Albert was not surprised or even particularly alarmed by what was transpiring around him. Even Martial Law did not trouble him that much. He didn't go anywhere, anyway. He didn't need anything. He was no more disconnected from society today than he was three months ago. His life had changed in small, almost insignificant ways while the people around him for the most part must be howling. As long as they left him alone, he wouldn't even poke his head out the window.
He took advantage of Harlan's absence to check out his room. He wondered briefly if Harlan had set a trap that would indicate that Albert had been in there poking around. The door was open. That was probably a message he should have picked up on. But he went in and glanced around the room and saw nothing of interest and left.
It was his house, wasn't it? He was doing Harlan a favor. He had a right to know who was living in his house and what they were doing, didn't he? He didn't know Harlan that well. Maybe Harlan had drugs or something. Maybe Harlan was a killer or a terrorist or a homo.
Albert went back to the living room and sat down. He wanted a cigarette for the first time in years. All he could do was listen to the radio broadcasts or pick up bits and pieces on the net when it worked or scuttlebutt from the Hams. They were checking trucks and then letting them proceed to the cities but they all had to be escorted. They had a Humvee following every truck until they ran out of Humvees in about an hour and a half so they started putting an armed soldier in the cab with each driver to ride shotgun. The soldier could call for support if he needed it and a gunship was supposed to show up with a tactical unit. Then somebody figured out that if they shot the soldier first, the driver would just hand over the truck. So they killed eleven guardsmen that way and the army went back to vehicle escorts. Then the bad guys mined a road or two and killed everybody and then burned the trucks with the frozen chicken inside. People stood around inhaling the fumes of the roasting chicken just to remind themselves what eating use to be like. Civilian drivers just walked away and wouldn't come back. Now they were at the point where a truck had to be escorted fore and aft, with a gunship hovering above. Food was not getting to the cities, nor was gasoline or anything else. Even the small towns were completely shut down unless they had a food factory within walking distance and all depots and warehouses were now under Martial control so it didn't really help at all. One by a one, a series of emergency executive orders were instituted that took control of the airwaves, the highways and airports and the storage facilities. And then they annexed all standing farm crops and beef herds. FEMA officials in their shiny black SUVs showed up at a farm, confiscated the cattle or sheep or chickens, which were then shipped out under guard. The farmer was given an IOU and three days worth of MREs were dropped on the porch.
Albert thought the reports must be exaggerated, the typical paranoid nonsense that always accompanied any sort of crisis until he heard it repeated both officially and through the ether on short wave.
He dialed in a HAM in Illinois who periodically turned away from the mic to violently cough and sneeze.
"They stripped every grain bin for a hundert miles," he said. "They took corn, beans...anything they could get they hands on, motherfuckers! Then they dumped fucking MREs on everybody and took off. Say the beeves have been took to slaughter and the goddamn politicians are hangin it in their secret bomb shelters."
"CQ...Indiana," Albert said and waited.
"Go ahead Indiana," the voice came back.
"You seen any of this yourself? Over."
"You callin me a liar, motherfucker? Over."
"I ain't callin you anything. I just want to know if anybody actually seen what's goin on or not? Over."
"I ain't seen it personally, no. But I got a brother in the guard who sent me a message and he said they're killin the cattle and haulin the beef off. That good enough for ya? Over."
"I'm just sayin how everything gets so whacked out so fast, you know? Like the other day they said there was a hundred tanks coming down the highway round here where I live so everyone went out to see and they was a single Humvee with a couple officers and they didn't even stop. Over."
"I hear ya," Illinois came back, mollified. "But I got this from my kid brother in the Guard and he says they got orders to take every damn thing they can find. Over."
"Things must be a whole hell of a lot worse than they are saying," Albert commented.
There was a long silence and he then added an "over," which brought Illinois back.
"They don't know what the fuck they are doin. That FEMA bunch opened up that place in Marseilles on Highway 6 just off the I-80. They seen guards in the towers this morning. Over."
"Who seen 'em? Over."
"Militia. Over."
"Well, hell..."
"-I know, but I grew up with these boys. This ain't no Timothy McVeigh we're talkin here. I mean they seen troops open the camp and getting ready to bring someone in. Swear to God. Over."
"Hell. Shit. Damn."
"Amen. The biggest camp they got is over in your neck of the woods, brother. You got Beach Grove. Over." And then he quickly added: "And they say that's a death camp with gas chambers and crematorium ovens and everything, just like Hitler. Over."
Albert released the mic and leaned back in his chair.
"CQ Indiana, you still there? Over. Well, if you are listening you best get yourself under cover, boy. They losing control of this situation so fast make your head spin. They're pullin back, pullin away from the cities. They figure the Ragheads and the white supremacists and every nut wagon in the country is going to start rolling perty soon. Over. Well, hell..."
Makes sense, Albert thought. Exploit the chaos. The last week had sort of been like the phony war of 1939 after the Krauts invaded Poland...nothing happened and then: Bang! Belgium. France, etc. If the various anti-government groups in the U.S., most of whom were heavily armed with conventional weapons including everything from stolen RPGs to fifty caliber machine guns, decided to move on the government - or each other - there would be a bloodbath. The question was: Are the various groups cooperating against the government? And the answer was probably not. First of all, there were no active groups in the country that had not been infiltrated by the various anti-terrorist units. They would know what was going on among them. They had to. There had been sensational busts by the FBI, BATFE, and various other so called law- enforcement agencies on an almost monthly basis. The bad guys couldn't crap without someone knowing, except maybe if it was a really dedicated, serious, secret, utterly determined tiny group with a brilliant and simple plan.
Had the great powers really missed the truck blower-uppers? How? How could these guys have managed to evade all the scrutiny, the surveillance, the espionage, the increasing use of children to inform on their parents, the new laws prohibiting home schooling that had taken effect in all but four states, the hot lines with hefty reward money, the promise of celebrity and privilege that would come with heroically informing on your fellow citizens. How had they avoided all this and managed to blow up what was, at last count, 518 transport trucks on Christmas Eve without anyone having a clue? The government had been expecting a major confrontation for years and had been preparing for it, or so they claimed. They got fooled? They claimed they were fooled on 911. Did they really get fooled again? Were they so busy peeking under the petticoats of old Georgia grandmothers in airports while letting Ragheads through to prove they weren't racists that they missed it? Is it possible they let the bastards in through the southern border, just like everyone said it would happen? Did they know about it and let it happen to hurry up the conflict they needed to impose the Martial Law they were so eager for? The executive orders that permitted the president to annex the transportation system, the communications, the power grid, the food supplies, the confiscation of weapons, had all been on the books since the fiasco of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in some cases before that. They knew it was coming. How did they miss it? Are they involved in it themselves, like the tin foil hats insist?
>
The bad guys wouldn't need to coordinate their activities, Albert reasoned. All these nuts just waiting for some kind of sign, some kind of detonator would just use the circumstances as an excuse to act. The Ragheads would start their shit and then the big white assholes and then the little brown assholes and so on and so forth. Pretty soon the fucking government wouldn't have a clue. The army would circle around the politicians and start killing everybody until the individual soldier realized what he had been set up to do. It wouldn't just be the Guard, either. Some guy who'd done a few tours in Iraq and helped bury some Iowa farm boy in the stars and stripes would turn around and look at the cowyards he was supposed to be defending, listen to their screeching while that dead kid's brothers and sisters and parents came looking for them with baseball bats and pitch forks and he'd open the door and stand aside.
"Come on in. They're right over there...the ones with little beady eyes and buck teeth nibbling on the cheese I confiscated from you on their behalf before I realized what had happened to me and the country and everything I believed and was ready to die and kill for. Take them. Have fun. I'm going home."
How many real homegrown terrorists could there be? One percent of the population, about three million people. Would three million heavily armed, highly motivated terrorists be a problem? The U.S. Military had a million or so active duty personnel, about a third of whom actually did any soldiering but add in a few thousand Gurkhas and Nigerians and Koreans wearing blue UN hats and we'll say there are three hundred thousand available for domestic combat against three million American guerillas. But there aren't three million home grown terroristas. There aren't three hundred thousand. There aren't thirty thousand. Maybe there are three thousand. Is it possible that a thousandth of one per cent of the U.S. population would slit the throat of every politician in Washington, commit mass executions of banksters and IRS agents and ATF hit men and string up every person who was even friends with someone who knew someone who may have worked on Wall Street? Could three thousand terrorists bring the United States to its knees. Could a thousand? Do they have to know each other to pull it off?
The real idiots had been picked up. Some had made themselves into targets by grandiose proclamations and recruitment drives in the trailer parks and at Klan rallies and blurted their plans and challenges and defiance on "Patriot" radio shows. The IRS had effectively neutralized hundreds and the bankruptcy courts many more. Then there were the spectaculares who staged bank robberies and storefront shootings only to be taken out by FBI and BATFE snipers (who only occasionally shot teenagers, babies and their mothers right through the head.) There were the idioti who bought ammonium nitrate over the internet and collected bottles of nail polish remover and they were quickly apprehended by the mighty arm of the FBI and shoved into federal prisons where they joined the Aryan Nations and Islamic Prisoners Benevolent Association and got a PHD in Revenge.
The real threat, the secretive, patient, ordinary man who wouldn't draw a second glance in a room full of telephone poles and who quietly and patiently and secretly plans out his attacks with a certain, limited objective - an achievable objective - which includes his escape that he might do it again - the man who is above suspicion, not just above conviction, the little, pasty-faced Poindexter of a man who walks his funny little schnauzer in the park each evening and then goes home and drinks lemon tea; he is the man you need to fear. He is the man you will never see, you will never detect and you will never catch. And he is the man who will bring the world to its knees. How many of them were out there? Are there a thousand dedicated, determined, psychotic, secretive, highly intelligent, meticulous, fanatics embedded in the population who believe that the destruction of American society as we know it, would be a good thing? If they acted independently but in concert, an inadvertent conspiracy, you might say, could they destroy mighty America? Probably not. But they could induce the government to do it itself. They would begin to repress the population hoping to squeeze the problem elements, these constitutional malefactors out between the toes and fingers of the secret police. There was no way the people in power could act in a way other than how they were trained to act. They would hunt down the rebels, execute captives on national television after show trials and seek the kind of power and control over masses of people that they had always dreamed of. Will people take up arms in self defense against their own government when it promises them flush toilettes, welfare, food stamps and lots of cheap electricity for their video games? With Monday Night Football and Britney Spears' new do and Michael Jackson's kiddy diddling and Dancing with the Stars for competition, does a mundane retelling of The Battle of Concord stand a chance?
PART 1, CHAPTER 3
He went to the kitchen and poured hot water into a cup with a tea bag and watched it turn color. He dolloped in some honey and a few drops of lemon juice, but it didn't help; he just didn't like tea.
Harlan had been gone for almost three hours. It shouldn't have taken an hour to run to town, find a woman with a couple of kids needing some milk and get back.
Albert's unease grew as the daylight waned and the sun began to melt over Andy Bowen's barn. It looked like lava was spilling down from the roof as the heavy red sun settled.
He had taken the dog outside to watch the sunset and now the big Shepherd sat in the snow beside him, still, but observant. He watched the horizon carefully.
"Probably found some woman with a bottle of Turkey and her husband run off," Albert said.
At the sound of his voice, Ludwig stirred, looked at him briefly and lay back down in the snow.
He jumped on the dog and they wrestled for a while. Ludwig opened his mouth and covered Albert's face, but the teeth never even dented his flesh. The dog's eyes were bright and challenging. Albert grabbed his neck with both hands and shook him back and forth. The dog licked his face. They fell into the snow and the dog jumped up and started to spring from place to place.
"C'mere ya bastard," Albert shouted and started to chase him. The dog kept just out of his reach, swerving and deking with incredible ease, his motion one fluid tangle. He yipped and his eyes flashed. Albert stopped, panting. The dog stopped too and stared at him as if to say, 'Are you kidding?'
Albert flopped down in the snow and Ludwig ran over and licked him furiously and pranced, trying to get him to play some more.
"Fuck that," Albert gasped, grabbing the dog by the scruff. They stared at each other until Ludwig got spooked and wiggled out of his grasp. Albert started throwing snow balls at him. The snow was too dry for good packing but he managed to land a few anyway. The dog watched them arc in and snapped at them, startled when they exploded to nothing in his mouth.
"C'mon, I've had it," he said getting up and they went inside.
Albert poured himself too much bourbon and looked at the glass for a moment before sipping it. Albert didn't share his George C. Stagg with anyone and didn't feel a bit guilty about it, either. The hundred and forty proof fireball plunged down his esophagus and exploded against the tender walls of his stomach. A rush of heat enveloped him and he nearly blacked out.
"Wow."
He hid the bottle back in the secret hiding place and pulled a slab of beef from the freezer. The dog watched him intently as he lay it on the maple anvil stand he used for a butcher block and layed into it with a heavy cleaver. A few pieces flew off and hit the floor and Ludwig gobbled them up almost before they landed.
He set a pan on the stove, stoked the fire with a few sticks and dropped the meat into the pan where it sizzled and jumped. He splashed some whiskey on it and let it thaw and simmer and curl in it's own juices for a while. He added an onion and some dried tomatoes. He had dried them himself. He had pulled seeds from tomatoes the year before and dried them and chilled them and germinated them and planted them and watched over them and harvested them and sliced them and dried them. And now he was eating them. He knew the whiskey was working on him but he couldn't help feeling a moment of power and pleasure as he stirred the mess i
n the big cast iron pan and Ludwig watched him, immobile and intense, wondering if...
The smells filled the house and he sipped his drink and thought back over the years and all the preparations he had made, sometimes not even really understanding why or what had prompted him to do it. Sure, he enjoyed it. He liked to be his own man. He came and went as he pleased. He lived as he pleased. He had earned it, every moment of it. He played by the rules, saved his money, invested it...dreamed. And now he was reaping the benefits, as they say. But something was nagging at him, preventing him from completely enjoying the situation. Maybe he shouldn't have let Harlan move in here. He didn't really know Harlan.
Back to that, are we? But you don't know him; that's a fact. Ah shit.
He poked at the frying meat and moved the skillet off the burner slightly to lower the heat. The house was filling with the magnificent aromas of frying meat and onions and whiskey and the last of the sun faded, leaving the world dark. It was a full moon and bright and cold. He imagined the animals in his barn all lying in the fresh straw out of the weather and safe from anything that could hurt them. He had insulated the chicken house this fall and he knew the temperature would stay above freezing in there as long as conditions remained within a certain range. He thought he could hear the old Axtell churning in the wind.
But the unease wouldn't leave him. He wandered around the house for a while, checking windows and doors, stopped again in front of Harlan's room but didn't go inside, touched the shape of the .45 under his arm and the outline of three more clips. He lit an oil lamp in the kitchen and took apart the Remington and wiped it down and put it back together. Then he popped the bullets out of his clips and rubbed them until they shone and pushed them back down the elevator shafts with a cloth, to keep the skin oils from smudging the perfect, fat, lethal larvae.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 8
