American Apocalypse Read online

  “Hi, Rachael!” the leader called out to the young girl.

  His lackeys mimicked him, “Hi, Rachael!” as they swaggered over.

  The leader told the two old people, “Git.” The old lady was already moving before he had made it halfway across the floor.

  The old man held up his hand, “Just a minute, boys! I am almost done.”

  He bent over the keyboard and continued typing furiously. The leader nodded at one his lackeys, who smiled. I noticed he had been neglecting his dental care. The lackey walked around, reached over, grabbed the old man by the collar, and tossed him from the chair.

  He told his boss, “He’s done.”

  The old man got slowly to his feet, rubbing the small of his back. “That was unnecessary, Lucas. I was almost done.”

  “Fuck you, Mr. Branson,” the leader told him. “Get your skinny ass out of here before I kick it.”

  The old man scurried out of their way. “Leader Boy” turned to me and said, “He was my English teacher”—as if that explained everything. I nodded. I had never had any English teachers I liked either.

  Whooping and hollering, the trio settled into the two now-vacant terminals. One of them came around and grabbed one of the empty chairs from the dead terminals next to me.

  “Anyone using this?” he asked me deadpan.

  “No.”

  They all thought that was pretty funny. I finished my e-mail to Night and hit Send. I started surfing the blogs, partly because I was interested in reading the news, partly because I was no longer in a hurry to get to the used bookstore.

  The boys found what they had come for—porn, of course. They talked real loud and made rude comments about what they were watching. One of them got up and acted like he was going to unzip and jerk off right there.

  “C’mon, Rachael, look over here.”

  She ignored them. Leader Boy flipped the flat screen around so she could view it.

  “Hey, Rachael, that looks like you. You’ve been making extra money on the side? Huh, baby?”

  She flipped them off and said, “Fuck you!” She was pissed and scared but she wasn’t moving. I liked that. I liked the boys even less now, if that was possible.

  “So, Rachael, I hear your brother and his butt buddy cousin are back from the army. How long they going to be around this time? They still got all their arms and legs?”

  She looked at them, smiled sweetly, and said, “Maybe I could call him and they could come by?”

  I don’t know what Leader Boy’s history was with Rachael and her family, but that was not what he wanted to hear. He decided to shift his attention to me.

  “What are you staring at, asshole?”

  I stood up slowly and looked each one in the eyes. The girl had her hands under the table. A weapon? Each one of them had time to assimilate the fact that I was also carrying. That familiar sensation of coldness swept through me and I welcomed it. It had been too long. Part of me registered that the library had gone silent. My field of vision narrowed to them and me. Inside—In my head? Perhaps in my soul?—I heard delighted laughter.

  “So what happened to your face?” I asked. “Nail gun accident on the job?”

  I saw the girl smile just a tiny bit. The boys looked confused. The boy leader processed it and realized it wasn’t a compliment.

  “Hey, fuck you. How about I come across this table and nail your ass? You would probably like that. Wouldn’t you, you pussy.” His fans approved—or at least they understood this exchange.

  “You can come across the table, but I guarantee you will be dead once you reach this side.” Without taking my eyes off Leader Boy, I said, “Rachael, why don’t you take a walk?”

  “Don’t you fucking move, Rachael!” snarled Leader Boy.

  I was impressed. It was a credible snarl. Leader Boy had a little more emotional range than I had expected.

  “That was good,” I told him.

  Rachael stood up, her eyes reflecting her uncertainty. A song began playing in my head, just a fragment of it, origin unknown: “Should I stay or should I go,” the singer wailed over and over in a rather demented loop. It was always nice to have a soundtrack, I thought.

  Then we all heard, “Yeah, why don’t you go, Rachael.”

  By the grin on her face and the grip on her cell, it was obvious her cavalry had arrived. A texted plea for help must have summoned big brother and cousin. Big brother strode in, his cousin flanking him until they came near the table. Then the cousin arched a bit for a better angle on the twins. Brother was carrying a twelve-gauge that had probably been cut down to the shortest legal length: eighteen inches of barrel. More than likely it had begun life as a hunting shotgun. The shotgun alone changed the balance of power in the room. Cousin had a big, black, snub-nosed revolver. Maybe we were cousins, too? I thought when I saw the revolver.

  Rachael moved toward the door, slowing long enough as she passed her brother to flip off Leader Boy and yell, “Asshole!” before she was out the door.

  “Lucas, what did I tell you last time I was home?”

  Leader Boy mumbled something.

  Brother looked at me, “Did he touch her?”

  As much as I wanted to say yes, I didn’t. Brother looked as disappointed as I felt with that answer.

  Lucas, being the idiot he was, had to say something to save face: “One day, you and your family ain’t going to be here to save her ass and boss people around. Then we’ll see who is tough.”

  Brother just laughed. “If that looks near to happening, I will come back and personally kill you and your cat and burn down that double-wide you inherited. You really think your kinfolk want to start a war over your sorry ass? I am going to tell you one more time. Any body part you touch my sister with will get cut off. Now I am going to add this: She ever tells me you looked at her the wrong way, then I am going to come and take your eyes. You got that?”

  Leader Boy nodded his head. Off to the side, Cousin started laughing.

  Brother stared at them for a few more seconds, nodded at Cousin, and looked at me. “Can we drop you someplace?”

  “Naw, I still got some errands to run. Thanks.”

  He turned his back on them and walked out. Cousin followed him, walking backward. After a second’s hesitation I followed Cousin, but temptation got the best me: I grinned and flipped off the trio. I got to see Leader Boy’s face go from white to red before I was out of their sight.

  The girl was sitting in an old Toyota Tundra. She waved when she saw me. I waved back. Brother said, “More than likely they are going to come boiling out of there in a few minutes, looking to kick your ass. You sure about what you’re doing?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, heck, this might even turn out to be an all-around good day.”

  Brother shrugged, and they got in their truck. I started walking. Fast.

  The library was situated on the corner of a park. The part I was walking across had probably been a soccer field a year or two ago—hard to tell for sure since the grass had not been cut for at least a year. It was knee high and paths through it marked where people had crossed. Once I would have assumed they were from the deer that had been so abundant, but not anymore. Deer hunting was turning back into real hunting as the herds had been thinned drastically over the past few years. Maybe it would cut down on the ticks but I doubted it. Ahead of me was a wooded area. My guess was, once I reached the woods I would find a creek, some hills, and a bike path. Might even be a Tree People community or two tucked away in there.

  I was halfway across the field when I heard shouting behind me. “Come here, you fucking faggot!” was pretty easy to make out. Leader Boy had rallied the troops, after waiting a few minutes for Brother to clear the area, of course.

  I flipped them off again and kept walking. I heard a shot and nearly laughed. It would have taken a miracle for them to hit me. I was out of their range, which I estimated to be less than ten feet. I entered the woods, hitting a well-used trail and a weathered sign that read Edwar
d J. Williams Park. Someone had spray-painted a skull and crossbones over the top of that. Nice touch, I thought. I looked over my shoulder. Leader Boy and his clones were running. I had about five seconds before the next act would begin and all the park would be a stage.

  The stream was there, just as I expected. It was maybe ankle deep here, where a ford had been created using rocks. The bank on each side was two feet high or so. It was steeply pitched except at the crossing. Part of the crossing was eroding due to bike traffic. Otherwise it was no big deal, unless you were a grandma with a walker. I crossed over and stood to one side of the path waiting for them. They came bursting through—I could hear them before I could see them. The boys were blowing hard. They were just as red-faced as they had been back at the library, this time because of the exertion. They came to an abrupt stop when they saw me standing on the other side of the creek.

  “Damn, boys. You need to save up your pennies and get a membership to Gold’s Gym. You’re blowing as hard as Lucas does on Friday night in the men’s room at the truck stop.”

  “Fuck you,” gasped Leader Boy.

  “You need to catch your breath before we commence?” I asked, laughing.

  It wasn’t a fair fight. That was fine with me. They hadn’t intended it to be. Leader Boy went for it, and a second later the clones followed. I had a couple things going for me: I was fast. Part of that was just something I had been born with; another part was a lack of hesitation. The final parts were holster and training. I had customized my holster to match the rig Bill Jordan had made famous years ago with the Border Patrol down on the Tex-Mex border.

  The training was thousands of reps in front of a mirror, practicing the draw, fire, cock, fire that was required. Jordan used a double-action revolver. Even in his day the single-action was considered a nostalgia piece. Yet it was all basically the same. His saying was “Be fast but not too fast.” I had really taken that to heart and it paid off now. I was using Hydra-Shok rounds in the Ruger. Tommy, who was a bit of a gun nut, had told me about them. He swore they were the best hollow points made for revolvers, especially for use on people at close range. They had a metal post inside the bullet that somehow made the slug mushroom. That was good because it ripped a bigger hole in the target’s guts. He gave me a box and we went out back, and I shot half of them. Then I switched back to the wadcutters that Tommy reloaded.

  The Hydra-Shok were expensive and difficult to find, so I kept them for when I carried. You might say that Leader Boy got the “shok” of his life. The first round was an almost perfect heart shot. I doubt if I was off by more than an inch. He didn’t even get his gun clear of his holster. The other two were still sucking wind, and they panicked. Only one of them cleared nylon, and that wasn’t good enough.

  The clones didn’t die right away, but Leader Boy was gone by the time he hit the ground. The second one didn’t stick around long either. The third one died hard. That was my fault. I rushed the shot and he paid for it. I kicked the gun away from his hand and knelt down beside him.

  He was bleeding from the mouth and trying to talk: “Did you call 911?”

  I assured him that I had and that help was on the way. He called for his momma a few times and then he died. I closed his eyelids like I had seen done in the movies—it felt very weird. I decided that the others could stare at the sun until the birds came for them. I rolled him over and pulled his wallet from his pocket. Three paper dollars. I rolled him back and patted him down. I found a soggy cloth bag that had tobacco and a pack of papers in it. That was it. I sighed. I fished his pistol out of the water and tossed it up on the bank.

  A stick snapped behind me. I came out of my kneeling position, my hand slapping leather. Two black guys were standing ten feet from me on the other bank. One was in his late forties, with whiskers that were more scruff than beard. The other one was in his early twenties. The older one held up his hand in the universal gesture. Neither one was armed that I could see.

  “Hey, be cool. We come in peace.”

  “I hope it isn’t to serve mankind.”

  He laughed, “No, man, I avoid the long pork.”

  The other guy wasn’t comprehending any of this—a cultural defect, or no access to crappy cable stations showing ancient reruns. I hadn’t holstered my revolver.

  “So, what do you want?”

  The younger guy stepped forward a couple paces; the older guy’s face tightened. “Whoa, is that that racist, cracker-ass bitch Lucas lying there?” the young one said. “Way to go!” His grin reflected his delight. He stepped forward a couple more steps. I holstered my revolver and stepped back a pace or two. “Nice. You got both of his buddies. Jesus, I doubt if their mothers are even going to miss them. They were freaking useless—and that was on their best day.”

  The older guy walked forward. Together they approached the bodies. The younger one stared at them and then kicked Lucas hard. “Just checking,” he explained to me.

  I was getting restless. “So, you guys live around here?”

  “Yeah,” the older man jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “back there. We’re camping.”

  All right. I knew we could deal then.

  “How about this: You get two of the guns and half the money. In exchange you make them disappear.”

  The older man didn’t hesitate. “Done. Luther, start dragging those bodies into the bushes.”

  The young one, Luther, began with Leader Boy, chuckling each time his head bounced off a rock. Then the older guy grabbed one of the clones by his feet and followed Luther. Three minutes later they had them tucked away from any prying eyes. I kicked water over the bloodied stones and ground. The blood washed away easily—just a faint swirl rapidly dissolving in the current.

  I stood there waiting for them to reappear. They weren’t long.

  “The one guy had no money,” Luther said. “The other two had eighteen dollars in paper, and Lucas also had two silver dollars.”

  “I got three dollars from the one guy,” I said. “I’ll take eleven, you get ten and your choice of the guns. And we split the two silver dollars.”

  The old man spoke up, “If you don’t mind, it would be better if you took dipshit’s gun. Someone might recognize it.” Then he asked me, “You don’t plan on staying around, do you?”

  “Okay, I’ll take the money and the gun now. And no, I’m going to be gone before sundown. Why?”

  He smiled. “Because if you needed a place to stay, you would be welcome to join us.”

  “Thanks, but I’m out of here.”

  We divided the spoils. I walked away rapidly. I was already late for my rendezvous with Tommy. This was good since I didn’t want to stand around waiting for him. I wanted him ready to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  RETURN

  Tommy was sitting in the car when I showed up. I got in, shut the door, and told him, “Let’s roll.”

  He turned the key, looked over at me, and said, “We going to have a problem leaving?”

  I looked at him, surprised. He laughed and pulled away from the curb.

  “Gardener, I can smell the gunpowder on you. Plus, I don’t see any shopping bags stuffed with books. That can mean only one thing when it comes to you.”

  “No, I think we are good.” I stretched out a bit.

  “I heard from Max. It’s time for me to go home.”

  “All right! Must have made you feel good.” He added hastily, “Not that I’ve minded having you around the place.” A note of wistfulness tinted what he said next: “Going to be kind of quiet without you. Your nurse won’t be coming around as much, that’s for sure.”

  “She’ll come around for the kids.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, “maybe I will get sick.”

  “You could do worse, brother.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I knew he was thinking about his ex. “So, are you going to give me a ride back?”

  “Sure, let me call Donna and see if she can come out tomorrow for a picnic and wa
tch the kids while I am gone. We can do a good-bye thing for you, too.”

  I had him stop at the Dollar Store along the way so I could run in and pick up a couple presents for the kids. The next day I woke early. I was excited to be leaving. I stuffed the few belongings I had in my bag after taking a shower. I spent the rest of the time cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. While I did that, I left the television on CNN so I could listen to it. They were running continuous reporting on what they were calling “the collapse of a ‘Narco State.’” It was not pretty, especially if you were poor, old, female, or a child. And based on the video they kept showing, one or more of those labels applied to a heck of a lot of Mexicans.

  I stopped cleaning to watch it. It was fascinating in a slow-motion, car-wreck kind of way. A combination of failures was driving these people across the border in what CNN was calling the biggest migration ever in America. It was “epic”—epic in the total failure of the Mexican state; epic in the U.S. government’s inability to do much of anything for any of the people involved; epic in the migration of countless people across hostile terrain, dodging angry locals and predators from both countries, ripping at them from all sides.

  Mexico had watched the flow of its oil fields diminish while the price of oil dropped simultaneously to levels unseen in years. This meant no money for government programs. Combine that with a worldwide depression, returning citizens from the USA, the rise of gangs, and general incompetence on both sides of the border, and the result was the citizens of Mexico voting with their feet. They had to: To stay meant to die—either slowly, from lack of food and water, or quickly and violently. As the CNN anchor said, “It was not a drug war now; it was a civil war.”

  The U.S. government did not have—or at least was still searching for—a policy that worked. The white minorities in the border states, with some backing from Latino U.S. citizens, wanted the hand of God to come down upon these poor and dying people and smite them something fierce. Failing that, the whites took to patrolling the border themselves. That was generating some really nice atrocity photos and videos.