End Time

by G. A. Matiasz

  “How the hell are we going to leave Oakland and get this truck back to Alabaster?” Greg shot Smoke a glance.

  “I’m staying,” Smoke announced, “You’ll be taking the truck back, plus a passenger. And don’t worry. They’re letting people leave, no questions asked. It’s getting into Oakland that’s the problem.’’

  The New Afrika Center, awash in bright light, buzzed with exuberant activity; combined town meeting and national capitol for the embryonic nation. Smoke parked where Johnson indicated. The captain’s orders brought several people to help Smoke and Greg unload the truck.

  “I’ll go see if I can find your passenger,” Johnson said, and eased his way through the noisy, excited crowd.

  No one paid any attention to their skin color as the truck’s cargo disappeared, hand-over-hand, into the Center. Presently, Johnson returned with a squat, stocky, Latino man clutching a battered briefcase to his side. Smoke got off the truck to talk to him.

  “My friend here, Greg, will drive you to Alabaster tonight. There, you’ll find my car. He can point it out for you. Take it with my blessing. Just get rid of it as soon as you can. It’s a junker, and I got a feeling its gonna become a liability. Real soon.”

  Smoke dug into his pocket, fished out his keys and slipped off the car keys. Meanwhile, the soldier who’d taken Smoke’s place on the truck whistled dramatically as removing the plasma revealed a floor of different boxes.

  “Jesus,” the man said and pried open the heavy duty lid to one of them, “These are Timpo grenades. One of ‘em could level a whole city block.”

  The captain and Smoke exchanged knowing smiles as the man gave Greg a look of respect tinged with skepticism.

  “When do you think we could leave?” Greg’s passenger asked politely, “The sooner I can get to where I’m going, the better. For the Insurrection.”

  “Greg?” Smoke asked.

  “Can we get something to eat before we go?” Greg asked as the last grenade box left the truck.

  “Absolutely,” Johnson grinned, “The Commons is right across the street. But first, put these on. I could be called away at any time, and these’ll help you move around New Afrika.”

  He handed them the well sown arm bands that the captain and other folks around the Center wore—a black, a green, and a gold star clustered on a field of red. Greg put his on. The group headed to a large warehouse, the wide open doors streaming light, the sound of company and the smell of food into the night. The large warehouse floor of the Commons had been converted into a cafeteria. Long tables in the back held the food, the servers behind catering from huge, steaming pots. The hall itself was about half full with people and full up with conversation and laughter.

  “Don’t got much this time o’ night,” one of the servers bellowed, “But well fix ya up.”

  Smoke, Greg and Greg’s passenger took trays and paper plates which were promptly heaped with aromatic baked beans liberally flaked with chunks of beef, a large square of corn bread, and a pile of greens.

  “Got any beer?” Smoke asked the server.

  “Yep, but only one to a customer,” the man said and he dipped into a cooler for three.

  “Revolutionary discipline,” the captain said, as he walked them to a table, “The first thing the Coalition and the Liberation Force did yesterday, when the city was completely under our control, was to communalize all food supplies and all the liquor in the stores. Every ounce of that alcohol is under lock and key. And would you believe, the home-boys in the gang alliance, they voluntarily turned over all their drugs. Its now also locked away. We might just need that heroin and Ynisvitrin for painkiller, once the real fighting starts.”

  “What are you doing about the addicts?” Smoke dug into the meal, using his cornbread to sop up the juices.

  “Trying the Panther cure,” the captain shrugged, “Cold turkey. Then we’re swapping their needles and pipes for guns. Its too early to tell if revolutionary nationalism can replace their habits. The alkies are the worst, and some of them we’ve had to hospitalize at Kaiser. I got a suspicion some of the gangbangers also have their own private stashes. But there’s no dealing.”

  “What about looting?” Smoke took a swig of beer.

  “Thursday was the worst. But when the gangs and then Oakland Base joined the struggle, it virtually stopped. We’ve now got soldiers and block militias stationed at every department store, shopping mall and warehouse. And we’re asking people to respect the small, mom-and-pop stores, those that haven’t left yet, and not loot them. We haven’t stopped it entirely, but its reduced considerably.”

  “And...”

  “Well, its not like we don’t know people want this shit, so we’re telling everybody, yes, we’ll distribute it. What we now need is a fair way to parcel out the junk.”

  Greg watched the two men, under hastily rigged incandescent light grids that hid the empty space above to the ceiling’s sketchy rafters with their glare. He noted each line and wrinkle in their intense faces, engaged in their discussion, under that sharp light.

  “So, what’s Oakland like for money these days?”

  “We expropriated banks and large payrolls, and that’s what we’re using to start up a little smuggling. On the street, we’re printing script and using ration cards. Script notes are immediately redeemable in food portions. A can of processed meat, a half gallon of powdered milk, a pound of cheese, a sack of flour or beans. The market gives us equivalencies, but everybody in Oakland is being fed. Every person is rationed enough food for a week, two and a half meals a day. Problem is, lots of folks don’t know how to efficiently cook the food they got. We’ve got teachers going to every neighborhood teaching people how to cook. For people who just can’t or won’t cook for themselves, we got the Commons here, all around the city, and folks can redeem their food ration for cafeteria style meals. Liberation Force soldiers for instance need a mess. So do most of the people taking up the front lines. There’s still a few restaurants open. No fast food though anywhere in the city.”

  “You know,” Smoke leaned over his empty plate, “It might be good PR to push some victory gardens. You’ve got empty lots, you’ve got rooftops, you’ve got parks. And hell, you’ve probably got lots of people needing some work to do. Start Victory Gardens and do a propaganda campaign on metropolitan self-sufficiency in the face of encirclement. Great press. It’ll kick as a story, even if Oakland doesn’t...”

  “Excuse me,” the Latino, whose name Greg didn’t, and probably wouldn’t know, interrupted Smoke’s reverie. “I do need to get going.”

  “Sorry,” Johnson and Smoke said, simultaneously. Smoke looked at Greg.

  Captured by the conversation, Greg made a snap decision.

  “Can you drive a stick shift?” Greg asked his would-be passenger, this anonymous man.

  “Sure,” he knit his eyebrows in concern.

  “Look,” Greg said, now firm behind his decision, “I’ll draw you a map. An exact map to the Alabaster State campus and to the Transportation Department. Smoke will give you his license plate number, and 111 give you the keys to the truck. Only, please don’t take the truck to where you want to go. It guzzles gas like you wouldn’t believe, and you can’t go over fifty miles an hour safely on the freeway. My recycling coop really needs that truck tomorrow for their run.”

  “No problem,” the man said, earnestly, “No problem at all.”

  “Park the truck, and leave the passenger door open. Leave the keys under the passenger’s seat. I’ll call a coop volunteer tomorrow and tell him to pick up the truck.”

  “Absolutely no problem,” the man said.

  “You gonna stay in New Afrika?” Johnson laughed.

  “Yes,” Greg said.

  ***

  Marcus hit it, bullseye, about 10 til 6 on Saturday.

  “Yup,” the resident manager wrinkled his forehead, “That’s Paul Janosik. He lives here. He recently moved from one apartment to another in the complex. You gonna give him money?”r />
  “Excuse me,” Marcus said, “I have to make a telephone call.”

  The detective immediately flagged Manley from a pay phone. He thought about calling in Randy from running point on the girl, Lori, but decided against it. A large raven, wing span momentarily silhouetted against the rising moon, joined the night. A patrol car pulled up to where Marcus waited on the corner of Main and California, Joe and partner inside.

  “Peregrine. He’s got an apartment in that building,” Marcus pointed.

  “You really found him,” Joe marveled, stepping from his car, “Oh, by the way, this is Pete Samsung.”

  “Better let us handle this,” Peter said.

  Joe and Pete explained matters to the manager, who grew less and less pleased with every word.

  “I didn’t know,” he shook his head, “Really, I didn’t know.”

  “No one’s blaming you,” Marcus offered, “Just let the police do their job.”

  “Here’s the key,” the manager offered, “Do what you have to do.”

  The stairwell up to Peregrine’s apartment was lit by a single bare light bulb. Joe flicked it off from the switch at the base of the stairs.

  “Better take this,” Joe whispered and handed Marcus his revolver, “Never know what might happen.”

  So they crept with deliberate stealth up the stairs, in the darkness visible. Joe had Pete’s revolver, followed by Pete with shotgun, and trailed two steps behind by Marcus. All three of their weapons were poised. Joe inspected the apartment number once at the top of the stairs, making sure. The gap between door and floor revealed a strange apparition. Serrated lines of light just on the edge of human vision marched methodically across the gap. Marcus could smell all of their sweat before Joe raised a cautionary hand. Then he kicked open the door.

  For a brief moment Marcus witnessed a phantasm, bathed in the smoky light of its own making. The creature was humanoid, dressed in a form fitting, single piece, eel-gray body suit. The hands were gloved, with thick seams running up the arms and shoulders. And the head was entirely, strangely helmeted. It was a type of skull-tight ski mask, fitted with shear goggles and headphones, and crested with a soft, gun-metal colored apparatus. The goggles pulsed with that on-edge-of-sight light Marcus had observed seconds before, from under the door.

  “Freeze,” Joe yelled, crouched, and aimed.

  An invisible light, apprehendable by a sense more visceral than sight and tailored minutely to Joe’s shape, streaked with precision from the refractive goggles, cookie cutting Joe perfectly. Joe exploded backwards as his partner fell in a faint to the floor. What remained of Manley hit Marcus with force enough to shove him back, collapsing him at the head of the stairs. Pete squeezed off two shells. Both sprayed off the figure’s chest before it launched a second form fitting invisible-yet-visible bolt to fry Pete as well. Then, the apparition bounded for the stairs.

  Perhaps it was Joe’s acrid, burnt corpse that camouflaged Marcus. Or, perhaps the creature which had just killed two policemen made an oversight in its rush. In either case, Marcus managed, with the last of his strength, to raise his foot, draped with Joe’s barbecued leg, to trip the creature as it reached the stairs.

  “She died of a broken neck,” Manley’s Sergeant, Damian Marx, diagnosed.

  The detective was not badly bruised or stained by Joe’s remains.

  “What the hell...” Marcus broke off, unable to rid his nose of the odor of burnt human flesh, “How did she do...”

  “Full body virtual reality assault suit is my guess,” Damian rubbed his fatigued brow, thinking of the two good officers he had lost. “I’ve only heard about such things. If you ask me, its Sulawesi Tech. Well leave an officer here, to catch Peregrine when he returns.”

  “He won’t come back here,” Marcus said, numb of emotion with the death of his friend, “There’s only one place he’s likely to go now.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Excerpted from

  “Nations and People of Earth,”

  The Amok World Almanac and Book of Weird Facts

  2010

  (Electrostraca #: A/GR-010-367-582-2376)

  San Cristobal is a country intentionally without representation in any world body, to include the United Nations. It is a country diplomatically unrecognized by any world power, let alone the two nations upon which it borders. It is a country unmapped in atlases. Cartographers until the 1820’s were beholden to the Spanish monarchy’s ban on acknowledging San Cristobal’s existence, and cartographers after the 1820’s knew nothing of it. A land outside of history, a purposefully disappeared nation; San Cristobal hovers above the world, both metaphorically and literally. As such, little about San Cristobal is known for certain. A caveat for readers of the remainder of this entry; most of what has been assembled on San Cristobal comes from second-and third-hand sources.

  First, its geography and geology. The three linked valleys of San Cristobal are located on the spine of the Andes, between Chile and Argentina, and between Cerro Ojo del Salado and Cerro del Toro. Comprised of 580 square miles of valley floor and close to another 140 square miles of marginal mountain borderland, San Cristobal was created by east/west block faulting around the time the southern Andean cordillera was folded up out of tectonic plate collisions. The hundreds of feet of sheer cliff surrounding and isolating the short rift zone stand without much erosion, given the cold, dry mountain climate. The highest, northernmost valley is arid, originally supporting only high desert scrub. The middle valley is blessed by a natural, cold water spring and soil suitable for agriculture. The middle valley’s waters flow into the lowest, southernmost valley. There it pools with waters from a hot sulphur spring before emptying into the caverns that originally drained the primeval lake which once filled all three valleys. The Almagro Pass along the middle valley’s northwest rim is San Cristobal’s only natural portal.

  This austere, wild setting accounts for the region’s unique history. The native Americans responsible for the Nazca lines and carvings knew of the site, and considered it sacred. They carved bas reliefs of spiders, condors and other birds, llamas and alpacas, fish, snakes, six-petaled flowers, and haloed figures along with complex geometries into impossible locations along the valleys’ cliffs.

  In turn the Incas [legend has it under first emperor Manco Capac’s reign (1100-1200 ce) but more probably after Topa Inca’s conquest of Chile (1300-1400 ce)] reaffirmed the site’s rugged sacredness by building a Temple to the Sun and erecting an intihuatama atop the eastern cliffs, virtually a copy of the one at Vilcapampa (Machu Picchu, 1200-1300 ce). The valleys were called Tacachavan. Later Inca generations elaborated the northern and western rims of the valleys with superb white granite temples, palaces, fortresses, plazas, stairways, cisterns, tombs and tunnels. All were substantially plundered if not destroyed by the Spanish conquerors in the 1500’s. The terraced valley floors still bear the mark of the Inca civilization into the 21st century. Legend holds that the mountain and sun worship of Inca emperors and nobles, priests and virgins invested in the valleys was being challenged, perhaps even supplanted toward the later decades of the empire by a darker mystery cult. The cult was associated with ruins on the southern rim of the valleys built around primal artifacts stolen from the conquered Chimu people. Pretender to the Inca throne, Huáscar, and his sister/wife were said to have been preparing for flight to Tacachavan when besieged, captured and killed by Atahualpa.

  The Spaniards saw their own value in the three valleys they christened San Cristobal. They converted the site into a penal colony, first for rebellious natives of note, then for notable, exiled Spanish enlightenment liberals, humanists and free thinkers, and finally for radicals and revolutionaries from all around Spain’s world empire. San Cristobal, while still a prison by 1750, was also a substantially self supporting settlement. Prisoners were allowed to bring family, or to marry native women. Agriculture and mining augmented sophisticated metallurgy, textile and chemical extraction industries; the most advanced in the Spanish
empire. Many of San Cristobal’s residents were heretical men of considerable knowledge. Schools and a university flourished in the valleys, as did the most modern medical facility in the world.

  The valleys’ extreme isolation, plus their over two centuries history as an internment institution, acted to forge a social character peculiar to San Cristobal. The valleys were a radical nexus, but they were also a dead end. All manner of liberals and revolutionists came to this mountain crucible, but few ever left, except through death. Strong autarchic sentiments thus colored the association of some the world’s most visionary, experimental and revolutionary minds from the start. At the same time, San Cristobal gained a reputation as an idiosyncratic type of international utopia. Prominent political prisoners often chose, if they could, incarceration in San Cristobal over internment in a less secure prison closer to home, this despite the horrendous and sometimes fatal transport to that distant mountain penitentiary. In turn, the valleys’ residents spoke not only an officially sanctioned Spanish and the unofficial native tongue Quechua, but also an organically developed lingua franca that melded the numerous languages of the diverse prisoner population into what was called lingupero. Literally, dog tongue.

  Inspired by the American Revolution, anticipating the French Revolution by five years, and seizing the opportunity offered by Tupac Amaru’s powerful, but failed revolt; the prisoners overwhelmed their guards, declared a revolutionary republic—Latin America’s first—and kicked out the Spanish empire in 1784. Spain spent twelve years and a great deal of wealth trying to retake the valleys, only to be thwarted by geography and the tenacious bravery of San Cristobal’s self-emancipated citizens. Spain opted for an early version of the cordon sanitaire strategy against the minuscule republic after 1796, what with trouble brewing in other parts of the empire.