Black Autumn Travelers Read online

  Three hours later, Mat cleared the city proper and edged out into the suburbs, the road choked with traffic bailing out of Baltimore. The suburban residents loaded their cars in their driveways, meandering about, restless to take some action to protect themselves and their families, but with no idea what to do or where to go. The impression Mat got was of hundreds of thousands of people in utter confusion.

  In that sense, this was a more savage environment than Iraq. At least in Iraq, people knew what to expect from civil disorder, looting and chaos. In an American suburb, civil disorder hadn't occurred in twenty generations—from Western European pre-industrialization to American colonization. The primitive instinct to head for cover had been winnowed down to zero after fifty generations of society and safety.

  At least the African-Americans in Baltimore knew better than to wander around clutching their cappuccino makers. Maybe it was DNA with fewer generations separating them from tribal Africa. Maybe it was the environment of urban crime and police “brutality.” Either way, generational immigrants to America knew what was up. Long-time residents knew jack shit.

  For the twentieth time since they left the EZ Storage, Mat heard gunfire. Caroline moaned, curling into a ball on the seat.

  “Look at me, honey.” Mat left the Glock in his lap and reached out to touch her. She jumped a little at his touch. “We’re going to be okay. I have this under control. We’re going to be all right.”

  She looked at him, her eyes darting. With his continued touch, her eyes rounded and her breathing slowed. “But what about my family in Louisville?” she worried. “Are they going to be okay?”

  4

  “Crying parents tell their children

  If you survive, don’t do as we did

  A son exclaims there’ll be nothing to do to

  Her daughter says she’ll be dead with you.”

  Stand or Fall, The Fixx, The Shuttered Room, 1982

  Wallula, Washington

  Sage sat up in his sleeping bag, still lying in the dirt where he had slept the night. He heard voices echoing from the pond below his rocky outcrop.

  The sleep sand had clotted copiously in the corners of his eyes like an accusation. It had been idiotic to flop down on the ground, falling asleep after a tantrum. If he was going to survive, he would have to do something about controlling his emotions.

  The voices from the pond were a mixed group of males and females, and they sounded strangely normal, like a bunch of everyday campers. An SUV had backed up to the edge of the pond, and they had set up lawn chairs around a would-be fire circle. The group probably moved in below him sometime in the night, while he slept off his indignation.

  Sage decided to watch for a while before he made himself known. Maybe he could tell if they were a threat just by listening. It seemed unlikely they were dangerous, based on the carefree way they chatted. The group was young, maybe in their twenties. For some reason, their age made Sage feel better. They belonged to his tribe.

  Still cautious, he looked about slowly, hoping to locate his backpack. That was where he had stashed his grandpa’s binoculars. He vaguely remembered kicking the backpack down the hill. He could see it against a bush, too far to reach without getting up.

  He listened instead. If he laid stock-still, he could pick out words, even from a quarter mile away.

  “…where’d you put the stove? I need my morning cup…”

  “Who drank my Mountain Dew? Come on, guys…”

  “Justin, did you remember to bring a shade fly?”

  After half an hour of listening, Sage had a sense of the group: a bunch of young adults, probably from Seattle. He decided to approach and make friends, but he would hold off telling them about his hideout and his cache of supplies.

  There wasn’t much he could do to conceal his camp since he had kicked his stuff around the hillside the night before. If he stood to straighten the mess, they would see him for sure. Instead, he scooted around on his butt, using the sagebrush for cover, and hid as much of his gear as he could. He scooped up the backpack and crawled into the shoulder straps. Sage made his way carefully through a gap in the rocks, putting the outcropping between himself and the new people. By their conversation, he felt pretty sure they hadn’t seen him.

  He walked around the back side of the rocky knoll, made a wide loop down to the dirt road, and approached them from the direction of the interstate.

  “Good morning,” Sage hollered.

  “Hey, what’s up?” one of the girls hailed back without concern.

  “My car died.” Sage pointed back toward the interstate.

  “Oh, yeah?” One of the men stepped toward Sage. “What can we do for you?”

  “I’m looking for a place to camp until cell phones start working again.”

  “Yeah? What do you have for supplies?” The guy nodded toward Sage’s backpack.

  “Just some camping gear…”

  “You got any food?”

  Sage made a non-committal gesture. “I have some freeze-dried. My name’s Sage.”

  The guy visibly relaxed and shook Sage’s hand. “If you’re willing to share, you can camp here. My name’s Justin. That’s Penny. There’s Tyson, Nora and Condie.”

  “Hey, guys.” Sage waved. “I’m definitely cool sharing.” He stepped into their camp and lowered his backpack to the ground, still too unsure to sit in one of their lawn chairs. “Where are you all from?”

  The first guy, Justin, continued to speak for the group. Two of the girls drifted toward the conversation with the newcomer, and the other girl and guy went about their camp business. “We’re from Seattle. We work at the Starbucks over on Fisher Street. When the lights went out, we grabbed some stuff from the store and headed camping. Figured we’d hang out for a couple days until things blew over.”

  “How was Seattle when you left?”

  One of the girls, Penny, answered, “Things were a little crazy. People were rioting downtown and in a few of the low-income districts. We figured it was time to bail for a bit. The police were out of control. You know, bashing heads like always.”

  Sage dug into his backpack and pulled out a Mountain House meal—egg-and-red pepper. “Are you guys making breakfast?”

  “We’re trying to get some coffee going. We have plenty of coffee.” Penny smiled and shrugged, as though being Starbucks employees guaranteed that they would never run short of coffee. Sage accepted her offer, and Penny dug around in the back of the SUV and pulled out a backpacker’s stove. She set it up on the tailgate while they talked.

  The three girls and two guys were in their early twenties, except for the one named Nora. She looked like she might be closer to thirty.

  “So what’s your story?” Penny asked Sage, making conversation.

  “I was staying with my grandparents in Port Angeles and took off toward my home in Salt Lake City when the bomb went off in California. I ran out of gas back on the interstate.”

  Sage told his first big lie. He wanted to trust these people, but he felt reluctant to commit. He sensed that they were probably underestimating the severity of “things going on in Seattle” and that they were living in a bit of a fantasy world. He wasn’t in a hurry to correct their mistake. It gave him a small advantage.

  With some difficulty, Penny got the backpacker’s stove working and poured water into the little pot that came with the stove. At that rate, it would take several pots to make coffee for everyone.

  “How’re you set for supplies?” With five people and only one SUV, Sage didn’t see how they could have much, especially if they had used up so much room by packing lawn chairs.

  Justin had gone off to set up their tent. Penny answered, “We borrowed lots of food from the store, and then we went by Justin’s house for camping supplies. He’s our outdoors guy.”

  Sage had spent his life around “outdoors guys,” and he hadn’t seen anything that would make him think Justin knew what he was doing. The gear they had looked like “tailgater” campin
g gear. But, at seventeen years old, Sage was by far the youngest person in camp. Even though he probably knew more than anyone about camping, the social situation suggested he behave like a guest. Plus, the guys were around twenty-five. They had to know a thing or two he didn’t.

  “How about you?” Penny asked Sage. “Are you into camping?”

  “A bit,” he demurred, “I was a Boy Scout, and my dad tried to get me to go camping with him a lot.”

  “Cool.” Penny turned back to her boiling water and dug around for the packets of instant coffee. “You want a cup?”

  Sage loved coffee, but he didn’t know if he would like the instant kind the girl was making. His dad was a coffee snob and had typically been Sage’s coffee supplier. Other than McDonalds and Starbucks, his dad’s coffee was all he had ever tasted.

  “Okay. What kind of coffee is that?”

  “It’s our Starbucks instant. Try it.” Penny handed him a paper Starbucks cup, half-filled with dark, instant coffee. “There’s some cream and sugar in there.” She pointed to a box on the ground.

  Sage dug around, found powdered cream and sugar, and mixed them with his coffee. He took a sip. “Wow, that’s really good. I can’t believe that’s instant coffee.”

  “Yeah,” Penny smiled, “it’s not fresh brew, but it’s good all the same.” Sage liked her smile. Too bad she was so much older than him. The other girl, Condie, was a bit awkward-looking, with stringy blonde hair and a long face. Nora, the older one, was straight-up chubby.

  “You got coffee?” Justin came back around, having made progress with the tent. Both guys in the group were rail thin and both had voluminous hipster beards. Justin’s mustache curled up at the tips, like a fancy lumberjack going out on the town. Both wore plaid shirts with pearlescent cowboy snaps. Tyson had a brown beanie pulled down over his ears. He hadn’t said a word or even gotten up from his lawn chair since Sage arrived. He would have pegged Justin and Tyson as a gay couple, except there was something possessive about the way Justin regarded Penny, like a dog that never takes his eyes off the sandwich sitting on the counter.

  After boiling water three times over the stove, everyone had coffee. Sage noticed that Penny filled the pot from single-serving water bottles. He didn’t see any other water around camp.

  “What’s the water plan?” Sage aimed the question at the group. Justin jumped on the answer.

  “We’re gonna fill water bottles with the spigot at the farmhouse we passed a ways back. We decided not to buy more flats of water bottles, since they add plastic to the landfills.”

  Sage nodded, but wondered how wise it had been to count on the permission of the farmer. He might not like that they were camped on his land.

  “We’re running low,” Penny said. “We should head up this morning and introduce ourselves.”

  Sage didn’t want the farmer to know he was camped on his land but, if these guys were going to meet the locals, he thought he ought to tag along. “I’ll go with you and help,” he said.

  Later, after a breakfast that included Sage’s Mountain House eggs and a few cold Starbucks sandwiches, the whole group jammed into the SUV and headed to the farmhouse two miles back toward the interstate.

  The farm consisted of several outbuildings with tractors, wood piles, farm animals, and barns. There was a chicken coop, and a pig sty with six or seven pigs. One dairy cow stood in a small enclosure, tied to the railing. As they pulled up, a big man in tan Carhart coveralls strolled onto the porch. Sage saw him set a shotgun within easy reach inside the screen door.

  “Hello,” Justin called as he approached the porch.

  “Hello to you,” replied the farmer. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “We’re camped just down the road and were wondering if we could use your spigot to fill our water bottles.”

  The farmer squinted. “All the land around here for a few miles belongs to us. There ain’t any campgrounds, except all the way back at the Gap near Wallula.”

  “We’re just staying near the pond down the road. We won’t be any bother.”

  The farmer appeared unconvinced. “Help yourself to water today, but we’d rather not have squatters on our land. You should head back toward town or move on to Walla Walla. There are campgrounds up that way.”

  “We’ll look into it,” Justin said noncommittally. “Is this the spigot we can use?” He pointed to a pipe sticking out of the ground with a big red handle and a hose bib.

  “Yeah,” the farmer said. “For today.”

  Justin motioned for Sage and the girls to come fill up twenty small bottles. They carried them in a grocery sack. While the farmer watched from the porch, Sage and the girls filled the bottles and shuttled them back to the car.

  “Thank you.” Justin waved his goodbye. The farmer held his hand up, but didn’t actually wave.

  On the drive back, Justin weighed in on the farmer. “Who does that guy think he is? It’s like he thinks he owns Mother Earth. Just because he cultivates the surface of the land, does that make him the lord of the manor?”

  Sage didn’t follow. “But he owns the place, right? He bought it at some point.”

  “Just because a rich guy plunks down money does not give him ownership over the land. The ground belongs to us all. We’re all guests of Mother Earth.” The girls nodded. “That guy may have a title to the land, but a piece of paper doesn’t give him the right to treat it like personal property.”

  “I doubt the police would agree with you on that one.” Sage let his contrarian nature get the best of him. He probably should have kept his mouth shut, he thought, as soon as the words left his mouth.

  “Who cares what the racist police think? They’re part of the problem,” Justin sneered.

  Nora changed the subject. “When are we returning to Seattle? I didn’t make arrangements for anyone to feed my cats.”

  Justin grabbed his cell phone from the center console and stared at it. “I’m still not getting cell service. Maybe we can head down the highway to the gas station by Wallula. We need to fuel up anyway. I can ask there and find out if things have calmed down in Seattle. Let’s drop off the water bottles in camp and I’ll make a trip for gas and supplies.”

  Back at the campsite, they pooled some cash for fuel and food. Everyone chipped in twenty dollars, including Sage.

  “Any special requests?” Justin asked, heading toward the SUV.

  “Yeah,” Tyson spoke up for the first time. “Can you pick up some weed?”

  Justin laughed. “The county sheriff will throw you in jail forever for buying marijuana in this part of the state, Tyson.”

  Condie spoke up. “I brought a big Ziploc of grass and a bong. We should be set for a few days.”

  The group said their goodbyes and Justin drove down the road, the car shooting a feather of dust into the sky. Sage worried that the farmer would see the car and it would aggravate his sense of trespass. With Justin gone, Sage peppered Penny with questions about their camping plan.

  “Why didn’t you guys bring jugs of water? Like big jugs?”

  “We’re just camping. It’s not like it’s the end of the world,” Penny answered.

  “How much fuel for the stove did Justin bring?”

  “Just whatever’s screwed onto the stove. That should be enough, right?”

  Sage grunted. “Where’s the rain fly for the tent?”

  “What’s a rain fly?” Penny asked.

  “It’s the thing that keeps rain from getting into the tent. I’m just saying; you guys might be in trouble if you don’t get back to Seattle soon.”

  “What do you mean us guys,” Penny fired back. “I thought you were with us.”

  “Sure,” Sage agreed, “while you’re in camp.”

  An hour later, Sage saw another plume of dust rising from the road heading their way. Justin’s SUV appeared in the distance.

  As soon as Justin got out of the car, it was obvious he bore bad news.

  “The gas station’s clo
sed. Same with the little store in town. Their power’s out and they won’t take credit cards. I couldn’t go any farther looking for supplies because I was afraid I wouldn’t make it back on the gas we have left.”

  “Oh, no,” Nora said. “Did you find out how Seattle’s doing?”

  “According to the old guy I talked to, Seattle’s gotten even worse than before. He said a lot of the city’s burning and the military has gone in.”

  Condie covered her mouth, her eyes wide. Nora began to cry.

  “What’re we going to do?” Penny asked. “How long can we stay here? Where are we going to go?” Everyone but Sage turned to Justin for answers.

  Interstate 15, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Cameron and Julie passed thousands of cars on the shoulder of the I-15, mostly abandoned. Since the high desert, they hadn’t seen a single open gas station. The blackouts apparently had made their way as far east as Hesperia. The stop they’d made for gas outside Hesperia saved them. They would have run out around Barstow otherwise.

  In maybe two dozen road trips to party with his buddies in Vegas, Cameron had never once noticed how this endless stretch of desert epitomized despair. For as far as the eye could see, oatmeal gravel stretched off into the horizon, broken only by distant, drab mountains. It was as though an entire planet of discarded, ground-up granite had been dumped between San Bernardino and Las Vegas. The thin switches of mesquite struggled out of the soil over decades, lucky for a sprinkle of water a few times a year. Where man had passed, by the highways and roads, trash endured forever, without rain or anyone to remove it. The only thing this piece of desolation had going for it was the incessant compulsion of Californians to gamble. Otherwise, it might as well have been Mars. Except on Mars, the baking sun wasn’t slaughtering people one drop of sweat at a time.

  The thought of his family walking down the interstate, sunburned and dragging luggage, like they had seen hundreds of times that morning, sent chills up Cameron’s spine. The desert would take peoples’ lives in the next few days, and it was by a slim margin that Cameron’s family would escape that fate, at least for now.