American Apocalypse (6 page)

I shook thoughts of tent cities out of my head, pulled off the path, locked the bike, and dropped it into some bushes. I knew I was getting closer when I started spotting trash. I could hear voices before I could see anyone. Virginia woods can be thick with undergrowth; a lot of it had thorns, and some of it was toxic with poison ivy. I had heard a story the other day about someone who had taken a dump in the woods and then wiped his ass with poison ivy. I fervently hoped it was a former mortgage broker—preferably one I had worked with.

I stepped into the middle of the encampment. A couple of guys were sitting around a Weber kettle grilling
something that looked like squirrels; either that or someone was missing a litter of kittens. I nodded at them, “Hey, what’s up.” I got civil nods back. Both guys were white and looked to be in their fifties. They reminded me of hippies who been left out in the sun to marinate in a BBQ sauce made of beer. Their clothes had that nice sheen of grime that only dedicated slovenliness can produce. One had a beard—God only knows what was living in there. The other had probably stood close to a razor in the last week. Upon closer look I decided he was younger. He came equipped with a decent beer belly and a Buck knife in a sheath.

The older one said, “If the smell of the cooking brought you up here, well, we don’t have enough to share.”

The younger one cackled, “Unless you got something to share.”

I was a bit taken aback. I had never heard anyone actually cackle before. It was rather creepy. The camp itself wasn’t creepy, just trashy. The tents were constructed out of plastic tarps and stray boards. Female laughter came from the “nicest” tent, and a man’s voice roared from inside, “Who the hell is out there now?”

“Just some guy,” replied the older one. “I think he’s leaving.”

Jeebus
, I thought,
where was the love?
I cleared my throat and asked, “Has anyone seen a young girl named Regina?”

“Goddamn it!” roared the voice from the palace in the woods. “I can never get any peace around here.”

The younger one slyly whispered, “Well, he’s the only one getting a piece that I know of.”

They were both busy guffawing as the owner of the voice rose out of the depths of the plastic. He was about
six foot two and maybe two hundred pounds. Tattoos were obviously a passion of his. So were body piercings. Personal hygiene, not so much. I thought the Harley T-shirt really set off the piercings and tats very nicely. I still wasn’t worried about my personal safety. I was amazingly naïve back then about some things.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Hey, man. My name is Gardener. I am looking for a girl named Regina. She is short, white, and maybe has blue hair.” I smiled at him.

He looked at me. I could tell he was busy processing all this information. That’s when the little demon bitch popped her head out. “Jackson! I bet my bitch of a mom sent him!”

Jackson got all frowny-faced at this. “That so?” he asked.

He was moving toward me, as was his little honey bunch. She had on a man’s T-shirt with a Grateful Dead logo. I was surprised. I didn’t see her as a Deadhead. She was rather young to have such good taste in music. He was in my face now. One of the side effects of the Crash was poor dental hygiene. He was an excellent example of that. His breath smelled like old fish.

“Is that true?” The tone of his voice had changed.
What the hell was he getting so pissed off about?

“I told you, Jackson! It’s my mom. She hired him to take me back! I know it.”

“That so?”

Later, I thought a lot about how I might have answered this question differently.

I replied, “Yeah, actually it is. If she wants to come—”

Getting hit upside the head, right in the jaw, doesn’t hurt as much as you would think. As my head rocked to
the side, I remember going from surprised to pissed in an instant. Unfortunately, he landed two more blows in that time: Those hurt. I was trying to get my balance back when he hit me hard in the ribs with a one-two combo. Then he landed an uppercut to my solar plexus, and I went down to one knee. That’s when they put their boots to me. I don’t remember a lot of what happened next. I do remember a kick to my kidney, which hurt more than I thought was possible.

Somewhere in all of this I remember looking up at Regina. Maybe I thought she would help me. One look at her face dissuaded me of that. She was enjoying watching them kick the crap out of me. I do remember grabbing a leg, giving it a nice tug, and hearing someone fall into the grill. I may have imagined it, or it may have been wishful thinking, but I am sure I heard a scream. Then again, it might have been me. Somewhere in there I blacked out. I came to for a few seconds as I was being dragged feet-first down a path. I think I heard the older guy bitching about how heavy I was. I remember my feet dropping to ground when they let go of me—that hurt. Then someone gave me a good-bye kick and I was alone.

Later—how long was later? I think I was there for about six hours—I tried standing up. That hurt way too much. I tried crawling. That hurt way too much, too. I waited for rescue and slept some more. It was dark when I awoke. I could hear people off in the distance. I tried calling to them but my throat was too dry to make more than a whisper; plus, my jaw hurt. I lay there a while longer.
Shit!
I recognized those voices—at least the female one. It was that little bitch, Regina. Jeebus, I had to get out of there before she decided to come looking for me.
The look in her eyes that I had seen earlier promised that if she wanted, what I had experienced so far would just be the warm-up.

I made it to my knees. I paused, then dropped forward, supporting my weight on all fours as I spit the blood and skin tissue out of my mouth. I was so dry that what I spit out just hung there, like a rubber band. I had to actually pinch it and pull to get rid of it. I struggled to get up on one knee, and then I pushed up. My head, ribs, lower back all exploded into one brilliant red-tinged explosion behind my eyes.
Oh, damn.
Breathing really hurt now. It had been hurting for a while; I had simply gotten used to it. This was a new hurt. I thought I knew what a bad beating felt like. I had been beaten pretty badly by some of my mom’s old boyfriends. The difference was they were not really trying to kill me. These guys seem to have been more motivated.

I struggled to my feet. Holy hell, that hurt.
Just one step,
I told myself.
Okay, I did it. One more step
. Thinking as I did,
I am going to come back and kill every one of them
. And then,
step
. I know I went down to my knees a few times. I was brought down from clutching my ribs when a really sharp stab of pain flashed through my nervous system.

My balance was not very good.

I didn’t even bother with the Batbike. I had one goal. Make it to the shelter one painful, freaking step at a time. I didn’t make it—somewhere in the darkness, I lost it.

From what I was told later, I think I made it halfway by sun up. Some good Samaritan had come across me and gone for help. I came to for a while—the pain of someone pulling me to a sitting position set off a whole new set of agonies that brought me back. I could hear a woman’s
voice; whose, I had no clue. I opened my eyes and saw a man in his midthirties staring intently at me.

“Okay, I am going to wrap your ribs. This is gonna hurt.”

I nodded—he was right; it hurt. The woman, a Latina I had seen around, was swabbing various scrapes. She was being pretty gentle about it. Once I would have made a big deal about how bad it hurt; now I laughed because it felt so good. Then I was back down and out.

I had a lot of time on my hands while my body healed. I found that sitting around in my motel room with my laptop, a television, and a bathroom, was very nice. Just thinking about what it would have been like trying to recover while living under a pine tree made me shudder. As it was, the first few weeks were tough. Night or someone else from the clan would come by with food each day. One unlucky ninja got to help me to the bathroom and back for a few days. I revised my opinion of him upward as a warrior when he entered the bathroom after a really toxic dump, and he lifted me up off the seat without flinching or gagging.

Carol came by and was really apologetic about me getting my ass kicked. I just waved it off. “It was no big deal.” What else was I going to say? Inside, I berated myself for screwing up. I had gotten cocky. Just because you can stick a trowel in a fat man’s belly doesn’t mean you are a warrior. I wallowed in self-pity for a few days.

Two things pulled me out of it. The first was the news. It had not been good for a while, and it was getting worse. I had long ago given up on the mainstream media outlets as a source of real news. I did not care about what some overpaid, entertainment drug-slut had been caught doing or had just died trying to do. The local news—the few times I watched it—might as well have been taking place in a parallel universe.

Over at the shelter they had a couple of flat screens bolted to the walls in the public area for the inhabitants. They used to love it when the local news would come by and do a story on “their struggle.” They would laugh at whoever got interviewed, and they’d be delighted to see themselves shown for a second in a crowd. But the news crews no longer came around.

They would still do the occasional story, but they just recycled the old clips. Eventually, people would turn away when they came on; it was no longer funny when they showed the clip of Janie talking about how she wanted to work, how she wanted to provide a future for her kids. The same Janie who two months later hung herself in the shelter shower room late one night after Child Protective Services came and took her two beautiful blonde girls.

I lay there in my bed and surfed the econ blogs and Web sites on my laptop. I had been a business major in college. Ironically, I had wanted to major in sociology but I decided not to. I didn’t think there would be any money in it. I was reading
Calculated Risk
when I realized that things were not going to get better. Despite what the media said, it was becoming obvious that we had started a slow descent into third-world squalor. The news, no matter how they tried to spin it, only confirmed it. Europe
was not any better off: The UK was going crazy. Some “chav” had discovered that he looked good on video and had a message people wanted to hear. YouTube had banned him a few days ago, but it was too late; he was already launched.

His main pitch was “Britain for Britains!” He was smart. When asked about Jews, he said, “I have no problem with the Jews. They have been members of the community for centuries.” They weren’t going to tar him with the “Nazi” label—he just hated foreigners. He didn’t even say “Muslims” or “Indians” specifically, well, at least very often. Nevertheless he had found that his words were attracting an audience that was willing to listen. Britain had an “official” unemployment rate of 15 percent last month, and it was still climbing.

The terrorist attack in Liverpool during a football match, where bombs killed 173 people, definitely pumped his ratings, especially as the group claiming credit was British Muslim. That went over really well with a lot of people. In the bloody rioting that followed, at least that number of Indians and Muslims died. And it wasn’t confined to the UK. The rioting swept through Europe. Even Germany, that bastion of tolerance, was having problems.

What was happening in America was what really got my attention. Not only what was being said but what was being left
unsaid
. Unemployment—at least by official count—was at 14 percent. The reality was a lot uglier. Despite what was being done and spent by the government, nothing was getting better. A couple of times things stopped plummeting so quickly, and people got hopeful, only to have their hopes and investments crushed when the downturn started again. Perhaps the Crash would
have been more severe without the government intervening. We would never know. It was difficult to believe that it helped when they let the bankers walk away with hundred-million-dollar bonuses. To say that cynicism was spreading about whom the government really cared for would be, at best, an understatement.

The bank bailout provided a glimmer of hope for some in the very beginning. The problem was, those who thought it was a good idea usually still had a job and money, and they expected those conditions to continue. What had been reported as the end of the world for the great mass of Americans turned out to be a massive windfall for a few.

This was quickly followed by Chrysler departing the industrial universe and General Motors filing for bankruptcy after the government stopped propping them up by shoveling money into them. Actually, it never did stop; it just became less obvious. The Cash for Clunkers program was one of the ideas the government came up with. It was spun as “green” and “good for America.” Like a lot of the ideas the government came up with, it turned out to be a short-term fix.

What most people did not understand was that Toyota and Nissan employed almost as many workers as the Big Three in the union-free South. They were not doing any better, and it created a ripple effect that began moving down the parts manufacturing chain. The third-largest consumer of computer chips made in the United States had been GM up to this point.

Nightmare—or Night, which she insisted I call her—came by during my second week of recovery. She was flanked by the ninjas and had a look on her face more
serious than usual. Not that she ever looked really happy to see me. “What’s up?” I asked, pushing the laptop away so she would know I was going to attempt to pay attention.

“We are glad to have you in the clan,” she started off.

I waved my hand dismissively and said, “Thank you. I am glad to be in the clan. But really, what’s up?” I knew something had to be. Whenever someone told me that they were happy or glad because of me, well, I knew they wanted something.