The world had become a living nightmare. Lawlessness ran amok. Beautiful buildings were vandalized; houses and dwellings were burned or filled with nasty squatters. My own apartment building lay in charred ruins and my possessions destroyed. I had lost friends and coworkers to bullets, disease, suicide, and mishap. Teenage daughters of good people were raped and killed. People could be pulled from cars and beaten at any time, or randomly shot. Pestilence and filth were omnipresent. The scummy, chronically criminal elements of society actually seemed to enjoy the new world. After all, the playing field was level: The millionaires, corporate officers and wealthy entrepreneurs were now basically the same as the poverty-stricken. They, too, were powerless nobodies with wealth and carefree comfortable retirements absent from their futures. A rich man died just as easily as a poor man and both were accorded the same indignities in death. These were the realities of humanity.

I cut the crew loose after I identified Sarah and just walked until I found a place to sit. I sat on an old bus stop bench in the late afternoon, surrounded by urban debris and awash in sorrow. I stared at the asphalt out in front of me. After some time, I realized that my fingers were absentmindedly spinning the wedding band on the marriage finger of my left hand. Crows squawked their annoying squawk. Every now and then a piece of garbage would blow by like tumbleweed through an old western town. Last spring seemed like twenty years ago. I’d lost more friends in one spring and summer than most people lose in a lifetime. I’d lost most of my possessions.

And, of course, I lost my Sarah.

Everything was a surreal adventure in the beginning right after The Attack, terrifying and exciting all at the same time. But post-nuclear holocaust society had slowly degraded into a vast emptiness of difficult existence. My soul wandered in the hopeless purgatory of not wanting to live and not wanting to die. Infinite sadness was a millstone around my neck. It must have showed.

A cordial elderly gentleman was shuffling by when he stopped and looked at me. He thought for a reflective moment before saying something: “Anyone can see beauty in the ruins of a church. But no one can see beauty in the ruins of a man.”

He smiled a kindly smile, nodded gently and then continued on his way. I don’t know if he thought he needed to say that or if I needed to hear that, but I was somehow glad that he did.

An unseasonably cool wind stirred, whispering a vague threat of colder months to come. Soon it would turn into autumn, and then autumn would turn into winter. Diesel generators would be useful…until the fuel was depleted. As any truck driver could tell you, diesels idled at such a low rate of fuel consumption that you could leave a truck idling all night long if you had to leave it outside on a cold winter’s night. A battery system with solar panels for recharging would be a more practical solution for long-term recovery. Wood- or coal-burning stoves and fuel storage would be a part of every county emergency system. Coal would store well if it were placed between a straw blanket and covered with dirt. I’d been studying for cold weather survival on the internet, see.

Whatever.

Such are the things that weighed on the mind as September neared. A cruel sibling of time, the seasons were without a flyspeck of concern if you were prepared or not. A harsh winter would separate the weak from the strong, the prepared from the unprepared.

What started out as a nightmare turned into an adventure, and adventure turned into a mindless, soul-sucking hell. I was in a situation way over my head. Fate, God, Allah, terrorists—whatever the entity was, it had beaten me. I tired of this life. Living only to live? What’s the point?

Nothing lasts forever. I guess just about everyone would agree with that.

My name is Dallas Burnette. I’m thirty-five years old and a native of Minneapolis. I used to sell sandpaper but now I nail boards over windows. I’m a scoundrel, a near-murderer…and a widower. I don’t know why I was put here on this Earth, why I’m still alive as people better than I die all around me. I don’t even know why I’m sitting on this bench. Maybe I’m paying for a life not well-lived and this existence that I’m experiencing is merely Erebus, the dark place through which the dead must pass before entering hell.

FINAL CHAPTER:
A SOCIETY OF GOOD MEN

In a culturescape where obtaining food and dodging random death were daily challenges, the things people used to fight for and about – universal health care, social security, civil rights, environmentalism, campaign finance reform, corporate tax-breaks—all of these things had become silly in comparison. Concerns about such things as credit card debt and rotten love lives evaporated into nonexistence.

A man used to be measured by his portfolio, bank account, job, and status. Now a man knew he was a winner at the game of life if he simply woke up in the morning. Breathing and relative health were the signs of a blessed person. Compared to the carnage and inhumanity that I saw every day, I had it very good. I had food, shelter, and a job. Hell, I even sat in a bar and drank pretty good beer on a regular basis. Yet, I thought of taking my own life almost constantly. Derek had the courage to do it—why couldn’t I?

Scheerer called me into his office one day in early September. Through everything that had happened to me in the previous months, Dan Scheerer had been a solid rock of stability. It was of little wonder to me that he was alive and thriving as a human being, all things considered.

He told me that he was sorry, very sorry about Sarah. He knew that her loss was an ongoing source of great sadness for me. Then we had a little friendly small talk before getting down to business.

“Our mission has been reduced to doing anything and everything at the whim of government minions higher on the food chain than us,” he said. One thing was clear; trying to be the stewards of a dying city was a losing battle. “We’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I think you know that.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied.

“The meek may indeed inherit the Earth, but I can tell you that shitbags have inherited the city of Minneapolis,” he said.

I’m not sure, but I think that was the first time I heard Dan Scheerer use a cuss word.

“If you want to stay,” he continued, “that’s up to you. You’ll still have a job with the county. God knows, metropolitan areas need guys like us. But if you decide to leave, I won’t stop you, and I won’t report you as deserting.”

“Thanks, Dan, but why are you telling me this?” I said. “Where the hell am I going to go?”

“There’s a man in town…I guess you’d call him a recruiter,” Dan said.

“A recruiter?” I said, surprised. “I’m not joining the Army!”

“Get serious. What I’m telling you is in the strictest of confidence.”

“Okay,” I said, somewhat intrigued.

“There are more nukes in America.”

The mere utterance of the phrase made my heart skip a beat. After staring at Dan for a few seconds, I managed to speak. “How do you know?”

“You’re going to have to trust me on that one, I have my sources.” Scheerer’s honesty was beyond reproach, and I believed him. He continued: “There’s a man looking for people to help start a new community, a new society, far from any urban area. I recommended you. If you’re interested, go to the community center tonight at ten o’clock. It’ll be after sundown, so nobody but a few government folks will be there.”

“You’re not telling everyone? Just me?”

“The people I’m recommending find out one-on-one from me. You understand this is strictly confidential?”

“Of course, I do. But, why in the hell would you pick me?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a better man than you think you are.”
“
Thanks,” I said.

“Get outta here for now, Dallas,” he said with a fatherly hand on my shoulder. I nodded, left his office, and went out on duty for the day. Yet I was curious. I had no idea what this recruiter was all about or what he could want from the straggling remnant population of a dead city.

I finished out the workday and went down to the bar. A peaceful beer at the Kaiserhof was one of the few things in my life I could count on. I talked with no one as I nursed two pilsners over several hours and then headed out.

I showed up at the community center on time, along with some other people, and we were led as a group to a room in the basement. There were about fifteen men in the room, mostly folks from other departments of the government. There was a tall, rugged man standing in the front of the room with his hands on his hips, waiting for us to get situated. He was a light-skinned African-American with an air of dignity and intelligence about him, even as he stood there motionless. He wore a clean denim work shirt tucked into pressed khaki pants with cargo pockets and clean, but well-worn hiking boots. A gold wedding band shined on his left hand and a large ring—Annapolis?—gleamed on his right. Next to him was a cart with a TV and DVD player hooked up and ready to go. I wondered what he would have done if the power had been out on this particular evening, as it appeared he was ready to give us a media presentation. People settled in and he spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for venturing out to meet with me tonight. My name is Boscoe Williams. I’m a former U.S. naval aviator, and I used to work for the federal government as a nuclear physicist, before the The Attack. I was the nuclear search team leader in San Francisco on April first. We disabled that bomb. Nowadays, I guess I’m what you’d call a consultant to the feds.

“What am I doing here? I drive around the upper Midwest looking for just a few men and women to hear a proposal. I have a DVD to show you, which I think will be self-explanatory. I’ll take all of your questions afterward, so please save your thoughts for now.”

With that, he pointed the DVD remote at the machine, hit the start button, and stepped to the back of the room. The first thing we saw was white letters on a black background:

This presentation is sanctioned by the government of the United States of America and exists under EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004, which allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, and designate areas to be abandoned, and establish and sanction new locations for populations.

After ten seconds or so, the screen started showing scenes of pre-April Attack society with a soothing male voice-over narrating;

“Do you remember what life used to be like? Do you remember the simple joys of life? Do you remember having a general feeling of safety and a hope that life held treasures and dreams yet to be realized? Life may never be the same since the nuclear attacks of April, but good people in this world can still find life, liberty and happiness in communities of shared philosophies.

“Who are we? We started as a group of concerned fathers and husbands. We have come to the firm resolution that our lives will go on. Our lives will go on in peace and tranquility. While sanctioned by the government, we are not a part of, nor are we directly linked to the government.

“If you decide to join us and are accepted, we expect you to bring your talents, your resources, and your optimistic belief that life and everything about life is precious. Every nail you hammer, every broken hinge you fix, every flower you nurture, every bit of knowledge or expertise that you pass along—from teaching someone how to dress a freshly shot buck to teaching someone a new chord on the guitar—every single thing you do is important for now, and for the next generation.

“A person brought into the society is expected to maintain the highest standards of good community behavior: A member of the society is not expected merely to exist, but to share and contribute and be a clear asset to the community on many levels. Everyone must perform assigned duties. There are no wealthy passengers along for a free ride to be served by others. There are many limitations to personal freedoms such as contraband materials. There will be no recreational drugs or alcohol. All firearms and weapons will be placed in a common armory and will not be released except under orders from a commanding authority. There will be no private stocks of foods because under survival conditions this can lead to social disorder.

“We believe that we are strong when we live and function as one: No individual has the personal resources that a group has. However, if it is a large group, then there are numbers of people available to continue to give support. Just like there are numbers of people available to maintain twenty-four-hour security, or to dispatch well-manned convoys to go after necessary supplies. One more prepared and equipped individual added to such a group is an asset. One more unprepared and unequipped individual is a liability. A successful society will be completely homogeneous regarding economics, values, and future expectations. Still, the society is not a democratic community any more than is a ship or an airliner.

“Neither is the society a democracy in the sense that there must be much more stringent rules regarding behavior. Malfeasance of any sort will not be tolerated: Order will be kept. And, lest there be any confusion, we are not survivalists or supremacists. Racially motivated violence or killings will be dealt with harshly and swiftly. Information is shared between like-minded communities, and the banished will find themselves wandering in a wilderness of the evil: the roving bands, the gypsies, the robbers, and the killers.

“The nuclear attacks of the first of April were a birthing process, and all birthings are painful. Natural progression demands catastrophe as catalyst. And as we shift into a new way of life—a new brand of human being—we become more complex, gain a higher level of consciousness, and gain new freedoms. These are simple laws of nature and natural progression. To quote Kahlil Gibran, ‘When you have reached the mountaintop, then shall you begin the climb.’ Welcome to the mountaintop, my friends.

“Tough? Yes, anything worth having is tough. But not nearly as tough as the conditions of survival will be for those who are not prepared.

“We are in a fight to preserve any semblance of a good and a free society. We don’t know what the future holds, but we will give our descendants the best chance they can get. We will do this by starting over and creating a society with templates of good and decent behavior, and by seeking the simple goals that founded our American country many years ago; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“Please remember: Destiny is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice. Thank you.”

The television screen faded to black, and the lights came back on. I was awestruck. For the first time in months, I had a feeling of optimism. Hands shot into the air as people tried to ask Mr. Williams questions about this new society, this society of good men. For me, there was no question: I was behind the wheel of a pickup full of supplies and leaving Minneapolis before sunset on the very next day.

- THE END -

I drew a peculiar assignment one day in late August.

We had to go secure several broken windows at the armory downtown—the very armory that was in service as a body identification and disposal station. This was where they brought bodies when people called in on the Dead Body Hotline. We had a crew of only three guys, and the job took us less than an hour. I was the crew leader. I told the guys to take a break upon completion of the job and brought the paperwork in to be signed off on.

“I’m looking for Dr. Bill Peterson,” I said to the first person I saw inside.

“Yes, that’s me,” answered the older man in a lab coat with white hair and reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“Hi, Dallas Burnette from the county,” I said. “We cleaned up and secured three windows on the south and east sides of the building per the work order. Was there anything else you needed?”

Peterson looked through the paperwork quickly and then signed off. “No, sir, that should do it.”

“Okay,” I spun around to head for the door but stopped, acting on a quick whim, and turned back around. “Dr. Peterson?” I was nervous.

“Yes?” he answered turning back to me.

“If someone were missing…I’m missing someone, a woman. If she were…killed.…”

“If she were picked up, we’d have her on file here. Are you talking about a relative?”

“Yes, my wife. Sarah Pennington,” I answered, using her maiden name.

“Okay, sir, we do have a data base. Whenever we get an unidentified body—”

“I work for the county,” I interrupted, “I know how it works.”

“Okay, sir. Follow me.”

Dr. Peterson led me to an office filled with desks and files. We sat down across from each other at one of the desks with a computer. We waited as the computer booted and then Peterson went to the appropriate application. Sarah had been missing for almost two months now. This was one of the first places where I should have checked, but I’d tried to remain as positive as I could, and checking here would have been a surrender to the worst-case scenario.

“Okay. Name of the missing person?” he asked clinically.

“Sarah…Pennington.”
“Is that first name with or without the ‘h’?” he said as he starting tapping away on his computer keyboard.

“With,” I said wiping my nose.

“And ‘Pennington’ just like it sounds?”

I nodded. If she’d had any identification on her, it would most certainly be in the name of Pennington.

“Middle name?”

“Renee,” I said. I could feel my heart beating.

He tapped in the information and we waited a few seconds. “Sometimes bodies come in with a driver’s license or some other form of ID.”

I nodded again.

“Okay, no one named Pennington, Sarah or otherwise, has been identified by us here. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t come through here, just means we didn’t identify her.”

“I understand.” I felt a slight wave of relief.

He clicked over to a different screen. “Can you describe the missing person to me?”

“She’s, uh, five-seven, about a hundred-thirty pounds, dark shoulder-length hair …”

“Approximate age?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Any tattoos or other identifying marks?”

“Yes, she had a flower tattooed on her left ankle.”

He tapped on the computer. “When is the last time you saw this person?”

“The morning of July fourth.”

He nodded knowingly. After ten seconds or so he removed his glasses and looked at me. It was that horrible look that doctors give family members in waiting rooms when the news isn’t good.

“Are you a tough man, Mr. Burnette?”

“Tough in some ways, I suppose,” I said. “Maybe not so tough in others.”

“I have a preliminary match to the description you gave me. Are you prepared to make a photo ID of the body?”

I simply froze. I literally felt a painful sensation as the muscles in my lower back contracted in fear.

“Sir?” Dr. Peterson said.

I could feel my pulse on my neck and was sure that the throbbing was visible. I took a long breath and let it out slowly. After several seconds I slowly rolled my chair around to get a better view of the screen.

I recognized Sarah instantly. Tears welled up at the corners of my eyes.

“Sir? Can you identify this body?”

I sat staring at the screen. There were three pictures of her face—front, side, and oblique—and one of the tattoo on her ankle. Her hair was messy and gooey with thick, semi-coagulated blood on the back, her lips were blue, her mouth was grotesquely ajar, and her eyes were slightly open. Her face was a little scuffed up as though she’d been in a fight, and she looked as if she were in the early stages of post-mortem bloating. But she was still my Sarah.

“Sir, I know that this may be difficult, but can you identify this person?”

I nodded affirmative. “Yes…that’s her.”

“You’re quite sure?”

I nodded. He hit a few more keystrokes.

“Do you know how she…died?” I asked with a trembling voice.

Peterson scrolled down until he found the appropriate paragraph and began reading: “Female victim found July four, nearest cross street 24th & Lyndale Avenue, partially clothed, no ID found on or near the body, body processed and recorded at 5:30 p.m., victim estimated to be dead five to eight hours at that time of arrival.”

“Was she raped?” I fearfully asked with my hand over my mouth. The beat of my heart thumped in my inner ear.

Peterson could tell this was hard on me and he sighed. “Does it really matter, sir?” he asked with compassion.

“Just tell me. I’ll deal with it.”

He read on: “Victim found partially clothed, one sock, short sleeve shirt, bra and panties.”

“So she wasn’t.…”

“No sign of forced sexual assault. But there was some significant skin residue under her fingernails. My guess is an attempted sexual assault, but she fought the bastard off. Your wife was a tough little lady.”

I was trembling and took a difficult breath before I responded. “How how was she killed?” I asked, not sure if I really wanted to hear the answer.

“Close range pistol blast to the head, through-and-through,” Dr. Peterson said without even looking at the computer screen.

I put my face in my hands, and he put his hand on my knee in an attempt at condolence. I was crying. Who in the world would want to put a gun to Sarah’s head and end her life? Who?

“If it’s any solace, I processed the body,” Dr. Peterson said. “That’s why I remember her. She—Sarah was handled with dignity and care when she got here.”

“Thank you,” I said, fully crying. My voice was high, and I’m sure that I sounded like a child. “Do you…do you still have her here? Do you think I could see her?” It was a foolish question: My mind knew better, but my heart had to ask.

“I’m sorry—she was cremated right after processing. It’s very standard procedure.”

My head dropped, and I cried even harder. Peterson waited a few seconds before speaking again. “Sir, I know this is hard, but we have to have you do some paperwork for us. It will just take a moment.”

“Why?” I challenged, still lingering in the stage of denial.

“Frankly, you could be killed in a street robbery two hours from now. Sarah needs to be officially declared as identified for her family’s sake, sir. Sooner or later somebody else will come looking for her. She needs to be taken from…‘Jane Doe #2,398’ to ‘Sarah Pennington.’ You understand, don’t you sir?”

I nodded.

I could have come to the armory weeks before then and discovered Sarah’s disposition. I had made some tepid phone calls searching for her by name, but not as a Jane Doe. Some folks are afraid of getting checked for cancer, as if the news of sickness would be worse than the disease itself. I think that’s how I felt about exhausting any search that had the possibility of disclosing that my wife was dead. Ignorance is bliss, and as long as I was unaware of her death, there was the possibility that Sarah would come walking through our front door. My wife was now officially dead.

I signed her out as ‘Sarah Burnette.’

Scheerer came up and joined me the next day as I sat on a pile of lumber after a day’s work. He was usually busy doing something—prioritizing work orders, figuring out crew assignments, bugging the shop guys to get this vehicle or that vehicle up and running. It was a little strange for him to come up and just talk. He sat down.

“How’s it going, troop?”

“Same shit, different day,” I answered.

“Any luck with your wife?”

“None,” I said. “I’m losing my grip, man.”

He shook his head in commiseration. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit, I almost shot a guy a while back because he was littering. I mean, I’m really losing it.”

“It’s a tough, tough world. You’re one of the good guys—you deserve better.”

“I don’t know if I’m all that good,” I shook my head.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, getting to the root of it. All things seemed minor compared to my anguish over Sarah’s unknown whereabouts, so I spilled the beans.

“Well, not too long ago, I went out and…I tried to kill a man in cold blood.” There, I said it.

“You tried to kill a man?” he asked, somewhat surprised.

“An old enemy, a civilian from my past. It was just an impulse that I acted on. I know better.”

“What were you going to do, shoot him?”

“Yup, sniper-style.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

“Too many witnesses showed up. That’s the one and only reason. Other than that, I was ready to do it.”

“How many men have you killed?” Scheerer asked casually.

The question took me aback. “You mean since the nukes?”

“I mean ever.”

“None that I know of,” I said. What kind of question was that?

“Do you know how many men I’ve killed?” Scheerer asked.

“How many?”

“At least eighteen. I’m talking Americans here in this city. I never killed any enemy soldiers as an Army Ranger, but I’ve killed eighteen fellow Americans as a civilian maintenance supervisor. Probably more than that. And now you’re self-conscious because you almost killed one?”

“I’m self-conscious because I planned it out. It was going to be a murder. It wasn’t self-defense or saving someone else’s life, like with you. The only reason I was going to do it was because I could get away with it. Once the risks outweighed the benefits, I scrubbed the mission.” I liked speaking in military-lingo from time to time.

“Okay. Anything else bothering you?”

“Well,” I said looking off to the distance and scrinching my nose, “I feel like…I’ve failed…as a…husband.” It was as though my throat were made of velcro, and the words barely crawled out of my mouth. “I was married a couple of weeks…and then it was, Whoops, where’d my wife go?”

“You have no responsibility in that, Burnette. That was the most screwed-up day ever.”

“So I shouldn’t feel responsible for the welfare of my wife? That was implicit in the deal, wasn’t it? That I would take care of her safety?”

“You’re piling an awful lot of guilt on yourself, and that’s perfectly normal. In fact, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel guilty. But let’s be logical: What could you have done? It started out as a normal day, you were out working on the other side of town, and then all hell broke loose.”

“I just don’t feel good about myself. Not now.”

“Stay strong. Be positive. She could be on her way home as we speak.”

“Thoughts like that are the only thing keeping me going,” I said.

“I hope you find your wife soon, Dallas. I really do,” he said with a firm slap on my knee. That was the first time he’d ever called me “Dallas,” not “Burnette.” “Just make sure she has something to return home to.” He got up and walked back into the maintenance building.

Good news was hard to come by, but it was easy to hear of the bad everyday. It seemed as if the entire world had turned into a cauldron of misery. The world economy had all but collapsed, and natural disasters reared their spiteful heads as allies of the terrorists, ensuring that life was difficult everywhere. North Korea was starting trouble with South Korea, and China threatened Taiwan. A crippled America could do little but sit on the sidelines like the superstar football player observing the game from crutches.

The combined forces of several countries attacked Israel. Her fight with Lebanon had grown to crescendo. Now with America immersed in her own problems, Israel was a tempting target for long-time anti-Semitic regimes. Scud missiles and Katyusha rockets rained mercilessly down upon her daily as armored forces pecked away at outlying settlements. The IDF fought well. They didn’t roll over, and most of the country was embroiled in battles of one sort or another twenty-four hours a day.

Meanwhile, some people filtered back into the city from their rural hideouts. The impact on the population was negligible, as they simply replaced some of the dead. Usually it was men coming back as forward scouts, as it were, to check out if things were okay. Sometimes they came home to an untouched house, but in too many cases they returned only to find looted or burned-out hulks of what once had been their family homes. Some stuck around, some got back behind the wheel and puttered, heartbroken, back out of town.

I was out on crew with Stubbs and three other newer guys on garbage detail north of downtown. We had been working all morning in the hot sun and took a break. I leaned up against the pickup, talking with the other guys, while Stubbs stretched himself out on an empty bus bench. We were all just hanging out, shooting the shit the way guys do. There was no one else around, no civilians or anything.

“Man, you know what?” Stubbs said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“I’ve been saving up some money and keeping in touch with my kids over the ‘net.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think I’m gonna drive myself on down to Chi-town before winter set in. Start makin’ a life down there.”

“I didn’t know you had little kids,” I said.

“Little kids? Man, my children be adults! Aaron Junior be twenty-four, my daughter Alicia be twenty-two.”

“Damn,” I said with a shake of my head. “Ya think ya know someone.…”

Aaron chuckled his baritone chuckle to himself and laid his face back up to the sun. Suddenly a dirty-looking homeless man came out of a building foyer and marched over to the bench.

“Hey motherfucker. That’s my bench,” he said to Stubbs. The man looked and acted like the street-crazies we’d seen a thousand times before.

Stubbs arched an eyebrow and slowly opened an eye. “I know you ain’t talking to me.”

“I’m looking right at your ugly ass,” said the vagrant. “Get off my bench.”

“Hey bitch,  move your meat, lose your seat.”

Well, shit, nobody had been there for a while now. This guy seemed like just another street flake, right?

“You motherfucking bastard.…” the hobo mumbled as he reached under his coat. Before any of us could react, he pulled out a .357 Magnum. Stubbs never saw it coming: The street-crazy calmly aimed at Aaron’s head and squeezed off a powerful and loud round, blowing the top of Stubbs’s head off in one impossibly quick and frightening moment. There was no question about the need for medical care. A significant part of Stubbs’s skull was missing, and his brains were splattered all over the sidewalk. His eyes were wide, and the last pumps of his heart were squirting obscene geysers of blood into the street.

The killing seemed to simultaneously last five minutes and last a nanosecond. There was no time for thinking, only reaction. The other guys and I ran up and tackled the bum before he could turn and take aim at us. I was intent on grabbing the revolver, but the new guy, who I only knew as Gardner, grabbed it first. He snatched the gun and, without pause or time to reflect, simply jabbed the barrel into the assailant’s abdomen and blew his stomach out of his back, killing him instantly.

That’s how Aaron Stubbs died.

Weeklong celebrations sometimes preceded a jumper’s death. It was now general knowledge amongst the Kaiserhof regulars that Derek had decided to end his life. When he told me over a beer at the Kaiserhof, it was as though someone had told me that they decided to by a Ford over a Chevy.

“So have you heard?” he asked one afternoon as I started to park my ass on a stool.

“Heard what?”

“I’m taking the plunge. Tenth Avenue Bridge.”

“What? Is that a joke? Am I missing the punch line?” I asked, sure that there was some pun buried in his phraseology.

“No, buddy. You heard me right.” He was serious. I was shocked.

“You’re not really…the kind of person…get the hell outta here!” I was still unconvinced that this wasn’t some sort of tasteless joke.

“I’m serious. Most everybody else knows. You’re a good guy, and I thought it was important that I told you in person before you heard it through the gossip mill.”

I was starting to believe him. I looked at Jack, who was bringing me the pilsner that he’d started pouring when he saw me walk in. I looked at him, and his non-verbal language told me that Derek wasn’t joking. He was intent on taking his life.

After ten more minutes or so of talking, I was convinced of his sincerity. It was just a decision, nothing more than that. I stuck out my bottom lip and nodded in feigned understanding. For him, I figured, Derek had simply reached the point of understanding that life held no more promises and simply wasn’t worth the effort anymore. If all went according to plan, he would kill himself on the following Sunday. “Life is unbearable, but I’m going out in style,” would become his mantra for that week.

With Jack’s help Derek planned a huge party for himself at the Kaiserhof. He had always struck me as a stand-up guy, and now he was facing his own demise with unflinching grit. He was actually quite upbeat all that week and, come Saturday night, was the star of his own party. It was as if he were about to take a long trip to Europe or something—there was no sense of sadness or doom in the air. We all just rolled with it, knowing that some dark sort of death probably awaited us all. At least he was calling his own shots and aware of his own destiny.

Derek had hired armed guards to watch the outside, so there wasn’t a danger of hooligans breaking up the party with a spray of gunfire and looting. There was a guy with an M-16 on the roof diagonally opposite the restaurant and two more on the street corners. A couple of people ran some food and soft drinks out to the guys every now and then.

Back inside the restaurant, people gathered, talked, and ate appetizers. Jack had been able to order and procure a small truckload of alcohol and food. There was a buffet with chicken, ribs, potato salad, rolls, and pastries. There was a near-constant din of the clinking of glasses as people drank and got drunk. Beer was abundant, harder alcohols less so.

There were ten guys from the Gulag there. I strayed close to Henri Lebenze on my way to the restroom and, like clockwork, heard him discreetly whispering into the ear of a female guest who I’d never seen before. He was drinking a concoction invented by John called “The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.” (He stole that name from A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I didn’t let on that I knew).

There were times when you could just hang out and talk with people and forget about the apocalypse. Those were times to savor, and that evening was one of those rare times. It wasn’t that long ago that the place was packed with mostly the same group of people celebrating my marriage. Now the occasion was bittersweet. The proximate cause of this particular celebration was itself macabre in nature. In spite of that, we drank and celebrated. Derek totally blew what was left of his cash.

“Can’t take it with ya!” he said with a wink. “Ya gotta spend that shit, move it around. Doncha think, Dallas?”

“I suppose,” I mumbled.

“I mean, what am I shootin’ for? A solid-gold coffin? I think not.” He raised his drink and whispered to himself, “Closer to God,” and he drank.

I wondered if Derek would change his mind. I got him alone off in a corner at one point during the festivities. We were both fairly buzzed, so the words flowed freely.

“So, Dallas, no word on your wife, eh?”

“No. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Stay positive. Keep looking.” Stay positive? From a man who was on the brink of killing himself?

“Derek, listen, are you sure you wanna do this bridge thing?” I asked.

“I’m sure…don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Look, man, life goes on,” I said sweeping my arm out. “There’s still good people all around, there’s still reasons to live.”

“You don’t understand,” Derek shook his head and took a swig of beer.

“Sure I do. You don’t think I’ve thought about blowing my head off? I can’t find my wife, the only woman I ever wanted to really be with.”

“You’re young, you have your health,” he said with a slap on top of my shoulder. “And you’ll find your wife. Mark my words, you’ll find her. What’s more, you’ll figure out something to do with your life.”

“Yeah, I’m not putting boards over windows from here till eternity, that’s for sure. But, listen…it’s not like you’re not young, you’re in your, what…mid-forties? Late-forties?”

“Yeah.…”

“And you’ve got your health.…”

“No, Dallas, I don’t have my health.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“About a month before The Attack, I went in for a checkup.”

“Yes, and…?” I said as I looked intently at my friend.

“I was diagnosed with a moderately advanced case of colon cancer.”

I was dumbfounded and took a few moments to comprehend Derek’s last statement. “Can it be treated?” I asked.

“I was beginning my regimen of non-surgical treatment in the last week of March and then,” he made an explosion sound with his mouth and gestured a blossoming mushroom cloud with his hands, “April first. No more treatments.”

“So you’re just giving up?”

“You don’t understand, Dallas. It’s getting worse, not better. Cancer has a way of doing that.”

“I …”

“Don’t try, my friend. I’m in a fair amount of discomfort most of the time. I eat these pain-killers like they were M&Ms,” he said as he pulled a prescription bottle out of his pocket and shook it like a baby rattle, “and it’s why I took up drinking so much again. This suicide thing, this is what I want to do.”

“It just seems like a…waste,” I protested.

“Listen, Dallas. I used to run a successful business. I used to be in command of my life. I used to be worth several million dollars. Now, I’ve got nothing. I’ve truly got nothing.”

I began to understand my friend and realized that I was slowly nodding in agreement with him as he spoke.

“The only thing I’ve got now is a say in how I go out and when I go out. Will you do me a favor and leave me that?”

I nodded and then slowly held my glass up for a discreet toast. He clinked his mug to mine.

“You’ll be missed,” I offered.

“As will we all,” he said as he smiled and then drank.

I was no longer the sort to even try to figure out life’s little mysteries anymore and I merely nodded in agreement and then changed subjects.

I’d like to be able to say that Derek went out with dignity. I had pictures in my mind of a tear-jerking farewell speech delivered at the edge of the bridge, followed by a glorious life-ending plummet into the Mississippi river. “Well, that man went out on his own terms, he did,” we would mutter in sad admiration as we ambled back to the bar for drinks.

But, no. After talking with Derek at the bar that night, I continued drinking. The rest of the evening is a splotchy patchwork of blurry memories. I woke up on the living room floor of Jack’s apartment the next morning. Jack was having coffee.

“Looks who’s alive,” he teased.

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t feel too good. The mid-morning sunlight beaming through the windows hurt my eyes all the way to the back of my head. It took me a few moments to remember the night before.

“Oh, did Derek jump off the bridge?” I groggily asked, worried that I’d missed the final farewell.

“Nope,” Jack replied flatly.

“Oh, good,” I said relieved. “So is he around?”

“You don’t remember, Dallas?”

“Shit, I was fucking ripped last night man. Remember what?”

“Derek called the Dead Body Hotline about one in the morning. He didn’t say anything to anybody. Right before they showed up, he just stepped out onto the sidewalk, put a gun in his mouth and blew the top of his head off.”

Oh, yeah. How did I forget that?

Though they happened any day of the week, Sunday had become the traditional day of suicide among the more organized of the remaining population. I guess people felt a little closer to God if they took their own lives on a Sunday morning. Jumpers included the sick, the lonely, the heartbroken, and the depressed. The Tenth Avenue Bridge near the University of Minnesota had become an informal gathering spot for the big jump. It was one of the bridges shut down by the government and had an anti-vehicle barricade at the north end. But it was easily accessible by pedestrians, especially coming from the downtown side. At first the authorities tried to stop people, but they eventually just looked the other way.

The bridge was high enough to ensure, if not death, at least unconsciousness upon impact that would allow the jumper to drown without agony. I thought about doing it from time to time. The most common thing now was a solitary person making the decision and planning his or her own death and bringing a friend or two down for moral support. Sometimes, whole families were rumored to jump hand-in-hand.

By the time I found out about the new “tradition,” someone had taken an acetylene torch and removed a section of heavy railing between two concrete supports near the middle of the span. Over a short period of time, the sidewalk in front of the jump area of the bridge had been lavishly painted and decorated. The railings were adorned with flower boxes and conical rose holders. On Sundays, carpets and ornamental chairs were arranged. On the very few rainy days, a small canopy was put over the jump site so the soon-to-be-departed could give their final words in dignity. People gathered as if they were seeing a loved one off at the gate of an international airport.

Observers gathered on the banks of the river on Sundays. At first they were quiet, but after a couple weeks they started hooting and hollering, goading people with chants of, “JUMP! JUMP!” They cheered when a body hit the water and booed when someone chickened out. They were soul-less animals.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Word came through government guys and then on the internet: the feds had located four more nuclear bombs on U.S. soil. One was a dud found in a semi in Pittsburgh. It had apparently gone through its detonation sequence but simply failed to explode. Another dud was found in a moving van on the outskirts of Houston. Two others were found, of all places, in a barn out in the country north of Defiance, Ohio. They appeared to have been abandoned, almost detonation-capable but not quite. Damned Kleinhoffer was right: There were more nukes scattered around the country. Finding them was good, I suppose. Maybe like finding half a worm in an apple you just took a bite out of.

By August, Minneapolis was quickly becoming a ghost town. What was left of the population was slipping away day-by-day, week-by-week. Men would often come slinking back into town to check out if it were safe to move the family back, only to find houses burned or ransacked.

Citizens and peacekeepers were killed nearly every day. Anything left of hope or relative happiness deflated out of the general community consciousness like air going out of a punctured tire. There wasn’t much in the way of good news coming from the central government and supporting oneself in any traditional way became ever more unrealistic. Opening or running a business of any sort was merely an invitation to get oneself robbed and killed.

And, of course, suicide was one more factor that thinned the herd. The government started cracking down on the bridge jumpers. Decaying bodies were hell to pull out of the river and created somewhat of a health crisis as well.

I spent several hours after work putting up posters and asking around about my wife; there were still no sign of or clues about Sarah. Frustrated again, I went home and tried to get some sleep. It was a horribly hot and oppressive evening. About ten o’clock, the power went out; no AC, no TV, no electric fan. I just lay on the bed and sweltered. Outside, the moon glowed red again. I could hear the distant whining of Humvee engines racing through the city streets and crickets chirping. Gunfire. A dog barking. There was no breeze. Just oppressive, oppressive heat and heavy air. I decided to assume one position and try not to move. I would just lie there and marinate in my own sweat and misery, waiting for some level of unconsciousness to wash over me. Maybe I could fall asleep and this hellish night would be over all the sooner.

I awoke with a start. I didn’t know if I had been asleep for three minutes or for three hours. I looked out the window, and the moon had moved through the sky—it was now hanging off the west side of the tree outside—and it was lightly glowing in a brownish-red hue. It was then that I noticed that the AC and fan were on, as was the TV, casting that eerie glow that a snowy television screen does in a dark room at night.

There was a man in a suit talking into the camera. I tried changing channels, but nothing else came in with any discernable clarity. I was awake now, so I settled back on the channel with the man in the suit.

He spoke: “God’s end-times prophecies are coming into clearer focus. It is important that this major subject of the book of Revelation is not ignored or misunderstood. The world power, which precedes the kingdom of the Antichrist, is painfully obvious. America is the New Babylon.”

I felt alone, like I was the only other person on the planet, and the man on the TV was speaking directly to me. I was feeling that middle-of-the-night feeling of anxiety and sharpened sensibilities.

He continued. “The Bible tells of a sign on the hand: That the day when a mandatory sign on the right hand would be a sign of the end. Many have speculated if we were destined to bar code our hands or implanted chips. But the answer is clear: The sign has always been there. It’s our fingertips, or more specifically, our fingerprints.

“Governments started using fingerprints as crime-solving tools at first, and it evolved into a method of cataloguing citizens. Cashing a check at the bank? Surrender your personal sign, your right thumbprint. Applying for a driver’s license? Surrender your right thumbprint. Get charged with a crime by the government? Surrender all of your fingerprints. The point, my friends, is that the sign prophesized in the Bible has always been with us; it’s only modern technology that allowed us to realize its existence. The Bible is time-locked, its mysteries revealed as man gains knowledge. Now I’d like to talk about references to modern America in the bible.

“The scriptures that mention Mystery Babylon by name are Revelation 17 and 18. As a man of God, I believe that all of biblical prophecy is God-given and one hundred percent correct. I believe we can safely apply the Old Testament prophecies that were directed at Babylon and remain unfulfilled to the Babylon of the end-times, that is, “Mystery Babylon,” and these prophecies combine to give us a very clear description of that great power.

“The new Babylon would be a major port city, as well as the greatest and wealthiest city, and it would be a city of Jewish exiles. New York City was undoubtedly the most important port city in the world, as well as the wealthiest: Half of the world’s capital was located in New York City. This means that half of the world’s money was in New York. The money of the IMF and the World Bank was located here, as well as the New York Stock Exchange, and many other international banks. Regardless of the truth of this statement, there was not another city in the world that could come close to equaling New York in wealth, and in total wealth the USA was by far the richest nation on earth.

“What may not be known is that when a ship approaches the New York City harbor from the south, in order to properly conform with the shipping lanes, it must aim due north, straight for a municipality on Long Island named Babylon. A tall water tower on the shoreline is used as a reference point for navigation, and when a ship reaches closest to shore before turning west to enter the harbor, the name Babylon, written on the tower in big bold letters, can be easily read.

“The community of Babylon was a predominantly Jewish community of over 250,000. Babylon was so named by early Jewish immigrants because of their study of the scriptures and their belief that Ancient Babylon would be relocated west of the Nile. It was the only inhabited and functioning community in the world that is known as Babylon. There were more Jews living in New York City than in any other city on earth, and there were more Jews living in America than in Israel and Russia combined. Clearly America is the home of Jewish exiles.

“Mystery Babylon is represented by a woman, we read in Revelation 17:1, ‘…I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters…the waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.’
“Let me show you how America in general, and New York City in particular, fit the biblical descriptions of Mystery Babylon: The New Babylon is represented by a woman: America’s most famous landmark is the Statue of Liberty. Studies make a solid case that our Statue of Liberty is in fact a reproduction of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Ishtar was at the top of the Babylonian pantheon of gods, and like the ‘progressives’ and ‘open-minded’ thinkers of the modern West, her cult promoted the notion of personal freedom and liberty to pursue a wild, hedonistic sexual lifestyle of immense promiscuity: ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Central to her cult was the practice of prostitution for religious purposes, thus the scripture of Revelation 17:5, ‘…The Mother of Prostitutes….’

“America’s most profitable export is sexually and violence-charged entertainment. We had young female pop stars, idolized by even younger girls, who dressed and acted like prostitutes-in-training. Pornography was a multi-billion dollar industry. There are several scriptures that point out the immorality of Babylon, especially the sin of adultery, which is celebrated and promoted all over the world through our unparalleled entertainment industry. California, ergo America, was the worldwide capitol of porn production.

“The ‘Mother of Prostitutes’ of Revelation 17-18 is a literal representation of the ancient Babylonian goddess Ishtar, whose cult demanded prostitution as a form of religious service. In former times she was known as Inanna to the Sumerian civilization, and later she was worshiped as Venus and Libertas by the Romans. At one time, Liberty was worshiped at a temple that was dedicated to her on Aventine Hill in Rome, and coins were even minted with inscriptions of her image and her name.
“The Statue of Liberty was conceived of, funded by, and created by men who were intimately involved in the occult organization known as the Freemasons. Edouard Laboulaye was the chief fundraiser, and Frederic August Bartholdi was the head sculptor. These men, and the Freemasons in general, idealize the pagan gods and goddesses of ancient Rome and Greece. It is a well-known fact that Bartholdi intended the Statue of Liberty to be a representation of the Roman goddess Liberty, also known as Inanna and Ishtar. The likenesses between the two are eerie.

“On October 28th, 1886, President Grover Cleveland accepted the Statue of Liberty on behalf of the United States. In the ceremony, which celebrated the unveiling of this ancient pagan deity, he spoke these words, ‘We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.’

“Follow me, my friends, as I outline my beliefs, and I hope that they will become clear to you. Descriptions claim that Mystery Babylon is the lone Global Superpower. We read in Revelation 17:15, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages.” And in Revelation 17:18, “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” Revelation 18:7, “In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’

“America in the global superpower in three ways; economically, militarily, and politically. First, is there any doubt that America was the Economic Superpower of the planet? We repeatedly see biblical references to the ‘merchants of the earth’ and the ‘the world’s great men’. In a 21st Century context, when we spoke of the ‘merchants of the earth’, we could only have been speaking of Global Corporations and their officers. It was the corporations that had all the money, and New York City was the engine that ran the economy of the world, and it was the home of the majority of the world’s wealthiest corporations. New York was the home of the World Trade Center and was also the home of the New York Stock Exchange, where corporations reaped their unscrupulous wealth.

“With the demise of Social Security, the common people of America, the bewildered herd, were tricked into gambling their future on the well-being of these global concerns as well, through 401k Plans, stocks, and mutual funds. Hyper-inflated stock and company values and book cooking in the billions of dollars dealt crippling blows to the American—Babylonian—economy. And when it crashed, it was not the banks or the mega-corporations that suffered or the orchestrators of “self-made” wealth—they insured that they would win either way—it was the bewildered herd. Driven by greed or envy, people placed their trust in the false idol of speculative economics and betrayed their families in the process.

“Retirees, committed employees who gave their adult lives to false gods—the companies they worked for and the promise of economic security—were left with little or nothing. Or it was the young family man who trustingly placed his faith and his money in the hands of corporations. These were predicted.

“In Revelation 18 we read, ‘…and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries…’ and, ‘The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more.’ And a bit later we read, ‘Your merchants were the world’s great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.’

“Secondly, it is undisputed that America was the dominant military superpower. There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that, even now, America possesses the world’s most powerful military. The question then is, has America used it in an oppressive and relentlessly aggressive manner that is described of Babylon in the scriptures?

“Jeremiah 50:23, ‘How broken and shattered is the hammer of the whole earth!’ and, ‘You are my war club, my weapon for battle—with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms,’ and Isaiah 14:4-6, ‘…How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended! The Lord has broken the rod of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers, which in anger struck down peoples with unceasing blows, and in fury subdued nations with relentless aggression.’

“Of course, being the engine to the world’s economy and possessing the world’s most powerful military guarantees that America is a political superpower as well. However, the scriptures are pointing to something else that Mystery Babylon possesses. Jeremiah 51:44 mentions that at one time, before its demise, the nations of the world streamed to Babylon. Revelation 17:18 tells us that the city of Babylon rules over the kings of the earth. In Revelation 18:9-10 we see the kings of the earth declaring that Babylon was the “city of power.”

“New York City fulfills these scriptures by being the home to the governing body of the Planet Earth: The United Nations. This fact alone makes it the most important city on the planet. It is from here that deals are made, boundaries are drawn, and lives are bought and sold as read in Revelations. It appears that after the sudden and catastrophic destruction of the city of Mystery Babylon that the Antichrist and his forces attack the remainder of this once-great power.

“This is recorded in Revelation 17:16-18, ‘The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until God’s words are fulfilled.’ And then goes on to say, ‘The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” Revelation 18:9-10, “When the kings of the earth … see the smoke of her burning…they will stand far off and cry: ‘Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!’

“And on April First, this prophecy came true. The new Babylon would be home to a large population of Jewish Exiles. Jeremiah 51:45, ‘Come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the Lord.’

“The above descriptions are just a few of the many biblical indicators that, I believe, point unequivocally and obviously to America as the great power known as Mystery Babylon, and New York City as the specific city destined to fall in Revelation 18.

“After examining the conspicuous lack of pronouncements on the cultural evils of the West, such as Hollywood, pornography, drugs, or homosexuality, we may conclude that the Jihad on the United States is intended as a political war, not ideological. And they may actually have been unwittingly playing out prophecies predicted in the Bible. My friends—”

The TV screen went black, and the electricity in the house went back out, leaving only the sound of chirping crickets from outside. Quite some time had gone by while I listened to the man on the TV.

It’s always lonely in the middle of the night, and people tend to be a little more receptive to new ideas in the wee hours of the morning. That’s why infomercials used to play all night long. The scary thing was that the TV came on and no other channels would come in. It was as though the man came to speak to me and me alone. I lay there sweating and thinking; I was never a big Christian sort of person, but that bible stuff always scared me.

I was sitting in the Kaiserhof. My crew leader had cut us loose around 3:30 due to the heat. As if life wasn’t unbearable enough, that August was sweltering. Temperatures were in the upper nineties, and the humidity was tropical. The bar’s central air conditioning system had permanently failed in early July, but the joint was kept relatively cool with the use of two window air conditioner units. The structure’s thick stone walls and stained glass windows did a fairly good job of keeping solar radiation heat out. The Kaiserhof became my home-away-from-home, and I treasured my times sitting there, sipping pilsner and chatting with members of the exclusive club that frequented the place.

The drunker people got, the more they loved to tell funny stories of things that had happened to them in the past—high school football stories, Navy shore leave stories, buddy road-trip stories, relationship stories…. People would get lost in their own words as they recounted joys from the past, and then delirious smiles would melt away from their faces as they came back to real life and remembered where they were. You could count on it. It was sad.

I stepped out of the bar a few hours later and immediately almost tripped over the dead body of a white male who looked to be thirty-ish. He was gripping his gut, and his face was frozen in agony. How he died, I don’t know. Maybe he was shot or stabbed a block away and almost made it to the bar in a vain search for life-saving assistance. He wasn’t stinking yet, so I assumed he had died very recently. I thought about going back inside to tell someone, but instead, I simply stepped over him and kept walking, sure that somebody else would call the Dead Body Hotline. I marvelled, but only lightly, at how such a thing, which would have been an extraordinary event in my pre-April Attack life, could now be so mundan. Life had become surreal.

I had been checking the email at every possible convenience for correspondence from Sarah. Nothing.  I continued handing out Missing posters as I cruised the streets in the evenings, optimistic and hopeful that we’d serendipitously cross paths out on the street.

I had pictured it already: We would scream ourselves into delirium and nearly hug the life out of each other. Tears of joy would stream down our faces. Then she’d tell me that she’d been hiding out with friends and didn’t have access to communication. I’d tell her how I survived the riots that horrible day and that our house was okay. Our faces would hurt from the beaming smiles that we couldn’t control and wouldn’t want to anyway. Then we’d go home.

I’d draw her a bath and cook her the best meal I’d ever cooked in my whole life. She would repose in the tub with a glass of red and we’d talk the whole time as I sautéed veggies in the kitchen around the corner. We would eat and drink wine and talk and laugh. I would tell her how much I truly loved her, how much she meant to me, how sad I was when I thought that she was gone forever. Then we’d hold each other for about three days straight. Everything would be right again, yes.…

But I never saw her out on the street.

Of the dozens of times that I had called Sarah’s mother, she had answered only three or four times, never with any positive news to relay. She was a useless ally in my quest for Sarah. Gary Matherly hadn’t heard anything, either. I had exhausted every avenue I could think of, and I was going crazy. I was starting to feel like a rabid dog.

I was walking down the street early one evening. Someone was walking behind me. That made me a little nervous, but I had my Baretta tucked in the back of my jeans, out of sight under the tail of my untucked shirt. The guy behind me was dragging his feet on the sidewalk, making an obnoxious scraping sound with his stupid shoes. He was also slurping a can of cheap soda. I stopped and stood off to the side so he could pass. He was tall, scruffy, and wearing a dirty T-shirt. He sneered at me as he went by, his feet still dragging across the sidewalk. How much goddam effort does it take to lift your feet when you’re walking? I didn’t know him, but I hated the guy.

I let him get ten feet ahead and then started walking again, trying my best to ignore him. He finished his can of soda and let out a loud, sickening belch. Then he carelessly flipped the can end-over-end off to the side of the sidewalk. Then the fucker stopped to light up a cigarette.

My eyes widened. I couldn’t take any more. “Pick up that can,” I said as I strode up even with him, keeping about an eight-foot gap between us in case he lunged.

He looked me up and down. “Fuck you, motherfucker.” He kept walking.

I looked over at the can that he had just discarded. These were my streets; I drove them, I cleaned them, I worked on them…only to have this useless piece of shit throw his soda can off to the side so I could pick up after him next week? I strode after him.

“Hey, asshole,” I called.

He turned around with anger and hatred in his eyes. I didn’t even wait for a response. I pulled my 9mm out, assumed a two-handed firing position and cocked the hammer.

“Get your fucking hands up, cocksucker,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

His hands went up, his eyes went wide and the cigarette tumbled out of the corner of his mouth. He started trembling.

“I try to keep this fucking town running, and you throw a soda can on the sidewalk? In my town?”

“I-I-I—” he stammered.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

He jumped, and his hands went a little bit higher.

“You’re gonna pick up that fucking can now, aren’t ya?”

“Y-y-yes, sir,” he stammered.

“Move.”

He carefully walked back to his discarded soda can and picked it up. He did his best to keep his hands up and visible the whole time.

“Now pick up that damn cigarette and put it in the can.” My weapon remained trained on him. My eyes burned wild with hatred.

“But … that’s my last ciga—“

“SMOKING’S BAD FOR YOU! PUT IT IN THERE!”

I felt my finger putting pressure on the trigger. I wouldn’t have been surprised, or disappointed, if the 9mm discharged. He walked over to the smoldering cigarette and put it in the soda can. I heard it hiss out.

“Into the alley,” I said.

He turned like a man going to the gallows. I followed him around the corner and into the alley. He looked at me, and I jerked my weapon toward an already-packed dumpster.

“Cram it in there,” I ordered.

He jammed the can in and slowly turned around. His eyes were wide with fear, and his hands were trembling.

“Today’s your lucky day, asshole. Pick a number between one and ten.”

“Wha—”

“Pick a fucking number,” I said with evil coolness. “If I have to repeat myself, I’ll shoot ya and stick ya behind this dumpster.” I kept my two-handed grip aimed at center-of-mass.

“S-s-seven,” he stammered.

“When I tell you, you got seven seconds to be out of my sight. If I can still see you when I get to ‘seven’, I’m going to kill you. Understand?”

“Y-y-y-es.”

“Go!”

He took off without hesitation at a fast sprint and disappeared around the corner. I started counting out loud; “ONE … TWO … THREE …”

I suppose if he had picked ‘one’ or ‘two’ as his number, I would have had to shoot him right then and there in that alley. A man’s gotta make good on his threats. Right?

I fucking hate litterbugs.

Fred Zampoli had given me rudimentary instruction on zeroing and firing the M-16 on the makeshift shooting range back at the compound, back about the middle of June, a couple of weeks before the riots. He started me out by having me shoot while resting the weapon on sandbags. “What if I’m in the field and have no sandbags handy?” I sarcastically queried. He explained that we had to ‘zero’ the weapon; I had to learn how to acquire the same sight picture each and every time I put a bead on a target.

He told me to squeeze, not pull the trigger. He showed me how to correct for windage. The rear sight of the M-16 had a tiny little wheel that clicked over micrometers at a time, and with great difficulty so that a shooter couldn’t accidentally throw his own weapon off sight. The front sight post clicked up and down, also in microscopic increments. After about three blocks of instruction, I got to be pretty good. Shooting the weapon was pretty easy, once you got the hang of it. Then Freddy gave me that M-16 right after the riots, and now I had a rifle for myself.

I was frustrated and angry. My emotions were on a hair trigger. I had almost killed a guy for throwing a can on the sidewalk…and I liked the feeling. I had no idea where Sarah could have gone to, and that’s a feeling I didn’t like. I got in my car and started driving north, toward Columbia Heights—toward Erik Johnson’s house.

Since falling in love with Sarah, I’d not revisited my plans of committing the first-degree murder of Erik Johnson. But now the plans were back. I don’t know why, I guess it was just at least something under my control. Telling myself that the murder of Johnson was a positive entry in the cosmic ledger books placated me. As long as I couldn’t find Sarah, my worse angels were telling me, I might as well take care of some other business.

My car turned onto his street after about a twelve-minute drive up Central Avenue and over a couple blocks. The road veered of to the east by about 25 degrees on the north end of his street, to account for the curve of the railroad tracks about a block over. It was perfect. By parking right at that bend, I had a clear line-of-sight down and across the street to his yard and even his front door. It would be about a 75-yard shot, I guessed. It was getting to be dusk, and I could see the mild glow of a light on in the house. He was still in town, apparently. All I would have to do is to get him outside somehow and then take the shot.

But how to get him outside?

I had it. I remembered a little trick from high school. If one pours the contents of a bottle of Drano into an empty plastic two-liter bottle, like the ones that soda pop comes in, and then tosses in about twenty little balls of rolled-up tin foil and screws the cap down tight, it will cause quite an explosion. The chemical reaction causes gases to form and expand. The bottle itself will become huge and almost perfectly round until the plastic can’t hold anymore, and then…BOOM! The process would take about ten minutes, and the loudness of the explosion is far more impressive than the potential damage it can cause. But it would be more than enough to get someone’s attention…say, that of a homeowner.

I looked up and down the street and saw two more house lights on farther beyond Johnson’s house. Down by the bend where I would park, I saw nothing. The houses looked abandoned. But there were overhead streetlights, one on the corner and one directly over my shooting spot. I would have to take care of them. I drove home for the night.

I knew that I had a .177 caliber pellet gun that was kicking around somewhere in one of the boxes of stuff I’d brought from the apartment over to the house. I found it and a box of blunt-end pellets. I drove back to Johnson’s street at about the same time the next night and backed up into the driveway of an apparently abandoned house. From that vantage point I could hit both streetlights.

I pumped the pellet gun’s handle its requisite ten pumps and loaded a pellet. I discreetly looked around and took aim out of the driver’s side window at the corner light first. There was no sound but crickets just starting to chirp. I gently squeezed the trigger. POP! I thought the light might shatter and cause noise, but it didn’t. Apparently the projectile had penetrated the thick, outer glass shell of the unit and found its mark – the light went out, quietly and immediately, with a minimum of sound. I looked around and stayed still for at least a full minute. Nothing.

I reloaded and re-pumped the weapon and slid over to the passenger side window. I took aim at the other light and squeezed the trigger. This time there was a loud clang and the sound of some glass breaking—and the damn light didn’t go out. The glass shell came loose and swung down like a pendulum, squeaking back and forth. Dammit! I reloaded as quickly as I could and re-aimed. POP! I hit the bulb directly this time, and it popped and shattered, raining little glass shards down upon the street. It was a little noisy, but I had knocked out both lights. I slid back over to the driver’s side, looked around and started the car. As best I could tell, no one had noticed my nefarious activities. I drove home and watched TV for a couple of hours and then went to bed.

My car was parked on Johnson’s street for the third night in a row, same time, same place: at the bend in the street. This time it was dark. I was wearing my regular work boots and jeans, but I had on a black windbreaker. I didn’t want to look too para-militaristic and raise suspicion in case the police or the Guard stopped me.

I backed my car into the driveway one house closer to Johnson’s from the night before. I thought about parking in the street and shooting from the back seat, resting the weapon on the driver’s seat and out the driver’s window at an angle. But I thought it would be better to be sitting in the driver’s seat so I could kill him and then get the hell out of the area as quickly as possible. From the driveway vantage point, I could comfortably rest the weapon out the passenger window, fire off a shot, and then get out of the neighborhood fast.

Reaching into a gym bag, I pulled out an empty plastic jug, a bottle of Drano, and a baggie filled with tin foil balls that I’d rolled that afternoon. Down the street, light glowed from Johnson’s house. I poured the Drano into the jug and then got out of the car. Once again most of the street was dark. There were no lights or signs of inhabitation between my car and the little bastard’s house.

I crossed the street and scampered through the front yards of houses finally reaching the shrubbery at the edge of my target house. I could ever so faintly hear the sound of a television or stereo coming from inside, and his car was in the driveway. He was surely home.

I took a large handful of tinfoil balls, poured them into the jug, and then screwed the cap down as tightly as I could. I sneaked over to the shrubs under the living room window and gently placed the bomb on top of one of the bushes. It wasn’t that heavy, so the shrub cradled the plastic bottle like an egg in a bird’s nest. I ran back through the darkened yards bent over at the waist like an infantryman running through a battlefield. I was breathing heavily by the time I got back in my car. I was nervous. I could almost hear my own heart beating.

If memory served correctly, it would take about ten minutes for the Drano bomb to reach critical pressure and burst. I picked up the M-16 from the floor of the back seat. I had a twenty-round clip locked-and-loaded with ten rounds, safety on. I looked at the dashboard clock—it was 9:48 p.m. It would take about eight more minutes, I figured. My stomach tightened as I raised the weapon up to shooting position with my thumb on the safety. I had watched Scheerer shoot and kill a man, and it didn’t look too hard. I can do this, I thought to myself.

9:52 p.m.
I felt the urgent need to piss, but there was no way I could step out of the car now. I had to be ready to shoot seconds after the explosion. With my luck, the Drano bomb would explode while I was in mid-pee and my plans would be ruined.

9:55 p.m.
Nothing.

9:56 p.m.
The only change was that I had to piss even worse.

10:02 p.m.
Still waiting. What in the hell? I had been looking down the sights of the M-16 for fourteen minutes now. Did I do something wrong? Was there a crack in the plastic bottle that I didn’t see? Why wasn’t there an—

BOOOOM!!!!

Even though I was expecting the blast, I still jumped. The decibel level of the Drano bomb was unbelievably loud. It hurt my ears, and I was a good distance down the street. The front window of Johnson’s house shattered, and I saw the curtains puff inward from the concussion. I clicked the M-16’s safety to ‘fire’ and took up position.

C’mon out, you bastard …

There was no movement from Johnson’s house, but three other house lights came on, two of them between the target and me. Damn it. I heard a voice from the darkness, then another one. Neighbors were slowly poking their heads out of doors, wondering what had just happened and timidly venturing out into the yards. I dared not take my sights off of Johnson’s front door.

Finally, I saw his curtains move. The front light came on next to the door. This was it—he would be in my sight-picture in seconds. Another exterior house light came on, this time just two houses away from me on my side of the street. Shit!

Somebody wandered into Johnson’s front yard—a neighbor—and then another. Finally, Johnson came out and stood on his front stoop to inspect the damage, pistol in hand. I took a breath and took aim. He was right there, right in my sights. His life was mine for the taking.

But now porch and house lights illuminated the street far more than I had planned, and there were potential witnesses, also unplanned. Center-of-mass in sight picture. I could hear the din of people talking but couldn’t actually make out what anybody was saying. Breathe in. It was now or never. Breathe out, slowly… Johnson was an easy stationary target. Squeeze, don’t pull. I felt the resistance of the trigger against my finger…

And then backed off.

Surely, someone would see the muzzle-flash coming out of my car if I fired. They’d all hear the direction the shot came from and would get an accurate description of the vehicle and maybe a partial license plate number. An oversight; why didn’t I drive someone else’s car and duct tape other license plates over the car’s own? Abandoned vehicles were all around; it would have been no problem to procure plates.

Situations in life-equations are composed of variables and constants: In planning an operation of any sort, the goal is to remove as many of the variables as possible and work with the purest set of constants attainable. I thought that I had planned my little operation out to the last detail but I wasn’t even close. Nowhere near close.

Bloody hell.

I clicked the weapon to ‘safe’, put it in the backseat, started the car, and departed at a low-rate of speed with the lights off, not wanting to attract attention. I don’t know if any of the bystanders took notice of my car or not. Once I was about four blocks away I pulled over in the middle of a darkened residential block and took a much-needed piss. When finished, I got back in my car and continued on home. My opportunity had come and gone, and there would be no more attempts.

I felt a sense of guilt, but not about planning to kill Erik Johnson. In fact, the only thing that I felt guilty about was not feeling guilty. I came within a second of being a cold-blooded killer and didn’t think twice about it. Oh, well.

The best laid plans of mice and men.

Hitting Atlanta was a brilliant stroke by al Qaeda; those guys were not stupid. Not only was it home to CNN, one of the most-watched news channels around the world—ergo, information dispersal venue—but it was also home to the CDC, the United States Centers for Disease Control. In fact, Ground Zero for the Atlanta nuke was in Druid Hills, roughly equidistant between CNN Center and the CDC, almost as if trying to assure that both would be rendered useless…and they were.

I used to see T-shirts with pictures of giant cartoon mosquitoes on the chest with “Minnesota State Bird” captioned underneath. While known for its cold winter months, the Minnesota climate is also capable of reaching tropical conditions during the summer months, a perfect breeding and living climate for mosquitoes.

It was humid and damp that summer, but it rarely rained—a truly odd combination. It was as though God had decided to make life just as miserable as possible in all ways, big and small. As result of The Attack, government resources were stretched so thin that duties like mosquito control, a lower-level governmental function, had fallen by the wayside. Mosquitoes were, after all, just a minor pest that would be a nuisance as you tried to sit on your deck and enjoy a summer’s sunset. At least up until The Attack.

With the continuing emergence of West Nile Virus and the maladies it brought with it, the pests had become the mice that roared. West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease, was never reported in the Western hemisphere before the late 1990s. By 2005, cases were fairly common even as the CDC was making great strides in controlling the disease. Birds are the natural hosts for this virus, which can be transmitted from infected birds to humans and other animals through mosquitoes. The disease could be transmitted through blood transfusions, mothers’ breast milk, organ transplants…it was a villain.

The rainy and damp spring followed by a sultry, hot summer aided the breeding of the mosquito species culex pipiens, which plays a major role in spreading West Nile. Lack of significant rain wiped out darning needles (dragonflies) and amphibians, which destroy mosquitoes and are their natural enemies. A lack of water also aided the spread of infection by drawing thirsty birds to the few pools and puddles, where mosquitoes bred. The hot weather itself played a role, too. Warmth increases the rate at which pathogens mature inside mosquitoes. I’m not an expert in the field or anything, I learned all this from another class given to us by one of the feds from the CDC.

With a disease like West Nile Virus, the risk of severe disease is usually higher for persons fifty years and older. We took a lot of garlic pills as a personal anti-pest measure and used a lot of Deet. The local government made some common-sense changes, too. Folks were allowed to burn trash and yard waste in the city, something that had been outlawed by county ordinance back in the seventies. The smoky haze would be a good pest deterrent. Someone even came up with the idea of breeding bats in the city. A bat can eat 600 mosquitoes in one hour—an efficient ally. Lord knows, there were enough empty buildings where bat shelters could be constructed.

The good news was that there was no evidence to suggest that West Nile virus could be spread from person to person or from animal to person unless there was a direct exchange of bodily fluids. Most people who become infected with West Nile Virus will have either no symptoms or very mild ones. But battling mosquitoes became an increasingly serious affair because, on rare occasions, West Nile infection could result in a severe and sometimes fatal illness known as West Nile encephalitis—an inflammation of the brain.

Ken Leland was bitten by an infected mosquito and contracted encephalitis, despite the fact that he was a healthy and robust thirty-four years old. My friend, my buddy, the guy with whom I survived the Fourth of July riots, the Best Man at my wedding fell sick. Ken’s nightmare with the illness happened very quickly.

Three days prior to his diagnosis, he began running a high temp. Thinking it was just a fever, he just took Tylenol. That night he continued to get worse. By the next morning, he was hardly able to walk without running into every wall. We went to the doctor, and he was admitted to the Hennepin County Medical Center for possible brain damage because his eyes were going from side to side real fast, something called a nystagmus. A spinal tap was done, and he was told he had meningitis. His temperature hit a high of 105.6 later that day. He suffered a seizure and spent six days in ICU with an ice water blanket on him. He was disoriented for a few days and didn’t know where he was. He had three more seizures in those first days.

Encephalitis is colloquially called the “Sleeping Disease.” Infected people are very tired and sleepy all of the time and lose mental sharpness. Ken was very tired and couldn’t remember things very well when he was conscious. One day he curled up into a little ball and started crying, and the nurses called the doctor.

The next day, he quit breathing and was put on a ventilator. He was put into an induced coma with some kind of medication and was left on it for a couple of days. When he was taken off that medication, he went into a coma on his own. At this point the doctors said his chances of survival were very slim. If he lived, he would have to endure a lovely drug called Dilantin, as well as Klonopin and Diazepam. But the Klonopin was the wildcard; it would throw his mood swings all over, the doctor warned us. If he lived.

A week passed by with no improvements, so they decided to go ahead with a brain biopsy. A week after the biopsy, he came out of the coma. He was unable to move any part of his body. He lingered for a few days, suffered several more violent grand mal seizures and then passed away. In less than three weeks after the first time he noticed a fever, Ken Leland was dead. The man survived thousands of insane rioters and hooligans, only to be felled by a common mosquito.

I wrote a nice letter to his children.

The Kaiserhof remained the place where I could relax and lose myself in my thoughts. Having gone virtually unscathed during the riots, it maintained its allure as a safe haven. The place never seemed to run out of beer or edibles. I don’t know how they did it, but it was a mystery I was thankful for.

There was a little oddity about the place that I haven’t mentioned yet. There was a strange, bullet-ridden art piece on one of the bar walls over between the restrooms. It was a huge five-foot by six-foot photograph shot by a famed photographer named Richard Avedon. He was famous for trying to capture the inner truth of his subjects so he often surreptitiously shot them before they were ready for the shoot to officially begin.

This particular piece was called “The Daughters of the Generals of the American Revolution.” It showed a group of matronly older women pouting and preening and thrusting their multiple chins about. It was a B&W print that was originally shot in 1964. While on sabbatical at the nearby art institute in 1970, the artist often stopped in the Kaiserhof to wet his whistle, and he fell in love with the place. He gifted the portrait to the bar before he left town. But that’s only part of the story.

Now fast-forward to October 17, 1985. It’s about five minutes after one in the afternoon. Tables are toppled, drinks are spilled, and patrons are trying to dig holes in the wooden floor with the buttons on their shirts. A whacked-out thirty-eight-year-old Vietnam vet named Robby Gerbach has just popped off a couple of rounds from a .357. There are two smoldering holes in the portrait: One a head shot and the other right in the heart. Two of the subjects in the picture received mortal wounds. The bartender was frozen in place thinking that, surely, this was his last day on planet earth.

Robby turns to him, barrel still smoking, and screams, “I CAN’T STAND THEM! I HAD TO SHOOT THEM! YOU UNDERSTAND, DON’T YOU?” Robby re-holsters the weapon and walks out. He even holds the door open for a couple of older folks walking in for lunch. He reportedly walks directly to the nearest police station and turns himself in. They upped his dosage and sent him to the county pokey for a stint and that’s the last anyone saw of him.
The artist Avedon himself got wind of the story and thought the whole yarn was pretty cool. He was appreciative that his work could evoke such a response. So with his blessing, the bar let the piece hang, bullet-holes and all. The Kaiserhof was exactly the kind of place you could fall in love with. It was an odd combination: the peaceful venue and its violence-related art centerpiece.

I was able to get a hold of a roll of concertina. With Jack’s blessing, Brian and I strung it up along the top of the iron fence out in the garden of the Kaiserhof. We took our time and did a nice job, making sure that it was nice and even and symmetrical. We had to wear thick metal and canvas gloves that went almost all the way up to the elbow. We still got nicked up a little bit, handling the wire. Once the razor wire was in place, we took a roll of thick .042 safety wire and secured it to the fence with little pigtail knots about every three feet. I was glad to have a constructive little project to do to take my mind off things, if only for a little bit. It looked real nice, too.

I was downhearted most of the time. I still had heard no word from Sarah. Certainly by now she could have emailed and told me where she was, where she had fled to. I could tell her that she could come back if only she would reach out and contact me. I even summoned the courage to call the Dead Body Hotline. They hadn’t registered anyone under the name of Sarah Pennington or Sarah Burnette.

Between the death and destruction that I’d witnessed recently, the ongoing strain of post-nuclear holocaust life, and Sarah disappearing, I could feel my soul oozing out of my body. I was becoming an empty shell, robotically going through the motions of my life, lacking any sense of humor or frivolity.

I showed up at work early the next day and dug out the number that I’d copied down from Sarah’s caller ID, got onto the internet, and went to a criss-cross directory. I entered the number and waited. It took only a few seconds for the entry to come back: Katherine Greene-Pennington. Not only did the search engine give the exact address in Minnetonka, there was an option icon called print map that spit out a precise pictorial road-guide to the front door of the house.

I had called the number several times over the previous days and never gotten an answer, but the phone didn’t appear to have been disconnected. I decided to drive out to the house right after work. I had to go through several check-points, but things went smoothly when I explained that I was with the county and that I’d be coming back the other way pretty soon.

The map was good. After getting off of the main highway, I had to snake around a two-lane county highway for a few miles and then get off that road and drive through some spendy-looking estates. Finally, I parked in front of a gated property that looked as if it might be abandoned. I got out of my car and went to the callbox. I was surprised when the buzzer actually worked and even more so when a voice answered through the intercom.

“Who are you? What do you want?” an older woman’s voice crackled out of the speaker.

“Is this the home of Katherine Pennington?”

“None of your business,” came back an angry response. “Go away or I’ll call the police. Somebody will come and shoot you.”

“Ms. Pennington, my name is Dallas Burnette. I’m a county deputy. I’m here about Sarah. Sarah Pennington?”

“What about Sarah?”

“Is she your daughter? I’m a friend.” There was no response for several seconds. “Hello?”

The woman responded after another several seconds. “Are you alone?”

“All alone, ma’am,” I responded. The gate buzzed and unlocked. I stepped inside the grounds and closed the door securely behind me. It was about a fifty-yard walk up the drive to the front of the house. There was a slender woman looking to be in her mid-fifties with bleached hair and dark roots standing on the elegant stone steps when I reached the house.

“Good day,” I said with my county ID already at the ready. She looked at it and seemed to approve its authenticity. I held out my hand.

“Katherine Greene,” she said as she limply shook my hand. “I dropped the Pennington. Would you care to step inside, Mr. Burnette?” Her speech was ever so slightly slurred as though she’d been drinking. She led me to a tastefully appointed solarium at the side of the house and motioned for me to sit. There was a mostly empty bottle of wine and a wineglass stained with lipstick sitting on the table next to her.

“You’re with the county?” she asked tersely.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’re here about Sarah?”

“Yes,” I said. She breathed in and exhaled heavily with her hands lying flatly upon the tops of her thighs. She looked to the ceiling and I saw her eyes get even glazier yet.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?” I said slightly confused.

“You’re here to tell me that my daughter has been killed, aren’t you?” The words alone made my heart beat faster.

“Oh, no, not at all, ma’am. I’m…I’m Sarah’s husband.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “You’re that fellow.”

Yeah, you would’ve known that if you showed up her your own daughter’s wedding. “Yes, that’s me. I’m here because I can’t find Sarah.”

“God, I thought you came here to tell me that my little baby had gotten killed in the city.” She exhaled audibly with her hand over her chest.

“No, no. The problem is that I just can’t find her,” I repeated.

“Could I get you something to drink?” she said standing up, still a bit shaken. “I have almost everything.”

“A Sprite if you’ve got one.”

I heard the sound of a refrigerator opening and closing. She came back with another near-empty wine bottle in one hand and handed me the Sprite.

“You don’t mind if I have a drink?” she said as she sat back down and poured the remainder of the wine bottle into her glass.

“No, ma’am,” I responded.

“And stop calling me ‘ma’am’. call me Katherine.”

“Okay.” She looked as though she might have been a pretty woman when she was younger, but now her face was defined by harsh, thin lips and lines in the face that I surmised were borne more of hostility than age.

“So, what’s the story with Sarah?” she said as she leaned back and crossed her legs.

“Well, Katherine, as you might know, there was quite a riot in Minneapolis on the Fourth of July.”

“Yes,” she answered, “I know. I was afraid of something like that. I told that girl a thousand times to come live out here with me but, nooo…she has a stubborn head like her father.”

“Well, I’ve tried calling you, but the phone just rings and rings,” I explained.

“I turned off the ringer and the answering machine. There’s not too many people I want to talk to,” she said with a gulp of her wine. “Me and Sarah’s father don’t get along at all. I can’t say that Sarah and I have the best mother/daughter relationship in the world. Then her father went and bought her that awful house in the city. Sarah isn’t happy about my drinking or the way things ended with Donald and me.”

“Uh-huh. Do you have any idea where Sarah would have gone?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track. “We were very close and it just wouldn’t be like her to disappear and not tell me where she went.”

“Off with her father maybe.”

“I thought about that, but it doesn’t fit. She wouldn’t just leave the city without telling me. She certainly wouldn’t just up and leave and drive all the way to Texas.”

“Are her purse and keys gone?”

“Well, yes, but there aren’t any spare clothes or jackets gone.”

“I saw on the news that people fled the city during the riot. Maybe you weren’t as close as you thought, and she ran off with another fellow,” she offered with a slurp of her wine.

You mean old drunk rich-bitch….  “I don’t think so, Katherine. Trust me, she just disappeared.”

“People do that,” she said, suddenly seeming ambivalent about her own daughter’s fate. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Well, for starters maybe you could turn your phone back on. She might call here—she could be calling right now, for all we know.”

“I can do that. What else?”

“I have your number. Here’s mine,” I handed her a card with my name and the main office number at the Gulag. “I also spend some time at Sarah’s house; you can try there at night. But call me anytime of day or night if you see or hear from her.”

“Will do,” she nodded and carelessly put the card on the table next to her. “You know, I don’t get too many visitors. Would you care to sit a bit longer? Have something to drink? I have beer, wine, hard liquor.”

“No, no, I have to leave. I have things to do in the city yet.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, looking away as though I’d offended her.

I felt sorry for the woman in a way. She was, indeed, all alone and drinking herself silly as Sarah had told me the first night we met. But, then again, there was a harshness about her that made me understand why Sarah wasn’t close to her. I left and drove back into the city.

After the fourth of July, police and military interventions became more and more sporadic as their members fled, were killed, or in some isolated cases, joined or started their own survival groups. Gangs started to run more and more rampant and there was a fundamental moral breakdown in society. Rape, robbery, and murder continued their ominous, steady rise. Human culture and behavior regressed at an alarming pace.

Turns out that the peacekeepers in the Twin Cities restrained their reactions better than those in other cities: Guardsmen on Chicago’s Southside opened up on crowds with heavy machine-guns, killing hundreds of people. Same thing in Detroit. Hundreds and hundreds of people were killed by the government. Were the soldiers right? Were they wrong? To this day, I can’t answer that question, I wasn’t there. Trying to keep a lid on unrest was like using ten fingers to plug a rain barrel that had twenty-five leaks.

The remaining peacekeepers were frustrated and overwhelmed. Commensurately, warnings from the police and military increased in severity. Citizens now risked drawing gunfire if they were witnessed looting or committing any act deemed “harmful to society” by the peacekeepers that were left. It was an open-ended provision that tested the judgment and maturity of every person who had a weapon and was charged with maintaining law and order.

In the city, life went on for the crew and me. We lost seven vehicles to the violence on the fourth. Leland told the wrecker guys exactly where to find the Wombat Wagon and that he had left the keys under the front seat. They went out, found it, and towed it back to the Gulag. It hadn’t been torched or suffered any more damage after Leland and I abandoned it. It needed a new engine, radiator, radio, windshield, back window, and left front tire & wheel; other than that it was in good shape. The bullet holes in the body would just be a permanent reminder that she’d carried her previous occupants from harm’s way.

The smell of death was now constantly in the air. God only knows how many houses and apartments held decaying murder and suicide corpses that hot summer. Dead bodies were also tucked away in bushes and behind garbage dumpsters. The summer’s heat caused them to bloat to the point that many corpses looked like ridiculous comical mannequins. The stench was not so comical. Dead Body Hotline vehicles were omnipresent.

The only monetary-oriented things that held value were liquid cash, bonds, and CDs. Sex, cigarettes, food, and drugs became the commodities of the street. Most folks had maxed out their credit cards on cash withdrawals soon after The Attack, so credit card commerce was pretty much a thing of the past. Some of the more wealthy folks were bartering, in varying degrees of success with junk silver, krugerrands, Swiss francs, or St. Gaudens gold pieces, trinkets that had been tucked away in safety deposit boxes or buried in mason jars.

I took Brian out for some beers on Friday afternoon…I think it was a Friday…in order to self-medicate. John and Brian had moved into the Marriot downtown after our apartment building burned down. Rooms were starting to get a little short, so they were roommates—again. We parked at my house and decided to walk to the Kaiserhof for a little change.

“What’s John up to today?” I asked.

“He’s working on that song.”

“Ah,” I said, not wanting to continue. I knew what Brian was talking about: John was putting the finishing touches on a tune he’d written called, “All My Shit Seems to Disappear (Whenever You’re Around).”

A hearse casually rolled by us as we made our way to the bar. The driver and his assistant had the windows open and were trying to get as much fresh air as they could by tilting their heads out of the windows. It looked like three bodies inside, best we could tell.

“Bring ou’cher dead! Bring ou’cher dead!” Brian said in a cockney British accent. All I could do was chuckle. Death had become not only meaningless but also the fodder of stupid, immature jokes.

“Who in the hell would volunteer to do that job?” Brian asked rhetorically.

“I dunno,” I said.

What we didn’t know at the time was that Executive Order 11000 allowed the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision, and that the poor schmucks picking up stinky bodies were conscripts.

A skinny young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, approached us as we made our way down the city sidewalk. She had striking blue eyes and looked like she might have once been a nice-looking girl, but she was now gaunt and dirty looking. Her hair was stringy, and I could see flea bites on her ankles. There was desperation in her voice as she stepped in our way and spoke.

“You guys got any money I can borrow?” she asked. Her voice was rough liked she’d drunk too much whiskey and smoked too many cigarettes in her short time. “I’ll pay ya back as soon as I get back on my feet,” she said with a wipe of her nose.

“No, we got nothing,” Brian said as we tried to skirt around her.

“I’ll give you a blowjob for twenty bucks,” she said. It was a highly untantalizing offer.

“No thanks,” Brian answered for both of us.

“Ten bucks. How ’bout a blowjob for ten bucks? Please?”

“No.”

“Pleeeaaasse?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” I finally said, reaching into my pocket. I pulled out a crumpled ten and threw it at her.

“Here. Now leave us alone.” We turned and continued on to the bar.

“Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you so much, sir! Thank you! Thank you, sir. I’ll pay you back when I get back on my feet, sir.…” We heard her whiskey voice fading behind us as we walked away. She was dirty and disgusting, but she was a human being, too. It struck me as being very sad and dreary that she was willing to do…that for ten lousy bucks.

Brian had his own take: “Judging by how skinny that bitch was, I’d say blowjob sales are down.”

We spent several hours at the Kaiserhof. Nothing too spectacular going on, just talking and drinking. Finally I just left Brian there and walked home by myself. I hated the feeling of walking up to that house, the house where I’d so recently experienced so much joy.

I unlocked the front door, trudged over the threshold, and secured the deadbolt and lock behind me. The house was dark and empty, silent. “Sarah?” I called out, as was my new habit. I stood motionless for several seconds with my head cocked into the air. No answer. It was always worth a try. I put on an instrumental CD and lit incense in an attempt to create some kind of atmosphere in there. I guess it was my way of trying to keep Sarah current, keep her in the present.

Easing into a living room chair, I gazed around. Right here, right in the middle of this very room, we danced and didn’t care how silly we looked. Over there, in the kitchen, cooking and laughing…how many times? That one Saturday morning, making love on the couch and on the chair…and on the rug…and, and….

Dear God, please return Sarah to me.