Emergency Transmission, Page 2

  The one thing they didn’t have to compete for was ammunition. There was plenty of that for everybody.

  There were other factions too, both among the Elect and the machete men. None could be relied upon. You had no allies except in your own group, and you couldn’t even be sure of them.

  The Pure One passed through the camp of the Elect, those not escorting him bowing their heads or cheering, the only two appropriate reactions, and walked across the open area between the camp and His own tent. David and Bill stepped to either side of the opening and turned on their heels to face the camp. The Pure One unzipped his tent, a fine old relic kept scrupulously clean by His servants, and went inside, zipping up the entrance behind Him.

  The last light of dusk faded over the sea to the west. Fires glittered here and there between the tents of the Elect. Somewhere, out there in the gathering darkness, Aaron was watching. David couldn’t spot him, of course. Aaron was too good for that. The breeze had picked up and dozens of plastic bags, puffed up with air, rolled and floated between the tents like wraiths.

  Almost time. How would the other main factions react? How would the machete men react? If he came at The Pure One like a thief in the night, wouldn’t they see David as a demon? Would there be true believers still, even after all this? Aaron and the others would have to take them out. They would be easy enough to spot, for they would come at David instantly, without thinking. The smart ones, the leaders from the other factions, would come at him later, conspiring or collaborating, assuming he got the luxury of being around later.

  Most would simply be relieved, wouldn’t they? Most would just bow and accept the change of leadership, for what choice did they really have?

  But the killing had to be something they could accept. There had been a messiah for so long they couldn’t accept the murderer of one unless David became the new messiah. If David lived past pulling the trigger, he must present himself to them, triumphant. It must be done in the old way.

  David glanced down at the Bowie knife at his belt, then back at Bill. The other guard looked back at him blankly. There was no way to tell what went on behind that mask of a face. Bill at the top in his faction, constantly bucking for privilege and favor from their erratic leader. David didn’t blame the man. He wasn’t doing anything that David didn’t do himself. It would be a shame for him to die.

  He’d like the chance to talk to this man, tell him not to raise his gun when David rushed inside the tent. He couldn’t take the risk, though. As soon as David made a move, Bill would raise his gun, even if only by instinct, even if secretly he wanted Him dead as much as David did.

  And that would be the signal for Aaron to fire.

  Too many dead already. Let Bill and that bastard inside the tent be the last.

  If only.

  Lord, if you’re still there, let my death be the last. I’ll walk gladly into Hell for that. I will even give up my one day of reprieve a year, if only you would make my death the last.

  Everyone said the Lord could read what was in your heart. Maybe the Lord could. That worried David. That meant the Lord knew he doubted.

  It didn’t matter. He had to go through with it whether there was any chance of his prayers being heard or not.

  All he had to do was yank down the zipper on the side of the tent with a single, fluid motion. Bill’s gun would come up, Aaron would fire, and David would shoot The Pure One.

  Assuming David was right about the machine at His belt. Assuming Bill didn’t get to fire before Aaron shot him. Assuming Aaron hit.

  Whatever happened, at least it would be over.

  A low hum reverberated from inside the tent.

  Now.

  David cradled his M16 in his right arm as he whipped his left hand to the zipper and pulled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Smile.

  Be the friendly host. Be the oasis of fun in a world of unhappiness. Laugh at their jokes. Tell them some new ones. Remember all their names and greet them like old friends when they come through the door.

  You’re needed.

  Roy Jones leaned against the counter and looked around at his bar, the famous $87,953, the most popular drinking den in the Burbs, New City, or anywhere else. He had a good crowd for a Friday. Farmers, scavengers, and market traders laughed and drank under the dim electric light as some upbeat rock from the Old Times thumped through the sound system. The two TVs were turned off since it wasn’t movie night and it was too loud to hear them anyway. Sometimes Roy put them on just so people could stare at the images in the old movies, but he had found that dampened conversation.

  And the Burbs needed conversation right now. The attack by the Righteous Horde, the arrival of the Chinese ship, the rise in Blame, it had been the worst winter he could remember, and people needed to wrap their heads around it and look forward to spring.

  Two white scavengers sidled up to the bar and called him over. They looked pretty toasted already. Roy didn’t mind. These two never caused trouble except for the one on the left, who had puked on the floor last week. Occupational hazard.

  “Hey Roy, another round here!” the puker said, waving an unsteady finger at himself and his buddy. He fished in his pocket and took out a pair of tokens. “Traded for these at one of the market stalls.”

  “Coming right up,” Roy said, taking the tokens, coins from the Old Times stamped with his own mark using a special punch he kept hidden in the back room. Roy would trade booze and food for just about anything, but the tokens made it easier. They had become one of the unofficial currencies in the Burbs, like packets of flour and salt. Roy never understood why The Doctor didn’t issue currency like the old City States had.

  Once he served the scavengers, Roy took a sip from his beer glass set behind the counter and surveyed the crowd again. His two bouncers, Clayton and Baruch, stood watch. Baruch manned the door while Clayton sat tucked away in a far corner, half hidden in shadow, alert.

  Everything seemed pretty quiet tonight. Watching this bar was like watching a pressure gauge for the entire city. Things had been building up for the last few months what with all the troubles, then that shipment of rice had turned things around. Suddenly everyone who had faced a hungry winter had something to eat. All but the angriest Chinese haters had shut up after that. Leah, his short order cook, had thought up all sorts of recipes for it—rice cakes, chicken stew on rice, goat cutlets with rice. Pretty good stuff. He couldn’t remember getting rice even back in the North Cape days when he was a kid.

  A shout and a clattering of chairs woke him up to the here and now. Two farmers were pounding away at each other as they rolled through the spilled beer and spit on the floor. Roy snorted. Garret and Wallis, still fighting over that goat that went astray three seasons ago and ate that tomato patch. Roy couldn’t remember whose goat and whose tomato patch and he didn’t care. This bullshit flared up at least once a month.

  A crowd gathered to cheer, blocking Roy’s view. Clayton and Baruch converged on the spot and elbowed the fight fans aside. Roy spotted Wallis sitting on Garret’s stomach and pounding away at his face.

  “Huh,” Roy muttered. “Last time Garret won. What does that make the score, 7-5?”

  Baruch grabbed Wallis by the middle and hauled him off his enemy, only to have Wallis turn around and land one right on Baruch’s nose. As the bouncer staggered back, blood gouting from both nostrils, Clayton gave Wallis a savage kick in the kidney that toppled the farmer like a dropped sack of oats. Garret took the opportunity to leap up and kick Wallis in the side of the head. Clayton spun around and gave Garret a roundhouse that tossed him backwards, crashing into a table that splintered under him.

  The crowd burst into applause. Roy couldn’t help but smile. A good, honest fight borne of stupidity and not malice made for a great pressure release, and you could always count on these two knuckleheads for a regular diet of that.

  Roy came out from behind the counter.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Why are you always ruining a perfe
ctly good evening? I mean, you didn’t ruin our evening, in fact you enlivened it—” Roy paused as the crowd burst into laughter, “—but you certainly ruined yours. Because not only will I report you to Sheriff Cruz in order to get restitution for my broken table, but Baruch here will probably press for restitution too. And you’re banned for a week. Go fight somewhere else.”

  The two farmers picked themselves off the floor as Clayton stood between them. Garret got to his feet first and Clayton pushed him out the door. Wallis was slower to rise but staggered after his neighbor.

  One of the scavengers sat Baruch down and held his head back, pressing his nose with a dirty cloth. Roy went for his first aid kit. He’d be all right after a bit of patching. The guy shouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place, though. It was hard getting decent bouncers since Annette had become sheriff and taken on Frank, his other bouncer, as one of her deputies. They used to handle the crowd with style, defusing fights before they began, and ending the rest before any innocent people got hurt.

  Not like these two. He wished he could have gotten a brother as a bouncer, Jaylen or maybe Malik, but everyone in the community with the qualifications preferred their own line of work to taking abuse from drunks, most of them white.

  “They’re at it again!” someone shouted from the door.

  The crowd rushed outside. Roy shook his head and went back behind the bar. A fight in the street wasn’t any of his business. He drained his beer and refilled it. The lager had come out pretty good this month. He reminded himself to brew up some more stout. It was getting low and there was always more demand for stout in winter.

  After a few minutes, the crowd came back, laughing and joking about those two idiot farmers. Roy set down his beer as the traditional post-fight rush for drinks began.

  Soon everyone was back in their usual places, talking and drinking like nothing had happened. Roy told Baruch to take a break in the back room. It didn’t look like there would be any more trouble for a while.

  The door opened and three figures appeared. Roy’s heart did a flip flop.

  He smiled and boomed out a happy greeting.

  “Xinxin! Wei! Da-bin! Good to see you!”

  Eyes swiveled in their direction. Over in one corner, a group of farmers glared at the newcomers. Clayton moved closer to the door.

  These were three of the Chinese residents of the Burbs. Everyone had thought they were Korean until that Chinese ship arrived, and that scavenger Yu-jin had come out as Chinese and translated between the ship and New City. She’d stopped World War Five from breaking out. This family had come out as Chinese too, as had a few other “Koreans” and “Vietnamese.” They had been essential in setting up trade with the ship, saving New City and the Burbs from a lean winter by trading for rice. What with all the toxic rains coming in from the sea, if it wasn’t for the rice everyone would have had to skip a meal a day. There would have been damn little spare wheat and barley for making his beer too.

  But had everyone been grateful? Hell, no. They’d looted Asian houses, lynched a couple of Asians they thought were Chinese, and nearly blew up the ship.

  The three Chinese hesitated at the door. Wei kept his hand close to his holster.

  “Come on in! How’s the baby coming along?” Roy said. Pointing out that the woman was pregnant might stop any violence. Maybe.

  Xinxin put a hand on her swollen belly and smiled. She stood a little taller and strode to the bar, her husband Wei watching everyone, her brother Da-bin walking along in his usual dim way. Roy felt grateful for the music. If it wasn’t for that, you could hear a pin drop.

  “Hi Roy,” Xinxin said as she eased onto a bar stool left vacant by a scavenger who had walked off in disgust.

  “So what’s your craving? Beer or whiskey? It’s on the house.”

  Xinxin managed a nervous laugh. “You know I love your whiskey, but I can’t drink for a while yet.”

  “I’ll give you a goat’s cheese sandwich then. That sound good? And what about you gentlemen?” Roy asked, turning to Wei and Da-bin. Wei had his back to him, scanning the crowd. Da-bin gave him a simple grin.

  “Whiskey would be just fine. You make the best whiskey in town,” Da-bin said.

  “The best beer too! Wei?”

  “A whiskey for me too,” Wei said without turning around. Roy didn’t take it personally. The man had a wife and an unborn child to protect. Clayton hovered close. Roy noticed he had placed himself between the farmers in the corner and the Chinese at the bar. Good man.

  But where the hell was Baruch? Hadn’t he heard Roy shout out those names? Idiot was probably still in the back room nursing his nose.

  Roy served up the drinks and sandwich. He accepted a couple of little packets of flour as trade for the drinks, but refused anything for Xinxin’s sandwich.

  “Good to see you come in. Wish we got to see more of you here,” Roy said.

  “Hopefully you will,” Xinxin said. “We’d like to hire this place. You still hire out for special parties, don’t you?”

  Roy shifted uncomfortably. “Well, sure. I don’t usually get calls for baby showers though!” Roy belted out a laugh.

  Xinxin smiled. “No, we want to hire it for a public party. Chinese New Year is coming up.”

  Aw, hell.

  “Didn’t we just have new year?” Roy asked.

  “We have a different calendar.”

  “Oh, like the Muslims.”

  Xinxin’s eyebrow raised in surprise. “The Muslims have their own calendar too? I didn’t know that. I’ve never really talked to one.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s only about a dozen of them in the Burbs.”

  Xinxin leaned forward as much as her belly would allow. “You see? There are so many different types of people here and how well do we know each other? We’re neighbors and still strangers. This is why we want to do it—”

  “Why you want to do it,” Da-bin interrupted.

  Xinxin shot him a look. “Father wants to do it too.”

  Da-bin looked away and picked up his drink.

  Xinxin turned back to Roy. “We’ve been living among you for so long and you didn’t even know we were here. Now that you do, you need to learn more about us. We want to have a big celebration. In the Old Times, Chinese New Year was amazing. Look.”

  She pulled out an old magazine from her pocket. The headline said, “Downtown Celebrates Chinese New Year.” A big picture spread over two pages showed a colorful, snakelike creature carried along by several men and women on the tops of poles. Flipping the pages, Roy saw images of a huge banquet, people letting off what looked like small explosives, and families in costumes so brilliant they still looked bright even on the faded and stained page.

  “That’s quite a party,” Roy had to admit. Someone at a nearby stool leaned over and looked at it curiously. Roy turned the magazine so he could see better.

  “Cool,” the man grunted. Xavier, a market trader. Roy had deputized him to keep the peace during the anti-Asian riots. “Must be a pretty old magazine.”

  You mean old enough to date before the big wars? Back when Chinese could still be Chinese? Roy thought.

  Xinxin went on. “We want to have a parade through town that ends here with a big party. We’re going to decorate it in the Chinese style and offer free food and cooking lessons. It’s coming up in a few days. Joe over at Joe’s Chicken Shack has already agreed to make a batch of sesame chicken.”

  Xavier laughed at that. “Blew my mind when I found out that was a Chinese recipe.”

  Blew everyone else’s mind too. Joe lost a lot of customers because of that.

  “We’ll give you a good trade for the use of your space and your kitchen,” Xinxin glanced around the crowd. “We’ll also pay for the … extra security.”

  Roy let out a sigh. “Yeah, there’s that.”

  Xinxin looked at him hopefully. “So you’ll do it?”

  A loud request for a beer from the other end of the bar got him out of answering imme
diately. Roy’s mind swirled. This was a bad, bad idea.

  What could he do, though? How many times had he had to kick out some asshole for calling him “nigger” or “coon”? How many times had he been looked down on just because of the color of his skin? He couldn’t turn around and do the same to someone else. His bar was for everyone. That was the rule he had established when he opened it all those years ago and that rule would never change. Hell, he had even hosted a Gay Pride Party last year. Seeing those guys kissing each other had turned his stomach, and the music they requested! Damn.

  The sign on the door said “Roy loves everybody” and he had always tried to live up to that.

  As he served the scavenger at the end of the bar the man gave him a sour look and muttered.

  “What the fuck are they doing here, Roy?”

  Roy looked him in the eye and replied, “Helping me out with a party I’m planning.”

  He turned away before the asshole could respond and saw a regular flagging him down from one of the tables, waggling his shot glass over his head. Roy grabbed one of the bottles behind the counter and a spare glass. He needed a drink himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Song Yu-jin stood in front of the Citizens Council of New City, wishing she were anywhere else.

  She stood on a little platform at the front of a large room inside the Old Times warehouse that served as the nucleus of New City. Most of the citizenry sat in front of her, a sea of white faces with only a scattering of brown and black ones. A lot of those faces looked at her with suspicion and hatred, and not just the white ones. She was the only Asian in the room.

  The Doctor stood next to her, standing erect and looking at the assembly with hard eyes.

  “The first item on the agenda is a vote on citizenship for my assistant, Song Yu-jin. You all know her. She was invaluable in stopping a war by offering her services as translator. She did this at great personal risk to herself and because of her efforts, we now have a valuable trading partner. We got a metric ton of rice, plus we got a supply of rare earths to fix our dying photovoltaic cells. The lights will stay on and we’ll all remain fed, and it’s all thanks to her.