‘I don’t want you going out there again, Kip. You look sick.’
Barb looked worse than him, he thought, but it wouldn’t be worth his life to point that out, of course. Her eyes stared at him from within dark hollows. She’d had little more than an hour or two of sleep a night for the last week. The old bathrobe clutched nervously just below her throat was dirty and her dark hair lank and greasy. Nobody had been allowed to run water for three days now, because of the contamination. They were living on what they had stored in pots and bottles and the old clawfoot tub upstairs in the half-renovated bathroom. Kipper needed to get into work to see if he could change that today.
‘Barb, I’m not sick. I’m fine. They’ve been checking us every day. Army doctors, guys who specialise in chemical war and stuff – we’re fine. We got those bio suits, but we don’t even need them anymore.’
Unfortunately, she would not be dissuaded. ‘Kip, you have a family to look after…’
‘And I am looking after them,’ he countered, with some irritation. ‘I am the guy who can turn on your taps again. I am the guy who makes sure the power is there when you flick the switch. Me – nobody else. It’s my job, Barb. I have to go.’
He wondered why she was so much worse this morning? The pollutant storms were clearing out. The toxic soup he’d had to brave on Tuesday to get into the city had been truly scary. The army had sent some sort of pressure-sealed armoured vehicle for him, something they were going to fight Saddam or the old Russians with, and all of the troops were suited up in NBC gear.
‘This is insane, James.’
Uh-oh. He knew he was in trouble when she called him that.
‘We should be thinking about getting out of here,’ Barb continued. ‘Not hanging around. Deb and Steve flew out for New Zealand yesterday. They’re not coming back. They’re too smart. But your martyr complex is going to see us die here. Isn’t it?’
He controlled the anger that threatened to flare up between them, reminding himself that Barb had nothing to do but sit in the house, like the rest of the city, staring out of the windows at toxic rain. She must’ve been going batshit by now. And, he remembered at that very moment, she was also premenstrual.
‘Okay,’ he said, as calmly as he could without shading over into anything that might be mistaken for a patronising tone. ‘Deb was born in New Zealand, so they could do that. They got out on a government charter. There aren’t any other flights leaving, because no airlines will fly in here anymore. So leaving isn’t an option. Yet.’
‘But it’s got to be, Kip. We can’t feed ourselves. We’ll starve soon.’
‘We won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all those freeze-dried camping rations down in the basement. The ones you gave me all that grief over when I bought them cheap, remember? We’ve got at least two months’ worth.’
She shook her head and her eyes hardened. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. The city is starving. They’re going to have to evacuate people before long. You know that, James. You must have been talking about it at council.’
He tried to speak but she rode in over him.
‘And when it happens, we’re going, mister. All of us. To New Zealand or Tasmania or fucking Bora Bora. Anywhere but here.’
‘D-a-a-a-d-d-y!’
Suzie, who appeared at the kitchen door to complain that Bear in the Big Blue House wasn’t on, saved him any further escalation. None of her shows were on. Jo-Jo’s Circus, Little Einsteins, The Wiggles, they had all disappeared off the screen days ago. And every day she grew more upset with their absence. The only TV and radio now available carried Emergency Broadcast System updates, warnings about dangerous acid levels in the rain, information on food and gas rationing, handy hints for post-apocalypse homeowners about fortifying their neighbourhoods and establishing citizens’ watch committees, and pleas for information on ‘saboteurs and subversives’ in the so-called Resistance. None of which impressed the hell out of a little girl who was bored and terrified in about equal measure.
‘I want my shows back, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Can’t you make the army men put them on?’
‘Can’t you watch a video, sweetheart? How about one of the movies I brought back?’
‘I’ve watched them all a million times,’ she complained, in a rising whine. ‘It’s not fair.’
He looked to Barb for help, but she wasn’t giving him an inch. She simply folded her arms and raised one eyebrow. Very much aware that she’d be dealing with this all day, Kip didn’t dare find fault with that response.
‘Tell you what, princess,’ he said as he dropped down to her level on one knee. ‘I’ve got to get to work, but I promise I will bring home some new videos, ones you haven’t seen yet. Okay?’
‘Can you get Piglet’s Big Movie?’ she asked, suddenly brightening.
‘Sure,’ he replied, without thinking. ‘Piglet’s Big Movie. No problemo.’
He felt, rather than saw, Barb tense up beside him.
‘You run along and get dressed for Mommy, now. And no playing outside yet. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘But D-a-a-a-a-d-d-y…’
‘Maybe tomorrow. No promises.’
As she scampered away he rose to his feet again with a feeling of trepidation.
‘Kip, you already made a promise you can’t keep.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Piglet movie. It’s not on DVD. It was supposed to be on at the Cineplex this week. She’s been looking forward to it all year. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?’ With that, his wife turned around and stalked off down the hall.
Damn!
Kipper stood in the kitchen, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to breathe slowly. Blood was rushing through his head and he desperately wanted to say something stupid, but long, hard-won experience kept him quiet. He knew he should follow Barb and work things out, but he also knew that doing so would involve him in at least an hour’s worth of apologies he didn’t feel like making and maddening, circular discussions of his manifest failings on the home front. He was already late, and couldn’t afford to miss the convoy out to the dam on Chester Morse Lake. Plus, he had to check on the food-aid distribution centres that were kicking off their operations this morning. One of them had been raided by some anarchist fools late last night. Kip hadn’t gotten back to sleep after the cops had called him about it. There’d doubtless be interminable meetings about that today.
So he simply did not have time to get caught up in domestic trench warfare. It wasn’t just a job anymore – people’s lives rested on his decisions.
He knew he’d regret it before the day was done, but Kipper grabbed his car keys and travel pass and walked out through the kitchen door. The headache that had been building eased off a little as soon as he stepped outside and sucked in some fresh air. Well, not fresh, exactly. He could still taste the sharp, chemical tang in his mouth, in spite of the prevailing winds carrying away most of the pollutants from the south over the last twenty-four hours. A gigantic low over the Bering Strait had drawn up enormous volumes of ash and smoke from the conflagration in the Los Angeles Basin while a weird, contrary ridge of high pressure to the east had held the lowering toxic clouds over the Pacific Northwest for two days.
Seattle’s chief engineer squinted into the morning sun for the first time in days, and tried not to think about what his family had been breathing into their lungs. He’d sealed the house as best he could – better than most would have managed – by rigging up an airlock and filter chamber in the spare room at the back. Barb had initially been none too impressed at the sacrifice of their best cotton sheets and the new Panasonic air-con unit they’d bought last summer, but the appearance of the towering, septic fogbank on the southern horizon quickly brought her around. When the power supply allowed, he maintained a rough overpressure by running the reverse-cycle heating and keeping the fireplace in the lounge room stoked at all times. Hopefully it would be enough.
Kipper stepped off the porch and started down the wet concrete pathway to his vehicle, the same F-100 pick-up he’d driven in from the airport a week ago today. He felt both guilt and relief at leaving Barb and Suzie behind. The house was large and comfortable, like most on Mercer Island, but it had felt like a cell while they’d been confined inside during the worst of the fallout period, as thousands of tonnes of toxic waste from the burning of LA had hung over the entire city and its surrounds. Barb’s immaculately maintained garden had turned brown and died as though soaked in defoliant. Stopping at his front gate to survey the rest of the street, he could see they weren’t alone. Mercer Island was a high-tone enclave, and Deerford Drive, perched on the edge of the lake and snuggled up against Groveland Park, was one of its better addresses. Truth be known, it was all a bit precious for Kipper, but Barb’s family were Manhattan royalty – or had been, he reminded himself grimly – and she was used to moving among ‘a better class of person’. ‘People like us,’ she would tease, smirking, knowing that the rude inhabitants of the cheap seats at a Larry the Cable Guy show were more Kip’s sort of people than any of their opera-loving, sherry-sipping neighbours.
Thinking about her family made him feel even worse. She had cried all through that first night of the Disappearance, after wasting hours ringing every number she knew back on the East Coast. Her parents, her brothers and sisters, her uncles, aunts, old friends were all gone. Kip almost turned on his heels and went back inside, but momentum carried him forward. He had to get to work.
The street was sorry-looking and deserted. Nothing moved in a grey landscape of dying trees, brown lawn and wilted flowerbeds. Rain had washed away the worst of the fallout, but blackened, soggy clumps of mud and ash had collected at natural choke points in the gutter, behind the wheels of parked cars, and in small ponds of sludge where the ground dipped and run-off normally collected. Normally lush green and manicured to within an inch of its life, Deerford Drive was now sadly unkempt. Kipper shivered in the bleak chill of the morning. It had been unnaturally dark for most of the past week, with the sun completely blotted out, but prevailing weather patterns had finally pushed away the worst of the airborne waste, and although the day was by no means sunny, it was at least a good dealer brighter. That wouldn’t necessarily last, however.
Hundreds of cities and towns were ablaze across North America. The entire continent was pouring out vast noxious plumes as the infernos spread, with nobody and nothing to stop them, save for the occasional (and completely futile) automated firefighting system. He’d seen satellite photos of it on the web, and once on a local news show, before FEMA took over the airwaves. If he hadn’t known better he’d have bet good money that an angry rash of super-sized volcanoes had suddenly erupted all over the US and up into Canada. Vast, slow-moving geysers of smoke, thousands of miles long, trailed away east from city after city. The Atlantic and most of Europe were now blanketed, with the wave front due to pass over the Urals in a day or two. It wouldn’t be long before it had circled the northern hemisphere and reappeared back over Deerford Drive.
‘Mr Kipper, Mr Kipper! Hello!’
Jolted by the unexpected cry, Kipper got his mask in place. He knew the voice only too well. Mrs Heinemann from number 43.
‘Is it safe now? Is it safe to go out, Mr Kipper?’
‘Well, you’d better hope so, Mrs Heinemann. Because you’ll be in trouble otherwise, won’t you?’
The woman was a wire-framed ninety-eight pounds of faded Jewish-American princess. Never married. Never got over it. At fifty-something, perhaps even sixty-odd, give or take some plastic surgery and a high degree of elasticity in her actual birth date, she’d poured all of her considerable energies into her self-appointed role as block kapo of the neighbourhood. Without a husband or children to harass and make miserable, she busied herself with other people’s ‘problems’ – situations that, generally speaking, nobody had recognised as a problem until Mrs Heinemann became involved.
And yes, she was Mrs Heinemann. Unless you wanted an earbashing out of your thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for the cruel vicissitudes that had left her single when so many other, undeserving women had chanced upon partners and offspring. Dressed in a bright green and salmon-pink shell suit, gathered at the ankles and wrists with elastic bands, and sporting a plastic shower cap and handkerchief face mask, she hurried up the slight incline in the street towards him, firing from the lip as she advanced.
‘I’m so glad I caught you, Mr Kipper. I haven’t seen anyone out and about all week. This terrible situation, you know. And the curfew. So is it safe now? Can we move about? It’s just that I have very little food in the house. And so does everyone else. Mrs Deever at number 36, with her two little ones – she needs formula, Mr Kipper. And sweet Jane at 29, the retarded girl, she needs her medication. The Songnamichans – that very large Hindu family, he’s a Microsoft manager – well, they must nearly be eating the wallpaper by now, with all of those children. What is to be done, Mr Kipper? What is to be done?’
She’d arrived right in front of him by now, yapping the whole time, a classic demonstration of fire and movement. He hadn’t had a chance to speak or retreat. But her questions gave him the opportunity he needed.
‘Mrs Heinemann,’ he said forcefully. ‘You need to get back inside right now. It is not safe out here, yet. We haven’t had a chance to take any measurements of air or water quality. I’m only out here because it’s my job. You need to get back inside where it’s safe, this very minute. Go on. Right now. Don’t delay. And don’t drag any mud into the house with you. You’ll need to strip off, bag up that outfit, and scrub yourself thoroughly. You still got water stored in the house? Good. Then, get going. Right now!’
He made sure his delivery was every bit as rapid and incontestable as her own. He waved her back towards her own house, shaking his head and brooking no backchat. In his peripheral vision he could see curtains twitching aside in a couple of houses and he made sure that everyone watching could see he didn’t want anybody wandering around until it was safe.
‘But Mr Kipper -’
‘No! Move along now. Go on, Mrs Heinemann. You’ve no business endangering yourself out here. Now git. Go and decontaminate yourself.’ He took her upper arm in a deliberate grip and gave her a hurry-on towards home.
‘Oh my. Oh dear,’ she mumbled as she toddled off at high speed.
Shaking his head, he returned to the pick-up and climbed in, carefully knocking any mud from his boots before doing so, mostly for the benefit of his audience. The cabin was cold and still smelled of the McDonald’s Family Meal he’d brought home late on day one. He’d also picked up a whole heap of canned fruit and eighty gallons of spring water in big ten-gallon plastic bottles, but that was the extent of any hoarding he felt necessary – because of all those freeze-dried, vacuum-sealed meals he’d bought in bulk near the end of last year, from some camping store that was closing down. Man, hadn’t Barb changed her tune on that little purchase. He’d got himself a new one torn at the time.
The engine needed turning over a couple of times before the truck grumbled into life, sounding louder than usual in the unnatural stillness of the morning. He checked the fuel gauge as soon as he had power, making sure he hadn’t been siphoned. The city council’s Emergency Management Committee had banned the sale of gasoline for ‘non-essential’ purposes on the second day, but hadn’t had the manpower-or the will, in his opinion-to enforce the measure when thousands of people ignored it and started queuing at gas stations. They bid up the price to almost fifty dollars a gallon at one point. That was when the army had rolled out of Fort Lewis to lock down the city and get everyone off the streets as the sky had blackened and the rain turned to acid.
Kipper’s truck had three-quarters of a tank, and he could get more from a council depot without any trouble, yet. But that’d change. No commercial shipping or air traffic had come into Seattle for five days, and he didn’t expect any in the foreseeable future. The only supplies they could draw on were aid shipments: food from Australia and New Zealand, one supertanker of petroleum so far from Taiwan, and more food and medical supplies from Japan. It was enough to keep things ticking over, if it kept coming, and if people didn’t panic. Two big fucking ‘if’s.
The island was quiet, and people were sticking to the curfew. Mostly. Kipper searched the radio dial for anything besides the recorded EBS messages, which told him nothing new, and said nothing about the raid on the food bank. He picked up a scratchy, inconsistent transmission from somewhere in Canada, but it was all electronic dance music, which in his book was worse than nothing. Sighing, he punched the button to cut off the radio and pulled away from the curb, wondering what the hell he was going to do about Piglet’s Big Movie.
His route took him along West Mercer Way. Normally a quiet, tree-lined drive through some of the more exclusive real estate the island had to offer, it felt eerily deserted, with sodden rubbish and leaf litter strewn along its length. He took the Homer Hadley floating bridge across Lake Washington into the city, and again found it hard to get his head around the empty lanes. At this time on a Friday morning, traffic should have been crawling over the span, bumper to bumper.
There was some vehicular movement, however. Mobile army patrols stopped him three times. Then there were the roadblocks and checkpoints he hit on another four occasions. His pass, countersigned by three city councillors and the ubiquitous General Blackstone, carried him through each obstacle, but he understood why there were so few people about. After the food riot on day three down at Ivar’s Salmon House, under the I-5 bridge, and a shoot-out at the 7-Eleven on Denny Way that left four people dead following an argument over who was going to get the last of the frozen pizza subs, the army had put away its smiley face. Three young men, who’d have been thought of as burglars a week earlier, got shot down as ‘looters’ while trying to make off with a carton of hot dogs from the Wendy’s on Rainier Avenue that evening. A vagrant, emerging from a dumpster behind a KFC the following day, was cut in half by automatic weapons fire from an armoured fighting vehicle. Far from attempting to cover up the incidents, the same General Blackstone who’d scrawled the signature on Kipper’s ‘transit documents’ appeared on television and the radio to detail exactly what had happened and to assure the citizens of Seattle it would happen again, to anyone who broke curfew and attempted to steal from their fellow citizens by ‘subverting’ the rationing system. Things went quiet around the city after that.
Talk-back radio and a couple of current affairs shows on the local TV networks had raged against the ‘injustice’, but that defiance was short-lived, lasting only as long as it took four Humvees full of troops to roll into their parking lots. Some lawyers who arrived at City Hall to serve papers on the administration for First Amendment violations were still in custody somewhere. There’d been no more open dissent and, incidentally, no more food riots or looting either. But the self-proclaimed Resistance appeared shortly afterwards in the form of an email spammed throughout the city warning of a fascist takeover and promising to ‘take back the streets’.
Kipper wasn’t happy about any of it – how the hell could you be? But on the other hand he knew how desperate the situation was, and just how easily it could spin totally out of control. He really hoped this Blackstone asshole would see sense and ease off the thumbscrews a little. People were hurting and scared; you couldn’t keep the whole city under house arrest indefinitely. And he could only pray that this dumbass Resistance thing turned out to be a bunch of dope-addled bullshit artists. God knows, Seattle was full of them. A few more stunts like last night’s stupidity at the food bank and they could totally fuck things up.
Speaking of which… He hauled the wheel around, crossing over the median strip and pointing the truck towards 4th Avenue South, where the main food distribution centre for the CBD was located, at a Costco wholesale warehouse near the train yards. He wanted to see for himself how the food aid system was working.
The signal-strength meter on his cell phone read near full and he called Barney Tench on hands free as the pick-up swung around Rizal Park. It seemed a small wonder the call went through – until he remembered that ‘unauthorised civilians’ were barred from using the cell network for anything other than emergencies.
Kipper shook his head and scowled at a measure he thought of as totally unnecessary and counterproductive. It wasn’t like the Wave had just appeared and people were going to be melting the phone-company servers with millions of calls. It was just more repression for no good reason. Exactly the sort of nonsense that fuelled the paranoid dementia of idiots and conspiracy loons.
His temper was building again as he chewed over the many poor decisions that had been made in the previous week, and it was only Barney’s answering the call that short-circuited a bout of foul-mouthed, solitary cussing. His friend’s voice filled the cabin, sounding flat and tinny as everyone did on speaker-phone.
‘S’up, buddy?’
‘Hey, Barn. I’m heading over to Costco right now to check things out. You on your way?’
‘About four or five minutes away. I’m just coming over 1st Avenue Bridge. Heather should already be there. She overnighted in town to get there early.’
‘Oh, okay. I didn’t know that. Good for her.’
Kipper was taken aback for a second. Heather Cosgrove was a young civil engineering graduate on a six-month internship with his road maintenance guys, all of whom had been at a conference in Spokane when the Wave hit. If he was giving out a prize for Most Freaked Out, Heather was an unbackable favourite. She was from Minneapolis, and apart from her job, she had nothing left.
‘It’s spooky, isn’t it,’ said Tench, completely oblivious, ‘without any traffic. Like a doomsday movie or something.’
‘Yeah,’ replied Kip, getting his head back in the game. ‘Listen, did you hear about the raid last night?’
Barney snorted down the line. ‘Dunno that I’d call it a raid, man. What I heard was two dreadlocked jerks got stoned and tried to steal a pallet of Cheetos from the food bank on South Graham.’
‘Well, d’you hear they got shot?’
The speaker-phone hissed quietly for a second, as Kipper swung down the off ramp at South Forest Street.
‘No. Sorry, I didn’t hear that,’ said Barney. ‘Who told you?’
‘Cops rang at about two this morning.’
‘Why’d they call you? Why not one of the councillors?’
‘Said they couldn’t raise them.’
Tench laughed. ‘That’d be right.’