He could tell there was a problem from a couple of blocks away. Two women, one of them covered in blood, ran past his truck, hair streaming behind, eyes bugging out. Kipper nearly gift-wrapped a telephone pole trying to follow them in his mirror. When he looked up and saw the danger, he jerked the pick-up back onto a safe course with one wrenching pull on the steering wheel. He could see more people running towards him, many of them pounding up the middle of the road, which was free of any vehicles save his own. With his heart beating quickly, Kip pulled over and wound down his window, immediately becoming aware of a distant siren.
He hopped out of the vehicle and tried to flag down somebody to ask what had happened. It had to be a problem with the food bank, but nobody would stop. A couple of young men abused him when he tried to block their path.
‘Get out of the way, you crazy old fuck! D’you wanna get killed too?’
And then he realised that the crackling, popping sound he could hear was gunfire. Shit.
Kipper jumped back into his truck, but before stomping on the gas, he redialled Barney, who answered on the second ring.
‘What’s happening, boss man?’
‘Something’s gone wrong, Barn. Very fucking wrong. I’m about two blocks from Costco and I can hear shots and there’s all sorts of people running past me. Some of them bleeding.’
A string of oaths burst out of the earpiece.
‘It sounds like the cops are coming, but get on the phone anyway. Make sure they get here before the army – those assholes should have been here already. If the army turn up now, they’re just as likely to kill anyone they see moving… Oh, and send some ambulances, too. I think we’re gonna need lots of ambulances.’
At that moment, a weeping woman ran past, holding up one hand from which a couple of fingers had clearly been removed by a gunshot. Kipper had no idea how she kept going, given the amount of blood she was losing.
Tench didn’t answer. He’d already hung up.
Kipper’s head was reeling and he felt distinctly ill. This was his fault. The food banks had been his idea, a way to ensure that the aid shipments coming in from across the Pacific were distributed in a rational, effective manner. It wasn’t the sort of thing he should have been involved with; as the city engineer, he already had a full dance card handling the utilities. But the elected councillors had frozen like rabbits on the road and they’d let him run with the program. He’d personally negotiated the use of the Costco facilities with company management, who’d assigned dozens of their own stock-control specialists to the job and cleared their warehouse space of any non-essential items. He and Barney had been expecting all sorts of teething problems on the first day, but nothing like this.
Heather. An image of his nervy intern sprang up unbidden: a big pair of Bambi eyes staring out at him from under a short blonde bob, as her hands twisted in her lap like small white otters, constantly moving over and around each other.
‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered, stamping on the accelerator and punching the horn. The F-100 leapt forward, scattering the mob immediately in front of it.
Many of the people running towards him still paid no heed to his truck, however, in their desire to flee whatever had happened at Costco, forcing him to slow down some. By the time he made South Bradford Street, the crowds were thinning out, with most people having already escaped the scene. He rolled down his window and listened for gunfire, but heard only screams and cries and the growing wail of sirens.
Kipper threw the pick-up onto the footpath and into the parking lot at the northern end of the giant wholesale warehouse. Immediately he saw bodies, a lot of them lying still, and people who were so badly wounded they could not flee. But no shooting. Costco warehouse staff were everywhere, easily identifiable by their brightly coloured vests, many of them tending to the injured. Of the army, who were supposed to have provided a security detail, there was no sign. Nor of the cops and other emergency services, although he could hear them on approach.
Kip turned off the engine and stepped down warily. His senses seemed to be unnaturally alive, and even though this part of the city was a grey industrial area, he could never recall seeing colours so vibrant as the red and blue of the giant Costco sign high up on the building. His hearing too was amped up, with every cry and moan disturbingly clear. Small stones crunched on the tarmac beneath his feet; the engine block of the F-100 ticked loudly as it cooled down. And he gagged as the smell of violent death flooded his nostrils.
Barney Tench’s car, an old mud-splattered Chevy CIO, came flying up the road and screeched to a halt under the tree at the entrance to the lot. The squeal of his tyres caused some people to jump and shy away a few steps. Barney climbed out and raised one massive hand, pointing towards the warehouse. Kipper saw Heather standing there, a small, forlorn figure in blue jeans and a Minneapolis Twins sweater. Even from a distance, Kip could see she was shaking violently. The two men hurried over to her, picking their way through the carnage.
‘Heather! Yo, Heather!’ Tench called out.
She didn’t seem to hear him at first, but her slack features became animated when she finally recognised her colleagues. She immediately burst into tears as Kipper folded the quivering young woman up in his arms.
‘It’s all right, kid. Everything’s gonna be fine. It’s all right.’
He didn’t attempt to question her for at least two minutes. Barney stood by and occasionally patted her shoulder, but obviously felt the need to be doing more.
‘Kip, I’m gonna see if I can scare up somebody from the company,’ he suggested. ‘See if they can tell me what happened.’
‘Good idea,’ agreed Kipper. ‘I’ll be here. You got the cops and the ambulance, right?’
‘Done deal.’
In fact the first squad cars were already screaming to a halt at the edge of the lot, disgorging officers who emerged with guns at the ready, but unsure of where to aim them. Barney kept his hands held up in clear view and walked carefully over towards them.
‘Can you tell me what happened, Heather? Can you do that yet, darlin’?’ asked Kip.
A small, tentative nod was all he got in reply. Her whole body was still shaking uncontrollably. As she pushed away from him, she rubbed at her arms, folded them, and started rubbing again. ‘There was m-maybe a thousand people here, when I got in at six,’ she began, unsteadily. ‘They all had transit passes and ration vouchers, just like we planned.’
Heather stared around the car park as if seeing it for the first time. Her face contorted and Kip was sure she was about to start crying again, but she got it under control. Her voice was small and seemed forever on the edge of breaking into a thousand little shards.
‘Th… they were just fine, everyone waiting their turn, until these three pick-ups arrived.’ She pointed with a shaky hand at a couple of abandoned trucks a hundred yards away. Kipper could only see two of them, but didn’t interrupt her. ‘A-about a dozen guys,’ she stammered. ‘All armed, and they like, just pushed in.’
Kipper shook his head. ‘What about the army, the cops – where were they? There was supposed to be a platoon of soldiers here to help out.’
Heather volleyed back his headshake with one of her own, throwing in a nervous, exaggerated shrug for good measure. ‘I don’t know. But these guys, like I said, they just started pushing their way to the front, and some people are yelling at them, some are just getting out of the way. And this one guy, some big guy in a lumber-jacket, a big red lumber-jacket, he just steps in front of them and puts his hand up like a traffic cop or something.’
‘Okay,’ said Kipper. ‘Go on,’ he added in a quiet voice.
‘Well, one of these jerks, from the pick-ups, he had like an axe handle or something, and he just butt-swipes this dude with it. Totally wipes him out. He goes down and then the shooting starts.’
‘The pick-up truck guys, the looters, they started shooting people?’ asked Kipper, his voice rising.
‘Nope. They got shot. Or at least the one with the axe handle did. He dropped the lumberjack dude, looked like he was about to start pounding on him with that club, next thing you know, somebody blew him away. Two or three shots – I’m not sure. But there’s blood everywhere, people screaming and then the real shooting started.’
Kipper felt as though he was going to vomit. There had to be more than a dozen lifeless bodies lying around in the parking lot. There’d probably be more in the streets beyond. Where the fuck were the army guys? They were supposed to have been here-they’d insisted on it, in fact.
‘How about you, Heather?’ he asked her. ‘Are you okay? You got a little blood on you, darlin’. You’re not hurt, are you?’
‘I don’t know where all the guns came from,’ she said, ignoring his concern. ‘But once they were out, it was like everyone was armed. Everyone was shooting. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was a little girl… standing just near me… She was screaming and crying for… for her mom… and…’ The young woman broke down completely now, as the morning’s blood and horror overwhelmed her.
Barney reappeared with a police officer, an older-looking man with sergeant’s stripes. ‘You in charge here, sir?’ the policeman asked, almost accusingly.
‘What? Yes, no… well, I…’ Kipper pulled himself together. ‘My name’s Kipper,’ he said. ‘James Kipper, city engineer. We were starting our food aid program here this morning. The city’s running the program, with help from Costco, here at least, but the army were meant to be doing the site management and security. So, no, I’m not in charge. Nobody was, by the look of things.’
The cop took in the scene with unalloyed disgust on his face. ‘You know, the fucking city could have just used us. This wouldn’t have happened on my watch, I tell you.’
More cops were arriving and the first of the paramedics were charging around, doing triage.
‘I don’t make these choices, Sergeant,’ Kip replied. ‘I’m like you – a civil servant. We do as we’re told.’ It sounded weak and worthless as it came out of his mouth, and he immediately regretted speaking.
The cop fixed him with a baleful glare. ‘Well, don’t you be wandering off, Mr Kipper. I’ll be needing to speak to you again.’ He turned his back on the three engineers with that, and trotted over to a couple of uniformed officers, barking orders as he went.
‘Jesus, what a fucking mess,’ said Barney.
‘Uh-uh,’ grunted Kip. ‘We’d better find out what broke down, do what we can to help, then get back to council. We’ll call the city councillors, tell them what’s happened.’
Tench looked troubled. ‘I tried, Kip. But none of them are available.’
‘What d’you mean?’ he snapped, instantly regretting it. ‘Sorry. It’s just I keep hearing this – it’s bullshit. Where are they?’
His friend shrugged. ‘I even tried a few home phones and their cells, but nothing. And if you call Municipal Tower you just get routed into phone-menu hell out at Fort Lewis.’
‘Why? How come our calls are going out there?’
‘Not ours, just the councillors’. When you call them direct, I mean.’
Kip started walking Heather over towards an ambulance. She had zoned out. She was looking shocked and pale and he wanted to get her cared for as quickly as possible. The paramedics, however, had their hands full with more serious casualties.
‘Heather, I’m going to get someone to run you out to the hospital,’ he told her. ‘No, scratch that – they’ll be completely overloaded. Do you have a doctor in town? Someone we can call?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but I’ve been to a clinic near my apartment a couple of times. I got food poisoning my first week here.’
‘Jeez, Seattle’s been good to you, hasn’t it… Okay. Barn, you think you could drive Heather over to this clinic and get her checked out? Don’t take any shit from them – it’s city business.’
‘No problem,’ replied Tench.
‘Okay, you guys go now. Fuck the cops, they know where to find you. I’ll deal with them. Off you go.’ He shooed them away, keeping an eye on the sergeant, who had his back turned to them.
A long line of ambulances was speeding down 4th Avenue South towards them and he could hear a chopper, more than one, approaching from the city. Hopefully it would be a medical flight. The media couldn’t take their helicopters anywhere without written authority from Fort Lewis. The entire state had been declared a no-fly zone, in order to ‘secure’ the city’s airspace and approaches. It was bullshit, of course. There were no more unpiloted, empty aircraft headed for Seattle. They’d all crashed within hours of the Disappearance. But General Blackstone hadn’t got around to removing the restrictions.
Well, for once, Kipper was glad of it. He could really do without having to deal with a lot of jackass reporters this morning.
Nearly six hours later, he finally made it through the last checkpoint on 5th Avenue, where a couple of Humvees with ring-mounted machine-guns blocked access to the Municipal Tower, the city’s administrative centre. A kid with the name-tag Meyer read his papers, stamping his feet in the cold while his breath plumed in the frigid air. He didn’t look at all pleased to be out in the open. The sun had disappeared again, and a light drizzle was drifting down from the leaden sky. It stung Kipper’s eyes as he waited for his papers, taking him back to childhood memories of swimming in pools with way too much chlorine.
‘Looks fine, sir,’ said Private Meyer. Or was it Specialist Meyer? Kip never really knew where he was with these military types. ‘Just park as normal and head on through. Major McCutcheon is waiting to see you.’
Kipper was about to walk away when he pulled himself up. ‘Sorry, who’s waiting to see me?’
Young Meyer consulted his clipboard again. ‘Major McCutcheon, sir,’ he repeated.
‘I don’t know any McCutcheon, son, Major or otherwise. What’s it about? Unless he’s come here to explain where your guys got to this morning when they should’ve been guarding my food bank, I’m not interested.’
Meyer looked severely discomforted. ‘Sorry, sir. I don’t know why he came to see you. He’s General Blackstone’s aide, if that helps.’
Kipper blinked away the burning rain that was running into his eyes. ‘Well no, it doesn’t… but… Damn it. McCutcheon, you said?’
‘Yes, sir. Major Ty McCutcheon. He’s waiting for you inside, sir, in the… er… deputy mayor’s office.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ He stalked off. If nothing else, this McCutcheon might make a convenient punching bag. God knows he needed one after this morning.
Forced to take a parking spot a good long walk from the tower, he didn’t recognise many of the vehicles, and noted that a fair amount of military transport had fetched up here, too. The thin mist of rain started to thicken up, falling heavier and forcing him to hurry. He no more wanted to be out in it than poor Private Meyer. Two more guards, both of them toting rifles, greeted him at the door, eyeballed his papers, and reminded him that he had an appointment with Major McCutcheon. Kipper tried to shake off his anger with the rain and pushed past them into the heated and slightly humid interior of the building.
He could tell immediately that many more folks were in residence than was normal, a good number of them, perhaps most, out-of-towners. Every fourth man or woman was dressed in a military uniform. A couple of very expensive suits were wrapped around some very polished Eastern accents, too, he noticed. And Canadians seemed to pop up at each corner, announcing their presence with a rising inflection and an ‘eh!’ for every occasion. None of the newcomers recognised him, but here and there he caught a despairing look from a city employee. He had no idea how many people knew about the fuck-up at Costco – it certainly hadn’t been on the radio as he’d driven in. Those stations still operating were given over to official announcements spliced in between wall-to-wall music, and none of the announcements made any mention of the trouble this morning.
By the time he reached the deputy mayor’s office, he’d calmed down a little, and decided to ditch the meeting with this McCutcheon guy. He was going to be far too busy with all the blow-back from the food bank disaster and opted instead to attempt an end-zone run to his own office.
‘Yo! Kipper, you made it, man, good to see. Come in, dude. We need to talk.’
The engineer nearly jumped out of his boots.
The army officer (or was he army? They had majors in the air force too, didn’t they?) was a lean, forty-something man with a bristling grey crew-cut. He looked the part, but sounded like a surf bum. A Californian, maybe? There was no avoiding him though, so Kipper set his features and made the best of it.
‘You’re McCutcheon, right? Did you come in here to explain what the hell happened at Costco? You guys were supposed to be there guarding the handout. You insisted on it, as I recall.’ As soon as Kipper started to speak, all of his bottled-up rage and frustration spilled out. He was nearly shouting by the time he’d finished. ‘All that bullshit about major security operations being an army gig now – but I got eighteen people dead, and the entire fucking city locked down again! It’s not good enough, Major!’
‘No it’s not,’ countered a gruff voice from somewhere behind McCutcheon. ‘Now get your ass in here, son, and help us sort it out.’
Kipper pushed in through the door, surprised to find another uniformed man in the chair behind the deputy mayor’s desk. This one was older, bald, and much more thick-set than McCutcheon. ‘Who the hell are you?’ Kip asked, as the major pushed the door to slightly.
The man, who was dressed in fatigues like McCutcheon, gestured to a chair for the engineer to sit in. ‘General Jackson Blackstone,’ he said. ‘Take a seat.’
Kipper blinked and froze. ‘You. You’re the fucking idiot who insisted that the army would handle security this morning. Great fucking work out there, guys. Top-shelf effort.’
‘Sit. Down.’ Blackstone’s voice came out in a low growl.
McCutcheon pressed Kipper towards the chair, placing a hand gently on his elbow. ‘Yeah, sorry, not our finest hour,’ he said. ‘We sent two platoons over to that marketplace that got hit last night. It’s a snafu, Kipper – I’m sorry, it happens. Come on, we need to talk.’
‘You’re damn right we need to talk,’ replied Kip. ‘And what’s with the invasion?’ He gestured to take in the hordes of military personnel swarming the building. ‘Is the army taking over or something?’
McCutcheon remained unaffected by his hostility. ‘Naw. We just stand out because of our superior grooming and fashion sense. Really, if it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t even know we were here. Come on… I’m not army, by the way, I’m air force. Special liaison to the civil power, for now. General Blackstone is army, and co-chair of the Special Means Committee.’
The air force officer fetched a coffee pot from the sideboard. The office was crowded with paper files, maps and electronic equipment, all of it military issue. Blackstone sat as quietly and impassively as if he were a log on the forest floor.
‘You want Java?’ asked McCutcheon. ‘It’s fresh. But the milk’s not. I got some very nasty military-issue creamer, if you want.’ He held up a drab olive container with a white plastic slide top on it, by way of explanation.
Kipper grunted, asking for a mug of black, no sugar.
‘Damn, that’s hard-core. You sure you’ve never been in the service?’
The chief engineer nodded grumpily. ‘I’m certain. People shouting at me just pisses me off.’
‘Well, fair enough then. You gotta love the shouting, or it’s just not the life for you. How’s your family, by the way? They pulling through okay, got enough supplies?’
Kipper shook his head in exasperation. ‘Look, what the fuck is this? I have a major disaster on my hands. Eighteen people dead. And you call me in here to make fucking small talk.’
The major walked over to the door and carefully closed it, cutting off the growing hubbub from the corridor outside.
General Blackstone spoke up as he did so. ‘The last time I checked,’ he said, ‘we had a lot more than eighteen dead. When last I checked, our casualty count was well over three hundred million, Mr Kipper. So I have some sour news for you, sir. This morning was a minor fuck-up, and there will be more of them.’
‘A minor -’
‘That’s right. And there will be more of them. More death. More chaos. Get used to it, and get used to dealing with it. Because if we don’t deal, it’s game over here. In this city. Everywhere.’
Kipper waved away the cup of coffee McCutcheon held out.
‘What are you talking about, General? If this morning was your idea of dealing with things, then yeah, we’re fucked.’
‘Look, this is kinda delicate,’ said the air force man, taking a perch on the edge of the desk, where he could look down on Kipper. ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem with the council, I’m afraid.’
Kipper shrugged. He’d wondered how on earth the military was going to continue working so closely with a group of people who were almost their antithesis. ‘Well, apart from this morning, things seem to be getting done,’ he offered. ‘All my department’s requests are going straight through the Special Means Committee and getting approved without any questions. What’s the problem?’
Major McCutcheon sort of whistled inwards, which Kipper recognised as the universal sign of bad news coming. ‘Well, the thing is, we don’t really have a Special Means Committee,’ he confessed.
‘What?’ asked Kipper, completely dumbfounded.
Blackstone leaned forward. ‘I had them arrested three days ago.’
McCutcheon actually looked embarrassed for a second. ‘Yeah. And we’ve been kinda winging it ever since.’