Without Warning Part 45

The crowd seemed to deflate as the malign energy that had been building up sluiced out of the room. Not entirely, but enough for everyone to climb down and retreat from their entrenched positions.

Culver stood to one side as a hundred or more people made straight for the coffee and sandwich tables where he was standing. He pushed through them, like a salmon swimming upstream, intent on catching Kipper before he disappeared again. He found the engineer loitering by a side exit, watching over the room with a censorious air.

"So. Ma.s.s psychology and creative bulls.h.i.tting. I didn't realize the city engineer had to be so versatile."

Kipper raised an eyebrow and turned up his palms.

"Mult.i.tasking, Jed. It's all mult.i.tasking in today's go-go world of local government."

"Uh-huh, so you're going to switch off the lights and send them to the naughty corner every time they get out of hand?"

Kipper looked at a loss for words.

"I don't f.u.c.king know. I mean, what the h.e.l.l is this about?" He waved a hand around to take in the entire auditorium. "I don't know that we're gonna get through this. You'd have thought that people would be pulling together, not trying to rip each other down."

Culver smiled gently.

"Do you know much history, Mr. Kipper? Do you know the battle of Salamis?"

Kipper looked slightly perplexed.

"Some civil-war thing?"

Culver shook his head.

"Most important battle in history. Gallant little ancient Greece versus the enormous, evil Persian Empire. If the Greeks had lost that battle, we would not be standing here today. There would be no such thing as Western civilization. Anyway, the point being, before the battle the Greeks looked a lot like the people in this room. Beating on each other, calling each other dumb f.u.c.ks and ignorant a.s.sholes. The only thing they could agree on was the need to kick Persian a.s.s. But n.o.body could agree how. In the end, though, they did. And it was partly all that aggravating back-and-forth that helped, as they sorted through their ideas. That and the fact that the Greeks all fought as free men, and the Persians as slave to a G.o.d King."

Kipper sort of squinted and sucked air in through his teeth.

"I don't really get it. We're not about to fight a battle. We're just trying to rebuild a working country."

Culver leaned in closely.

"We are fighting a battle, Kip. And this ..." He waved his hand at the room. "This is just a skirmish."

Suzie's squeal of delight was painfully, beautifully loud in the gloomy candlelit kitchen.

"Oh thank you, Daddy. Thank you!"

She hugged the bright yellow packet of Milk Duds to her chest.

"I'm going to have a tea party and share them with Barbie, and Big Teddy, and Daisy the horse and ..."

Barbara Kipper stroked her daughter's bobbing head and tried to calm her down.

"That's lovely, sweetheart, but remember, Daddy may not be able to get any more, so don't share them all at once. Maybe just one tonight?"

"Oh, I know that, Mommy," she insisted. "I know that Milk Duds might not come back ever again. Or Oreos or Barney the Dinosaur. So I'll share mine for real with Sophie and Anna. Because they're sad."

"That's very generous of you," said Kip. "That's very good, darling. You go play, and let Mommy and Daddy talk."

The little girl flicked on her s...o...b.. Doo flashlight, turned on a dime, and shot away up the darkened hall to set up a tea party with her A-list stuffed toys.

"Any chance she won't scarf them all down tonight?" asked Barb skeptically.

"Oh, she's pretty good. She did share that army chocolate with her friends."

"And she got in trouble for it, Kip. Remember? That a.s.shole ration n.a.z.i at the school had her wait outside his office for an hour. A f.u.c.king hour ..."

"Okay, honey. Calm down. It's a good thing, you know. She gets so little now. And she's so good about it. It's nice that we can still get her these little things."

"Nice for her, Kip, but you're not here every day dealing with the neighbors, and the school moms." Her voice hitched. "The th-things they say."

Tears welled up in Barb's eyes, and her face creased as she leaned forward into his chest, sobbing. She was like this so often now. Brittle and p.r.o.ne to emotional collapse. They stood like that, in the soft, guttering light of a half-melted candle, for nearly a minute. The house did have power, for the next two hours, but like most people they kept their energy usage to a minimum. Barb had the rice cooker plugged in on the bench, with some vegetables in the steamer basket, but that was it for appliances. They would turn on the battery-operated radio at nine for the Emergency Broadcast update, and then switch it right off again.

His wife was just calming down when three hard knocks rattled the door leading out to the porch and made them both jump.

Kip left Barbara to compose herself and peeked through the curtains to see who'd come by. Visitors were a rarity these days, because of the shortages. Everyone stayed close to home. There was no mistaking the mountain-size moonlit silhouette on the porch, however. It was his friend and former deputy, Barney Tench.

"Holy c.r.a.p, Barn, what are you doing all the way over on this side of town? How'd you get the gas?"

"Can I come in?" asked Barney, with a hint of urgency.

"Sure, buddy. Come in. Hey Barb, look, it's Barn, reckon we could break out the emergency bourbon?"

Tench hustled in, keen to be off the street.

" 'S okay. I don't need a drink, Kip. Although a gla.s.s of water would be nice."

Barbara wiped the last of her tears away and fetched him a gla.s.s from the cupboard. She drew the water from a five-gallon plastic bottle on the bench by the sink. It didn't matter how many times Kip a.s.sured her that the water supply was all right. She refused to drink straight from the tap anymore. She handed the gla.s.s to Barney, who was abashed to see that she'd been crying.

"Oh man, I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Barbara kissed him on the cheek.

"Don't worry, Barn. I'm just being silly. Ignore me. I'll go look after Suzie. She gets lonesome in the dark after a while."

As his wife disappeared Kip pulled out a couple of chairs from the kitchen table.

"You sure I can't offer you a drink, buddy? Wouldn't mind one myself, the day I've had. The week, really."

Barney sat down and said no.

"I have to keep a clear head, Kip." He paused and looked his former boss in the eyes. "I'm sort of on the run."

"What?"

"It's Blackstone, Kip. There's a warrant for my arrest. Oh, man, I hope you don't mind me coming here. I don't want to get you in trouble."

"Don't be f.u.c.king ridiculous. You're always welcome in my house. What's going on? Is this another one of his stupid f.u.c.king games? I'd have thought he'd have learned after the last time."

Barney shook his head.

"The warrant is for sedition and sabotage. For aiding the Resistance. Specifically for cutting off the power to Fort Lewis last week."

Kip smacked his open palm down on the scarred oak table that Barbara had dragged all the way over from New York.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h. Those a.s.sholes at Lewis ..."

"Kipper," said Barney, talking over the top of him. "It's true. I was part of that. In fact, they couldn't have done it without my help."

"Oh."

An awkward moment followed, a hot uncomfortable silence broken in the end by Kipper.

"Well, they're still a.s.sholes. But why'd you do that, buddy? You'd know you couldn't really hurt them. Crews had that supply back on within hours. It's like poking a wild bear with a stick. You're gonna get your a.s.s bit."

Barney rubbed his face and leaned forward, elbows on the table, a picture of desolation.

"I did it because it was the right thing to do, Kip. Even if it seemed pointless and made things even worse for me. And my family. They cut Lorraine and the kids off support, did you know that? After I left the department, they couldn't even get the food stamps that everyone else got. They had to live off the neighbors and her family. Church helped, too, for a while. Then their stamps got cut off, too."

"d.a.m.n, Barney. I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"You wouldn't, Kip. You've been too busy holding the city together. And I didn't want to put you in the s.h.i.t by contacting you. They've been watching me pretty closely. I meant what I said when I left. I couldn't collaborate with a dictatorship. But I want you to know that I think what you've done for the city, for the people, that's been great."

"Oh come on, Barney. Don't p.i.s.s in my pocket. That was my job. It was yours, too. I respect your reasons for going. But I couldn't agree with them, for myself, you know."

"I know. I ... Look ... I don't want to sound like a nut, but do you think we could go somewhere where I can't be seen from the door?"

Kipper was nonplussed, but Barney was so agitated, and his concern seemed so genuine, that he picked up the candle and led him through to the den. He could hear Barb and Suzie playing tea party upstairs, and thought about calling out that it was almost time for bed. But he kept his mouth shut. Barbara would probably put her down in the next half hour or so and crawl into bed with her. She'd been doing that most nights since the Disappearance.

The den was dark, and the curtains drawn. A small fire in the hearth threw a flickering glow over the room. Kip blew out the candle and placed it on an old plate that was already sc.u.mmy with melted wax.

"Welcome to the new frontier," he said drily.

They took seats facing each other across a gla.s.s-topped coffee table, spread with Barb's old magazines. New Yorkers. Vanity Fairs. And a couple of Vogues. None of them would ever be published again.

"Okay," said Kip. "What have you got yourself caught up in, Barney?"

Tench rubbed his palms on the knees of a pair of jeans that looked like they hadn't been washed in a long time.

"Like the arrest warrant says, Kip. The Resistance. That's what they call themselves. Frankly, I think it's a dumb name. It's all a bit Get Smart for me, but there's a h.e.l.l of a lot of them out there. Normal people, you know. Some like me, worked for the city. Some used to work for the feds. Lots of busi-nesspeople, too. But normal, Kip. Really normal people who just don't like the way this thing, this f.u.c.king Disappearance, has been used as an excuse to mess around with stuff, to start cutting off people's freedoms."

"But Barney, we're not free to live as we did. You can surely see that?"

Tench leaned forward.

"We're not free to run our plasma TVs twenty-four hours a day. No. We're not free to gorge ourselves to death on junk food and Vanilla c.o.ke. No. We're not free to travel anywhere we want. We're not free to fill up our tanks and drive to Disneyland. We're not free from hunger or fear of being eaten alive by that f.u.c.king thing out there, whatever it is. You're right. None of those freedoms are ours to enjoy anymore. But the basic freedom, Kip, the freedom to say what you think, and to act on it, the freedom to control your own life, that is being taken from us."

Kipper was going to protest, but he had been at the convention when that blowhard mayor had moved an amendment to reserve thirty percent of the congressional seats for the military as an emergency measure. To ensure stability. He'd sn.i.g.g.e.red when he heard it, and then been flabbergasted as one speaker after another rose to support it. And the fact was, the city was still locked down. People were living on handouts and doing as they were told. Food stamps were the new currency. The movement of people and goods was closely vetted by the military. "Production committees" had been set up to allocate labor and resources where they were most needed. And the local media, although able to work again, were heavily constrained by "D notices," issued by the acting governor but countersigned by General Blackstone.

"Barney," he said, feeling very uncomfortable. "I work with these people every day. Some of them, sure they are sons a b.i.t.c.hes. I wouldn't trust them with three dollars in change. But I can guarantee you, man, they are not doing these things because they're all little Hitlers in their hearts. They're doing it because they're scared. They're scared we're not gonna make it."

"We're not," said Barney. "Not like this. We might survive. But as what? What about you, Kip? Be honest. Do you think it's a good idea to just rope off a third of Congress for the military?"

"Well, of course not, Barney. It sucks the big one, but if you'd been there today and seen the chaos on the convention floor, man, I really don't know whether that is the way to go. I just..."

A thunderous hammering interrupted him. Barney blanched and muttered, "Oh, G.o.d."

"Open up," called out a harsh voice. "It's the police."

The two men locked eyes and a whole conversation pa.s.sed between them without a word being spoken.

Kipper placed a finger to his lips and gestured for Barney to follow him, leading his friend into the hallway and pointing to the door under the stairs that led down to the cellar. Barney needed no telling. He hurried over to the door as the pounding began again.

"Open up, please. Police."

"I'm coming," Kipper yelled back. "But I'm not breaking a leg for you, so you can just f.u.c.king wait."

Barb appeared at the top of the stairs and Kip waved her back, shaking his head emphatically. There was no time to explain to her any of what Barney had just said. He could only hope she wouldn't give anything away. Kipper moved into the kitchen and deliberately banged his leg on the table, sending a cup crashing to floor.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he yelled, loud enough to be heard outside. Reefing open the back door he let his natural foul temper off the leash a little, surprising the two police officers who stood there, blocking his view of a small squad of soldiers.

"This better be f.u.c.king good and quick," he snarled. "I have to get up about three in the morning tomorrow and drive out to Fort Lewis."

One of the cops actually blinked and said, "Oh."

The other, older one didn't take a backward step.

"Mr. Kipper, eh? Sorry sir. My name is Sergeant Banks. This is Officer Curlewis. But we're looking for agitators who've been reported in this area. We need to have a look around your place."

"What's going on, dear?"

Barb had appeared at his elbow.

"I dunno. Some c.r.a.p. They think we've got someone here. Want to search the place."

"Well, that's ridiculous."

"Mrs. Kipper, ma'am," said Banks, the older cop. "I'm sorry. I have my orders. Do you mind?"

"Well, I do, but that's hardly going to make a d.a.m.n bit of difference, is it?"

The policeman didn't bother replying to that, but he at least waited until Kip opened the door properly, rather forcing his way in. His partner followed and the soldiers moved up the path, but Barb held up a hand.

"I'm sorry. I don't mind the police looking around, but you boys have the filthiest shoes I've ever seen. Would you mind awfully just waiting for the police to do what they have to? You can stand on the porch if you want to get out of that drizzle. I could make you some cocoa if you'd like. It's powdered milk, though, I'm afraid."

A corporal raised one eyebrow at the cops, who shrugged it all off.