"c122" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Chapter 12.2
Chapter 12.2
3:32 P.M., Thursday, January 13, 2000
Agate, Colorado
"What the hell's going on here?" Nate shouted into the knots
of arguing people in his house, but nobody seemed to hear him.
He repeated the question, banging his crutch on the floor, with the
same lack of effect. He went over to a "secret" closet, a cupboard
whose door happened to look just like the paneling, where he'd
hidden an old shotgun. He fired it carelessly out the front door
toward a field.
The shouting stopped.
"What the fuck is going on here!" he demanded. "Turn off the
goddamn TV." Someone did. "Can't I leave you people alone for
a minute?" After a moment's quiet, everyone began making
excuses. "Shut up! I don't want to hear it! Just clean this place up
now or I'm kicking the lot of you out on your asses!"
"I don't think so," Lenny said, waving a stubby beer, and
turned his back on Nate.
A little voice in Nate's head said, See, I told you this guy was
trouble.
He thought he saw the bulge of a pistol in Lenny's sports
jacket.
"Where's Russ? Jamal?" He didn't see his brother or friend in
the room.
Lenny shrugged without turning around. A couple people
Nate wasn't sure he knew looked worried. Mostly people's eyes
counted floorboards, or beams on the ceiling.
"I think they left with them others." Lenny said, swigging his
beer.
"What others? Left for where?"
"Them crazy ones. Went home. Said this was all fake bullshit,
everything was fine out there. Faked like them moon landings."
His finger inscribed circles by his head. "Loco."
Georgina came over to her brother's side. "Maybe you ought
to let them out now, Lenny."
Nate's eyes narrowed. "Let them out of where?" He gripped
the shotgun reassuringly.
"I think maybe we ought to send John Wayne here in to join
them."
"Join who where?"
Nobody spoke.
"Join who—where!"
Georgina twisted her face around apologetically. "Lenny and
your friends had a sort of disagreement. Everyone thought it best
if they... separated. They're in the back room."
"Well call them out here."
Georgina nodded toward Lenny with a tense smile. "Lenny
has the key."
"The key? You fucking locked them in?" Nate raised the
shotgun, steadying it against is crutch. He didn't know if he had
the guts to shoot Lenny in the back if he didn't turn over the key.
He began sweating. What if Lenny suddenly wheeled on him with
that pistol in his hand? Could Nate fire?
Lenny reached into his coat. Began to turn around. Nate
watched the other people's eyes for signs whether he was fetching
a gun or keys... but couldn't tell from their blank looks. Lenny
kept turning, his hand still hidden.
Nate felt his finger's tighten slightly on the trigger. Ready...
Ready...
"Catch!"
Lenny tossed a padlock key at him.
Nate fumbled to catch it left-handed, but couldn't without
dropping the crutch. The key clinked to the floor, bounced onto a
throw rug.
"Lenny, get the fuck out of my house this fucking instant, or I
swear I'll blow your fucking brains into the fucking bathroom."
"Hey, man, chill." Lenny stretched his hands out.
The shotgun wavered in Nate's grasp. To Lenny it must have
looked like Nate was indecisive about where to aim—his head,
chest, or groin.
"I'm cool. I'm going. You're fucking crazy, man." He
hesitantly stepped toward the door, then ran for it.
"Anyone else?" Nate asked, his voice cracking. "Then
somebody unlock that fucking door," Nate said, and sank into a
stuffed chair, the shotgun across his lap. Jamal, Dominque, Russ,
Mary Beth, Steve, and Nate's half-sister spilled out of the back
room, pissed off and thankful for release.
It took days to clean up the mess, but Nate slowly whipped
them back into shape. He secretly worried they might stage a coup
again, force him to reveal where the majority of the food, water
and fuel were stored, but they seemed, at heart, more scared of
being thrust out to fend for themselves. He worried that Lenny
might return with drunken friends, but with each day the fear
lessened. After a week the machine was running efficiently.
Nobody groused further about going to bed at dark. People
uncomplainingly did their chores. They kept the noise down, out
of courtesy to those sleeping, such as those who had night watch
duty. They grumbled only a little at having to eat stale bread.
They grumbled louder that they weren't allowed to leave to search
for loved ones. They seemed to grumble loudest that the NFL
playoffs, Superbowl, and "three-peat" hopeful Broncos had been
postponed indefinitely.
Nate fully sympathized with the second, anyway, wanting
very much to look for Amber. But he refused everyone on the
grounds that it wasn't safe. The world teetered on the knife edge
of civilization. People both in the farmhouse and outside that Nate
had met the week before seemed to be like starved lions. They lay
weak in the grass and didn't exactly pounce on anyone, but they
growled lowly and it wasn't wise to get too close; the teeth were
ready to grab a meal.
A couple with two teenage boys, some friends of Jamal's he'd
never met before, had left this morning saying they were going to
march on Washington to demand the government fix everything.
"Those bozos in Washington are just playing games, and have been
the whole time," one said. "They must have known about this,
unless they were complete idiots, and it's time we demanded some
action." Nate was glad to see the extra mouths go, and wished
them well. He wondered if they'd even make it. Not all parts of
the country had camps. People were dying from eating poisonous
plants or drinking standing water.
Nate's brother Russ approached him on the afternoon of the
20th. The dull blue-metal clouds made the world look torpid and
restless. "They're getting bored," Russ said, sliding down to sit
next to Nate on the floor in his bedroom. "Only so long they can
play poker and monopoly." Or "monotony" as they'd come to call
it, finding they could play the same game forever without anyone
winning. The satellite broadcasts were less frequent, rather than
more. It was as if the more prolonged the loss of services lasted,
the less interesting it became. Newspeople went home to tend to
their own needs, stand in their own lines. The world was stuck in
the mud.
Nate yawned. "And I'm supposed to do exactly what? It's
better than starving or freezing." Thousands of people around the
country had died from exposure by now; like the body count
during the Vietnam war, the broadcasters no longer listed names,
only daily counts. Only noted celebrities merited name mentions.
"We just have to wait it out."
"And how long is that going to take? This isn't exactly like the
battle of Britain. People may have lived in the subways, but then
they were afraid of getting blown to bits up above. And I'd bet
they still went out during the safe periods. You've got dozens of
people with severe cabin fever out there."
"They can walk around the farm," Nate ventured. "It should
only be a few more weeks," he guessed. "If every good little
citizen buys their programmer bonds..." In truth, he hadn't
thought it would really last this long. He finally admitted to
himself that he'd really hoped for two weeks, that it would have
been over by now. But as a programmer, he knew how long it
could take to fix programs. With too few programmers under
ideal situations, he knew it could be far longer yet. The
government was now advertising "programmer bonds", series
MM "millennium" bonds, like they had issued war bonds during
world war II. Their requests for volunteer programmers had been
a flop; now they were paying programmers nearly any rate they
asked, and asking the populace to pick up the cost. Few
programmers were interested; "What good's money?" Nate had
asked. "What they really need are people to fix the programmers'
pipes and keep their houses from being looted while they
program." Not that it mattered. Few people were buying the
bonds anyway, and they were hard to come by for those willing to
buy. It was going to be a long wait. The people who'd invaded
Nate's house would just have to sit tight.
Russ shook his head. "They have family they want to find.
They know they can't bring them all here, but they want to at least
let them know they're ok."
"No way. They'll drag them here. Or they'll magically show
up. Or a whole army of twits will hear about it and they'll show
up, probably armed and hungry. No way."
"Nate, some of them say that if they find their family, they'll
stay with them. What if we have them pair off, one for one—if one
person leaves, their partner can bring in one family member.
People could trade around their rights; it'd give them something
positive to focus on. And for searching, to prevent someone from
dragging an extra body back they're not entitled to, they could go
out searching with a chaperone, someone who's dead-set against
growing the size of the group. Give them a gun. It'd be self-enforcing."
"I don't know. I'll think about it."
"You'd be an ideal chaperone. You wouldn't let anyone new
come in without cause. And you could search for Amber..."
The next day Nate relented, and visited his first refugee camp,
looking for Amber. It was overwhelmed with people. Tents
stretched to the horizon on the cold-packed soil. Unsanitary
looking ditches served as latrines. There was barely enough bread,
soup, and water arriving each day from government depots to feed
everyone. He trudged up and down rows of wind-whipped tents
calling for Amber Ericson. The people, already looking gaunt and
sallow, stared at him from blank eyes buried among makeshift
parkas. Many had cut holes in the top of their tent and burned
fires inside, teepee fashion. Surely they'd be warmer in their own
heatless homes. But here was where the Emergency Alert System
promised they'd find food. Depending on how good the Red
Cross officials were at lying that "there will be lots of food
tomorrow," the refugees would either revolt, Nate thought, or get
too weak to.
Nobody challenged Nate at the gate; in fact, nobody manned
the gate. Anyone was allowed in; anyone was allowed out, and
people stumbled both to and from the parking lot. Nate
considered that perhaps this was the rationale for the rumor he'd
heard (though not seen in practice—yet) that the government
might take control of all gas stations: Anyone with enough gas
could drive from one camp to the others each day and collect
multiple rations of food and water. He'd assumed the government
hadn't taken control of the gas stations because there wasn't that
much gas, what with oil imports at a trickle because the middle
eastern countries were virtually shut down, or at least withdrawn
into their shells. Still, you could hitchhike or ride a horse from one
camp to another...
Until Nate discovered otherwise. Speeding west on I-70,
attempting to cross from a camp on the east side of Denver to one
in the foothills to the west, Nate found the highway blocked by
National Guard troops.
Like the camps, anyone was allowed out. A trickle of cars
headed east.
Unlike the camps, only people with valid passes were allowed
into Denver. The soldier at the checkpoint coldly refused to say
how one obtained passes. Nate and the fellow he was chaperoning
were turned around at gunpoint at Powhaton Road.
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