Burn District 1

by Jenkins, Suzanne

  “You mean Junior? Oh lord, Dad, he’s a treasure! I can’t imagine how dull my life would be without all my kids and Junior was a good one to have first. He is so happy! He just makes me want to smile.” Steve nodded his head.

  “I know. He makes me smile, too. But it’s still a worry.” I grabbed his hand.

  “Dad, don’t, okay? As soon as we’re settled, my goal is to find something for Junior to do. He needs some direction but not a dotting mother and father breathing down his back. Independent living would be the best thing for Junior, but that isn’t happening now.” If the nation’s situation didn’t resolve soon, my kids would have a very different life than we imagined for them. There wouldn’t be college or careers or group homes for Junior unless something drastic happened.

  Could we go on trying to have a normal life while our government was murdering people around us? I didn’t know. It wouldn’t be moral. Didn’t we have to find a way to fight? We avoided answering the question because it would make us responsible. What was the right thing to do?

  “It was so cold at home, we had to wear our winter coats and boots,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

  “You won’t need anything like that here. As a matter of fact, that reminds me; I got a solar panel. It’s just one, but it’ll be a place to start. If we really want to be off the grid, we need to do solar. The sun shines three hundred and fifty days a year.”

  “Well that’s a benefit, I think.” I didn’t reply if we stay here in Tulip. “Better go find out what the boys are up to and scrounge up something for lunch. Come with me, Dad. Kelly made fried chicken.”

  “Okay, I’m hungry now you mention it. So tell me about Kelly. How old is she?” I turned to look at him to see if he was pulling my leg.

  “You want to know how old Kelly is? Maybe having her sleep in your rig wasn’t the best idea.” It actually made me sick, the thought of my dad with Kelly.

  “I might be old but I’m not dead,” he said. “Okay if you don’t want to tell me. I’ll ask her myself.”

  “She’s over forty,” I answered quickly. “But a lady doesn’t divulge the age of another lady.”

  Laughing, my dad nodded his head. “I gotcha. Is she available?” I stopped walking toward the trailer and looked at him carefully. Who was this man?

  “She’s not married, if that’s what you’re asking. Why so interested? She doesn’t seem like your type.” My dad sighed.

  “My type is a woman who can speak English, isn’t a drunk, a skeleton or a doper.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking,” I replied. My premonition when we were on the road about Kelly and my father-in-law came back to me; it was just about a different father.

  “Mom’s been gone two years,” he said. “I’ve been doing the online dating thing for six months, and if you knew what I have been through, you wouldn’t be so stingy with your friends. Now, of course, I doubt there will be anything like online dating in the new world.” I thought about what he was saying and it hit me, hard. The New World.

  “Dad, that’s not the point. If you start anything with her and it doesn’t work out, then what do we do? We can’t abandon Kelly because you decide she isn’t for you.” He chuckled, and I could see he was embarrassed and understood what I was getting at.

  “So, tell me about your dates.”

  “How much time do you have?” he said. I peeked in the front door and the boys were watching a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD while Mike snoozed in my dad’s old recliner. Closing the door again, I pointed back at the fire pit, forgetting about our lunch.

  “We have the rest of our lives. Let’s go sit down again and you can tell me all about it.” Steve pulled a cooler out of the back of his truck and dragged it over to the fire pit.

  “Beer?” He held one up but I shook my head.

  “If I start drinking now I’ll be sleeping by dinner time. Get on with the story, please.”

  “Okay, well before I tell you the dating stories, let me clear the air about another matter. After you sent me the link for the forums, I went online to read and decided it was a bunch of bull crap.” I started to protest but he put his hand on my arm. “Let me finish.”

  “Remember that fishing trip I went on with my brother Dave last month? To the Outer Banks?”

  “I think I remember. What about it?”

  “Dave and I left for home after dinner that Sunday, and by the time we got to Florence, we needed gas, so we got off the interstate. There are no rest stops with stations along that stretch of highway.” I wondered where my dad was going with this and stifled a yawn. “Dave got out to pump the gas. He knocked on the window and pointed toward the road. It was like a race had started. Out of nowhere, cars took off from the light and were racing toward the entrance to the highway, jockeying for position.

  “I rolled down my window and shouted for him to hurry. I’d just read in the forums about a burn outside of Baltimore and witnesses said the same thing had happened; all of a sudden, people were fleeing, and within minutes, the city was bombed.” I grabbed my father’s arm.

  “Dad, why is this the first time I’m hearing this?” What surprised me is that we’d both heard similar stories for months and chose not to do anything about it. We stayed in our homes waiting, because it was comfortable there.

  “I didn’t want to scare you, and I knew you were making provisions. I had a few things to pull together and then I was going to tell you to quit your jobs and meet me.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry I interrupted you. What happened next?” My dad rubbed his face before he continued; I could see he was anxious talking about it. He stood up, pacing.

  “Come with me for a second.” He led me to his truck where he pointed to the bumper. The chrome lookalike had a wavy appearance, as if it had been exposed to extreme heat.

  “What happened to it?” He led me back to our seats.

  “What happened was that we were in line to get on the interstate and the hit was so close, the car behind us exploded into flames.”

  “Oh my god, Dad! That’s unbelievable,” I cried. “You could’ve been killed.”

  “We both screamed when it happened. It reminded me of being in the desert during the Persian Gulf conflict, having a rocket zip by my head, hearing the fizz, it hitting so close to where I was standing that the pressure from the blast threw me into the air. I lost my hearing for a month. The same thing happened at the gas station in Florence. Dave said he heard it too, heard the bomb fall. The only thing I can compare it to that you might be familiar with is the sound of a firework after it explodes and the little bits spin to the earth.” He made the sound, like a young boy doing sound effects, complete with hand gestures mimicking an explosion.

  “When it hit the ground, the blast was deafening. We both complained of ear pain for a week afterward. I wasn’t sure how much the blast decimated, but the heat from it set off a fire at the gas station we’d just pulled out of making the car behind us explode and that was what melted my bumper. The rush to the interstate was almost a catastrophe, with cars going off the road and narrowly falling over the embankment to merge. A woman whose car caught fire from the station tried to climb in the back of my truck. I saw other drivers open their doors, and then they were engulfed.

  “We finally made it, me driving like hell, like I was in the desert again. Dave looked back and said that the entire city appeared to be in flames from that one blast. There could have been more, but we just heard the one.

  “It made a Rumor out of me. I was astonished at the amount of bullshit we were being fed by Washington. I finally had to stop watching the news because I could see now that it was all lies. Or just not reporting. Nothing was ever mentioned about Florence, South Carolina. I researched it myself and there was no news that it had burned. Florence has had its share of problems like all county seats have. But is that any reason to kill the inhabitants?”

  “So you don’t believe it’s because of a virus?” I asked. I was still frightened of t
he virus stories because I had children.

  “That story is a bunch of BS. I read that some communities had an inoculation. People were lining up with their children to get it. And guess what it’s rumored to be?”

  “What? Come on, Dad, you’re scaring me.”

  “Microchips. Yep, you heard me, they are microchipping the kids.”

  “Dad, that’s impossible.”

  “No it’s not! Microchips can be as small as a human hair. If we ever turn the internet on again, you can read about it. It is a number they’re injecting, that’s all. You need to have access to a database, where the kid’s information is kept. But just the same, that did it for me. I packed up the house, grabbed Mom’s ashes and headed here.”

  “When did you get here?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Last Monday,” he answered.

  “That’s why I couldn’t get in touch with you.” He nodded his head.

  “What does this have to do with online dating?” He burst out laughing and bent over my chair to hug me.

  “I’m so sorry. I did get sidetracked, but I wanted you to hear what happened to your Uncle Dave and me in case you had any doubts.”

  “Where’s he going to go?” My uncle was the polar opposite of my dad; a mild-mannered, genteel, retired English professor.

  “You know his cabin in Maine, on the Canadian border? He’s there with his dog and his bird. They still have pay phones at the 7-11 in Mobile so when I reached Alabama I called his landline in Madawaska. It might have been the last time I’ll talk to him.” I grabbed my dad’s hand again.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s got nothing to do with you. But it was a reminder that you and Jenna and the kids are all I’ve got, if you know what I mean. It was always my desire to live close to my grandkids and now it’s happened. I guess that’s the benefit of all of this. I’ll be really happy if we can get Jenna to come, too.” I nodded my head, hoping he was right, that we could all live happily ever after.

  “I haven’t talked to Jenna,” I confessed. “Since Mom died and she and Poindexter divorced, she’s pissed off at me. I had to set up boundaries for her and it didn’t go over very well.”

  “Egad, Bob was a Poindexter, wasn’t he? What was the attraction?” My father was a master at avoiding conflict and I was determined to get him to address my issues with Jenna, at least superficially.

  “Who knows? I think she felt like she needed to compete with me. I was getting married because I was pregnant with Junior and she didn’t want to be the old maid-older-unmarried sister.”

  “Your mother begged her not to marry him.”

  “Mom knew what was going on. She knew Jenna didn’t love the guy. But that isn’t why we’re at odds. When Junior was born, Jenna said something to me that really hurt and our relationship went downhill from there. I let it go, but it’s always there, festering.”

  “You mean about him born with Downs? Frankly, I’m shocked. She never said anything negative about him in front of me.” I nodded my head. I still couldn’t bring myself to put the words my sister spoke into the air. I made excuses for Jenna for years and would continue to, just to keep the peace. My mother said she was jealous of me and wanted to hurt me. The attention I got when I had Junior pushed her over the edge and she said things that she couldn’t take back.

  “It’s a shame your sister hurt you. I wish I could help the situation.” Good old Dad, always wanting to solve the problems of the world.

  “I want Jenna to come here,” I said. “Nothing that happened in the past should interfere with her safety. I may try to contact her soon, while we still have phones.”

  “I begged her to come with me,” Steve said. “I just hated to think she was there alone. She said she’d find a place to hide in Florida if it came to that.” Talking about my sister always made both of us feel horrible, but at least I got him to acknowledge there was a problem.

  “Okay, well I’m ready for a laugh now. Tell me about your dates.” He chuckled and I could see he was trying to decide how much of the truth I needed to hear.

  Chapter 3

  Paralyzed with grief, Katharine Garrison stayed in bed since she got the news Miranda had been murdered. She was trying to justify how she could avoid going to Miranda’s funeral. Victor wanted to get it over with, “As soon as legally possible,” he said, thinking there might be some kind of delay because of the way she died. “I can’t stand this waiting around.” He kept bugging her, coming into the bedroom to engage her. She pulled herself up and rested against the headboard.

  “Why do we have to even have a funeral,” Katharine countered. She lowered her head and began to weep again. “It’s so stupid. Why did this happen?”

  Victor Garrison already knew after he’d been warned repeatedly by the men Miranda angered to gain control of her or suffer the consequences. The problem was that he didn’t care what they did to him. He just never dreamed they’d really hurt Miranda. It was all hot air, a means to frighten him. Lackeys of Winston Clarke never visited his office in Washington. They weren’t going kill him in the Capital Building.

  Instead, they came to his house. The family, except for Miranda, was sitting around the dinner table laughing and talking on Sunday afternoon when there was a knock on the door.

  “I’ll get it,” nineteen-year-old Lexie said, getting up from the table, thinking it would be a friend of theirs. They heard Lexie yelp. Victor jumped up from the table as she was brought back into the dining room in a headlock by a human ape with a knife to her throat, surrounded by two other men in black coats. Irrationally, Victor thought it was humorous that they’d stoop to wearing all black. They watched too much TV. Katharine’s scream brought him back to earth quickly.

  “What do you want with my child?” she cried.

  “It’s not this kid we want,” the ape said. “I told you to keep the other one quiet. I told you to get her home and shut her up. Now unless you want this….” Here he pressed the knife into Lexie’s cheek, not enough to cut her, but enough to leave a red mark. “...to happen to her, get her home and shut her the fuck up.” He let go of Lexie, throwing her so she hit the floor with a thud. Later, Victor would regret not running to her at the very least. He could have sacrificed his life right then and they would have probably let Miranda alone.

  The thugs left the house and Victor made a decision he’d later be chastised for, by everyone from his wife to the President of the United States. He didn’t do anything. Oh, he called Miranda and warned her, told her they’d roughed Lexie up. But she was passionate.

  “Dad, they’re going to kill thousands of people, hundreds of thousands. You have to see this video. Winston Clarke is telling a group from the Brotherhood of Life that, and I quote, ‘the only solution to the rampant socialism that’s destroying our country is to kill the beneficiaries.’”

  “He used the word kill,” Victor replied, chuckling.

  “Yes, Dad. You laugh, but I’m telling you, the virus thing is a hoax. There is no virus. They aren’t quarantining towns. They just go in and bomb them with napalm when enough time has passed since the last burning. And the towns are always full of people, having dinner or sleeping in their beds.”

  “You are hallucinating, Miranda. This is so farfetched; I’m worried for your well-being. You’re going to destroy a man’s reputation, spewing this fantastical bullshit all over Washington.”

  “I’ll send you the video, Dad. I’m ready to post it on You Tube but I’ll show you enough respect to let you view it, first.”

  “Where’d you get it if it’s such a ground breaking piece?”

  “Someone within his camp sent it to me. I run a forum helping to sort through all the information that’s available, so people can make decisions about whether or not they need to leave their community. It sounds so simplistic, but you have to remember these are working class people, Dad. They aren’t your neighbors. Your suburb might never be targeted. These are people who live pay
check to paycheck and they don’t have a lot of money to begin with. Some of them don’t even own cars. In order to save their lives, they have to quit their jobs and leave the support of their community.”

  “You just said he was advocating killing welfare recipients and now you’re telling me working class people are being displaced.”

  “If communities were segregated like that, then it would be easy. A perfect example is Grand Island in New Jersey. There was still public housing in Grand Island, did you know that? One of the few developments left in the United States. Ninety percent of the residents of the development received some kind of public assistance in addition to the housing allotment. It might be in the form of food stamps, or Medicaid, or help with their heating bill. And of those ninety percent, seventy percent worked!” Miranda was getting emotional, something she didn’t want to do in front of her father. She took a quick deep breath and tried to pull it together.

  “Dad, it burned! The entire town is a black, flat mess. Grand Island is only one example. I have a list of sixty communities that were lost, over eighty thousand people either killed or displaced. We don’t have concrete numbers because no one will admit what’s happening. I’m hearing about rural communities, farmland and small factories that are lost. It makes no sense. The only explanation I can come up with is that burning outside of the urban district is a smokescreen.”

  “Why aren’t we hearing about this on the news? I know you’re going to tell me there’s a gag order.”

  “They run TV now, Dad. I wish I could prove it to you. Just watch the video.”

  “Who are they?” Victor asked. “I know, I know; the nebulous they. No one knows where they are, but they’re there.” He tried not to laugh. Miranda was his smartest child. She went to Yale on a full scholarship, and she was wasting her life speaking to groups of rumormongers.