Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  "What about the due process of law? A fair trial and all that?"

  Tracy shrugged. "As one of the Irish officers said to me, 'there's no justice, there's just us'."

  The wind whistled, blowing the corpse dust back at the Roadshow. The convoy of lorries, buses, low-loaders and cars stretched out about a quarter of mile behind them. Tracy asked what was going on, and Lowe told him in neutral tones about Captain Bob's travelling circus.

  Kl

  Back in the USSA

  The young man whistled. "That's insane."

  Lowe looked at the neat piles of dented skulls. Their eyesockets looked at him. Turquoise glowworms writhed in the shadow-circles.

  In a few more minutes, these bones would walk around.

  Lowe didn't want to be here for that.

  He didn't want hallucinations, but he didn't want this reality either. He didn't want more absinthe, but he knew he needed it.

  The worst of it was the short bones, the skulls no bigger than apples.

  Men, women, kids.

  Maxwell stood nearby, still talking to, no, talking at, Colonel van Damme. He had the upper hand, because he controlled the photographer. Van Damme's grin was like ice about to crack.

  "You're a reporter, right?," said Tracy. "Report this. Tell the folks back home what a grand job the UN are doing. The poor soldiers never get any thanks for anything. Tell the tax-payers something else, too. They're not vigilantes or hired killers, but sometimes they do unpleasant things to stop matters getting worse. Tell your readers this poor damn country is being crucified by ignorance, greed and hate. Tell them not to let the politicians pull the troops out. We're the only hope people like these ragged bones used to be have got."

  Lowe nodded. He'd heard the Danish Lutherans say the same back in Flagstaff. He heard Maxwell say something similar every day. America was dying from the attention of too many doctors, each with a different cure.

  Up ahead, the rotors on the helicopters started up. The Land Rovers blocking the road were backed away. Van Damme saluted Maxwell and Brown and strode off.

  "So long, then," nodded Tracy.

  The kid was probably right, but Maxwell wasn't about to let Lowe write anything on mass-graves. Being rocketed by Sir Bob for depressing Mirror readers would be bad enough, but what he wouldn't be able to take would be dealing with Blair's hurt and disappointed tones for "negative reporting"

  But he had next week's Lilliput column, no problem. He doubted if he could think of many Okie massacre jokes, but the humour seemed to be leeching out of Joanna Houseman as she travelled further along PR 666.

  Maxwell seemed unaware of the burying ground a few yards away from his convoy. He'd had his photo taken with some heroes, and that's what the Mirror readers were interested in. Lowe remembered Billy's

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  grin and Hanson's—that was the name—rolling eyes. And he imagined the others, the two hundred individuals shovelled under out here in the nowhere.

  Lowe got back into the Roller and started the engine. Penny sat in the back, and picked up her magazine again.

  Maxwell's car moved forward. Lowe put the Roller into gear and drove.

  "What in heaven's name are we doing here?"

  "Earning a living the only way we can," said Penny, without looking up from her magazine.

  Barstow, Calif

  The nearer you got to the Pacific, the more the edge of America frayed. Before they crossed into California, William Brown told everyone to travel in groups of at least four. Barstow, though, he said was okay. A sheriff had brought law and order to the town. Lowe didn't like to think what the rest of the state was like.

  It was early evening, and they were heading for the Roadshow to do their bit.

  "Not as shabby as some of the places we've been through lately," he admitted.

  "It's feudal," said Penny, looking across the road at a busy-sounding saloon. A sign at the entrance said (in English and Spanish) that all weapons were to be left with the gun-check girl at the door.

  "How so?" said Lowe.

  The saloon looked tempting, but kind of rough.

  "All the townsfolk have been telling us Barstow has law and order. This, as I understand it, is thanks to the activities of the town sheriff, a mysterious stranger who came in, shot some local trouble-makers and is now hailed as a wise and just ruler."

  "I didn't think that there was anything wise and just about the feudal system."

  Two of the townsfolk, elderly gentlemen in Stetson hats sitting on the porch of the dry goods store, wished them a good evening.

  "There isn't and that's not what I meant," said Penny. "People are moving into Barstow from outlying areas because the Man with No Name will protect them. They accord him respect, give him so much of their

  K

  Back in the USSA

  money or produce, and he protects them. The feudal system was exactly the same."

  "You make it all sound so simple."

  "It is," she said, as they turned a corner. "There's nothing more simple" —she pointed—"than that."

  In the middle of the street, the corpse of a man dangled from a gibbet. Around his neck hung a sign, "SHEEP-RUSTLER AND THEEF" His boots had been stolen, and fungussy dead toes poked through holes in his socks.

  A lorry swerved past them and pulled up. In the back were stacked the biggest amplifiers Lowe had ever seen. Elwood leaned out of the cab, ignoring the grotesque display further on.

  "Evening, pilgrims!" he called. "Coming to the show this evening? I'll see to it you get VIP seats."

  Jake leaned across his brother's lap. "He ain't talking about the Maxwell show. Bob fired us for rustling his lobsters." Jake maraca-rattled a pair of claws. "We're putting on a show of our own. Got the old band together."

  "Be just like old times," grinned Elwood.

  "Be a damn sight better than listening to that hundred-year-old crooner Cliffy or the mad preacher or Maxwell telling us we should start our own businesses."

  "Even more fun than cricket," said Elwood.

  "Are you sure it's wise to annoy Sir Robert like this?" said Lowe. "I expect he's bought the sheriff of this town. And the sheriff, from what I can see, is very keen on law and order."

  He pointed to the corpse, swaying gently in the breeze.

  "We'll be fine," laughed Elwood. "It was the sheriff loaned us these babies. There's an old military depot in town. Them's Marine battlefield amplifiers. Supposed to be for broadcasting propaganda and inviting the enemy to surrender. You can hear 'em 30 miles away. Don't be late now, y'hear. We're on a mission from God."

  In the marquee at the back of the stage, what passed for local society was tucking into sausage rolls and Penny was trying, and failing, to start a conversation with the Sheriff. He stood still as a rock, polite, not bored, just not very talkative. He looked like a hobo, in his tattered cowboy hat and a filthy poncho. Sir Cliff was onstage. Back here, behind the PA, a distorted, bass-heavy "Bachelor Boy" rumbled, but not so loud that you couldn't hold a conversation.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Lowe held a half-hearted chat about politics with Mr. Blair. The PR man was thinking of standing as a Lib-Lab candidate in the council elections when he got home, but wondered if he wasn't too young for the burden of office. Blair never said anything without qualifying it, as if all his remarks were going to be quoted back at him at the tribunal. Lowe wanted to ask him what his position was on mass murder. "On the one hand, it's very bad. But on the other..."

  Everyone was saying Alan Clark's government was so unpopular that the next general election would see John Noakes in Number 10; but the Tories had been in power since World War Two. It had been predicted that they would lose each and every general election that came along, until a last-minute landslide kept the Opposition in opposition and the Conservatives in power.

  Lowe realised he was experiencing slight pangs of jealousy about Penny and the Man with No Name. Sure, they'd told one another this affai
r was expedient. She'd told him she had no strings attached, but...

  He kept trying to edge closer to Penny, Blair occasionally taking a step to keep up with him. Blair reckoned Noakes was PM material, but had doubts about the Lib sidekick, David Icke, who had taken to wearing white robes at the hustings and sometimes claimed to be God.

  "Bachelor Boy" finished. Cliff thanked the audience, which ran to several thousand people sitting out here on the edge of the desert. He began "My Old Man's a Dustman", but another, louder noise started up. High-ish chords on an electric guitar tore the night air, backed by a fast tom-tom beat. Cliff was entirely drowned.

  "Good EEEE-vening, Barstow!"

  The voice didn't sound like Jake or Elwood.

  The Sheriff's immobile, granite face momentarily cracked upwards. "He's here," Lowe heard him say, as much to himself as to Penny. "Excuse me, Ma'am. I've gotta go."

  Jake and Elwood had set up their rival attraction about half a mile away, but their battlefield amplification easily squelched Sir Cliff. On stage, the eternal cheeky lad looked as if he would cry.

  "Bloody shame," Lowe smiled, going over to Penny.

  "You're just jealous. You thought I was trying to seduce the Sheriff."

  She was watching the Sheriff's slim shanks scissor as he strode away.

  "I didn't mean that."

  "I don't see what's so funny," said Blair. "After all the trouble Sir Cliff's been to to bring some British pep to this dried-up desert."

  K

  Back in the USSA

  "If you knew... " sang the voice half a mile away.

  "Good grief!" blurted Lowe. "I know who that is!"

  "... Peggy Sue... "

  Penny arched her eyebrow.

  "That's Charles Hardin Holley. Penny, Mr. Blair, talk about pep! That man is a legend. The Blues Brothers have brought Charlie Holley to town. You have got to see this!"

  Sir Cliff and his band descended from the stage, shrugging. They made for the food and drink. Maxwell waddled in at speed. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing, Bachelor Boy? You're not finished yet. Get back out there and play. Turn everything up."

  "It's up as far as it can go," said Sir Cliff politely. "We can't compete with that rig."

  "Get on stage at once!" Maxwell yelled. Cliff shrugged and led the band back towards the stage. "Brown, I want you to put a stop to that other racket."

  Brown appeared out of shadows and shook his head. Maxwell looked as though his brain was about to burst.

  "The Sheriff approves," said Brown quietly.

  Maxwell roared.

  Outside, the crowd drifted toward the Blues Brothers show in a single, quiet and compact mass. Lowe dragged Penny along. For all his protest, Blair came with them.

  The Blues Brothers' stage was a huge scaffold in the middle of the desert, sited at the bottom of a gentle slope. Behind it, at least half a dozen generators fed power to the enormous amps and to a few lights. Up ahead, as Holley played through his best-known song—the first to get banned by the Communist Party back in the 1950s—people had already reached the front of the stage and were dancing.

  "I think this is far enough," said Lowe. "We get too near, we'll be deafened."

  He took off his jacket and spread it on the ground. Penny sat on it. He sat next to her. He took out his hip-flask, she produced a bottle of Vimto and some plastic cups. Lowe turned to Blair to ask him if he wanted a drink, but he stood there, smile fixed across his face like a cut throat, lost in the music, nodding his head back and forth like he was praying at the Wailing Wall.

  "Beats 'Bachelor Boy', doesn't it?" he yelled, but Blair couldn't hear him.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  The crowd applauded wildly as Holley wrapped the song up. The tiny figures of Jake and Elwood appeared quite distinct in mid-stage and bowed. Other musicians appeared. A brass section. Then a pianist.

  At a signal from Elwood, two trumpets, bass, drums and piano burst into a tune every American over the age of ten knew better than the national anthem.

  "My socialist heart" sang Elwood, "will play its socialist part... "

  The song was a huge hit for Sinatra back in the early '50s. The party suits were worried about it when it first came out, because they weren't sure it was altogether respectful.

  " Wanna be a good loyal communist, increase the quota of lips I've kissed... "

  In Chairman Capone's eyes, Sinatra could do no wrong. He was an Italian from Hoboken and an official Friend of the Friends. Even without talent, he'd have been the USSA's most popular singer. Nobody knew whether Sinatra was being ironic or not.

  "Wanna look into your reflective eyes" Holley took up the verse, "lets you and me collectivism "

  Irony became fashionable in Capone's America. Once Chairman Al died and the threat of late night visits from the FBI and the rumours of dissenters being tortured to death in deep underground cells started to recede, it became the national religion. That was what made the song so popular.

  "Whenever you are standing near" sang Holley, "I wanna be a good little pioneer. "

  Holley passed it to the horns, who blew a break fit to blast you into the middle of next week. At the end of it, the audience clapped, cheered and held up lit matches.

  "Remember folks," announced Holley over a drum and bass holding pattern, "it ain't over 'til the fat guy sings!"

  Jake came forward. "Come on baby, be a smartie...Lets you and me form a vanguard party... Come on baby, what do you say... Lets tell this whole big beautiful USSA. r

  The band wrapped it up, the military amps fell silent for a moment. The roar of the crowd reminded Lowe of the time he'd watched Accrington Stanley take the EA. Cup at Wembley. Even poor Mr. Blair was jumping up and down, clapping, saying, "Oh really good show! Quite splendid!"

  "Whoo! Thank you, thank you," said Jake, waddling around the stage, jerking arms and legs this way and that. He might have been possessed by one of Beverley's angels. "Did you hear that, you jerk, Bobby Fatwell?"

  Back in the USSA

  "Yeah!" said Elwood. "Any day of the week, my socialist heart can whup your capitalist ass!"

  The crowd agreed. "Oh dear!" said Blair quietly. Penny clapped enthusiastically. It took Lowe a moment to realise he was clapping, too.

  "Strap yourselves in folks," said Elwood. "We're going to party— awwwll niiiight llooong!!"

  San Bernardino, Calif.

  He was out ahead again, on his own. That made it worse. He'd have liked to ask Penny if she was seeing what he thought he was seeing. The driving was slow, because of the objects strewn across a lot of the roads.

  Some of the offices and shops were boarded up, as though by people who were planning to come back. A lot of the houses back in the suburbs had just been left. Curtains flapped out of broken windows. Screen-doors slammed back and forth. There were abandoned cars. Faded smiles, pock-marked with rips, beamed from out-of-date advertisements.

  Lowe drove in slow motion. Dust blew across the windscreen, and he had to use the automatic wipers. The few feeble squirts of water turned the dust to grit. The wipers scraped.

  He was seriously spooked.

  It wasn't as though the place had been left to rot. To rot, you needed moisture, and that was the one thing there didn't seem to be any supply of.

  Lowe was thirsty.

  It was only when he parked the car outside the boarded-up main post office that Lowe was certain this really was a ghost-town. His copy of the Rough Guide to America, admittedly five years old, put the population of San Bernardino at 165,000. Driving in, he hadn't seen a soul. However, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.

  The eyes in posters moved as he passed.

  In a place like this, you could be jumped by bandits and left lying in the middle of the street. It would have been best just to drive away, back to the safety in numbers of the Roadshow, the sheltering arm of William Brown and his matt black Swiss machine-gun.

  Curiosity got the better of him. He
wrenched the Skorpion from under the dashboard, peeled off the tape and got out of the car. He

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  pretended to himself that he was Agent 007 of SMERSH, coolly proficient with deadly weapons.

  There weren't even any dogs or cats. Maybe there weren't even any rats. Nothing to eat.

  He walked up to the door of the post office and peered through a crack in the boarding. Inside, it looked neat and orderly enough. Next to the door was a peeling sign giving the times of collections and deliveries of mail. But he didn't think there'd be a coded message from John Lennon waiting for him here.

  Further along the sidewalk was a large bar. MURPHY'S SHEBEEN, said the sign, which had shamrocks to either side of it. Evidently an Irish-style bar that had sprung up during the New Deal with no more success than Limey Louie's. This, too, had been boarded up. Peering through a crack, he saw the place was neat and tidy. Tables and chairs had been stacked against one wall. The bar was empty, no broken glass anywhere, no signs of looting. Whoever had left Murphy's had not left in a desperate hurry. The abandonment of San Berdoo had been orderly and deliberate. Which probably ruled out radioactive or chemical contamination.

  He looked around for mutant gila monsters. There were none. The only truly monstrous thing to hand was a life-sized plastic cut-out of a happy family with very white teeth. It was advertising Freedom, a British company which ostensibly sold toiletries and household cleaning materials, but which was in reality a pyramid-selling scheme which relied on members recruiting new "representatives" all the time. Thousands of Americans had put everything they had into the scheme and its "business excellence" and "customer service" courses only to lose it all when the scheme went belly-up.

  No sign of life anywhere. He peered through the doors of the bar again.

  "I'm afraid you're going to have to search a little further afield if you want a drink."

  The man was between him and the sun. A black shadowshape. He tried to cock the machine-gun and instead got the muzzle tangled in his shirt cuff.

  "You're obviously lacking in skill-at-arms, old fellow."