As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  There were some basic amenities in the room but nothing more than necessary. A bed, a desk, a shelf with some books that he was beginning to think had been a complete waste of time because he couldn't expend battery power on reading. His famous toilette was hidden behind a curtain. Hundreds of MREs stacked like cord wood covered one long wall and enough water for about three months was stacked in bottles against another.

  The north end of the room was filled with racks of twelve-volt batteries that powered his lights and his camera and microphone and the all-important ventilation system. A fan at one end drew in fresh air through a serpentine pipe that surfaced inside a hollowed out stump twenty feet from the tomb door and a fan at the other end drew room air through a conduit to a pile of rocks twenty feet on the other side. The fans ran twenty four hours a day and took up most of his battery power but they were the difference between life and death. The little generator on the Axtell, he'd made from a twelve-volt motor reversed to produce current. He also had a thousand watts of solar panels he'd wired together and hidden outside under a pile of brush. They could be hooked up in an emergency and then disconnected and hidden again leaving no trace of their terminus. When he used them on windless days, he sat right beside them ready to disconnect and run or fight if he had to. The batteries on full charge could operate the fans for four days.

  He'd clad the interior with regular plywood as a barrier against the treatment impregnating the timbers and carefully fitted one panel over the entrance to the long escape tunnel. It swung out enough for him to get inside and then he could pull it closed behind him. Hopefully the motion detectors would be charged and working and the passage lights would come on. He'd crawl along the poplar planks one hundred and sixty feet to where the steel intestine emptied into an upright culvert with a ladder and a hatch just like the main entrance. Maybe he'd get away. Probably not. By the time they were actually moving on the tomb, there'd be no time. They'd blast his ass and he knew it. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they'd open the hatch and shine a light down and think they'd found his hideout and they'd send someone down. He'd shine a flashlight around and call back up the chute for others to come and see the marvel of underground ingenuity. Maybe someone up top would be curious enough to come down as well and they'd look around and see how he'd been living and shine their flashlights on the battery bank. They'd shine their flashlights all around the room, amazed and impressed and a little chagrined. They'd see the switch on the wall and hesitate and then one or the other would lift it to open the lights and trigger an electric current that would race down those pretty copper conduits right into the sperm tails of those kids' rocket igniters which would instantly glow white hot donating sudden life to the black powder in the detonator and that simple explosion would hammer the acetone peroxide with a 12-gauge incendiary shell and that would in turn explode with a tremendous, contained power and in turn set off the ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel sleeping in the two thirty gallon drums and all would culminate as a geyser of earth and stone and wood and body parts erupted from the depths. Maybe. Probably not. They probably weren't that stupid. They wouldn't go down there. They'd open the hatch and shine a light down and call someone else over, a captain or some officer who'd tell them to blow it. That's really what was most likely to happen. That was why the hatch was wired to a black powder pipe bomb two feet long and six inches in diameter containing enough explosive force and flechette shrapnel to kill everybody within a radius of fifty feet and set to explode exactly one minute after the hatch was opened. If that failed and they really did decide to go have a look, well, they would evaporate. By then he would be a hundred and fifty feet down the escape tunnel and ready to open that hidden hatch under a beaver damn of sticks and forest detritus, and wait there, if he had to, until the opportunity to escape presented itself. He'd be holding a fully-automatic AK 47 and be carrying twenty loaded magazines. Man, they were heavy. If they wanted to fight he'd kill them that way until they killed him. If they missed him, he'd run and plan more ways and means to kill them later until they were all dead or he was. There was no in between, no truce possible, no understanding or agreement or concession, no compromise and no surrender. If they gave up, he would kill them. If they ran, he would pursue them and kill them. The revelation was liberating. He had a single, simple purpose now, a reason to live and to die and to concentrate on his own survival. He had to survive for one reason only: to kill as many of them as he could.

  He flicked on the small LED and put away his outer garments and then carefully checked the batteries and the fans and then lit up the fiber optic camera and watched the area around him for a while, the microphone hissing quietly as the slight wind broke across its mouth.

  He tore open the MRE and dropped the package into the heater pouch, holding it close so he could feel the exothermic reaction and be warmed by it as it cooked the alleged pork chop. He wanted to feel some warmth, to feel the breath of a fire or the radiant greeting of a stove. He ate slowly, like any prisoner, knowing there were long, almost unendurable hours of nothing ahead. He would have to sit or lie in the cool darkness, fully clothed and wrapped in a sleeping bag. He needed the sleep but he could not sleep. He got up and checked the batteries again and took a small emergency throw-away flashlight from the dozen nested in a small box and took a book down from the shelf. It was a collection of American poetry. He had deliberately chosen books he could reread, thinking that space should not be wasted on stories that had an ending. He opened the book at random.

  We are the hollow men,

  we are the stuffed men

  Leaning together

  Headpiece filled with straw

  Our dried voices, when

  We whisper together

  Are quiet and meaningless

  As wind in dry grass...

  When Smith-Jones #1 entered the Quonset, Smith-Jones #2 was getting ready to take his shift on guard. They were pulling long hauls - eight hours on, eight hours off - a dangerous and prohibited practice but there was no one to complain about it and there was no one attacking them, it seemed.

  "Nothing," #1 shrugged and dropped his rifle on his cot.

  The other nodded and went outside. The snow was dazzling in the hard light and he put on sunglasses. He saw Gonzalez emerging from the barn, shaking straw or hay from his pant leg.

  "What up my man...you playing farmer today?

  Gonzalez grimaced as he came forward.

  "Those animals are starving," he said. "I threw down some hay but we can't look after them. Something has to be done."

  #2 nodded agreeably.

  Gonzalez glanced back at the barn as he walked towards the house. #2 locked his rifle and trudged over. He opened the barn door and the smell rolled over him.

  Bolivia was moaning as she ate through the bale, her udder swollen and red. The goats didn't get up right away. They'd been without water for two days and licking snow had given them colic. They looked at him indifferently and he looked back at them. He'd never seen a goat or a cow up close before. He was repelled by their marbled eyes and the way their muscles seemed to move under their skin, like athletes on television or in photographs.

  The old nanny sensed something from him and stopped chewing and looked right at him.

  "You be a goat, huh?" He said.

  She got to her feet and continued to stare at him but her flight response was activated and she started to move.

  He sprayed her with machine-gun bullets turning her white coat bloody almost instantly. The incredible noise startled Bolivia who tried to turn and run but didn't get far as he emptied the clip into her side, taking special care to blow her udder to bits so that her blood and her milk ran together. She bellowed and fell and kicked while he turned to the little Nubian goat in the corner, her flap ears trying to stiffen as she watched him in terror. She pranced in the corner and #2 grinned as he followed her back and forth with his rifle, amused by the tennis match humor as she tried to escape. She bleated long and loudly as he shot her legs out. S
he fell, howling and he emptied the second clip, blowing her head to bits.

  The sound was contained by the heavy, thick boards of the barn but #1 came running out, his rifle ready for work. #2 emerged casually and sauntered across the yard.

  "What the fuck?" #1 shouted.

  "I offed them animals like Gonzo said," #2 answered, puzzled by #1's excitement. "It weren't nothin to worry about. Didn't want 'em to suffer," he added, almost as an afterthought.

  Gonzalez had heard the firing and came out of the house as #1 was returning to his hut, a look of disgust plastered across his dark face.

  "Next time, you check with me first, understand?" he snapped.

  Gonzalez looked at the barn and caught on suddenly, his face pained.

  "I didn't expect him to do that!" he whined.

  #1 declined further conversation and walked away. Gonzalez saw #2 replacing a magazine in his rifle as he walked out to the field and headed for the wall of trees. #2 looked back at him and grinned.

  It was barely eight o'clock and the day was already going south. He hesitated going out to the barn to see the carnage he imagined inside and then decided firmly against it. The weather was cold enough that the carcasses probably wouldn't start to smell right away, but something would have to be done.

  "Shit," he said.

  He had higher expectations of Homeland Security and his own FEMA managers. Things were not going smoothly and he didn't understand why more personnel hadn't been delegated to assist him here. He couldn't do everything himself. How could he manage the committee and oversee the food confiscation and storage programs and distribute MREs and prepare the police to work with the army to confiscate weapons and...and...and...It was impossible!

  The security detail had given him a message from Indianapolis informing him that he was to cooperate fully with any military designates who would assume operational control wherever they happened to be. But there was no indication that anyone was heading down to Provost. There was a platoon of Guardsmen camped outside of town who checked any vehicles on Highway 61 and the two operators living here with him on Albert Smythe's old property, but no one seemed to have the slightest interest in managing or getting involved in or handling in any way the dross of daily management. He spent the rest of the day organizing his files and preparing responses to the cables he received through the security detail from both Homeland Security and FEMA. He stretched his legs out on Albert's old coffee table and sipped a cup of coffee they had made in the Quonset. He didn't like these two, but the South African was definitely a different class from his subordinate. #2 was your typical, plain, run-of-the-mill ghetto punk who'd been press-ganged by affirmative action, given two weeks training, an automatic rifle and a license to swagger.

  In the afternoon, #1 came in and opened one of Albert's old freezers and picked through the venison and the beef. Gonzalez tried to ignore him but #1 wouldn't have it.

  "How you cook this shit?" he asked.

  "Beats me," Gonzalez shrugged. "I look like a short-order chef to you?"

  The big South African laughed and shook his head slowly. He dropped the joint back in the freezer and let the lid down. He tracked as he walked into the living room where Gonzalez was parked, leaving little puddles of melted snow.

  "Shame having all this good food and nothing to eat," he said. Gonzalez was drinking water from a tin marked with the FEMA logo. He had stuck religiously to the rations handed down to everyone else. He didn't like the freewheeling behavior of the security detail.

  #1 tried again to engage him: "You hear anything about the trucks moving again?"

  Gonzalez finally dropped the cover on his laptop and nodded.

  "Rumors," he said.

  "Ya...me too. Seems this thing maybe has blown over. Fine with me. I can't get home soon enough, get the hell out of this weather."

  After a few minutes of silence he said: "Capetown."

  It struck a note with Gonzalez who recalled a memo about the possibility of United Nations forces being deployed in the United States under some circumstances and he was well aware that contractors from all over the globe had been ensconced in the U.S. Military since Vietnam. The ratio was eight soldiers to one civilian contractor in 1968 and then it was eight civilian contractors to one soldier in 2008 and now it was fourteen civilian and quasi-military contractors to one soldier.

  "What about your sidekick?" Gonzalez asked.

  "Lewis? Hell. Lewis be fum Dee-troit," he said, grinning and trying to mimic the other man's ebonic syntax. That scumbag was selling crack in Blackbottom a month ago when he got selected. He's a fine piece of work, isn't he?"

  Gonzalez couldn't figure out what #1 wanted so he nodded and said nothing. The other man looked around the room and seemed impressed.

  Here it comes, Hector thought.

  "Lot of room in here for just one guy," don't you think?" he said.

  Gonzalez frowned and did not answer.

  He drove back in to Provost for his evening meet with the committee in a foul mood, planning to cut anyone short who attempted to drag things out.

  They were waiting for him, passing around a package of lifesavers someone had scrounged up. He frowned when he saw it but said nothing.

  The mayor banged his gavel and looked up quickly for Gonzalez's approval. The Mexican nodded and Reggie Jarvis brought the meeting to order. Gonzalez allowed a thin glaze to form over his eyes and sat back while they reported on their various adventures.

  Finally, they finished, their bromidic conversation running down and sputtering out until they were all looking at him again with vapid expectation.

  "I have received a message from Homeland that the regular food trucks may start running again in the next few days," he announced.

  This got them all chattering and he waited until they stopped and looked at him again.

  "It's been almost a week since there's been an incident so they're thinking this thing may have wound down," he continued. "If that happens, we will distribute the food from a central location, probably the high school-"

  Town Clerk Vanna Bruntley listened attentively to Gonzalez, taking brief minutes with a ball point pen. The pen went out of focus for a moment and Vanna pulled her head back in surprise and looked at it. Then she turned quite pale and felt a surge of saliva fill her mouth. She pushed away from the table and conversation stopped as everyone watched her. She seemed to be in a sudden panic. The mayor opened his mouth to say something, when Vanna choked and splattered the table with a thick oyster of vomit. She reeled backwards as she stood and a second gurgling belch brought forth a stream of bloody froth mixed with processed MRE sweet-and-sour pork.

  As soon as Works Commissioner Gary Sheiskopf saw the vomit and smelled the sour stomach acid, he vomited into his own lap and fainted. The others watched as Vanna caromed off the wall and then slowly descended to the cold floor. It took another few seconds before people were jerked from their trance and the Sheriff heroically bent down and felt her neck for a pulse.

  "She's breathin'," he said.

  "Thank goodness," someone gasped. "Imagine if you had to give her-"

  "Excuse me," Dr. Fulthy said sternly and they parted so he could attend her. The Sheriff stood up and backed away.

  "What the hell is it?"

  "She's sick," Fulthy said.

  The ambulance arrived quickly enough and Vanna was taken to the hospital emergency room where a Locum from Nigeria stared at her for five minutes before he even palpated her gut.

  "Dis woomun ees going to die," he announced to the room. The nurses gasped and the Nicaraguan orderly who spoke little English and automatically shaved the genital area of every patient, male and female admitted to the hospital, grinned and nodded repeatedly as he prepared to wheel her down the hallway.

  "Isolation," Dr. Makumba said. Then he locked himself in an operating room and could be seen making telephone calls on the satellite phone he'd been given by the CDC.

  Vanna's husband, George, could not be reach
ed because the grid had suddenly pulled a disappearing act again and only the hospital had electricity from it's generators. Gonzalez told the police chief to send a car for him and a young cop was dispatched to pick him up.

  But when he arrived, he couldn't get anyone to answer the door and he reported back on the radio that the house was empty and the lights were off.

  "Jesus, Calvin," the dispatcher said. "The lights are off everywhere. I know George Bruntley and he's in there."

  "Go in and look around," the chief said, interrupting the conversation.

  The policeman used a small bar to open the door and shined his flashlight into the darkened living room. There was an acidic odor which he mistook for cat litter. His flashlight caught a dark mass on the floor and he approached, thinking it might be a blanket or maybe a dead dog. He found George Bruntley cramped up in a fetal position, his head stuck to the carpet in bloody vomit. His eyes were wide open. Wrangle stepped back and then remembered he was a policeman and looked around the room, trying not to gag and throw up on top of poor old George. The house was empty. He didn't know what else to do so he drew his nine millimeter pistol and backed out towards the front door. He pressed the transmitter on his shoulder and despite his effort, his voice came out strangled and high pitched.