As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  He found the trap and pushed up on it gently. It didn't budge. He shone his flashlight along the cuts and then gently inserted the tip of his knife. He levered the panel and it moved.

  Now as long as the goddamn closet door isn't open...

  He lifted the floor panel and managed to squirm into the closet without making too much noise. He lowered it back into place and then stood up straight. He pressed his ear against the door for a full minute. There was no one in the room. He heard the front door open and the three men entered, their boots clumping against the oak. Albert pressed the handle and cracked the closet door. The room was empty and the door was closed.

  God looks after idiots.

  He opened the closet door and stepped into his own bedroom. The bed was unmade and there were women's clothes in a red vinyl suitcase. He could hear many voices arguing and shouting in the main room. He moved to the bedroom door and pressed his ear against it. The words had the edges shaved off from the muffling but he could make it out.

  "You take them with you!"

  That must be the new Mr. FEMA.

  "Excuse me Mr. Gonzo-

  "-Don't you call me that, you black bastard!"

  Silence.

  "We ain't goin nowhere," a woman said. "We ain't got nowhere to go. We're staying right the fuck here, ain't that right, Ginny?"

  "Fuckin A." Ginny answered.

  "Shut up. Nobody's asking you."

  "I have orders to withdraw from here, Mr. Gonzo and that is exactly what I am going to do. We are leaving you the Quonset. The communication equipment has been transferred to my vehicle and anything left you are welcome to."

  "You brought these cunts here - you get rid of them!" he shouted. "Where the fuck are you going, anyway?"

  "Who you callin a cunt? you beaner faggot."

  (A hard slap)

  "Jesus Christ, are you gonna let him get away with that? C'mon, I was good to you-"

  (A second hard slap followed by male laughter)

  The front door opened again and it seemed that everyone left. He took the chance and cracked the door. He moved down the short hallway sticking close to one wall. When he got to the living room, the front door was standing open and he could hear them all outside.

  They're getting away.

  The Humvee engine rattled to life and before he could collect his thoughts, it had disappeared.

  He didn't know where to go. There was nowhere to hide and it was obvious someone was coming back in. Then he heard Mr. FEMA shouting again.

  "You better be gone when I get back, understand?"

  Then he heard the door slam on the SUV and the engine screamed as it skidded down the driveway after the Hummer.

  Albert looked frantically for a place to hide, knowing there wasn't one and then realized that it wasn't necessary. What were these two women going to do to him? He sat down on his sofa and laid the .45 beside him. He felt the leather and then felt the warmth from the heating system wash over him.

  It was easy to tell who Ginny was. She was younger and not as hard looking, but mainly her face did not have a large red patch on it. The two women didn't notice him at first and had walked into the room before Slapface stopped and stared.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  Albert didn't know what to say. He couldn't speak. He just looked at her. Ginny pulled the lapels on her jacket tight around her throat and stepped forward, glaring at him.

  "What are you doing here?-"

  Somehow Albert came to life and he stood up, holding the .45 at his side. They both looked at it and their self-assurance evaporated.

  "What-?"

  "Shut up," Albert said. He was startled by his own voice. He almost didn't recognize it.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  The two women were frightened now and they moved closer together.

  "We're just stayin here-shit! You're that guy!" Slapface said. "You're that fuckin guy they were all looking for!"

  Albert raised his arm and focused on Slapface. He pulled the hammer back and stared at her through the sights.

  "Hey! Hey!" she said. "We ain't done nothin to you, have we?"

  He kept the gun pointed at her head. He watched her discombobulate as her panic set in. He didn't pull the trigger because it would make a mess in the house. He would take them outside first and then kill them. But then he'd have to get rid of the bodies...

  Slapface was falling apart right in front of him. She ripped open her blouse and displayed her breasts to him. Albert was caught off guard and he looked at them. They hung like two sacks, like two water bags. She had a thick roll of fat around her middle which quivered and spilled out over her pant waist.

  "Look!"

  Albert hadn't seen naked flesh other than his own in the shower for almost three years. He stared at the globes and at her collar bones and at the curve of her neck near her jaw line. It was like he'd never seen it before.

  "Come on," she said, "Come on..."

  And Albert advanced towards her, his eyes pinned on her breasts. As he got closer he could smell her unwashed body and saw the bristle in her armpits. It wasn't her choice; there were no razors left! She pulled her blouse off and made a step towards him, her flat breasts swinging slightly like a wind chime.

  Albert put the gun in his waistband and stood as she advanced towards him. She took another, tentative step, watching him carefully, wanting to be sure. He inhaled and raised his hand.

  She spun away, blood spurting from her nose, the pain so intense she couldn't even scream. He had swung his fist into her face, not as hard as he could, but hard enough to smash the cartilage and burst all the blood vessels. She managed to stay on her feet but the blow had sent bullet trains of searing pain into her head.

  Ginny stood silent, dumfounded, too terrified to move.

  "That red Ford belong to you?" he asked.

  Ginny grabbed her friend by the shoulders and started towards the door. Slapface was moaning and crying at the same time. Her face was covered in blood and she could barely walk.

  He followed them a few feet behind and watched them struggle across the frozen ground to the car.

  "If it doesn't start you're dead," he shouted.

  They climbed in and cranked the engine. It moaned and groaned and then suddenly caught. Slapface spun the tires until she burned away the ice and the car whipped out of its stasis. He watched them fishtail out the driveway.

  Suddenly everyone was gone and he was back where he had started.

  He looked around the room, not feeling any joy or even much recognition. They were his things and nothing had really been moved or looted. He had been sitting in his underground tomb fantasizing about walking into this room and feeling the ownership and the inviolability of a place he had built. He had dreamed about making a pot of coffee and sitting down quietly to drink it before he went out to milk Bolivia and collect the eggs and check the water lines and the hay racks. He still couldn't think too much about Luddy, and when he did, he heated up with rage, tormented by the fact that he could only kill Monteith once. He tried to remember the man's screaming as the flames seared off his skin and boiled the blood in his throat and popped his eyeballs, but it didn't help at all. It wasn't enough. And the others. Harlan turning on him like that after he had invited him into the house! And that little FEMA character lecturing him about giving milk to starving people and coming right up his driveway onto his property and ordering him to hand over the food he had grown himself and canned himself and stacked in a cold cellar he had excavated himself using his own money and his own time...

  He walked back to his bedroom and saw the suitcase of women's clothing on the bed and then he checked 'Harlan's old room' and saw that bed was unmade and a man's shaving kit was on the night table.

  Gonzalez had no idea what awaited him when he arrived in town at the council chambers. He expected to find someone from Homeland Security or FEMA or even the military there to explain the sudden change of orders but it was the usua
l crowd and about a hundred and fifty others, many of them carrying weapons and in no mood to be put off by a Mexican with a federal "approved" stamp on his forehead.

  He pushed his way through the crowd and the chief let him in and closed the door.

  "What the fuck?-"

  "It's been like that for a couple of hours," Finney told him. "There's been people fallin' over all day. The hospital's full up and they got 'em on gurney's in the hallways, just like one of them disaster drills.”

  "I think we need to call the Guard," the mayor chirped. "I'll not have-"

  "Oh shut up, Reggie," County Commissioner Martin Brunk said with disgust. "Take this opportunity to shut up, will you?"

  "See, there's not enough vaccine for everyone," Brunk said. "That's why they are out there."

  Gonzalez slumped in a chair. So that was it. Homeland was pulling it's people out because of the damn flu.

  "We just got enough for the committee. That's the law," lawyer John Kilpatrick interjected. "The doses are only to be administered to officials for now, until they make up some more. I mean somebody's got to keep the town running."

  At this point Judge Klempke cleared his throat and put on his sagest expression: "Put on your own mask first, ladies and gentlemen. Put on your own mask first."

  "We can't help anybody if we're sick," the mayor squeaked.

  Outside the three town policemen and four sheriff's deputies had parked their vehicles in a semi circle around the entrance to the council chambers and had removed shotguns which drooped over their arms. Allsop and Finney, the two highest law enforcement officials watched warily. Finney was a relative newcomer to Provost, having moved here twenty five years ago when he joined the police force and had worked his way up to chief without ever really integrating past the council members from year to year. Allsop on the other hand had grown up with many in the crowd and knew them well.

  "Is there enough for my boys?" Allsop spoke finally.

  "There's actually about two hundred doses," Jarvis piped up.

  "Oh for Chrissakes," Martin Brunk spit. "You fucking idiot!"

  "Two hundred doses!" Finney said. "When were you going to tell us that?"

  "It wasn't his business to tell anybody," Gonzalez said. "I informed him as head of the council."

  "So you knew all along?" Why didn't you give them out?"

  "Because I was ordered not to," Gonzalez snapped. "I've got a request in right now to FEMA headquarters and I'm just waiting for them to give me the go ahead."

  "Jesus Christ, man, we've got people dying out there!" Allsop said.

  "Okay," Gonzalez said indifferently. "Bring 'em in."

  "What the hell are you talking about now?"

  "Let 'em in, tell them the first two hundred people through the doors get vaccinated. I'll wait right here."

  Nobody moved and after a minute Gonzalez stood up then and went to the door. Finney pushed the glass door open for him and stepped back.

  Gonzalez was greeted by a hundred angry shouts, bombarded with questions and insulted numerous times. They called him a "fucking wetback" and a "beaner" and a "Spic." He stood his ground, waiting for them to quiet down.

  "I know how you feel-"

  "Ya, right, I feel your pain..."

  "Where's the vaccine, asshole?" someone shouted.

  "It's on its way," Gonzalez said. "I have just heard from my headquarters that a medical convoy is making it's way in this direction, as we speak."

  "And when will it get here? After everyone's dead?"

  "He don't give a shit. Them feds all got their shots, ain't that right, Gonzo?"

  The cops, sensing a rise in the crowd's temper shuffled in place and held their shotguns with both hands. It wasn't lost on the crowd and several men and women peeled away as soon as they saw.

  "Is that why you joined the sheriff's department, Larry?" someone shouted, "so you could shoot your friends for the federal government?"

  "You go home Randy and shet yer mouth," Larry called back at him.

  Rev. Jamie Prosser opened the door and joined Gonzalez. His voiced cracked when he spoke. He opened his bible and looked out over the crowd.

  "You know me...you all know me. I have never lied to you and this good man is not lying to you now. Let me read to you from our own Holy Scriptures. Romans 13:1-7. You know of what I speak...

  "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers," he began, and his voice strengthened as he felt himself filling with confidence.

  "For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil..."

  He looked up and the collection of faces stared back at him as if some many-eyed beast was listening with an innocent curiosity. For Prosser it was the moment he lived for, the moment he struck them with the Word and they melded into a single consciousness, an entity filling with God - through him! Little Jamie Prosser waved the conductor's baton and the orchestra tuned.

  "Render, therefore, to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor."

  He has been skeptical when FEMA and Homeland Security had paid for the seminar in Hawaii last winter where they explained how leadership - real leadership - would be crucial to the survival of the nation in crisis.

  "We are counting on you," they were told. "God has ordained you to speak to your congregations, to calm them and use your great influence and authority to make sure they help the government during these trying times by quickly and quietly obeying the authorities. And you who doubt our sincerity, let me ask you this: Do you not train people to file quietly out of the building when the fire alarm sounds?"

  It might have ended right there if this had been a collection of tax protesters assembled in front of town hall because the county commissioners had given themselves a raise. On a cool Sunday morning, fresh from breakfast tables and with all those Toyotas standing in the church parking lot and that giddy suffusion of piety from seeing baby Martha up there in her startling white crinoline handing the chalice to Rev. Prosser, well it might have worked. It might even have worked this day if a woman near the front of the assembly hadn't pitched forward in what was quickly becoming a standard and recognizable piece of theatre, spewing bloody vomit and collapsing on the ground in a comatose state, where she jerked like a frog on a dissecting table. The crowd shoaled around her, consumed by a sudden silence.

  Prosser stared at her in shock and Gonzalez felt the vibrations emanating from the crowd which was no longer just a crowd but a thing ionizing the air with a swelling rage.

  The council doors opened and Mayor Jarvis came out and stood beside Gonzalez and Prosser. It was time somebody got control of this situation. No one was going to tell Reggie Jarvis to shut up, by God. He was the duly elected Mayor of Provost, the highest official in the town. You don't tell the mayor to shut up, by God.

  "Folks...folks, Jarvis pleaded. "Calm down, now. Just everyone step back and take a breath. I want you all to come in here and we're going to give everyone a shot right now."

  Gonzalez turned in disbelief, but Reggie had them. It was just like that speech at the Moose when the whole room rose applauding and he knew the election was in the bag.

  "You got vaccines in there?" someone asked. The police had moved in closer and they heard Reggie say, "Yes, we've got over two hundred doses in there right now and-"

  Deputy Larry dropped his shotgun to his side and waded into the crowd to the front steps.

  "You got vaccine in there?" he said, his eyes screwed a little tighter than normal.

  Reggie's face fluttered between a smile and terror with the sudden realization of what he had done.

  "Well, yes...not exactly-"

  He turned to Gonzalez who was now watching the crowd as a whole, a giant lethal volvox undulating with its own power.

&nbs
p; "The door opened and Sheriff Allsop and Chief Finney stepped out.

  "Is that so, sheriff?" Larry demanded.

  "Now I'm ordering you boys to get back in position," Allsop said sternly.

  The city police had clumped together, in their own little club. Allsop was sheriff, but by decree, not by election and a county sheriff is a very personal man in a small town. Allsop didn't fit and couldn't win an election to dog catcher.

  "Is that so, or ain't it?" Larry asked again.

  Finney was eyeing his own officers. They were leaning against a patrol car, the shot guns hanging down.

  "Who egzakly were you savin them doses for?" Larry asked.

  "For themselves," someone shouted.

  And that was it.

  The volvox burst with a sudden rage that no one could hold back. Deputy Larry was dragged down like a bear by a pack of dogs. Rifle and pistol fire shattered the morning as the crowd turned first on the police. Two cops managed to get into a cruiser and race off; the third was shot more than twenty times. The county deputies were overrun, though they managed a few blasts of their shotguns before they went down. Three civilians lay dead but the enraged crowd ignored them, trampled right over them breaking their dead arms and crushing the brittle ribs and rushed headlong into the council chambers. Poor Reggie, his glasses askew and his hand-knit blue cardigan with the sailboat on the pocket ripped from his shoulders, unable even to speak, perplexed more than anything as the ax came down through the air in a silver, flashing arc and imbedded itself in his forehead. Little Jamie Prosser managed to get to the door but Finney locked it and they dragged him down the concrete steps and onto the street as a crocodile pulls its prey from the bank kicking and screaming until the merciful death trance of the herd animal calms the mind.

  And Councilwoman Lurlene Walton, shrieking and begging as her flabby, doughy white flesh was exposed and her breasts ripped from her chest. And old judge Reese Klempke. Good old Judge Klempke, who'd never lost an election and had always been a lucky man, coughed once and before the first blow landed, his heart exploded in his chest and he left Provost thinking only that he was having a bad dream.