American Apocalypse (25 page)

By midwinter we began to have real problems with communications. The Burners began taking down cell phone towers and relays whenever they could. As food began to be harder to find, we assigned people to do nothing but wait in store lines to purchase whatever was available. Carol opened a stall in the market so we could trade what we found and didn’t need for goods or sometimes silver. No one was taking cash on the gray or black market anymore. Silver, gold, jewels, and tradable goods were the only way to purchase anymore.

Rosa brought her friend Maria to see me. Maria was El Salvadoran also. Where you came from was a big deal, even in the shelter. Maria knew we were doing everything
we could to find and stockpile food. She had two kids and no man, so she had a stake in our success.

“Hello, ladies, what can I do for you?”

I was sitting at a table in the back of the Dollar Store finishing teaching a class on how to clean a revolver. That was going to be followed by a class on how to use a speed loader. For the speed loader part I was going to have each of my students—there were only three—run out to the oak tree and back, then try doing it, but only after each of them had done it thirty times from a standing position. I had them practicing with wax bullet dummy rounds. I had no desire to end up perforated by a student. One of the scavenger teams had found the rounds in a house, along with a beautiful Colt single-action .45 pistol. Max had looked the Colt over and told me it had been customized for fast-draw shooting. It came with a beautiful holster. I thought about switching from the Ruger to the Colt, but I decided against it. A little Hollywood for me, but I could appreciate the work that had gone into it. I gave it to Night who either traded or sold it for something we needed.

Rosa started the conversation. I noticed that the newer people were very hesitant to talk to me. “Gardener, we are sorry to bother you. We can come back or wait.” Her friend was hanging back, standing almost behind her. This being Rosa, I knew it was something important, maybe not to me, but you never know.

I told my students, “Take a break but don’t leave the market area.”

I gestured for the women to sit down in the folding chairs the students had just vacated. I had to make a
point of waving Maria into one or she would have stood behind Rosa. “Not a problem, Rosa. What’s up?”

Sometimes I really liked playing
el jefe
or the Godfather. I wasn’t sure what movie this was yet.

“Maria knows where to find food—a lot of food. Go on, Maria, tell him.”

Then Rosa spoke sharply to her in Spanish. Maria began hesitantly, but once she got rolling, she kept going. She would stop only to ask Rosa to translate a word or phrase for her. Pared of all the information I didn’t need to know—Maria would go off on tangents about the personal habits of her former employer—what she had was interesting.

Maria had worked for a while as a housekeeper for a wealthy family in Leesburg. They were horse people, which, besides the cultural and status baggage, meant they had horses—a lot of them. The estate was a horse farm. They now also boarded other people’s horses, something they had not done previously. Apparently, the last couple years had been less than kind to the family fortune. At any rate, Maria had gone out to the stables a few times; some young man who was in charge of stall cleaning, or something equally prestigious, had caught her eye.

What had surprised her was how well the horses ate, especially the grain. It wasn’t corn meal, but it was close enough that it had stuck with her. It was oats, something she was sure would be edible for us. The big deal was how much they had of it—no little five-pound bags. They bought in bulk: big, heavy bags on wooden pallets that her friend said were a bitch to unload and move. I asked how much they might have, where it was, and if they had guards. She didn’t think so. The house had a safety room,
and she was sure the man had guns. Other than that, she shrugged. I thanked them, told them I would think about it, and called my class back in.

Usually we would meet at the end of the day in the break room back at the motel. There we would eat a communal meal and talk about whatever we thought the others should know. Or we’d just bitch, although that was usually kept to a minimum. Bitch for more than a few minutes and you began to get ridiculed. A more formal planning session was held on Sundays. That group would expand to include Carol, some of the guys like Tito and Ninja, and whoever Night or Max thought had something to bring to the table. Since it was Saturday, I decided to hold off, and bring up Maria’s info at the Sunday meeting.

Sunday was in theory a day of rest, not for religious reasons as much as to avoid burnout. What it really meant for everyone was that it was okay to sleep late if you didn’t have to stand watch. It also meant that Night and I could stay up late and see how many different positions we could try—three or four were as many as we usually got before I ran out. It was fun. I had not had a lot of experience before Night, especially not with someone who actually enjoyed it instead of seeing it as a way of paying for dinner.

The meeting had already started when I arrived. Max had a thing about punctuality. His idea of being on time was being there fifteen minutes before you were supposed to be there. That never made sense to me. If you meant 0545 hours, well, then say 0545. I figured fifteen minutes late was close enough to being on time that it should count. Plus, I never wore a watch. Why bother? Before, if you needed to find out the time, you would either look
at your cell phone or computer, or ask someone. None of those ways worked well anymore. Night kept pressing me to get a watch.

Eventually, I traded four silver dollars and fifty rounds of .38 special ammo for a Rolex at the market.

Tito laughed when I told him what I paid. “You got burned, bro,” he said, showing me his. “I paid three silver dollars.”

“Nice—too bad it’s fake,” was my reply.

I didn’t know if it was or not, but I loved the expression on his face.

I walked in and sat down next to Night, who had saved me a seat. She rolled her eyes when I walked in—like I had really missed anything that was that important. I did the greeting thing and Max continued with what he was saying.

“We may have a problem with heat soon. The motel is electric, which means if what we have seen lately holds true—and I have no doubt it will—we can expect some cold days and nights this winter.”

Everyone nodded their heads, including me. Having a roof over your head meant heat when it was cold. Otherwise we might as well all be camping out in a car, or in the woods with the Tree People.

“We need to find iron stoves, like the old ones they used to use. If we have to, we can use fifty-gallon drums. Regardless, we need wood, a lot of wood, and we don’t have the bodies to spare to cut everything we need now. So we need to hit some of the old suburban developments, the ones without gas heat, and see what we can find before everyone decides the same thing.”

“Why can’t we hire day laborers? It’s not like there is a shortage of Juans and Josés around here. We could pay them with lunch and silver.”

This got me an elbow from Night. She frowned on my inability to be politically correct at times. We had had a big argument about it once. She had told me, “You only talk that way because you’re a white male. If you had grown up inside another color skin, you wouldn’t be so cavalier with your comments.”

Perhaps she had a point. I can’t say I really cared. For her sake, I tried to pretend when I remembered.

They had been going back and forth about the stoves, wood, and hiring help for a while. I really wanted to take Night back to the room for some fun. After that I wanted to clean my guns and go to sleep. I was willing to change the order that I did that in, but that was about it. I interrupted, told them about my conversation with Maria, and was surprised about how excited Carol and Night got about the idea.

They started talking about raiding the nearest southern states and about how we needed hand mills.
Argh
was what I thought about it. Watching them get all excited, talking about how critical this might be—well, I understood it. It was just that, watching them, I knew I would be cleaning my guns and going to sleep, since I could see this meeting going on until midnight.

I looked over at Max. He was just sitting back watching. I caught his eye and he grinned. He may have found it amusing that my sex life was going to suffer, but I knew he was going to be here until they got tired. It passed through my head that Carol wouldn’t be going home
tonight. I wondered where she was going to be sleeping and if Max already knew.

Oh well, none of my business
.

I leaned over and told Night, “I’m out of here.” She nodded her head. I didn’t kiss her—she was not fond of public displays of affection. I am sure it was something cultural. I went back to my room and cleaned my guns.

The next day I met Ninja under the oak tree. We were scheduled to work the morning shift providing security and discouraging the riffraff. I still wore my Fairfax City police shirt. We had found some patches at city hall for the police department. I had given one to Ninja, and someone had sewn it on a shirt for him. Looking official still counted for something, especially if we bumped into feds. Unlikely, but possible. It was the same reason I hung on to my credentials.

We were walking through the area where not all that long ago there had been real stores.

They were gone. I knew this, but Max and I had agreed to patrol outside our perimeter whenever time allowed. It was always good to know who was lurking out there. Plus, we were looking for gang or Burner signs. I was surprised that a large number of the empty stores were occupied by Mexicans. The men looked thin, tired, and in need of showers. Up ahead, on a corner, stood four of them, just standing, talking, and smoking.

I felt myself become a little more alert. Especially when I heard one of them call me by name. “Hey, Gardener!” he waved. The men he was standing with were a tougherlooking bunch than what I usually saw, and two of them were armed. They were trying to go for the concealed, but I noticed that they touched the bulge they thought they had covered up with their jackets. Max had taught me that. People who don’t carry a weapon on a daily basis will touch it every once in a while, especially when they think they are going into a situation. It reassured them that it was still there and was a good “tell” for a cop.

Ninja was still learning. I stopped, but he kept moving a few more paces while watching them. You didn’t want to be bunched up, especially if one of them had an automatic weapon. The guy who called out, whoever he was, held up his hands. “We’re cool. You’re the guy that lives up in that motel and feeds the
niñas
at the shelter.”

I said, “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

“That’s what we need to talk about. C’mon,” he used his head to indicate the empty storefront behind him, “Come into my
casa
and let’s talk.”

I didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary. On the surface it didn’t look like a great idea, but I wasn’t getting any feeling that it was a bad idea. I hesitated for second, long enough to do another scan of the area, including the rooftops. Playing games online had taught me about looking up. I started walking toward him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Ninja was pacing me, but keeping his distance.

“So, what’s your name?” I asked as I approached him.

“José.”

Of course
, I thought. I stopped about four paces from him. “What can I do for you, José?”

“Please, come inside, it is not good for many people to stand together on the street.”

He turned and walked into the store. We didn’t bother with the door as there was no need to. There wasn’t one. His men stayed close to him, while Ninja stepped away from me and kept his back to the store’s wall. It was colder inside the storefront.

“José, you need to get a fire barrel in here.”

“Yes, we tried that before. It burned the place down.” He shrugged.

“Yep, there always something, isn’t there. So . . .”

“We hear that you may need workers—we have workers. We can also help you in other ways.”

Well, someone has been running their mouth too much,
I thought,
and whoever it is has been outside the perimeter. Interesting
.

“So, José, how could you help us?”

“Besides working as laborers? Some of us have skills that you may need. Also, there is that abandoned housing development two blocks from here. We are going to stay there—at least for now. Burners have been through here. We could discourage them. There will be others, also, and we can discourage them, too.”

“I see. Of course you will be doing this out of the kindness of your heart . . .”

José and his buddies thought that was funny. I didn’t say anything—I just stared at them. José stopped laughing first. He must have seen the look on my face. Somewhere nearby, a baby began crying. It was quickly hushed, as I only heard it for a brief moment.

“No, please, Gardener. We do not laugh at you. It has been a hard trip for us. Some of us didn’t make it. Many times we have met those along the way who wanted something for nothing. No, we will work for food and silver. Perhaps you have things to trade us in exchange for our labor? We are not a threat to you and your people. You could end up with far worse neighbors.”

Funny, but I was hearing both a plea and a threat in this conversation. “So how many people are you?” For the first time he looked evasive.

“Oh, we are about forty people.”

Then one of his men decided to join the conversation: “We are strong. It would be best for you to listen to José carefully, cowboy.” His face was pockmarked, and his broken nose and broad shoulders spoke silently of enjoying a brawl. The way he said
cowboy
as he leaned in toward me made it sound like it was lower than a banker. That was not a friendly thing to say. He had just finished and the word
cowboy
hung there between us. His eyes began to sparkle as he enjoyed his macho moment of support for his leader.