CHAPTER FORTY

 

It looked mostly like a ghost town. It would have been like an abandoned town out of an old western movie if the buildings had been more weathered and there were tumbleweeds blowing through. Nance slowed down and drove through the outskirts, with abandoned houses overgrown with weeds, and into the center of town, three blocks long, with signs saying “closed” on every shop door. Many of the windows had been broken and the shops obviously looted. There were no vehicles anywhere. Up ahead was the sign for the drugstore.

It had obviously been broken into and looted. The front door was leaning off its hinges, and Dana and Nance, rifles ready, walked in. Shelves were mostly bare. Here and there, some items remained – diapers, cosmetics, orthopedic inserts, toys. In the frozen section, ice cream had melted and dried into a multicolored mess, with flies buzzing around it. They went towards the back, into the pharmacy, and saw that the shelves behind the counter were mostly empty. Nance told Dana what to look for, in terms of the names of pills to terminate pregnancies and to control fertility. They made a complete survey of the few remaining drug bottles, but none of them were what they needed.

Nance sighed, “Well, I’m not surprised. Let’s head south to the next town and see if things have improved there.”

Dana replied, “Probably best to have our guns at the ready going back to the vehicle. We don’t know if anyone has been watching us.”

Using the projected map, they moved on to the next town south. On the way, they saw four black-clad men moving across a field in the distance. The second town was the same as the first, and now they were down to 75% of battery power remaining. Nance sighed as they re-entered the vehicle and selected yet another town further to the south.

Dana said, “You know, Nance, here we are, risking our lives, driving around this dangerous country, looking for condoms, of all things! It’s almost comical!” At that, they both began to giggle, and then laugh out loud.

The next town was inhabited.

Many of the buildings were derelict, but others had been repaired and painted. There were a few other vehicles on the streets, whose drivers stared at them as they passed. Some of the drivers were men, others women. They saw two people walking on the dusty sidewalk, both with rifles over their shoulders. There was a pharmacy that appeared to be open. They went inside, and Nance spoke in Spanish to a middle-aged woman with a rifle over her shoulder at the prescription counter, and asked about condoms and birth control pills. The pharmacist smiled, and explained that they would need a prescription for birth control pills, but there was a condom display one aisle over. They had no idea among the two dozen varieties what to choose, so they picked a selection of several dozen and took them to the counter. The middle-aged man at the counter rang up the purchase and gave them a total in pesos. At that point, Nance said, “We have dollars, and we also have meat and produce to trade. Will either of those do?”

The man replied in English, “Yes, we can take American dollars.” He looked at a chart on a tablet viewscreen, entered a number, and gave Nance a price in dollars. She blanched.

“I don’t have that much with me. How about this much,” she asked, counting out all the dollars she had with her, “plus three kilos of pork chops and five liters of fresh vegetables?” Dana walked out to the vehicle and brought in the meat and produce. The man looked it all over and nodded.

Dana asked, “How does it happen that this town is inhabited, when the ones to the north are deserted?”

“People are just slowly moving north, I think. The real estate is free, but you need money to fix it, or you can’t have it. My wife and I,” he nodded in the direction of the pharmacist, “are Mexican citizens, and fixed up this place with our savings. We weren’t doing too well down in Mexico – too much competition – so we’re here, now. Since we’re citizens, we can pass back and forth through the Mexican army lines to replenish supplies and do our banking. We all pay a couple of guys who know about electric power and communications to run the old power station and the comm tower in town, and a couple of other guys to run the water and sewer facilities. Eventually, the army will be here, and government will follow. The only big worry is bandits. There’s no law here. The people who’ve moved in have organized a citizen police force, and we all take turns at patrolling. Two other men and I will be on patrol tonight from eight until two in the morning. So far, we haven’t had any trouble. But, watch out heading north.”

Nance spoke up, “Why is the U.S. dollar so low relative to the peso? The last I heard, a couple of months ago, the exchange rate was much higher.”

“The US economy is slowly falling apart. They hardly export anything, they import a lot, and their national debt is huge, especially after the war. They have to pay a very high interest rate on their bonds, and their debt is now denominated in more stable currencies, like the euro and the yuan. In fact, I gave you the exchange rate from last week, when I was at my bank. I’m pretty sure the dollar has fallen further, although I haven’t checked the past few days, and I’ll probably lose money on this.” He smiled kindly. “I thought you two young people needed a break, as you say in English. By the way, you can use condoms several times if you store them in water between uses. Just check them carefully.” He smiled kindly again.

Nance asked, “Do you think there is any way I could change more American dollars into pesos? Is there a bank that would do that around here?”

“No banks yet, but I anticipate that there will be some soon. They aren’t letting Americans back through the Army lines right now, but maybe they will soon, and you could open an account at a Mexican bank to the south. You can keep an eye on the exchange rate through the news,” and he nodded toward a viewscreen on the wall that was showing a program in Spanish. Nance asked him for the codes for the Spanish-language broadcasts from Mexican stations, and he happily provided them.

“This will help us improve our Spanish,” she said, “Thank you so very much.”

As Dana drove the vehicle north out of town, Nance expressed dismay that her family’s life savings were constantly devaluing. “At least I have the farm,” she said.