After America

by John Birmingham

  “I saw it in a movie once,” Aronson said. “Don’t ask me which one.”

  Miguel didn’t. He really didn’t want to know if the movie featured entrails and flesh smeared into the greasy road surface. Each scrape of the shovel against the tarmac to collect another body part caused his stomach to twist and gurgle ominously, pushing the bile to the back of his throat. He choked it back down and continued with the task of dumping the body into the heavy bag Aronson held open for him. It was a task that did not get any easier with each thump of the next corpse against the asphalt. Fortunately, most of them came to the ground in more or less one piece.

  More or less.

  The three men to whom the task fell all wore long and forbidding expressions by the time Benjamin smacked the horses on their rumps to drag away a charred wooden beam that was propping up the last wall. It came free with a giant crack and the deep thunder of tumbling brickwork. The rain had finally eased off an hour earlier, but the mass grave was so thoroughly soaked that the collapse raised no dust.

  “We shall pray for them, if you don’t mind, Miguel,” said Cooper Aronson.

  “I shall add my Hail Marys before sleeping tonight,” he answered, “but now I will clean up.”

  Ben Randall looked up from where he’d been untethering the horses.

  “If you head on down Main Street, across from the rail yards, that Trudi Jessup was setting up to boil water in a big white shed down yonder. A sign-writin’ business, as I recall. She’s got soap, clean clothes, and boots, too. Got ’em from the Walmart. I think your daughter and Sally were helping her, too. Finding dry wood for a boiler.”

  “Thank you,” Miguel said, his mood lifting at the prospect of cleaning the remains of the settlers from his body. That Miss Jessup had attended to the preparations also gave his mood some reason to improve. As the only non-Mormon in the camp—besides the whores, of course, who did not count because they could not be trusted—Miss Jessup had proved to be a relief from the sometimes stern and moralizing company of the Saints.

  He picked up his rifle from where it leaned against a wall and bade the other two men good-bye as they prepared for another of their strange baptisms for the dead. At this rate, thought Miguel, Mormon heaven would fill up with their dead converts long before they reached Kansas City.

  Leading Flossie by the reins, he set off parallel to Main, walking past the sports center where the blue silhouettes of basketballers leapt across the tinted windows. He shivered as what little warmth was left in the day quickly bled away into the gathering dark, reminding him of how wet and filthy his clothes were. He would have to dump them. They were beyond any laundering. Over the road, the windows of the Silver Lady jewelry shop were smashed, and the counters inside upturned and ransacked. A couple of cars parked outside sat on their rims, their tires having deflated long ago. He crossed at Magnolia and Oak, marveling at how the streets of Palestine were so free of car crashes compared with other towns he’d been through. At the next intersection, however, he was forced to divert south by a tree that had fallen and blocked most of the intersection. He was wondering how long it would take to find the place where the ladies had prepared bathing facilities for them, but after cutting diagonally across an open lot, he saw the golden flicker of an open fire outside a big white shed a few hundred yards away.

  It was, or had been, as Benjamin had said, some sort of sign-writing business. Miss Jessup appeared from within as he approached, probably alerted by the clopping sound of Flossie’s iron shoes. His heart lifted slightly as Sofia appeared at her shoulder. He had been worried about her. She waved, and he raised his rifle to return the greeting. He felt his age, more than had ever been the case before. Every year lay on his back and weighed down his tired arms and legs. This was a hard land. Always had been by reputation. But there was hard and there was bad, and the deeper Miguel moved into the dominion of the road agents, the worse things seemed to get. He hoped Miss Jessup had found deep tubs somewhere so that they might scrub every inch of their bodies clean, but he also knew there were some stains a man might never be rid of. And Miguel Pieraro, trudging back from the site of a mass grave, felt himself covered in just that sort of insoluble corruption.

  39

  Kansas City, Missouri

  “Mister President, I have the latest reports on the situation in New York City,” said General Franks.

  “Go on,” Kipper said as a macabre sense of dread crept over him. The faceless soldier in the recovery ward would not leave his mind. He was tormented by flash visions of what she might look like under those bandages: jaw gone, tongue split and lolling obscenely over sharp jutting nubs of bone, loose teeth falling from her upper jaw like broken bricks from a ruined wall.

  Did she have children? Many women in the military did. Although if they’d been in the country when the Wave came … He pushed that thought away, but even worse followed. How would her children react when they saw their mommy? He could see his own daughter screaming in terror if Barbara and he came home missing their faces. Kipper shuddered and pushed the images away.

  Jesus how do guys like Franks endure this? Or Bush or Clinton, or any of them?

  General Franks floated before him, occupying most of a large-screen TV hanging from the wall of the secure videoconference center on the Cerner Campus. Smaller TVs provided feeds from the remaining global news networks, mainly talking heads hashing out the situation in New York City. Most of the equipment was salvage, cobbled together from scavenger runs to Best Buy and Circuit City, combined with whatever military gear was in the area. Some of it was enhanced with more up-to-date cryptography, but for the most part, right down to the KMBC-9 News camera that had been lifted from their downtown KC Studio, the salvaged tech had one redeeming attribute.

  It was free for the taking.

  Presumably the chairman of the joint chiefs was watching him on a similar but presumably much better setup somewhere at Fort Lewis. The secretary of defense should have been online too, but she was in London at that very moment talking with the British prime minister about what additional assistance the Royal Navy might render in blockading the Atlantic approaches to New York. Kipper suspected that the Brits, though still their allies, would engage in some ugly horse trading for their assistance. Just as the United States had done in the early days of World War II. What was he saying? There were no friends, only interests. He couldn’t remember who said it.

  Sitting next to Kipper was Jed Culver, bunkered in behind a great wall of ring binders, three civilian landline phones, and one green and black phone from the army. Kip’s military aide, Colonel Mike Ralls, stood out of view in a corner of the room, in case he should be needed. Apart from the three of them, the small room was empty. It probably couldn’t have held many more occupants, anyway. Kipper’s ever-present shadow, the air force officer with the suitcase, was sitting on a plastic chair just outside in the corridor.

  “We’ve managed to push farther up the island of Manhattan, but the weather has turned against us,” Franks said. “We’ve had heavy rainfall for the past forty-eight hours. Given the city’s gravely deteriorated condition, the result has been to fill the streets with water, and I mean that literally. It’s making movement nearly impossible in some quarters.”

  That didn’t surprise the president at all. For once he probably had a better appreciation of the so-called battlespace than his military commanders. New York was a little like Venice, simply holding back the tide until the day the waters inevitably won.

  Franks pushed on. “The enemy, such as they are, have continued to fight for every block of the island in very loose company-size formations. They are using the urban environment to maximum effect, slowing our efforts down even further. Some of them have been donning militia and army uniforms, which increases the possibility of blue on blue casualties.”

  “Blue on blue?” Culver asked, saving Kipper the effort.

  “Friendly fire,” Franks said. “It’s a lot like the crossroads fighting during the withdra
wal from Iraq, Mister President, except, of course, it’s our own real estate we’re demolishing.”

  Culver leaned forward from his perch, accidentally knocking over a pile of blue ring binders. “And what can you tell us about the enemy now, General? We spoke with Colonel Kinninmore earlier, and he was adamant that this isn’t just some sort of gang war or bandit uprising. It’s coordinated by political actors.”

  Franks’s features didn’t change much as he registered the question. Kipper wondered if that was significant.

  “I’ve seen the raw intelligence that Colonel Kinninmore is using to make his assessments, sirs. I concur with his findings so far, but that’s not telling us much. Until we can capture and properly interrogate some of their leadership cadre, we’re thrashing about in the dark.”

  “Could you speculate, General,” Kipper said. “Please.”

  Franks’s shoulders lifted slightly on the screen. He sighed.

  “At a guess, sir, New York is collateral damage from the Paris Intifada or the Isreali nuclear strikes, perhaps the British government’s forced resettlement schemes, or some combination of them and other factors. There are nearly a billion and a half people on the move around the world right now, Mister President, fleeing conflict or engaging in it. New York is the main game for us, but it’s small beer when you look at the global situation. If I had to lay a few newbies on the barrelhead, I’d say somebody is making a simple play to grab up some real estate and colonize part of the East Coast. It’s not like we have the people or resources to occupy that territory.”

  “But why pick a fight?” Kipper asked. “Why not just sneak in there and, I dunno, take over a fishing village or an empty farming hamlet if they really wanted to just settle? Hell, why not just ask? We’re looking for immigrants.”

  “Maybe we’re not looking for these ones, Mister President. But I really do not care to speculate on the motives of an enemy I can’t even ID yet.”

  Kip was forced to concede the logic of his point.

  “Are there any assets you need that might help us identify them?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Franks said. “Their communications discipline is very good. At least at command level. Reminds me of looking for bin Laden back in the day. They just don’t use the sat phones. I’d speculate they use runners to get their orders out and push a lot of responsibility down to the small unit level. They move around a lot. But they do so under cover. Whenever we get any sign of big concentrations of enemy personnel, we hit them with what we can, although, with respect, sir, we could hit them harder, much harder, if you authorized the use of strategic air assets.”

  “The big bombers, you mean, General?” Culver asked.

  “Yes, sir. I’m afraid that a city like New York provides lots of protection from helicopter gunships and even from the limited air strikes we’re able to carry out under our current rules of engagement. It’s also a very dangerous environment for close air support. We’ve lost four jets to shoulder-fired missiles and—” He checked a piece of paper on the table in front of him. “—and thirteen helicopters so far.”

  Kipper felt his head reeling at the numbers. They simply could not bear those losses for very long.

  “Were they all taken down by missiles, General? Surely we could find out where those things came from.”

  “Some of them were ours, sir. And no, most of the choppers were killed by very low-tech means. Rocket-propelled grenades, often fired from skyscrapers. As I said, sir, it is a very challenging battlespace.”

  Jed leaned across his wall of ring binders. “We have discussed this, Mister President. We can use men or we can use ordnance. But at the moment we’re not using enough of either. Is that what you’re saying, General Franks?”

  “Yes, Mister Culver.”

  “How many troops do we have on the island right now, General?” Kip asked.

  “Close to twenty-four thousand regular army, marines, and New York militia, Mister President. The militia element forms the majority of our combat power, probably close to sixty percent. But their effectiveness is mixed depending upon their local commanders,” the chairman said. “If you are amenable, I would like permission to deploy an additional marine expeditionary brigade into New York.”

  “Where would these marines come from?” Kipper asked. The U.S. Armed Forces were a lot smaller than they had once been. You couldn’t just go tossing marine brigades around like confetti.

  “I’d probably pull them from California. Los Angeles and San Diego. Stripping them down to MCRD San Diego,” Franks said. “Things are secure enough that the corps felt they could move boots back to San Diego. At least secure from outside interference at any rate, and using marines there is probably overkilling the issue of zone runners and scavengers. We’re scheduled to transfer more of that mission over to the local militia, anyway. May as well move it up.”

  Jed Culver riffled quickly through a sheaf of papers until he found what he wanted.

  “Couldn’t we send forces from Missouri and strip units from the garrisons along the Seattle–Kansas City rail line? They’re a lot closer, and they’re not busy. It’s mostly wilderness out there.”

  Franks shook his head. “I know it looks as if those troops aren’t doing anything, Mister Culver, but they keep the rail line secure from interdiction and sabotage.”

  “Sabotage?” Kipper asked.

  “The incidents have been relatively small in number and not coordinated, but all it takes is one train derailment to cause considerable disruption to reconstruction efforts in the Midwest,” Franks said. “The Second MEB is vital, but with a third one in—”

  “Who the hell’s been sabotaging my railways?” Kip asked. If Franks noticed his sudden surge of interest, he didn’t react to it, continuing in the same gruff voice as before.

  “The bureau is investigating, Mister President. They’re not ruling anything out. There’s some indication it could be a Deep Green thing or one of the Earth First splinters. But the strikes were pretty far into the interior, well beyond the reach of a bunch of tree huggers and vegan whack jobs. Latest theory is Fort Hood, possibly using a bogus Green front to mess with our supply lines. They do have the capability and motive,” Franks said, notably omitting Blackstone’s name. It was known that Franks had been part of the effort to oust Blackstone from uniform. Kip understood that he didn’t care for the man in the least.

  “That Blackstone asshole again?” Kipper exclaimed with a passion that surprised even himself. “This guy is like Satan’s own jack-in-the-box the way he keeps popping up. How bad is it, General? And why wasn’t I informed?”

  Franks didn’t look at all uncomfortable with the question.

  “It’s not as bad as it could be, Mister President, precisely because we have those garrison forces along the line, constantly patrolling. And that’s why you weren’t informed. Compared to some of our other problems, this one is small potatoes and easily managed as long as we keep those forces in place and on alert. I’d add, though, that the fact they haven’t caught anyone does tend to bolster the case that it’s not amateurs operating out there.”

  Kip got his runaway temper under control again. He’d come forward in his chair, and the knuckles on his clenched fists stood out white against the suntan he’d picked up visiting so many reconstruction sites.

  “Okay,” he said. “But General, and Jed, too, if this sabotage gets out of hand or even if it starts ramping up, I want to know. That rail line is the single most important transport corridor we have.”

  “Will do, Mister President,” Franks said.

  “I think you were about to give us a few options for redeploying troops to New York,” Culver suggested, moving the discussion forward again.

  On screen, Franks nodded.

  “We should also be able to redeploy the marines from Kennedy since the cav has now totally secured the airport. Navy is moving some of their assets up from Puerto Rico to seal off access to the city from the sea. At least as best they can. Thes
e ‘assets’ consist of two destroyers and an oil tender. It will be a big help if Secretary Castellato can secure some assistance from the British, Mister President.”

  “That’s why she’s there, General,” Kipper said. He was due to call Castellato in two hours for an update but saw no point in wasting time speculating on progress until he’d heard from Alida herself.

  Franks leaned toward him on the screen, almost filling it.

  “I should warn you, sir, that casualties are certain to increase over the course of the next month.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kipper said, certain he’d misheard. “A month? This battle could last a month?”

  Franks nodded. “Easily, Mister President. We could deploy two to three times as many troops without changing the duration of the engagement.”

  Oh, man, thought Kipper. This was getting worse by the minute.

  “I see,” he said aloud. “General, did you receive a copy of Admiral Ritchie’s brief concerning the possible use of nuclear and/or chemical weapons in New York?”

  “I did, Mister President.” Franks replied. “And I concur with Ritchie’s opinion. We should be very, very careful about going down that path for all of the reasons he outlined. I can understand the attraction of a technological fix, Mister President. I don’t like losing precious lives any more than you do.”

  “Well, then give me some options, General,” Kipper said plaintively.

  Franks nodded slowly, as if considering the issue for the first time, which was obviously not the case.

  “If you are willing to write off large sections of New York City,” he suggested after a moment, “we could send a flight of B-52s over.”

  “What? Conventional bombing?” Kipper asked.