But what about the money? One day - ONE DAY - before Sept. 11 (that would be Sept. 10, 2001) then-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told the United States government that 2.3 trillion dollars was missing from the defense budget and nobody knows where it went. "It could be a matter of life and death," Rumsfeld said. Pithy. Where's the missing $2.3 trillion? Lost in the smoke and cinders and asbestos dust of the Trade Towers Tango the very next day. Forget about that? Okay. Old news. But what about immeasurable criminality and duplicity cheered on if not in fact orchestrated by the UN, the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, The Federal Reserve and Maurice Strong. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars are skimmed from the treasury for Goldman Sachs and AIG and Lehman Bros. and Citi Group, Merryl Lynch, Bank of America and on and on and on. Federal reserve notes, empty promises except for one thing: All of it has to be repaid and the cab drivers and factory workers (the few who remain) and the doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs and the truck drivers and the store clerks and the farmers (except for those owned by Monsanto or Pioneer or Syngenta or the ever-present, ever-permutating Dole corporation, giggling over its control of entire countries) and the garbage collectors and the garage mechanics - in fact every barely employed prole - excepting the fifteen or twenty million living under bridges - will have to pay it back so that Goldman Sachs can make the largest profit in history and bestow upon itself and the groupuscule of grasping, conniving slime-balls it employs the largest bonuses in all of human history. And you know what Geitner says? National Security. We took all the money and we gave it to our friends and we're not going to tell you any more about it except that YOU HAVE TO PAY IT BACK!!!!!!!! But, a tax on these banksters who reaped and raped such profits from the prone populace is unconstitutional. Did you know that? Stealing from you is fine. Taxing the banks, unconstitutional. You know what is constitutional, folks? The pashas of any town council in the nation may seize private property from a private human citizen under the auspices of eminent domain and sell it to a private corporation citizen at a profit. That's what those scum-sucking bastards at the Supreme Court decided is constitutional. They can take your property away and give it to their corporate friends and there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing. But you know what's unconstitutional? Restricting corporations from buying politicians. That's unconstitutional. No limit spending by corporations, folks. Corporations have free speech protected by the constitution but you better watch what you say, by God or you will find yourself in the hands of those jack-booted bastards and they will kill your children right in front of you! Yes, thanks be to God for The Supreme Court of The United States."
Then he started singing, wildly off key:
Barak our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home...
And:
Obama loves me! This I know,
Harry and Nancy tell me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Obama loves me!
Yes, Obama loves me!
Yes, Obama loves me!
Hillary tells me so.
They have your children singing hymns to Barak Obama in school while congressmen amuse themselves with page boys. Oh how they love children, yessir. Until those children come of age when they can be shipped out to Afghanistan before being dismembered and then just as quickly disremembered. If they make it back, they can join their friends and fellows under the bridges and viaducts composing new riffs for America's Detroitland Soliloquy until Blackwater or the FBI or the New and Improved Civil Defence Army of Young Tattletails or whatever blood-crazed mercenaries are the flavor of the moment are told to burn them out to the tune of Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show. They are then jammed into railroad cars and delivered to FEMA concentration camps where there are no gas chambers but there are chambers. And inside those chambers they are reeducated to despise and condemn and obliterate everything they are not ordered to embrace. But there is no conspiracy. I'M JUST MAKING THIS ALL UP!!!" he screamed again, blocking his own transmission for a few seconds.
"Until recently at least they let us complain about it as long as we never tried to do anything about it. But no longer. This new tribune, this demon from The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Papa Cass Sunstein, the maggot-brained succubus, the grinning miscreant, this soon-to-be new monarch of the Supreme Court who advocates banning any utterance not approved by the state, who advocates infiltrating and annihilating any group, organization, collective, publication, broadcast or bumper sticker printing plant that dares to question the veracity of government assertions. So, in the name of protecting you from the corrupting influences of conspiracy theories and countervailing opinions that only upset you, the government shall now become the only purveyor of truth, so help me God. But there are no conspiracies.
"These bastards should be hanging from lampposts in every city in the United States and anyone who aides them or abets them should be swinging right beside them. These attacks, these so-called terrorist truck bombers: They are FBI! They are BatFaggots! CIA!...these are your enemies. But there are no conspir-
"They're here folks. They're here. I can hear the helicopter. Can you here it? This is it. It's-"
That was it. The radio went dead and Albert tried for half an hour to get it back, but there was nothing.
He had no idea what was going on three miles away in Provost or anywhere else. The electric grid had crashed as the flu felled plant operators and engineers. The nucs would shut down on their own. Attention had to be constantly paid to the operation of a nuclear reactor or it began to close itself up. Once the grid truly collapsed the dominoes began to fall very quickly and whatever society had been there was gone except for the buildings and the junk the civilization had produced. There were millions still alive in the country but many of them had survived disease only to starve to death or be murdered or raped or enslaved.
On February 22, Albert tried all day to find a short wave report that lasted longer than a minute and contained any useful information. By nightfall it seemed pointless to continue listening and so he put the radio away, figuring to take it out perhaps once a day, or a couple of times a week from then on.
Occasionally he saw jet aircraft streaking far in the distance and assumed, correctly, they were military. He didn't know that the military had been as badly affected as the civilian population and aircraft carriers and sub-marines were cobbling crews together from the remnants of all the services. More than half the surviving army and marines were stationed around missile bases, silos, high security military "assets" and secret bunkers for the protection of the courageous men and women in government valiantly straining to keep the country going. Working from barely adequately heated and air conditioned underground shelters where they had to put up with a small forty-bed hospital and eat in a dining hall, while having only the privacy of tiny two and three bedroom apartments where entire families were supposed to live, a basketball court that wasn't even regulation size and swimming pool water that could not be properly heated at all, the noble folk of congress pondered their reelection. The other half of the army and marines were kept behind heavily guarded bases in the event they might be needed to repel an attack.
He walked back through the woods trying to imagine the world outside and what was going on. He didn't much care any longer. He had everything he needed and had at the same time lost everything that really mattered to him. The thought of Ludwig could still make him weep like a woman watching The Sound of Music. He laughed at himself. That way the leaden image of Ludwig's pointless death did not stop him from breathing. And Bolivia, the big gentle, funny cow who lectured him every time he was late for milking lying like that...and the old nanny goat.
He was just approaching the edge of the woods where his field sloped to his house and he stopped behind some trees. He took out his binoculars and scanned e
very inch of the property from west to east and then back again and on his return sweep three vehicles suddenly appeared at the top of the driveway. He saw four men and two women emerge, the men carrying rifles. One looked to be an assault type weapon, probably a semi-automatic and one shotgun and one deer rifle with a scope. They surrounded the house, hugging the walls while the women hovered back behind the vehicles. The sound of their shouts carried up to his position, but not the words. They kicked the door in and rushed inside and then there was silence. He saw fleeting shadow pass the bedroom window and then they emerged, guns at rest and signaled to the women to come forward. He recognized the women and one of the men. His surprise was slowly supplanted by a fury. He moved farther back into the cover of the trees and watched the house over the next six hours as the new occupants got increasingly drunk and relaxed about security. Perhaps they thought he was dead and gone, killed by the flu or the plague or the Ebola, whatever they were calling it. Perhaps they believed they outnumbered him four to one and that would be enough. He dozed until the yelp of a coyote awakened him.
Lights were on in the house and faint strains of country music drifted across the field. As he moved quickly down the slope he heard the babble of their little party and the familiar shrieking laugh of one of the women. He had moved to the back of the house and heard the door open and saw the slab of light fall against the ground. He flattened himself against the building. One of the men he did not recognize clumped down the two steps, obviously affected by alcohol, if not actually drunk. He had what appeared to be a nine millimeter pistol in a shiny black holster. He wore a baseball cap. He was three inches taller than Albert and at least fifty pounds heavier. Even drunk, Albert wouldn't have a chance.
"No such thing as dirty fighting. Forget that shit. Get 'em from behind. Get 'em from underneath. Get 'em any way you can," Lenny says, handing him the big Emerson combat knife with its chisel edge blade. "Just start stabbing the fucker. Keep the knife moving. Stab, slash...whatever...Nik him once...nik him twice and then - home. Right in. Twist. Yank it up as you pull it back. Rip his guts out. And again...and again..."
He expected the man to scream so he had tried to cover his mouth but he didn't get his hand on the jaw and the man threw his arm off. But the man didn't scream. He gasped and grunted as the knife pushed into his side and then he tried to run but Albert was right with him, holding him by the jacket collar and he plunged the knife as hard as he could right through the spine and the man collapsed, his leg connections gone forever. He was holding his side where the blade had slashed into his kidney and making strained sounds like someone lifting a terrible weight. And then Albert knelt down and chopped at his throat, hacking into the Adams apple and through the ribbed hose of the trachea and felt the geyser of hot blood splashing against his hand.
If the man had stepped out to urinate, he probably had about three minutes before someone would start to wonder where he was and maybe another minute before one or the other inside decided to check on him. He'd stand at the door and look out, trying to see where Bubba was and not seeing him, call out for him. He'd call again and then take a step outside, look around the edge of the door, suddenly very security conscious and take out his .357 and cock it. "Bubba, you out here?" he'd say just as Albert swung the big knife in a scything arc across his own chest and jammed it straight into the man's solar plexus.
But now he had to move. Within a minute or two the others would be alerted and-
The machine gun burst caught the third man in the face, obliterating it completely and sending pieces of skull and brain all over the place. Ginny covered her ears and crouched down, silent and terrified while Slapface screamed and tried to run down the hall. He shot her legs out and she hit the floor in a smear of blood.
The fourth man had covered his head with the first shots and now he removed his arms.
"Albert-" he started to say and then clamped his mouth shut.
Len Burdock owned a single axle dump truck and made his living hauling ten-ton loads. He could get up just about any driveway and could spread the stone like a mother icing a cake. He was overweight and graying. He'd been the one with the shotgun. He stood up and Albert stared at him. He had done almost eight thousand dollars worth of business with Burdock over a period of three years, always paid cash on the barrel head and had recommended him when someone had inquired.
"We thought you was gone, Albert - honest to God," he pleaded.
Slapface was moaning and weeping from the hallway. Two bullets had caught her; one in the ankle and one behind the knee.
"Go drag her over here," Albert said. He tried to keep his voice not only level but reasonable.
"You can sit down, if you like," he told Ginny. She sat back on the edge of the sofa, her hands in her lap. She was even skinnier than when he'd last seen her. She didn't speak. Burdock helped the whining woman from the floor and walked her back into the room. He was taking her to the sofa but Albert gestured for them to go outside.
The sun was breaking.
"Oh my God," she wailed as they saw the bodies of the two other men. They looked like rag dolls on the ground. Their pants were filled with excrement and urine and they stunk already.
Burdock let go of Slapface and she fell to the ground with a yelp. Then she propped herself up with her arms, looking very Scarlett O'Hara.
"Listen to me, Albert, Burdock chattered. "You've got to be reasonable here because you can't just be killing people...honest to God, we thought you was dead..."
"Get down on your knees," Albert ordered Burdock and Ginny.
"Oh no...oh no...what are you doing?" Slapface wailed.
Ginny promptly did what she was told. Burdock hesitated and clenched his fists.
"It's the quickest way," Albert said, reasonably. "You won't feel nothin."
"For Godsakes, Albert," Burdock blubbered. "You got no idea what it's like out there." He was panting and crying profusely. Albert was afraid he might have a heart attack before he could kill him.
"You wanna see it coming, it's fine with me," Albert said.
The big trucker turned and made a break for it, hauling his huge body about six feet before the burst hit him in the back. He pitched forward and lay still.
Albert walked over and looked at him. Burdock was still breathing, though barely and his eyes were slits. Albert slung his rifle and reached into the sheath on his belt. With a quick, controlled motion, he brought the heavy blade down against Burdock's throat, slicing through the larynx and into the spine. The head didn't come right off so he kept chopping and hacking until the head pulled loose and rocked into a depression.
Ginny still hadn't moved, but Slapface was shrieking and screaming, begging, cursing and blaming one of the dead men, as Albert came over. He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back, exposing her throat.
"I told you not to come back here," he said.
"I know...I know...I didn't want to. They made me and Ginny come up here and they raped us...isn't that right? Ginny! Ginny, you fucking retarded cunt! Say something-"
Albert looked into her face, her eyes obliterated with tears.
"Don't. Don't. Please don't," she begged.
Then she choked and gurgled as Albert sawed into her throat, ignoring the gush of blood that spurted into his face and over his arm and then hacked at the spinal column until the head came off in hand. He dropped it and wiped the knife on her blouse.
Ginny watched him approaching with the fear of a child. Her eyes were big and wet and her cheeks were trembling, but she didn't move.
It might have appeared that Albert was in a trance, a fugue of some sort and was now operating independently of volition but that was not the case. Albert knew exactly what he was doing and felt no remorse at all and therefore did not have to hide his mind somewhere while he completed the task at hand. He might have simply shot these people or maybe even pardoned them and let them go if they had simply stumbled here by accident But they had breached the walls of his world once and
been released and returned, this time in the company of mercenaries, profane and monstrous.
He grabbed her short hair and pulled her head back as he had done with Slapface and Ginny closed her eyes, just like the animals he slaughtered for food.
"Why did you come back?" he snarled through clenched teeth.
"I don't know," she choked. "She-"
He pulled her hair harder and she squealed until the air was cut off from her throat, the same throat as a sheep or a pig only he could see the blood pounding as he stretched the skin over her windpipe and just like the lamb she closed her eyes and stilled herself, calmed herself like a girl standing in flowing dress at the edge of a smooth, quiet lake-
He released her hair with a savage, enraged jerk and threw her face down on the earth, stood over her with the knife poised, lifted his boot to crush her ribs, to crush her neck, imagined for a moment ramming the Emerson between her legs and into her guts and ripping her in half-
Time passes. The sun rolls slowly into the valley of cumulus.
"Get up," he ordered.
She stood right up and looked at him, no malice, not even fear in her eyes. She looked apprehensive, maybe afraid of his unpredictability; the weather changed around him without warning. She looked right into his face, her lip trembling. She didn't seem to even see the carnage around them.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 16
