Zero day code, p.32
Zero Day Code, page 32
part #1 of End of Days Series
Jonas made a show of blowing out his cheeks and staring back down the mountain.
“My thinking is that this bunch you got coming on you now is the first of a lot more.”
He looked Muller square in the eye.
“I think the situation’s going to get… tough. I haven’t read the news this morning. And I’ve been out of contact, as you know. But you should probably be ready for things to get out of hand down in the city. Feels like they’re getting out of hand everywhere. Unravelling. I wonder if you could feed everyone in that mob coming up the mountain and still have enough left over for your own people. City was jammed up bad when I left. I don’t think Big Al’s gonna be getting a food delivery in any time today, or maybe even this week. Hate to be the messenger with all the bad news but…” he shrugged. “You gotta look after your own. Right?”
Muller said nothing.
Not straight away.
He took a good long time thinking it over.
Finally, he nodded, as if conceding something he didn’t care for at all.
“Yep,” he said.
31
American Siege
Jonas left Muller with those uneasy thoughts. He returned to his cabin, showered and changed into jeans and a black tee-shirt, and went through to breakfast at the diner. The bar which had hosted seemingly half the town last night was busy again this morning, but the vibe was different. It didn’t feel hungover to him. More like subdued and anxious. He ordered scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon, biscuits and chicken gravy, and all the coffee they could pour. No charge, of course.
He took a booth by the window looking out over the street and searched for a newspaper to read. He knew they were full of a globalist lies and special pleading for elitist parasites, but he also knew how to filter that shit out. He wasn’t a moron. This morning, however, there was nothing to filter.
“No delivery today,” the barmaid informed him. “Usually get the Post and the Times from Seattle but they didn’t turn up. Nothing’s getting through.”
She apologised again with a lift of her shoulders.
“WiFi’s free. You want the password?”
That was good to know, but even though he had a rock-solid VPN on his cell, he didn’t dare turn on the phone. They could track you through those things, and although Jonas doubted he was a priority for the Seattle PD, it was good op-sec to leave no trail. He was still going to need to find another anonymous way of getting online to check his accounts. He settled down to his breakfast and Today on the TV over the bar. Craig Melvin was interviewing some admiral when Jonas speared a fork into his eggs, but the newsfeed switched over to Kristen Welker in Washington before he even had time to start carving up the bacon.
The fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
A banner beneath Welker screamed AMERICAN SIEGE?
And beneath that…
STARVATION!
The muted buzz in the diner dampened to a tense, almost febrile hush as Welker’s voice filled the room.
“Congress is meeting in emergency session,” she said, in a piece to camera from the steps of the Capitol Building, “but not behind me. All four hundred and thirty members and one hundred Senators are meeting in an unprecedented online session, logging in from dozens of secure and secret locations scattered around the nation.”
The buzz came back as Big Al’s customers began to speculate among themselves about where their representatives might be hiding, and why.
“It’s China. China’s gonna go nuclear,” somebody said a few tables over.
“No, Rosie,” another diner on a different table called out. “It’s Iran. I read on my Facebook this morning that they’re all saying it’s Iran.”
“Who’s saying?”
“My David’s in the Air Force and he…”
Jonas tuned out the idiot chatter and tried to focus on the official fake news up on screen. The government would be lying for sure. That’s what governments did. But the shape of the lie they threw over the truth could sometimes tell you what lay beneath. Kristen Welker had a full slate of lies and evasions to report on. China’s denial of involvement in the previous day’s attacks on US military bases. Homeland Security’s assurance that all critical domestic infrastructure remained functional and that the President’s Executive Order imposing food rationing was merely a precaution against panic buying and hysteria, which “would do far more damage than any limited and largely unsuccessful cyber-attack on a small number of grocery chains.” And, most notably of all, at least to Jonas, was something Welker mentioned almost as an aside about the Attorney General ‘going missing’ for three hours during the chaos and haste of evacuating the executive from DC.
Jonas chewed his bacon thoughtfully.
Three hours.
That was a hell of a long bathroom break. Especially for the guy running the Justice Department, a rival power centre to the Oval Office on a normal day, but possibly the most important challenger to supreme executive fiat in any national emergency. He felt his heart quickening and his thoughts beginning to race.
This was it.
This had to be it; the coup anybody could have seen coming if they’d just opened their eyes and looked.
Jonas hurried to finish his breakfast, making sure to eat everything on the plate. Nutrition was gonna get scarce, that was for damn sure. One of the first things you do in a siege? Cut off the food supply. Starve out the enemy. He observed the other customers, who were mostly still arguing among themselves about the meaning of it all. One table of young women he thought he recognised as Tomi’s friends had moved on to celebrity gossip. He was almost tempted to ask them if they’d heard about the actresses Pendleton had raped. But he denied his own understandable curiosity. If those girls had any sense they’d be loading up on calories and weapons. But they weren’t of course. They were all sheep. Content to graze.
He left the diner and felt himself passing among them as a wolf.
He had no idea what Muller and the other cops were going to do about the thousands of people heading for Silverton, but he did know that whatever they tried would not work and was irrelevant anyway. The situation had moved beyond the prosaic measures of a small-town sheriff. As Jonas stood on the sidewalk in front of Al’s, taking in the clean air and the warm morning light, a police cruiser sped past, headed downslope for the refugee caravan.
That’s how he imagined them. A caravan. For that was the truth if it. They were refugees, the first of millions that he was certain would soon be on the move. Most of them into military camps. Or prison camps. These chumps had no idea. Since 1903 every male in America between the age of seventeen and forty-five had been legally defined as being part of the nation’s Unorganised Militia. They were subject in times of national emergency to military discipline. Not civilian law. Jonas was pretty sure that these days federal anti-discrimination statutes gathered up every woman in the US between those ages too. Hundreds of millions of idiots, stuffing their faces with breakfast, none of them realising they’d just been drafted.
Jonas had to get moving. He had people to find. He didn’t know where to look for Dale Juntii, the jarhead he’d met last night at Al’s, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking around. But he knew Brad Rausch—“Damn but you fucking showed that wetback”—would be at his auto shop, or would be turning up soon enough. And the nice thing about a fuckmaggot, one-street burg like Silverton? All you had to do to find the diner, or the town hall or the auto shop was take a stroll up and down that street.
Jonas didn’t recall seeing Rausch’s business back the way he’d come into town, so he headed west on Main, tracking alongside the leafy stretch of greensward that served as the town’s centrepiece and gathering place. He didn’t imagine Rausch would have his shop in the middle of town. The only businesses which could afford the rent would be living directly off outsiders, and sure enough he passed one tourist trap after another. Two cafes were open and serving breakfast, but both warned diners that they couldn’t process electronic payments. The three cash machines he passed were all out of service and the sidewalk in front of them littered with discarded transaction slips. A woman sweeping the path in front of her trinket shop smiled at Jonas as he walked past, but quickly returned to her chore when it was obvious he wasn’t a paying tourist.
Main Street wasn’t long. He quickly reached the western end of town and frowned when the streetscape gave way to thick forest not far beyond a small, white clapperboard home with a hand-carved wooden shingle that declared this to be the surgery of Doctor Andrea Cornwell. Jonas stood half-in half-out of the gutter in front of Cornwell’s surgery, wondering whether to go back and check the street on the other side of the town’s dividing park, when the door to the doctor’s rooms opened and she hastened down the steps.
“Oh,” she said, surprised to find a stranger lurking at the end of her garden path. “I’m afraid I can’t see patients right now. I have to go help the sheriff with something.”
Jonas was just as surprised, but he put the whole thing together quicker than Cornwell. He had more information.
“That’s cool, doc,” he said. “I’m not sick. I’m looking for Brad Rausch.”
Her face, previously arranged in a pleasant if neutral expression, turned almost vinegary at the mention of the auto mechanic’s name. She made a visible effort to hide her distaste, however, when Jonas went on to explain that he was looking for a car.
“Thought he might have one to sell me is all. Just an old beater, you know?”
She had paused on the other side of her gate, keeping it closed between them.
“I’m sure he could help you with that, Mister Murdoch.”
She recalled his name.
That was almost never a good thing, but Jonas put it down to her looking after Al Barrett. Of course, she’d remember the guy who saved her patient. A town this small, they were probably good friends. Cornwell appeared to reach a decision. She opened the gate, came through closing it behind her and pointed to the road out of town.
“If you keep walking, you’ll find him about ten minutes down the road. Be careful. There’s no path to walk on and once cars get out of the town limits they speed up. A lot. They won’t have time to see you and slow down on some of those bends.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Jonas said, keeping it light and breezy. “How’s Mister Barrett doing?”
She wasn’t expecting the question and he saw the shadow flit across her face.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected. But I’d prefer to have him in hospital, not sitting in bed watching ESPN.”
She considered Jonas anew.
“He speaks highly of you, Mister Murdoch. If you should see him, please do encourage him to be sensible and get to a proper hospital.”
“Sure,” Jonas said, the very picture of compassion. “I owe him, after all. Dinner and breakfast so far.”
Cornwell excused herself and started walking towards the other end of town. Jonas watched her go before plunging into the forest.
He reached Rausch’s place ten minutes later. No vehicles of any sort passed him on the forest road, which was good luck. Cornwell was right. There really wasn’t much of a walking path by the edge of the blacktop. Rausch’s auto shop also doubled as a gas station. A 1950s or 60s vintage pick up was parked on the apron, gleaming in the shafts of morning sun that pierced the forest canopy. It was a striking contrast to the business premises which were of an even earlier vintage, but not as well maintained. Two later model sedans were inside the garage under repair, and Jonas was pretty sure Rausch had a few more refurbs and rebuilds out the back, but his view was blocked by a tall, corrugated iron fence.
“Yo! Brad Rausch,” he called out, standing next to the pump.
The door to the little shopfront stood open and Jonas could hear talk radio inside, but there was no sign of the proprietor.
“Hello,” he called out again.
Rausch appeared from around the side of the building, wiping his hands on an old rag. His expression was dour, until he recognised Jonas. He was a solid fireplug of a man. Somewhere in his fifties, but still packing more muscle than flab thanks to a life of hard physical toil. His sullen, slightly florid features lightened some when he saw who’d come calling.
“Hey champ. What I can do for you?”
The mechanic approached with his hand out and Jonas shook it, heedless of any grime he might pick up.
“Jonas Murdoch,” he said, guessing Rausch had forgotten his name. “Might be interested in some wheels, if you got ‘em to sell.”
Rausch’s mood, which Jonas assumed was permanently stormy, lifted even further.
“Could be I can help,” he said. “What you got in mind?”
“Depends,” Jonas said. “Guessing that pick up out front isn’t for sale?”
Rausch smiled. “Nope. My pride and joy.”
“Sweet ride. Anyway, seems like I’m up for some reward money for tackling that wetback yesterday. If it pays off like Sheriff Dave says, I’d like to get me something that can handle cross country terrain. You got anything like that? For a good price?”
“I do, and the price is great,” Rausch said. “For you, a patriot’s discount. But it’s cheap anyway. Got a Jeep went off the road two years back. Insurance company called it a write off. But it wasn’t. I been putting it back together with spares and stuff. Thought I might drive it down south some time. Take a swim where the water won’t freeze off your balls.”
“But?” Jonas said.
Rausch threw his hands up.
“Who’s got time? Or the money?”
“Ha, testify brother,” Jonas laughed. “You mind if I take a look?”
“For sure. Come on back,” Rauschenberg said.
The mechanic led him through the shopfront, past a rack of tired, faded pornography and stale-looking road food. Twinkies. Corn chips and such like. The radio was loud and crackling with reports of supermarkets across the country defying government orders to restrict customers to purchases totalling one hundred dollars each. There’d been a riot in Texas when a Piggly Wiggly tried that communist shit on for size. Rausch didn’t appear to be listening. He led Jonas through his ‘back office’, a small utility room piled high with spare parts, stacks of paper, and the second dirtiest toilet Jonas had ever seen. (Numero Uno was definitely the shitter in Mikey’s place when he moved in. Jonas had demanded and got a permanent twenty-dollar discount on the rent for cleaning it out and keeping it clean. A bargain. He could never live with a poop throne like that).
The lot out the back of Rausch’s shop held three vehicles in various states of repair. The Jeep was the best of them. He let the mechanic talk him through the manifest benefits of owning a pre-loved Jeep, and the potentially niggling but truly barely fucking noticeable issues of buying this particular Jeep which Rausch had hauled off the side of the mountain, where it had ended up on its roof after rolling on a tight bend.
“I won’t shit you, Jonas. It had some serious fucking deceleration trauma, worst of which was probably the door panel I had to rip off and the busted ass top cover, but you can see that while it ain’t like new, it will surely do.”
Jonas had to stop the snort of laughter that tried to escape from the back of his throat and out through his nose.
This was a fucking Frankenstein ride. Mismatched panels. One missing headlamp (“Yeah I’m planning to fix that.”) A badly crumped fender. (“Still beating that one out.”) And a weird, hand fashioned side-mirror on the driver’s side.
“Well,” Jonas said, “it ain’t pretty, but I’m not interested in paying for pretty. Does it go? Is it roadworthy?”
“Hell yeah!” Rausch laughed. “You want we should take a run back into town, maybe down the hill aways. I know! I can show you where I pulled it out of the ravine. Weren’t nothing to it. Insurance weenies just didn’t want the trouble is all. Didn’t want to pay me for the work, truth be told.”
“Amen to that,” Jonas said. “Those fucking crooks. They never pay nothing.”
He had a natural facility for adjusting his conversation to level of those around him. It had helped with the hoodlums he repped back in Florida. He knew he was doing it, and he knew not to overdo it.
“No point driving back into Silverton, but,” he went on. “Or at least not much beyond town. You hear about the refugees?”
Rausch’s face betrayed confusion before turning dark.
“The what? Fucking Mexicans you say?”
Jonas smiled, winningly he thought, as if at his own stupidity.
“Nah, not that sort of refugee, no. My bad. I was out this morning, saw a couple thousand people dragging themselves up the mountain from down Seattle way I guess.”
Rausch looked confused again.
“The fuck you say? What’s that about?”
Jonas took his time.
This was like fishing. You didn’t want to pull too hard on the rod.
Not that he’d ever done much fishing.
He arranged his face into the expression of a man who has some hard news he’d rather not deliver.
“You been watching the news?” he said at last, as though finding a way through a difficult patch of trail and emerging onto clear path.
“I try not to,” Rausch admitted. “It pisses me off.”
“Yeah. I know,” Jonas agreed. “Fucking fake news, right?”
“Fuckin’ right,” said Rausch.
“Yeah, well they’re still lying and shit,” Jonas went on, leaning forward as if to conspire darkly. “But they can’t hide what’s happening now, not when it’s this big.”
Brad Rausch furrowed his brow. He was leaned up again the dented driver side panel of the Jeep. It was quiet out in the forest. The tinny sound of the radio drifted back to them, but Jonas couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. Just the quickened sense of threat and danger in their tone.
“China, you mean?” Rausch frowned.
“Yeah, that,” Jonas agreed. “But the rest of it too. The banks collapsing. That’s a hell of a coincidence don’t you think? And the internet too. Another coincidence.”
“My thinking is that this bunch you got coming on you now is the first of a lot more.”
He looked Muller square in the eye.
“I think the situation’s going to get… tough. I haven’t read the news this morning. And I’ve been out of contact, as you know. But you should probably be ready for things to get out of hand down in the city. Feels like they’re getting out of hand everywhere. Unravelling. I wonder if you could feed everyone in that mob coming up the mountain and still have enough left over for your own people. City was jammed up bad when I left. I don’t think Big Al’s gonna be getting a food delivery in any time today, or maybe even this week. Hate to be the messenger with all the bad news but…” he shrugged. “You gotta look after your own. Right?”
Muller said nothing.
Not straight away.
He took a good long time thinking it over.
Finally, he nodded, as if conceding something he didn’t care for at all.
“Yep,” he said.
31
American Siege
Jonas left Muller with those uneasy thoughts. He returned to his cabin, showered and changed into jeans and a black tee-shirt, and went through to breakfast at the diner. The bar which had hosted seemingly half the town last night was busy again this morning, but the vibe was different. It didn’t feel hungover to him. More like subdued and anxious. He ordered scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon, biscuits and chicken gravy, and all the coffee they could pour. No charge, of course.
He took a booth by the window looking out over the street and searched for a newspaper to read. He knew they were full of a globalist lies and special pleading for elitist parasites, but he also knew how to filter that shit out. He wasn’t a moron. This morning, however, there was nothing to filter.
“No delivery today,” the barmaid informed him. “Usually get the Post and the Times from Seattle but they didn’t turn up. Nothing’s getting through.”
She apologised again with a lift of her shoulders.
“WiFi’s free. You want the password?”
That was good to know, but even though he had a rock-solid VPN on his cell, he didn’t dare turn on the phone. They could track you through those things, and although Jonas doubted he was a priority for the Seattle PD, it was good op-sec to leave no trail. He was still going to need to find another anonymous way of getting online to check his accounts. He settled down to his breakfast and Today on the TV over the bar. Craig Melvin was interviewing some admiral when Jonas speared a fork into his eggs, but the newsfeed switched over to Kristen Welker in Washington before he even had time to start carving up the bacon.
The fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
A banner beneath Welker screamed AMERICAN SIEGE?
And beneath that…
STARVATION!
The muted buzz in the diner dampened to a tense, almost febrile hush as Welker’s voice filled the room.
“Congress is meeting in emergency session,” she said, in a piece to camera from the steps of the Capitol Building, “but not behind me. All four hundred and thirty members and one hundred Senators are meeting in an unprecedented online session, logging in from dozens of secure and secret locations scattered around the nation.”
The buzz came back as Big Al’s customers began to speculate among themselves about where their representatives might be hiding, and why.
“It’s China. China’s gonna go nuclear,” somebody said a few tables over.
“No, Rosie,” another diner on a different table called out. “It’s Iran. I read on my Facebook this morning that they’re all saying it’s Iran.”
“Who’s saying?”
“My David’s in the Air Force and he…”
Jonas tuned out the idiot chatter and tried to focus on the official fake news up on screen. The government would be lying for sure. That’s what governments did. But the shape of the lie they threw over the truth could sometimes tell you what lay beneath. Kristen Welker had a full slate of lies and evasions to report on. China’s denial of involvement in the previous day’s attacks on US military bases. Homeland Security’s assurance that all critical domestic infrastructure remained functional and that the President’s Executive Order imposing food rationing was merely a precaution against panic buying and hysteria, which “would do far more damage than any limited and largely unsuccessful cyber-attack on a small number of grocery chains.” And, most notably of all, at least to Jonas, was something Welker mentioned almost as an aside about the Attorney General ‘going missing’ for three hours during the chaos and haste of evacuating the executive from DC.
Jonas chewed his bacon thoughtfully.
Three hours.
That was a hell of a long bathroom break. Especially for the guy running the Justice Department, a rival power centre to the Oval Office on a normal day, but possibly the most important challenger to supreme executive fiat in any national emergency. He felt his heart quickening and his thoughts beginning to race.
This was it.
This had to be it; the coup anybody could have seen coming if they’d just opened their eyes and looked.
Jonas hurried to finish his breakfast, making sure to eat everything on the plate. Nutrition was gonna get scarce, that was for damn sure. One of the first things you do in a siege? Cut off the food supply. Starve out the enemy. He observed the other customers, who were mostly still arguing among themselves about the meaning of it all. One table of young women he thought he recognised as Tomi’s friends had moved on to celebrity gossip. He was almost tempted to ask them if they’d heard about the actresses Pendleton had raped. But he denied his own understandable curiosity. If those girls had any sense they’d be loading up on calories and weapons. But they weren’t of course. They were all sheep. Content to graze.
He left the diner and felt himself passing among them as a wolf.
He had no idea what Muller and the other cops were going to do about the thousands of people heading for Silverton, but he did know that whatever they tried would not work and was irrelevant anyway. The situation had moved beyond the prosaic measures of a small-town sheriff. As Jonas stood on the sidewalk in front of Al’s, taking in the clean air and the warm morning light, a police cruiser sped past, headed downslope for the refugee caravan.
That’s how he imagined them. A caravan. For that was the truth if it. They were refugees, the first of millions that he was certain would soon be on the move. Most of them into military camps. Or prison camps. These chumps had no idea. Since 1903 every male in America between the age of seventeen and forty-five had been legally defined as being part of the nation’s Unorganised Militia. They were subject in times of national emergency to military discipline. Not civilian law. Jonas was pretty sure that these days federal anti-discrimination statutes gathered up every woman in the US between those ages too. Hundreds of millions of idiots, stuffing their faces with breakfast, none of them realising they’d just been drafted.
Jonas had to get moving. He had people to find. He didn’t know where to look for Dale Juntii, the jarhead he’d met last night at Al’s, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking around. But he knew Brad Rausch—“Damn but you fucking showed that wetback”—would be at his auto shop, or would be turning up soon enough. And the nice thing about a fuckmaggot, one-street burg like Silverton? All you had to do to find the diner, or the town hall or the auto shop was take a stroll up and down that street.
Jonas didn’t recall seeing Rausch’s business back the way he’d come into town, so he headed west on Main, tracking alongside the leafy stretch of greensward that served as the town’s centrepiece and gathering place. He didn’t imagine Rausch would have his shop in the middle of town. The only businesses which could afford the rent would be living directly off outsiders, and sure enough he passed one tourist trap after another. Two cafes were open and serving breakfast, but both warned diners that they couldn’t process electronic payments. The three cash machines he passed were all out of service and the sidewalk in front of them littered with discarded transaction slips. A woman sweeping the path in front of her trinket shop smiled at Jonas as he walked past, but quickly returned to her chore when it was obvious he wasn’t a paying tourist.
Main Street wasn’t long. He quickly reached the western end of town and frowned when the streetscape gave way to thick forest not far beyond a small, white clapperboard home with a hand-carved wooden shingle that declared this to be the surgery of Doctor Andrea Cornwell. Jonas stood half-in half-out of the gutter in front of Cornwell’s surgery, wondering whether to go back and check the street on the other side of the town’s dividing park, when the door to the doctor’s rooms opened and she hastened down the steps.
“Oh,” she said, surprised to find a stranger lurking at the end of her garden path. “I’m afraid I can’t see patients right now. I have to go help the sheriff with something.”
Jonas was just as surprised, but he put the whole thing together quicker than Cornwell. He had more information.
“That’s cool, doc,” he said. “I’m not sick. I’m looking for Brad Rausch.”
Her face, previously arranged in a pleasant if neutral expression, turned almost vinegary at the mention of the auto mechanic’s name. She made a visible effort to hide her distaste, however, when Jonas went on to explain that he was looking for a car.
“Thought he might have one to sell me is all. Just an old beater, you know?”
She had paused on the other side of her gate, keeping it closed between them.
“I’m sure he could help you with that, Mister Murdoch.”
She recalled his name.
That was almost never a good thing, but Jonas put it down to her looking after Al Barrett. Of course, she’d remember the guy who saved her patient. A town this small, they were probably good friends. Cornwell appeared to reach a decision. She opened the gate, came through closing it behind her and pointed to the road out of town.
“If you keep walking, you’ll find him about ten minutes down the road. Be careful. There’s no path to walk on and once cars get out of the town limits they speed up. A lot. They won’t have time to see you and slow down on some of those bends.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Jonas said, keeping it light and breezy. “How’s Mister Barrett doing?”
She wasn’t expecting the question and he saw the shadow flit across her face.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected. But I’d prefer to have him in hospital, not sitting in bed watching ESPN.”
She considered Jonas anew.
“He speaks highly of you, Mister Murdoch. If you should see him, please do encourage him to be sensible and get to a proper hospital.”
“Sure,” Jonas said, the very picture of compassion. “I owe him, after all. Dinner and breakfast so far.”
Cornwell excused herself and started walking towards the other end of town. Jonas watched her go before plunging into the forest.
He reached Rausch’s place ten minutes later. No vehicles of any sort passed him on the forest road, which was good luck. Cornwell was right. There really wasn’t much of a walking path by the edge of the blacktop. Rausch’s auto shop also doubled as a gas station. A 1950s or 60s vintage pick up was parked on the apron, gleaming in the shafts of morning sun that pierced the forest canopy. It was a striking contrast to the business premises which were of an even earlier vintage, but not as well maintained. Two later model sedans were inside the garage under repair, and Jonas was pretty sure Rausch had a few more refurbs and rebuilds out the back, but his view was blocked by a tall, corrugated iron fence.
“Yo! Brad Rausch,” he called out, standing next to the pump.
The door to the little shopfront stood open and Jonas could hear talk radio inside, but there was no sign of the proprietor.
“Hello,” he called out again.
Rausch appeared from around the side of the building, wiping his hands on an old rag. His expression was dour, until he recognised Jonas. He was a solid fireplug of a man. Somewhere in his fifties, but still packing more muscle than flab thanks to a life of hard physical toil. His sullen, slightly florid features lightened some when he saw who’d come calling.
“Hey champ. What I can do for you?”
The mechanic approached with his hand out and Jonas shook it, heedless of any grime he might pick up.
“Jonas Murdoch,” he said, guessing Rausch had forgotten his name. “Might be interested in some wheels, if you got ‘em to sell.”
Rausch’s mood, which Jonas assumed was permanently stormy, lifted even further.
“Could be I can help,” he said. “What you got in mind?”
“Depends,” Jonas said. “Guessing that pick up out front isn’t for sale?”
Rausch smiled. “Nope. My pride and joy.”
“Sweet ride. Anyway, seems like I’m up for some reward money for tackling that wetback yesterday. If it pays off like Sheriff Dave says, I’d like to get me something that can handle cross country terrain. You got anything like that? For a good price?”
“I do, and the price is great,” Rausch said. “For you, a patriot’s discount. But it’s cheap anyway. Got a Jeep went off the road two years back. Insurance company called it a write off. But it wasn’t. I been putting it back together with spares and stuff. Thought I might drive it down south some time. Take a swim where the water won’t freeze off your balls.”
“But?” Jonas said.
Rausch threw his hands up.
“Who’s got time? Or the money?”
“Ha, testify brother,” Jonas laughed. “You mind if I take a look?”
“For sure. Come on back,” Rauschenberg said.
The mechanic led him through the shopfront, past a rack of tired, faded pornography and stale-looking road food. Twinkies. Corn chips and such like. The radio was loud and crackling with reports of supermarkets across the country defying government orders to restrict customers to purchases totalling one hundred dollars each. There’d been a riot in Texas when a Piggly Wiggly tried that communist shit on for size. Rausch didn’t appear to be listening. He led Jonas through his ‘back office’, a small utility room piled high with spare parts, stacks of paper, and the second dirtiest toilet Jonas had ever seen. (Numero Uno was definitely the shitter in Mikey’s place when he moved in. Jonas had demanded and got a permanent twenty-dollar discount on the rent for cleaning it out and keeping it clean. A bargain. He could never live with a poop throne like that).
The lot out the back of Rausch’s shop held three vehicles in various states of repair. The Jeep was the best of them. He let the mechanic talk him through the manifest benefits of owning a pre-loved Jeep, and the potentially niggling but truly barely fucking noticeable issues of buying this particular Jeep which Rausch had hauled off the side of the mountain, where it had ended up on its roof after rolling on a tight bend.
“I won’t shit you, Jonas. It had some serious fucking deceleration trauma, worst of which was probably the door panel I had to rip off and the busted ass top cover, but you can see that while it ain’t like new, it will surely do.”
Jonas had to stop the snort of laughter that tried to escape from the back of his throat and out through his nose.
This was a fucking Frankenstein ride. Mismatched panels. One missing headlamp (“Yeah I’m planning to fix that.”) A badly crumped fender. (“Still beating that one out.”) And a weird, hand fashioned side-mirror on the driver’s side.
“Well,” Jonas said, “it ain’t pretty, but I’m not interested in paying for pretty. Does it go? Is it roadworthy?”
“Hell yeah!” Rausch laughed. “You want we should take a run back into town, maybe down the hill aways. I know! I can show you where I pulled it out of the ravine. Weren’t nothing to it. Insurance weenies just didn’t want the trouble is all. Didn’t want to pay me for the work, truth be told.”
“Amen to that,” Jonas said. “Those fucking crooks. They never pay nothing.”
He had a natural facility for adjusting his conversation to level of those around him. It had helped with the hoodlums he repped back in Florida. He knew he was doing it, and he knew not to overdo it.
“No point driving back into Silverton, but,” he went on. “Or at least not much beyond town. You hear about the refugees?”
Rausch’s face betrayed confusion before turning dark.
“The what? Fucking Mexicans you say?”
Jonas smiled, winningly he thought, as if at his own stupidity.
“Nah, not that sort of refugee, no. My bad. I was out this morning, saw a couple thousand people dragging themselves up the mountain from down Seattle way I guess.”
Rausch looked confused again.
“The fuck you say? What’s that about?”
Jonas took his time.
This was like fishing. You didn’t want to pull too hard on the rod.
Not that he’d ever done much fishing.
He arranged his face into the expression of a man who has some hard news he’d rather not deliver.
“You been watching the news?” he said at last, as though finding a way through a difficult patch of trail and emerging onto clear path.
“I try not to,” Rausch admitted. “It pisses me off.”
“Yeah. I know,” Jonas agreed. “Fucking fake news, right?”
“Fuckin’ right,” said Rausch.
“Yeah, well they’re still lying and shit,” Jonas went on, leaning forward as if to conspire darkly. “But they can’t hide what’s happening now, not when it’s this big.”
Brad Rausch furrowed his brow. He was leaned up again the dented driver side panel of the Jeep. It was quiet out in the forest. The tinny sound of the radio drifted back to them, but Jonas couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. Just the quickened sense of threat and danger in their tone.
“China, you mean?” Rausch frowned.
“Yeah, that,” Jonas agreed. “But the rest of it too. The banks collapsing. That’s a hell of a coincidence don’t you think? And the internet too. Another coincidence.”
