick-ick-ick. But the banks of industrial-grade laundry machines were indeed impressive.
“Beats hell out of that beer-cooler laundry operation on Long Island, Dee,” Brandy pointed out to me. “That was awesome footage,” she added wistfully. “Glad you didn’t actually get raped for it. That was the best part, though.”
I shot Brandy a dirty look, and explained the reference to Vivian Wiehl. About a year ago, I’d been on Long Island interviewing another woman laundry entrepreneur, at a rather different level on the Resco scale of bootstrapped re-civilization. Mary on Long Island was at level 1, living at the mercy of rape gangs, and doing laundry by hand in a beer cooler. I helped.
“So, with just us here at the hotel,” I resumed the interview, “you have a lot of excess capacity.”
“Yes!” cried Vivian with enthusiasm. “And most women don’t have power. So they’re doing all this by hand. I don’t have any coin-op machines, so I can’t let the public in here. But I bet lots of people would like a wash-dry-fold service. Don’t you think? And that would bring more traffic into the hotel. They could enjoy our new phone-charging facility, and the dinner buffet. Maybe even the swimming pool and the hot tub!”
“How did I not know of this pool and hot tub,” I murmured, entranced.
“And what will you do with the proceeds, Vivian?” Brandy asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” Vivian replied, taken aback. “Give it to charity, I suppose. I certainly don’t need to eat any more.”
We all smiled. Indeed, Vivian was well-padded, with the middle-aged thick waist that had all but vanished in Hudson and New England. This woman had never gone hungry. She would attract hostile stares on the gaunt streets of the Apple. A full meal ticket back in Brooklyn was 1600 calories a day, if you could earn it. Vivian would serve us more than that for lunch, and try to ply us with seconds.
“But wouldn’t it be fun for everyone?” Vivian continued happily. “There’s so little to do these days. Except church.” She pursed her lips, clearly not enthused by church socials. “We don’t pay any money for the electricity, or the hotel. So it’s just a way to throw a party for the community, really.” She smiled hopefully.
“Thank you, Vivian,” I said with a smile. I jotted down a final note. “So you don’t need any capital at all? Just permission, really?” She nodded. “I’ll pass your plan to the Resco, an
d we’ll see.”
“Vivian, while we’ve got you,” Brandy followed this up, “we’re hoping to speak with women from different walks of life. Different religions, too. That seems so important here. Could you tell us how to meet with, say, an Apocalyptic housewife?”
-o-
Beatrice had a wood-frame house on Mount Washington, not wildly different from Dane Beaufort’s. Although her land was closer to level, and her view correspondingly not as good. A thick candle and a thicker Bible held pride of place on the dining table, a black coal-burning stove the centerpiece of the living room.
It gets cold in Pittsburgh, much colder than the Hudson Atlantic coast. I fervently hoped we wouldn’t be here long enough to experience their snowy winter. In Beatrice’s house, the brave little pot-bellied stove was the sole source of heat, not only for the rooms, but for wash-water and cooking. A stockpot sat upon it now, to heat water. I didn’t see any more candles, either. Apparently after the Bible was read for the night, they went to sleep.
We’d met up with Beatrice as the soup kitchen closed its breakfast service at her Apocalyptic church a few blocks away. She volunteered there six mornings a week. The seventh morning was Sunday. Her church allowed only Apocalyptics to attend on Sundays, and they fasted until after services, when they held a meager pot-luck brunch of penitential foods. Her words, not mine. Last Sunday, her offering was uncooked oats mixed with home-made yogurt.
The other women at the soup kitchen didn’t want to speak with us. They hustled away quickly, with furtive backward glances. Beatrice seemed to feel duty-bound to host us, her husband a captain of militia.
Their eldest daughter, a grubby ten-year-old in a plaid dress and braids, kept peeking at us from the stairwell. I wondered how well she remembered life before the borders cut them off from the rest of the world. She’d gone to school once. Her dress looked like a well-worn parochial school uniform of the dull jumper sort, that surely belonged to someone else back then. She’d have outgrown her own school clothes. It was only two years now since the world had changed. But children tend to believe what their parents want them to. She was much put out by the way Brandy and I and our two female soldiers were all wearing pants. Girls were supposed to wear dresses.
“Beatrice, if you could work outside the home now, what would you want to do?” I asked. She used to work in IT at a bank downtown.
“I do the Lord’s work,” she replied. “I want no other.”
I nodded, smiled. “What if the power were turned on again tomorrow?”
“I would turn it off,” she said severely. “It was man’s grasping and misuse of power that led us to the straits we’re in today. That caused the climate to turn against us, and sent the tornados to rend.”
I blinked, wondering if Beatrice intentionally conflated electric power with social power, or was just being rather literal about fossil fuel burning.
“You wouldn’t want the refrigerator back?” Brandy prompted. “The washing machine?”
“No,” she denied. “They are tempting. But I would resist temptation, and bear my penance.”
“So you take personal responsibility for climate change?” I asked.
She nodded vehemently. “We are all, each and every one of us, guilty of bringing this calamity down upon us. We pray and do penance for atonement with the Lord.”
“We’re unfamiliar with Apocalyptic doctrine,” Brandy said. “But we’re trying to explain this viewpoint to others. What do you see as the goal, Beatrice? Of this praying and atonement and penance. When we have done ‘enough’ penance,” Brandy supplied the quote marks with her fingers, “what happens?”
“Judgment Day is coming,” Beatrice said. “It is nigh at hand. Whether we have atoned or not.”
“Prayer and penance won’t prevent Judgment Day?” I asked.
“Prevent it? We long for Judgment Day,” Beatrice said, nodding, looking relieved. “It won’t be long now.”
“What is this?” a man bellowed from the porch. “What are you shameless women doing, polluting my home?”
“My husband,” Beatrice explained to us, rising with alacrity to meet him at the door. She opened it and bowed her head. To speak to him, she spoke to her feet. “Spike, these women asked to interview me, so that they could understand Apocalyptics better. The soldiers are from the new Resco, Colonel MacLaren. This is Dee Baker, the Colonel’s woman, and Brandy O’Keefe, a news reporter, and her camera man, Blake Sondheim. My husband, Spike Crowley.”
Spike Crowley looked like a Spike. He wore militia camouflage, with single silver bars. That meant he’d once served as a commissioned lieutenant before the militia. Or at least, that’s what those bars meant in Hudson and New England. Living with Emmett, I was catching on to these things. Spike wore several piercings in ears and eyebrow. Tattoos spilled from his shirt up his neck and down his forearms onto the backs of his hands, multicolored and covering every inch of skin.
“Are you a Jew, Blake Sondheim?” Spike demanded.
“Yes, I am,” Blake replied evenly. He carefully lowered his camera to his waist politely. He was still filming Spike.
“Is that a problem?” I inquired.
Spike scowled as I met his eye. “You will cast your eyes down, woman,” he barked at me.
“Excuse me, Mr. Crowley, but we are not Apocalyptics,” I said firmly. “We do not follow your ways. We are here trying to understand your ways.”
“Then get the fuck out of my house,” Spike replied. “All of you. And you!” He yelled, pointing at the 10-year-old. A sound of pelting footsteps receded up the stairs. “Do not get foolish ideas from fallen women!” he called up after her.
Qwanisha, my black female guard, leveled her rifle at him from the porch. “If you could step aside, sir,” she said, “so they can leave.”
“How dare you, bitch?” Spike made a grab for her gun. Qwanisha yanked it away easily, while her squad-mate Penny fired a warning shot at the porch. Now he had four guns leveled at him.
“Just step outside for a moment, sir,” Qwanisha directed. “Over there.”
A third squad-mate – the biggest one, Jorge – reached in and grabbed Spike out of the door frame. The angle was bad for me to watch what happened next. The gist was that Spike ended up laid out on the porch with guns trained on him.
“We’d better go,” I said faintly. “Thank you so much for your help, Beatrice. It’s been very illuminating. I’m sorry we’ve brought…”
“No trouble,” Beatrice denied.
“Can I give you my meshnet number?” I asked in concern. I wondered what the fallout was likely to be on her, when we left.
“I have no use for such things,” Beatrice said. She didn’t press us to leave faster or anything. She just stood holding the door open, in apparent unconcern. Fatalistic in this as in all things, perhaps.
We walked carefully – sometimes backwards or sideways so as not to turn our backs on Spike – to the waiting news van and troop SUV. Brandy and I quickly agreed to rendezvous at the Catholic church next, and hopped into our respective vehicles. The guards on the porch worked their way out of there without any bloodshed or further shots.
The guards vetoed our instructions and stopped a block away to confer with Sergeant Becque regarding the unwisdom of our plans. It took me some wheedling, and a promise not to invade anyone else’s home unless the man of the house invited us in. But we finally got moving again.
-o-
“Pre–Vatican Council II?” Agent Gianetti echoed in surprise. Apparently Sergeant Becque had tattled on me. The IBIS agent joined our expedition at the Catholic church on Mount Washington, along with Tibbs for added muscle and cunning. Based on their names, I was unsurprised to learn that Donna Gianetti and Brandy O’Keefe were better versed on matters Catholic than I.
“There was a general feeling that the reforms of Vatican Council II perhaps went too far,” Sharon Wentworth told us, our latest respondent. The younger woman wore knee-length sober brown dress and pumps, hat
with veil, and thin gloves. We’d caught her as she exited the church following a noon weekday Mass. The small children she’d walked with had continued on without her. “That returning to a way of life before the social disturbances of the 60’s, and climate change acceleration, would help us return to God.” She smiled beatifically beneath her lacy veil.
Donna and Brandy both appeared horrified. Not understanding what that was about, I dove in. “We’d like to understand your goals and problems these days, Sharon,” I prompted with a smile.
“I seek a good marriage, of course.” Fair enough, I thought. Not something I ever would have said, but most women in their twenties – let alone men – spent the bulk of their leisure time thinking about seeking sex, one way or another. “And to bring more people back into the Catholic Church,” she added.
“Back?” I asked.
“All these Protestants,” she clarified.
I still didn’t get it. “Have many Pittsburgh Catholics converted to Protestants lately?”
“We seek to heal the Reformation,” Sharon Wentworth clarified.
Ah, she meant the Protestants who split with Rome centuries ago.
Brandy winced, and wrested control of the conversation back. “On a more mundane level, Sharon. What do you do for a living these days?”
“I teach at the parochial school.” She prattled on a bit about her class, apparently first grade. Aside from the usual fundamentals, she also taught them catechism. “We’re on break for lunch and Mass. I really ought to get back now, excuse me. Peace be with you.” She took hands with each of us in turn with a warm smile, repeating the benediction.
“And also with your spirit,” Gianetti and Brandy modeled the ritual response for me, although Sharon’s version was, “And also with you.” We beamed smiles until the locals were out of earshot again.
