American Apocalypse Read online

  There were also the parasites that hung off the body of the government. They had gorged themselves on taxpayer money since the Reagan administration. With that first windfall they had built their towers around the perimeter of the interstate that girded the capital city. Like castles of feudal lords, they housed tens of thousands of foot soldiers, all dedicated to reaping the harvest from the government money trees. It was a good time—until autumn came.

  The government no longer had the money to support the programs that fed the money trees. It had turned out to be a perfect storm. The federal government hit the same brick wall that the state, county, and local governments did. The Fed just hit it later, and the aftereffect was larger. You can’t run a lot of expensive programs if the money is not coming in from taxes. There was another problem too; the world financial system turned to out to be insolvent and that created a whole bunch of expensive problems. In between the death of real estate, the financial system and the tax base crumbling, there just wasn’t enough juice left to power the local system, let alone keep an empire running.

  The change was obvious to me as we drove toward D.C. Traffic was light. Light in this area meant rush hour just about anywhere else. I had driven this route before and knew the difference. We pulled off Route 50 and headed toward Clarendon. I tried making a bit of small talk, but all I got in return were grunts, so I decided to shut up, watch the scenery, and see how it played out. Max pulled off by the metro and parked next to a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant.

  “C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  We got out of the car and walked around the corner. There was a deli open that was serving breakfast. We got our coffee, went outside, and sat down in front of the place. It was cold enough that a faint wisp of steam escaped from my cup when I peeled back a section of the lid.

  “So, you have any questions?”

  I came close to spitting out my coffee when he asked me that.

  “Yeah—what did you mean when I asked if we were going to your dojo? And when and where do we start training?”

  He just stared across the street. Since we had sat down, four or five people had shown up to stand in line in front of a double door that opened onto the street.

  “You see those people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re lining up for the free breakfast. In ten minutes there will be fifty of them in line. I want you to imagine you’re working security and tell me who’s carrying a weapon. Then, I want you to tell me if they are any good with it.”

  I sipped my coffee and took a look at the group: It was the usual polyglot mix that represented the new American polity around here and, as far as I knew, everywhere else. A couple of young black males looked like possible candidates, but I rejected that as profiling. So far, there was nothing I could see.

  Max startled me a bit when he started talking. “You want training—maybe we will get that far, maybe we won’t. I can tell you one thing. You’re going to have to upgrade from your garden trowel. You got away with it once, but try more than that and you will find it will cause you more problems than it is worth.”

  My blood went cold when I heard that. Time slowed down and I became very focused as I looked over at Max. He met my look with nothing: nothing in his eyes, nothing in his face. He was just there. “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He nodded. “Listen to me. This isn’t about being a master of martial arts or being able to execute a fly at thirty paces with a spitball while you sip a cold one. It’s all in your head. You get your head right, and the rest will follow—you understand this?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “When you get there, half your problems will be solved. You know why?” I figured this was a rhetorical question, so I just shook my head no.

  “Because you change internally: You have a bit of it. Your aura, your energy changes. Civilians will see it and shut their eyes to it. The predators—they will see it and adjust accordingly. When the world is filled with sheep, why bother with a wolf? I am going to teach you how to be a wolf. Or in your case, maybe a big shaggy dog,” he laughed.

  “Funny—really funny.”

  “Listen up,” he said. “The first commandment is this: You are not God. You get to thinking you are and the next thing you know the real God sends around someone faster and smarter. Your job is to protect and serve—only that will justify the steps you will take.

  “The second commandment is this: Watch your perimeter. That is, not just your personal space; sometimes it may be blocks or miles wide.”

  That startled me. I had heard it before. I filed it away to ask him about it some other time.

  “The third commandment is this: When you commit, commit to kill—at whatever the personal cost. You do not think about going into an engagement with the intent to frighten or wound; you are mentally prepared to escalate immediately to killing them.”

  He stopped with that.

  I waited, sipped the dregs, and crumpled the cup. I tossed it toward an open trash can about five feet away and actually made the shot. He finished his, crumpled it, and without looking or turning around flipped it over his shoulder. It landed in another trash can about ten feet away.

  “Show-off,” I said. He laughed.

  “Let’s go.”

  We were headed back in his Camry when he asked me, “So how many people in the soup line were carrying weapons?”

  Damn. Actually, I hadn’t seen any indication that anyone was, so that’s what I told him.

  “Very good . . . you know why?”

  “Ah, no; it was really just a wild-ass guess.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, well, because people who have guns don’t have to stand in soup lines.”

  That line alone led me to more realizations than everything else that had been said that morning.

  CHAPTER NINE

  VENGEANCE

  Max told me before he left that he would see me in a week. No big deal. The training wasn’t moving as fast as I thought it would, but I wasn’t going anywhere. My body was back, well, almost back. I hadn’t pissed blood in a while. The ribs still hurt, but it was a throb rather than that knifing pain. I felt good enough to go get my bike, which, to my surprise, was still there. I went to get it half-apprehensive, half-filled with cold rage. Pedaling back I knew it was time to do something about what had happened. If I let it slide, well, then I might as well quit the clan and move to Maryland. Since I would rather live in the men’s room at the Greyhound bus station than live in Maryland, I was going to have to do something soon. Regardless of Max coming through with the training, I figured I might as well take care of it this week. That way Max and I could have something to talk about. Think of it as homework, I told myself.

  Just as I turned into the motel it struck me how I was going to do it. I wasn’t really into guns, which made me an aberration. Everyone loved guns. If you were a male in my age group, liking guns was cool, unless, of course, you were talking to some young lady. Then guns were “bad,” hunting animals was “bad.” Most women really did not want to know you were into online gaming, either. By my age, most of them had dated someone who was more into playing online than he was ever going to be into them. That had begun to change: not the online gaming part—the gun part.

  Being knowledgeable about guns was becoming socially acceptable with your college-educated, upwardly mobile, wannabe types. I did not like guns. Online, it was cool; offline, it was not. It was primarily because I didn’t trust them. They were too complicated. You had to know too many things to get them to work. Slides and safeties, since I was left-handed, were always on the wrong side. Plus, all that black plastic. If I smacked somebody upside the head with one, I was afraid it would either break or, worse, not do anything. With a blade there was no safety, and the odds were pretty good that it was not going to break or jam at the wrong moment.

  The other problem with guns was some really weird government stuff was going on with them. The feds could not ban them wit
hout really stirring up trouble. You could tell they really wanted to ban assault and military-style rifles but those weren’t going anywhere for the same reasons. So what they were doing, and doing very quietly, was choking off the supply of certain ammunition. Only lately had it become noticeable enough that public questions were asked. The government said the war effort was straining production for certain calibers and that it should be resolved shortly. No one really accepted that for the same reason the public no longer accepted anything the government said. Nobody believed them, especially after the bank nationalization fiasco.

  The bank nationalization probably didn’t even start as one. It was never even officially called that by name. We will probably never know, as the government still has not released any information on what they were doing or hoped to do. It was billed as an exercise in determining the current state of the bank’s balance sheets. What no one had realized was how bad a situation the banks were in. One of the examiners was a young lady named Meredith Gonzales. Meredith, who I watched being interviewed after everything broke loose on YouTube, was a fat, unattractive Hispanic woman with a bad accent; she was also a brilliant analyst. Her bosses had never gotten past her exterior to appreciate the interior, and she resented that. Rightfully so, I thought. Meredith had access to a lot of data, and no social life. She took the data from Citigroup, ran her own analysis, and uploaded everything to the Web. Everything meant the bank’s data, the government data, her data, and some really huge spreadsheets, which were later considered works of art by aficionados of that genre. The result was that she blew up the American banking system. Then the dominoes, which in this case meant banks, started falling all across the world—and they were still falling. Governments fell, and in a handful of countries they did not fall gracefully.

  So that’s why I signed onto Craigslist to find my weapon of choice. I was looking for a saber. I would go all the way back to medieval times for a blade if I had to. But a saber was my weapon of choice. I didn’t want to stick my attackers; I wanted to slice. I figured less chance of the blade getting hung up that way. I guess I could have gone samurai, but I felt that was disrespectful. Why appropriate another culture’s tools, when yours had created ones that worked just as well?

  Craigslist was fascinating to me: the debris of a civilization being jettisoned overboard, where it could wash up on anyone’s cyberbeach. Craigslist reminded me of Hemingway and his great short story For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never used.

  The stories behind some of the flotsam that washed ashore had to be fascinating. “Wedding dress. Used twice. Size 12.” Also the engagement rings—a lot of heartbreak contained in those short posts. I found what I was looking for under “Collectibles.” I actually had three choices. In theory, posting ads for weapons was against Craigslist policy, but with the flood of merchandise and the ability to repost if an ad got deleted, you could get what you needed if you moved quickly. One ad was for a Marine Corps dress sword. Nice, but no. One looked to be a cheap Chinese stainless steel fantasy sword. The last one was good—very good. A copy of an 1860 U.S. Calvary saber made from carbon steel, with a leather-wrapped hilt. I sent the posters an e-mail.

  My reply arrived in minutes. They were in the area and willing to meet me in a public place close by. I suggested the McDonald’s down the road. The last time I had been down that way it had been open. They agreed, and I rode down there on my bicycle to meet them. They turned out to be a middle-aged couple. She was eager to take my money; he was reluctant to part with the saber. It came with a belt and hanger—I liked it a lot.

  Back in my room, I couldn’t get the sword to hang right from my waist. I kept tripping over it or catching it on something. I felt as if I had a tail growing from my side. I decided to wear it over my shoulder instead. When I wore it that way and looked in the mirror, I could almost imagine myself as a ninja. I sat there and spent some time thinking about my plan. Not a lot, maybe five minutes. It just didn’t seem all that complicated to me.

  I logged in, played some Halo, and then logged off to go find something to eat. I went down to the clan’s common room and raided the refrigerator. I gave Night money every week to pay for this privilege. Night came in as I settled down at the table with my bowl of freshly nuked soup.

  I ate a lot of noodle or rice soup here. Nowadays, I was just about a vegetarian, as meat prices had become so high that no one I knew could to afford to buy it. Once in a while the main clan would send a few pounds of fresh meat to us—usually burger, probably cow, but you never could be sure. I am sure that a few ponies went missing. There were very few squirrels to be seen anymore. I suspected a direct correlation between meat prices and their absence. Dogs were also not seen as much anymore.

  I was sitting at the table, trying to be patient enough to wait for the soup to cool down so I would not burn my tongue again. Night had helped herself to the same soup. We were sitting there, slurping together, after having done the ritual “Hey, what’s up?” She was eyeing me curiously.

  “What is that on your back?”

  “It’s my sword.”

  I had worn it to eat because I wanted to get used to the weight. She nodded her head solemnly and then sprayed soup out her nose as she burst into hysterical laughter. She would begin to catch her breath, look at me, and go back to laughing. I finished my soup, rinsed the bowl out, and headed out the door. She called out something to me, but I didn’t catch it, as she fell into another bout of laughter. I failed to see what was so funny. And I decided to rethink how I was wearing it. I resolved to cover it up a bit when I went out in public.

  I was determined to do it that night: It was payback time. Since they hadn’t given me any warning, I wasn’t going to give them any. I set the alarm for 3:00 a.m., the time when men’s souls are the least tethered to their bodies. I dressed in black and green and stuffed my mask into my jacket pocket. I pulled on the backpack and headed out the door. It was quiet; no traffic was moving on Route 50. The moon was two-thirds full, which was nice. I was going to need the light. There was a nice downhill slope to the road, which I only planned to be on for a handful of minutes. Then it would be paths and parking lots until I got close. It was nice being out at this time of night. Peaceful. I startled two deer that were browsing on the grass that grew next to the path. They bounded away from me in graceful leaps. Like squirrels and dogs, free-range deer were ending up on a lot of dinner tables. I left my bike in the same place I had on my first visit. Symmetry of action: I like that. I pulled the saber from its sheath, which was stuffed into an empty gym bag, leaving the sheath in the bag on the bike’s basket. I walked up the path listening to the night sounds of the forest.

  As I drew closer, I was able to hear sounds of the Tree People. Someone was snoring under a tarp tent across from the dead fire. The place looked the same—no reason it shouldn’t. There hadn’t been a storm, and it was less than a month since I was here last. I decided to start at the blue tarp tent and work my way to the mansion, where Jackson was hopefully sleeping. At this point I didn’t care if he was there or not: I would find him eventually. I lifted the saber, pushed the point through the plastic, and let the weight of the blade and gravity pull it down, slicing through the tarp. I used the tip to push aside the plastic and took a look inside.

  Nice! My two old friends from my previous visit were stretched out and asleep, sharing the same blanket and a special love, no doubt. Both slept with their mouths open—one to snore and the other to inhale the snores. The smell was decidedly ripe inside the tent as I stepped through the rip. I wondered how it would feel to me this time. I decided to take the older one first, as he wasn’t snoring. I slid the point of the blade inside his open mouth with just a bit of angle to it. His eyes snapped open as the tip grazed the inside of his mouth. Then I leaned on the blade and punched it through the back of his head where it joined his neck. He gurgled and twitched as I withdrew the blade. Unfortunately, he was loud enough to disturb his soul mate, who was quick. The second guy went from snoring
to trying to grab the blade with all his strength as I centered it on his face.

  It’s been repeatedly proven throughout history that grabbing a razor-sharp, carbon steel blade with your bare hand is a mistake. This time was no different. Four of his fingers left his hand when I thrust. I could feel the bones almost popping as they came off. One finger dropped into his open mouth, smothering an unvoiced scream. While he choked on what I believe was his index finger, my thrust cut his throat.

  Well, that was two. I felt really great. There were no flashing strobes, like when I had done the Fat Man. I felt happy and peaceful—relaxed, like I was swimming in warm water. I stepped back through the hole in the side of the tent and paused, listening for any disturbance in the force. That is exactly what I thought to myself, too.

  I slipped the blade into the next wall of plastic and slid it down. Once again, I flicked the tarp aside enough to view the inside: an empty sleeping bag and an equally empty bottle. I guess the boys had not been going out together long enough to move in with each other. I stepped back out and began moving toward Jackson’s tent. This was going to be a little trickier. His tent, being the executive model, had plywood sides. I thought about it for a second or two and decided What the hell.

  I stood off at an angle from what I figured was his front door.

  Then I knocked. Nothing. So I did it again but louder. I was rewarded by a roar of “Who the fuck is that?” followed by the sound of a loud, ripping fart.

  I didn’t say anything. My guess is, the smell of that long, ripping, cheesy fart made him stick his head out the door—and he immediately lost it. I swung that saber like a bat, putting my hips into it. His head actually bounced—very cool, especially as it landed eyes up. I wished I hadn’t worn the mask. I would have liked for him to have seen my face. I looked cautiously into the tent. The girl was gone—just as well. That might have been awkward.