Albert took over from Harlan and shut the computer off. The house was completely dark. The penumbra of a sodium vapor bulb over the barn reached to the driveway.
Albert showed Harlan down the hallway with a flashlight. The room was sparse but not unwelcoming. There was a bed, a night table, a chair and a closet with a few hangers. Albert had installed wooden shutters everywhere in the house. He hadn't been in this room himself for more than a year.
"I don't think anyone's ever slept in them sheets," Albert said. "Not since they were put on. There's a bathroom down the hall...you'll find it."
"'’Preciate ya," Harlan replied. Albert handed him the flashlight.
He heard the door close as he walked down the hallway. No one had stayed in the house since he'd built it. He'd never had a guest. He walked through the dark rooms to the kitchen. It was snowing again. Fat, wet flakes clung to the windows in desperation and then melted and slid away.
Christmas meant absolutely nothing to Albert. He understood that people used it as an occasion to torment themselves, but he had not participated in it since he was a child. He remembered the Christmas decorations. His father set up an aluminum tree and he helped his mother decorate it. There were wrapped boxes under the tree and he was curious about them, but not obsessed the way everyone at school seemed to be. He sang Christmas carols when required to do so. He went to Sunday School for one year and the teacher thought he might become a minister. He read the required tracts and recited the stories and prayers so well only because it came easy to him. He had asked not to return and his parents, ever agreeable had not mentioned it again. He didn't believe "in" anything. He believed things or he didn't. That was it. He didn't believe anything about Christianity or any other theology except that they were the sanctuary of the terrified and the moronic.
He turned on the crank radio and tuned in NPR.
Some politician was telling the American people that everything was going to be fine. Tonight, midnight masses would be celebrated across the country, come what may. They could kill us and rob us and turn us into a homeless mass swarming over the countryside like an ant nest after a delinquent has stomped on it. They could do anything they wanted, but they couldn't take away Christmas.
"We're going to have a white Christmas," he thundered and then began to stutter. "Uh...uh...by that I just mean snow, of course...Mr. President, you understand...uh...snow is white...an unfortunate fact but I am sure we can find consensus on that given the...uh...uh...uh...
Christmas Day broke with the finest cerulean sky spreading across the Midwest and a clean breeze playing in the bare branches. The sun shone so brightly it was hard to see. Small towns were covered with a perfect white crystalline counterpane that sparkled electrically and filled you with slow time. Sound carried for miles it seemed without disintegrating. A shout landed where it was aimed as sure as a snowball.
Albert and Harlan were walking the perimeter of the farm, Ludwig chasing in and out of the snow and following or leading depending on his degree of excitement.
"He is a very fine dog," Harlan said.
Albert smiled like a grandparent. It was actually quite nauseating to see. He had a bumper sticker that said: The more people I meet, the more I like my dog. For most people that was a joke. For Albert it was a statement of fact. He loved Ludwig. He thought about Luddy when he was in town and he saw something the dog might like. He felt joy when he met up with him after an absence. He worried about him. He buried his face in Luddy's neck and inhaled his scent. This is love. There is no difference between this love and the love a human has for his child except that this was a case of arrested development. Luddy reached a certain level of contact and that's it. They don't discuss abstract philosophy. Luddy recognizes Albert from a mile away. He detects body language that eludes humans entirely. He knows the sound of Albert's truck above all other truck sounds. Sometimes he knows what Albert is thinking and acts accordingly. That is what these dogs are. They are telepathic. When a German Shepherd loses his human, he may die. When a human loses his German Shepherd, he experiences a loss that is so profound that it cannot be described. If a man had a retarded child with whom he lived and looked after for, let's say, twenty years, and the child died, the man would be permanently affected. German Shepherds are not ordinary dogs and every person who has ever lived with one knows this. They are transcendent beings, life forms that reside in between the various worlds of normal consciousness. Harlan didn't know this. He just thought Luddy was a great dog and Albert was weird.
The fresh snow made it easy to check the territory. They found deer and coyote tracks, they found a frozen bluebird and they studied one set of tracks for a while and determined it was a stray dog. This time Ludwig stayed with them and ran into the house when they got back and lay down, falling asleep almost instantly.
They sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and listening to the crank radio. The power had not returned but Albert had not started the generator. The house was warm, except for the water and they had an abundance of everything they would need for several months; longer if they conserved their resources.
They. They.
Albert repeated the word in his mind several more times. There had never been a 'they' before, at least not at this level, at the level of survival.
Harlan was fiddling with the radio when the news broadcaster shouted: "...bomb just went off." There was the sound of chaos and panic, screaming, shouting, the harsh voice of command, the screech of terrified onlookers and then a second explosion. Then the radio went dead. All they heard was static for about a minute and then the government emergency voice returned, repeating the warnings from the day before.
They went to the computer but even if they connected to a website it almost immediately displayed the president sitting in the oval office in what was clearly a pre-recorded speech about remaining calm and trusting the government to keep control of the situation. No matter where they surfed, they couldn't get a commercial news broadcast. There was no video and no on-site reporting of any kind.
"What the fuck's going on?" Harlan said.
"They've shut down the NET," Albert replied. "Remember all that stuff in the news about some legislation, you know something that lets the government take over the NET? Well they've done it.
"What the fuck?"
Albert tried unsuccessfully to connect to something else, but wherever he landed, the same speech was being played.
"So we don't know fuck all anymore," Harlan said. "They can tell us whatever they like and that's it."
"I guess," Albert said, absently, thinking about his short-wave radio. He had installed the antennae and run the cable into the house during the summer. All he had to do now was hook up the old Yaesu SSB FT-101 transceiver and see if he could connect with some other soul, somewhere. There had to be eyes on the ground reporting through DC short-wave. Even if the government set out to locate them, they could probably dodge the bullet for a while and there was no way they could shut them down with an EMP or something crazy like that without affecting their own broadcasting. No, they'd have to hunt them down one at a time, maybe do antenna searches from the air. He hadn't thought of that and his antennae, though it was anchored in a dense copse of maple, ash and walnut trees that climbed to sixty and seventy feet, would still be visible from a helicopter because the leaves were gone. There was nothing he could do about it now. They wouldn't come looking so long as all he did was receive. It was the broadcasting they were after.
He set the Yaesu on the desk and instructed Harlan to unwind the antennae cable that was tucked under the window. The battery pack was under the desk. He ran the power cord from the radio to the inverter and switched it on. It took a few seconds for the tubes to warm up. Harlan shook his head.
"What?"
"I heard about stuff like that...tubes and stuff."
"What do you mean?"
"Tubes. I never owned anything with tubes in it."
Albert connected the system and turned i
t on. After a few minutes of bright static and some strange whale sounds, they picked up a broadcaster somewhere in upstate New York.
"...Albany? Anything back from Ratman? Over."
"That's a negative, Cool Ray. Ratman's last broadcast was three hours thirty two minutes ago. Over."
"They shut him down, or-?"
"No idea. I've gotta split."
Static popped like an old record but there was no further conversation. They dialed through the entire spectrum, catching various conversations, most of them in English or Spanish. There was plenty of speculation but no reporting. Once, Albert broke in on a broadcaster in Los Angeles who said the streets had been overrun with gangs coming out of the projects and East LA.
Albert turned the radio off to preserve the batteries and they refilled their mugs.
"I wonder how much longer this stuff's going to be around," Harlan said, sipping the hot, sweetened coffee like a connoisseur. Albert was about to say: "I've got a hundred pounds stashed away," but something made him keep his mouth shut. Harlan sensed he was going to reply and waited but looked away after a moment.
"Well, Merry fuckin Christmas," he said finally.
They thought it was Swine Flu, a resurgence of the great phony threat of 2009-10. That particular winter, tens of millions of vaccinations were distributed and five or six drug companies from France to Australia made a fortune but most of those who refused the vaccine and got sick recovered so quickly that some of them didn't even know they were infected, while the vaccine itself was suspect in three hundred and fifty percent more deaths than predicted. About thirteen thousand people died from Swine Flu - a quarter of the expected death rate from regular flu. Even the United Nations and WHO finally admitted it had been a hoax perpetrated by drug companies to recoup losses from other, unsuccessful pandemics like SARS.
So the people of these United States could be excused for not taking too seriously a sudden announcement on the now government-controlled airwaves that a new and improved strain of flu had been detected.
"Oink," Harlan said, watching the new about-to-be-former health secretary telling people to wash their hands and sneeze and cough into the crooked elbow. He was the third individual to hold the death seat cabinet post in eighteen months. This was a population that had been confined under Martial Law for almost two weeks dining on MREs and O-O SpaghettiOs while congressmen and "civil serpents vital to the national interest" stuffed their jowls with capons and caviar. Well, not really capons and caviar. But they weren't eating rations either and you could almost smell the garlic and fresh corn bread through the radio whenever they belched. With a great gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and strategically timed unctuous voice breaking for the media, they praised the American People freezing in the dark and assured them of their government's love.
Albert nodded agreement, looking at Harlan who hadn't shaved since he'd arrived and looked like an old alcoholic. Albert scratched his own raspy cheek and regretted it immediately as it began to itch. They had plenty of water but they weren't going to waste it shaving.
"I guess I'll go milk the cow," Albert said, standing.
Harlan sipped at his coffee and pulled his chair a little closer to the stove.
"I can do that if need be," he said.
"'Preciate that, Harlan," Albert said, "but she don't like anyone handling her except me."
Harlan shrugged and went back to fiddling with the radio.
Albert stepped outside into the dark morning and listened to the icy silence. It had turned cold again, hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit following a brief thaw and many of the trees were coated in a thin sheen of ice. He slipped a few times on the path to the barn and it made him aware of how disastrous even a simple injury could turn out to be. Sometimes he wondered about people in the German death camps of World War Two who had come down with a cold, or a slipped disc or sciatica or an infected toe? How did they survive it? Did they all die? Was it the ultimate Darwinian selection? Imagine how tough those damn Jews were if they all came from people who survived the camps. Fuckin Jews. Madoff. Goldman Sachs. Lehman Bros. Jews and Niggers and Ragheads and Pakis and Spics. Sand Niggers of all kinds and Queers and...God knows what. Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn all you get is this frothing vomit of third world parasites. Fuckin bastards. Why can't they just leave us alone?
Bolivia called out to him loudly as he entered the steaming barn.
"What's your problem? I'm not late."
She had placed herself in the milking stall and was waiting for the scoops of meal he gave her twice a day.
Information had been coming sporadically for the last few days until this morning when it began to repeat. Harlan was more alarmed by this than he had to be, Albert thought. But Harlan saw great significance in this. He said everyone was sitting here watching the news and listening to the garbage coming out of Washington, but all the politicians had left. They were in their bunkers and the idiot public was watching a tape that kept rewinding.
"Come on, man," Albert chided. "You're starting to sound like a tin foil hat."
So they tuned in the short wave again, which for several days had produced nothing but speculation and rumors. The scans produced a few desultory conversations until they landed on a broadcaster claiming to be located "near the capitol," just as he came on air.
"I will be shutting down in ninety seconds. Take heed. Nothing here will be repeated. National Guard killed five hundred and seventy people yesterday morning in DC. The government has abandoned the city for shelters in Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming. The Capitol Buildings have been shut down. Only George Washington University Hospital is open. At oh four hundred today the-"
He never even lasted the ninety seconds.
"He's a fuckin nutcase, Harlan," Albert scoffed. You can't believe an asshole like that."
Harlan looked hard at Albert and then finally made a gesture of acquiescence.
Albert took pleasure from watching the streams of heavy, creamy milk shoot from Bolivia into the pail. Such a beautiful thing, milk.
The goats and the donkeys and several of his sheep had congregated in the larger section of the barn and were sprawled in the straw. Sheep are not generally affectionate with people, but Albert's five black sheep always came up to him when he walked through the yard. He could pet them briefly, scratch them under the chin, even grip the wool for a moment. Then they would shy away. The two miniature donkeys he had picked up from a local farmer about to ship them to a slaughter house when he went broke had taken over management of his yard almost immediately. They were an inordinately affectionate pair of neutered males, who stood side by side whenever anything transpired, pressed against each other and staring myopically and sadly at whatever spectacle was unfolding before them. He called them Mutt and Jeff, though they didn't seem to know their names. They chased the goats around the yard, sometimes and one or the other occasionally bit Bolivia in the rear in a moment of pique. But generally they did nothing but eat and mourn.
Carrying the milk back into the mud room he once again considered what he would do with the excess. He couldn't keep making cheese and the Amishman had killed the calves and was already jarring them up when Albert arrived with milk the other day. To throw it away seemed almost sacrilegious in the face of rationing. He wanted to offer the milk to someone but he didn't know how to do it.
Harlan was still tinkering with the radio but there was nothing new. He looked up as Albert entered.
"You think someone's dropped a bomb?" he asked.
"I doubt it," Albert said. "You're going to hear about that one way or the other. They couldn't hide that kind of thing."
"Ya, you're right."
"I want you to do something for me," Albert said after a minute.
Harlan looked up at him, surprised.
"Sure. Of course. What?
"I'm going to pasteurize this milk and put it in these jugs and I want you to take it into town. Give it to someone. Maybe someone with kids."
<
br /> Harlan laughed, embarrassed by Albert's obvious discomfiture. Albert looked away and concentrated on pouring the milk.
"Hey, no problem," he said. "You just kind of took me by surprise, that's all."
"I can't keep making cheese, for Chrissakes and the Amishman killed his calves. I got nothing else to do with it and I don't want to throw it away."
"I hear you," Harlan said. "I'll take it to the sheriff's office."
"I wouldn't do that," Albert said. "They'll take it home. I want you to find someone with kids, you know, someone who needs it."
"Okay, Gandhi," Harlan replied. "Shit. I'm just joking, Albert. Ain't you got any sense of humor left?"
Albert placed four gallons of pasteurized milk in glass jars in the front seat of Harlan's truck and secured them with the seat belt.
"I appreciate it," Albert said as Harlan climbed in and started the vehicle.
"Well I doubt they will," Harlan replied. "You sure you want people to know you got this stuff here? Maybe better to waste it and stay low, you know what I mean?"
Albert closed the door and went back into the house. He watched Harlan drive off from the window.
Albert didn't know what was happening to him. He had never cared very much about anyone except Rosemary, the homeless black woman who lived in a tent in a Home Depot parking lot but he had only known her for a few months. He was not bitter or resentful or unhappy about his solitary life. He lived earnestly and quietly. He did what he wanted and paid his taxes and did not concern himself very much with abstract ideas or politics. So why should he care if the milk was wasted? The Amish threw away milk all the time when they didn't have calfs to feed and no one wanted it. You have to keep milking but what do you do with the excess? You throw it away. You feed it to the pigs...
For several years he had spent all his time and effort preparing for the end of the world. He knew it was coming, just like you know the knock at the door is bad news. You don't know how you know, but you know. You hear the knocking and somehow its timbre, or its frequency, or its magnitude transmits something of its meaning and you prepare yourself as you walk up to the slab that separates you from the future.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 7
