Angels of Vengeance ww-3

by John Birmingham

  The kitchen was warm and smelled of wood smoke from an old-fashioned stove. It was too dangerous to operate the gas lines, and electricity supply could be sporadic. Wood stoves replaced electric in many homes. If there was one thing Kansas City was blessed with, it was wood. A city in the forest.

  Maive had been baking. A tray of muffins sat cooling on a scarred wooden table, resting atop a folded tea towel. She gestured for him to sit down while she splashed some water on her face, drying off with an apron hanging from the handle of the kitchen cupboard. Miguel considered the cup of lukewarm coffee he still held in his hands: the beans were carefully rationed and very expensive, and he didn’t like the idea of it going to waste. All the same, he poured out the dregs, rinsed the cup and set it in the drainer.

  ‘I’m sorry … my manners,’ she said. ‘Please sit down, and let me pour you a hot drink. I could do with one myself.’

  ‘So you will not be attending to the advice of your friend, about the sinful coffee?’

  Maive answered that with a sour grimace. ‘He’s no friend of mine. He only turned up here after I registered with the tabernacle. They’ve had trouble with him too. Harassing people, new arrivals mostly. I suspect he has a mental illness.’

  She poured him a mug of coffee, offered cream and sugar, both of which he declined. After retrieving her own cup from the sink, Maive poured herself a full measure, took a sip to taste, and topped it up with another slug, as if to make a point.

  ‘Cooper never was one for superstitions,’ she said, struggling somewhat. ‘His faith was … practical. My husband just wanted to help people. That was his idea of how to live your life the right way. I’m sorry …’ Her face suddenly folded into contrary panes of anguish as grief threatened to get the better of her again.

  ‘You have nothing to apologise for, Maive,’ he said in a gentle voice. ‘I, on the other hand, should not be so quick with my fists. This is your home. I am sorry if I was too rough with him. Do you mind? These look very good …’ He indicated the tray of muffins, trying to change the subject.

  ‘Not at all,’ she sniffed. ‘I baked them for you and Sofia.’

  He teased one of the golden-brown treats from the tray. She had topped them with crumble and brown sugar, creating a hard, sweet crust that he very much enjoyed. It was all Miguel could do to resist dunking the muffin top into his coffee. His beloved Mariela used to scold him for such poor manners, and he couldn’t imagine Maive Aronson would approve of it either.

  ‘I am afraid Sofia is not very happy with me at the moment, Maive. The school has suspended her for fighting again and I have grounded her.’ He really wasn’t very happy with her either. He had been called during his shift at the stockyards in the West Bottoms to deal with it, which meant losing a day’s pay while he took the city bus to the high school at Northtown.

  Throwing caution to the wind, he broke off a large chunk of crusty muffin top and dunked it quickly into his coffee. The glazed crumble retained its crunch while the cakey centre soaked up the warm liquid, becoming almost liquid-soft itself. Maive did not approve, but she seemed more concerned about Sofia.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that, Miguel. I thought she was past the acting-out phase.’

  He put more food in his mouth, chewed and swallowed mechanically, before taking another sip of coffee. All to give him time to think. It was difficult. He knew how his daughter felt, just how much pain she was in every day. But he also knew she could not allow that suffering to take over her life, and she could not take it out on other people. And yet …

  There was a part of Miguel Pieraro that remained fiercely proud of his daughter and her refusal to bow under the heavy burden fate had laid upon her. Witness to the murder of their family in east Texas; survivor of a journey that took the lives of so many others, Cooper Aronson among them, of course. And a fighter, an avenger indeed. One who had saved his life during the gunfight at Crockett, when they’d rescued Maive and her five female companions from the depredations of the road agents. Sofia had grown up beyond her years on the trail. And he could not deny that, in many ways, although young, she was now a formidable woman in her own right.

  ‘I do not know what to do, Maive,’ he admitted finally. ‘Honestly, some days it seems beyond me without the help my wife.’

  Mentioning Mariela aloud was enough to tighten the band of grief that seemed to sit permanently around his chest. He felt his throat closing on a lump that had not been there a few seconds ago. Another sip of coffee and a deep breath were what he needed to regain the reins on his feelings. Maive, who had no children of her own, but who had mothered and, yes, loved his daughter and the other youngsters on the long exodus from Texas, reached across the table and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. Unlike him, she seemed to have no compunction about reaching out and touching people.

  ‘You are a good father, Miguel. You would give up your life for her. She knows that. And you will not let her give up on her own. She knows that too.’ The Mormon woman smiled, but not happily. ‘That’s why she knows she can test you, and push you, and drive you mad.’

  He stood up to rinse out his coffee cup, determined to avoid the temptation of another sugary treat. Since they had come off the trail, he had put on a few too many pounds.

  ‘It is hard,’ he said. ‘I must punish her because the school requires it. I understand that. I have been a boss of the vaquero - I understand the need to maintain your rule. And yet, I do not think she was wrong. I understand why she was fighting. She was insulted. Our family was insulted. By some dog, some … boy, at the school. The son of a man who is too important to upset.’

  A few lonesome flakes of sleet, grey and wet, smeared themselves against the kitchen window over the sink as Miguel washed out the cup. None of the trees retained more than a couple of brown leaves, and their branches resembled the withered hands of dead men reaching up from the grave.

  ‘But does this boy get punished?’ he went on. ‘Oh no. I am the parent who is called in to explain himself. Sofia is the one upon whom correction must fall. While this smirking little puta …’ He paused. ‘Again, I am sorry.’

  He found Maive Aronson shaking her head when he turned away from the bleak view out of the window. ‘That poor child has been through so much, Miguel. I suppose that’s what makes her such an attractive target to some. All of that pain, out on display.’

  ‘If that is so, they are foolish,’ replied Miguel. ‘Great pain she has in abundance, but great strength with it. As this foolish boy discovered while he spat his broken teeth out on the ground.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Maive, although she did not seem particularly disapproving. ‘So she’s at home now, studying, I suppose?’

  ‘Studying, yes,’ he answered. ‘Or sulking.’

  ‘Well, that is a pity. But it is important that you’re seen to do the right thing, even if you disagree with it.’

  She began clearing up the table. Using the tea towel under the cooling muffin tray to brush up the crumbs. Pouring the remains of her drink, more than half again, down the sink after the dregs of Miguel’s.

  ‘Will you still want to go to the mid-week markets this morning?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘We will need groceries before the weekend.’

  It was also true that he looked forward to spending time with Maive, particularly since Trudi Jessup had transferred back to Seattle with her government job. Apart from Maive and Sofia, he knew nobody in Kansas City. Adam, the teenager who had impressed him so much, was now with relatives in Canada. Miguel missed him more than he might have imagined. He had come to regard the boy almost as a son over the long months on the trail. And a friend, if a young one.

  He had no friends here, save for Maive, of course. The men he worked with at the railway cattle yards were mostly Indians, and he found them difficult to get on with. They spoke English, true, but sometimes it seemed like they spoke a very different version of the language. Even the Americans had trouble with them from time to time. Mostly he di
d his job there and came home. It was only a temporary position, at any rate; a place the government had put him so that he’d be available for interviews by investigators, agents and the small army of men and women who seemed to want to know everything about his time in Texas. Even if they never did anything about what had happened there.

  ‘I should get my bag, then,’ said Maive. ‘Shall we walk or drive? The weather isn’t that nice, but the radio said it probably wouldn’t get much worse either.’

  ‘We shall walk, I think,’ Miguel decided, mindful of the fact that the federales were cutting back on the paltry gas ration again, as well as increasing the price to twenty new dollars a gallon. Maive’s salvaged Jeep Wrangler was not the most fuel-efficient vehicle, in any case. ‘I shall carry your groceries for you,’ he added gallantly.

  ‘Thank you, Miguel. You’re a very good friend.’

  3

  DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  ‘I don’t think you should go to Texas, Mr President. The precedents aren’t good.’

  James Kipper made a show of furrowing his brow and mashing up his lips. Culver had learned to think of this as his I’m-not-happy face. It was getting an Olympic-standard workout this morning. The White House Chief of Staff absorbed his boss’s displeasure with the unflappable air of a man who knew he was right. Because he was. Jed Culver was always right.

  ‘I think the longer I stay out of Texas, Jed,’ Kipper protested, ‘the more it looks like I’m too frightened to show my face down there. He hasn’t seceded, despite all his Republic of Texas bullshit. We’re all still living in the same country. And I really think it’s time I went down there. After all, with the election coming up …’ The President left the statement hanging there, dropping his chin and regarding Culver with an expression that said: Ha! What d’you think of them apples, fella?

  They were alone and the Chief of Staff actually allowed himself a small snicker of amusement. Kip was at his funniest when he was trying to play politics. It just didn’t suit the man at all.

  ‘The last thing we need before the election, Mr President, is Mad Jack Blackstone kicking your ass from one end of his snaggletooth republic to the other.’ That’s what I think o’ them apples, fella.

  He could see the boss looked even more put out than before - a common occurrence whenever Culver had reason to remind him of his naivete. That happened less frequently these days, especially after New York. But for a politician, even one press-ganged into high office, Kip could still be maddeningly childlike in the way he viewed the world. Jed felt the need to explain. They still had a few minutes before the cabinet members arrived for the morning meeting.

  ‘Right now, sir, Blackstone is looking for any excuse to paint you as a weak, soft-hearted fool. And he’s very carefully picking his fights to make himself look like the Great White Hope, quite literally. There are so many things we need from him right now that if you fly down to Fort Hood, you’ll have no choice but to lay our demands on the table and he’ll have no qualms about laughing in your face. He won’t even be cruel about it. He’ll do it in such a way as to make it obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about, you can’t possibly be trusted to run the country, you’re a lovely man, but soft and weak, and the sooner we get rid of you the better.’

  Kipper narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and frowning at Culver over the top of them. The first real frost of the winter lay hard against the windows of Dearborn House, sheathed in Christmas decorations just that morning. Outside the big picture window that framed Kipper at his desk, dirty grey clouds scudded slowly across the sky, obscuring the upper floors of Seattle’s taller buildings. The President seemed to lose himself for moment, staring at a picture of his daughter, Suzie, in a small silver frame on his desk. He sighed.

  ‘Why am I here, Jed?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr President?’

  ‘No, really. Why am I here? I just wonder some days, that’s all. There’s so much that needs doing to rebuild this country. We all know what’s needed. You, me, Blackstone, Congress, Sarah Palin, Sandra Harvey - Abe, the guy down the market who sells me my sausages. We all know what needs to be done. So why the hell can’t we just get on and do it? Why can’t I do my job? Pass my budget, get my tax law through, the migration bill, the energy bill - any of it? At every single step of the way, I got somebody telling me what I can’t do. Even though we all agree what has to be done …’

  He swivelled his chair around to stare out the window. His mood was as bleak as the weather.

  ‘I’m just wondering what the point is,’ Kip added resignedly. ‘That’s all.’

  He’d been like this since the Battle of New York. Or rather, since he returned to the Big Apple a couple of weeks after the last of the diehards were killed or run off. It was as though James Kipper had decided to assume responsibility for every death, for every piece of rubble. It didn’t matter how many times Jed, Barbara or anybody else told him he had done what needed doing, that he had seen off an unexpected but deadly serious threat to the republic, and shown the world that an America laid low would still not countenance the designs of any foe upon her land or her sovereignty.

  Kip had been the most reluctant of warrior kings, and having seen the cost of taking up sword and shield to expel the so-called Emir and his pirate allies from Manhattan, he seemed to have lost the stomach for any kind of fight. He was a tinkerer, a builder, an engineer; not a destroyer. Even his impacted rage at the attacks on settlers in the Texas Federal Mandate had abated as those attacks tapered off. He was a problem-solver by nature, and once a problem went away, his interest shifted elsewhere.

  Culver, who had been comfortably reclined in a dark leather club chair that had become known as ‘his’ whenever he was in the Oval Office, put aside the folder of papers he’d been holding and heaved himself up to his feet. A one-time college wrestler, he’d always been a big guy, and he found the constant round of state dinners and cocktail parties in the new national capital ruinous to his waistline. Kipper was a lean and hungry-looking wraith in comparison. Jed grunted as he stood up. He was really going to have to start that walking routine his doctor and Marilyn, his wife, were forever hassling him about.

  ‘You’re here because you’re here, Kip,’ he said.

  That got his attention. Jed almost never called him by his nickname. The President turned away from the window with its melancholy view of leafless trees and a slate-grey sky.

  ‘Somebody has to do this job,’ the former Louisiana attorney continued, ‘and it’s better done by a good man like you than an asshole like Blackstone or a feral, crazy eco-nazi like Sandra fucking Harvey. It’s not much fun, but someone’s gotta do it. So man up, buddy. You’re the guy.’

  The President smiled as if conceding a pawn in a long game of chess. ‘Suppose you’re right,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody held a gun to my head and told me to do this. Although, you know, I think Barbara might have. She really surprised me back then.’

  She had. Culver well remembered Kipper’s shock upon discovering that his wife had been quietly working with the resistance to the then General Blackstone’s martial law regime, imposed upon the Pacific Northwest in the panic and chaos of spring 2003. She hadn’t surprised Culver, however. As soon as he’d met Barbara Kipper he’d judged her capable of reaching hard conclusions and acting upon them in a way that her husband wasn’t. Not immediately, anyway. Kip was just too trusting of people. He wanted to think the best of them and it often stayed his hand when he needed to do his worst.

  ‘Guess we better bring them on in, if they’re ready,’ said the President.

  He started to straighten up his tie before thinking otherwise and loosening it further instead. A fire blazed and crackled in the small hearth, adding its warmth to the under-floor heating. As always, Kipper had discarded his jacket as soon as he sat down that morning. He worked with his sleeves rolled up, citing the Kennedy precedent if anyone questioned him. ‘Anyone’ usually being
his wife, and occasionally his Chief of Staff. If they didn’t keep a close watch on him, he’d turn up to work in jeans, boots and one of his old hiking shirts.

  Jed buzzed Kipper’s secretary, Ronnie, to check whether the Cabinet group were ready yet, and when she answered yes, told her to send them in. Barney Tench was first through the door, still licking his fingers from the small tray of pastries set out for visitors in the anteroom, and looking only marginally guilty. Like Barbara, Kip’s old pal Tench had thrown in his lot with the resistance; but unlike her, he had suffered for it. Blackstone had issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of sedition. That had been enough to convince Kipper, then a mere city engineer working closely with Blackstone, that the man had to go.

  It was tempting to imagine they’d all moved on such a long way from those first horrible days. Barney would seem to be living proof of that, thought Jed. Instead of being arrested and possibly hung or shot under martial law, Tench was now the chief of Kipper’s national reconstruction efforts, a job that brought him into regular contact with Blackstone, who’d gone on to become the Governor of Texas. But they hadn’t moved on that far, had they? Because Blackstone was still a gigantic pain in the ass, still the most dangerous man in America, at least to Jed’s way of thinking. But to a lot of other people, he was a hero.

  Kipper and Barney greeted each other as old friends and co-conspirators, with smiles and handshakes devoid of any pro forma posturing. For one brief moment they really were just a couple of old college buds who didn’t get to see each other nearly enough. Not outside of the crushing demands of their respective jobs, anyway. Tench was frequently away from Seattle, either supervising some project out in the boonies, or overseas wrangling aid and redevelopment funds out of the small coterie of allied nations willing and able to lend a hand.

  Behind him entered the Treasury Secretary, Paul McAuley, followed by the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Sarah Humboldt, and the country’s newly minted National Security Advisor, Admiral James Ritchie. Jed was happy to have the old salt on board. Were it not for Ritchie, the chances were pretty good that Jed himself wouldn’t be standing here. They’d met in Honolulu during the first hours after the Wave had swept across the continental US, when Culver had understood the importance of attaching himself to what was left of the nation’s power structure. He believed that Ritchie’s leadership had been one of the main reasons the remnant population of America hadn’t turned on each other in a snarling tangle of fear and madness. He lobbied Kip hard to rescue the man from the backwater he’d been lost in for the last couple of years, securing the military’s stock of WMDs; important work, for sure, but not the best use of Ritchie’s talents.