Ed carefully set the telephone back in its cradle, and looked across the living-room at Karen. Then, while she watched him, he stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the front yard of South Burlington Farm the same way he used to when he was a boy.
‘Well?’ asked Karen. ‘Weren’t they there?’
‘That was a cop,’ Ed told her, taking out a cigarette and lighting it slowly. He breathed out smoke. ‘He said the house was empty. Even the doors had been left unlocked.’
‘They’ve probably gone to stay somewhere safer,’ Karen suggested. ‘The way I heard it on the news, a whole lot of people are banding together to protect themselves from looters, and Hell’s Angels, and people like that. Maybe they’ve found some kind of sanctuary.’
Ed leaned against the window-pane. Outside, the sun was gradually eating its way into the roof of the stables opposite, and the sky had flushed the colour of ripe strawberries. To a city dweller, an evening like this on a Kansas wheat farm would have looked idyllic. To a farmer, the overwhelming silence, right in the peak of the early harvesting season, was ominous. The tractors were all parked and covered with tarps; the stables were empty and quiet. A single door banged and banged in the warm breeze that had risen on the prairie.
‘I used to believe that this was God’s own country,’ said Ed. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’
Karen said nothing, but came across to stand beside him. She was wearing a pale blue blouse that belonged to Season, and a pair of Season’s baggy denim jeans. Her hair was drawn back, the way Season often drew hers back, and tied with a ribbon.
‘You’ll find them,’ she said, gently. ‘You know you will.’ Ed looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, unconvinced.
At that moment, Della came down from the bathroom, showered and smelling of Goya talcum. She had dressed herself in one of Ed’s green gingham shirts, with the sleeves rolled up, and the front unbuttoned right the way down to her navel. She had washed her hair, and it was wet and combed Sha-Na-Na style.
‘I just looked in on Shearson,’ she said. ‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Again?’ asked Karen.
‘I think he’s trying to retreat from reality,’ Della remarked. She went to the cocktail cabinet and, uninvited, poured herself a bourbon. Ed said, ‘Help yourself to a drink,’ but his sarcasm didn’t faze her in the least. She came to the window and possessively curled her arm around his waist, and kissed him on the cheek. Karen gave them both a tight lemon-at-the-party kind of a smile.
‘Shearson can’t imagine a world without food,’ said Della. ‘Therefore, he’s decided to withdraw from it completely until it all gets back to normal. If this famine goes on, he’ll probably sleep like a baby until he dies of starvation in his bed.’
‘How’s Peter?’ asked Karen.
Della swallowed bourbon. ‘Peter’s okay. I think he’s got used to the idea that he’s going to be better off if he cooperates. Peter’s enough of a political manager to know what kind of a jam he’s in. In his case, I think a little plea-bargaining is going to go a long way.’
‘You still think you’re going to be able to bring Shearson to court?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Della. ‘But until I get orders to the contrary, he’s under arrest charged with fraud and misappropriation of funds and more federal bank offences than you can mention. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’ Peter Kaiser appeared in the doorway, dressed in an ill-fitting short-sleeved shirt in bright orange, and a pair of creased khaki slacks that were too wide around the waistband and three inches too short around his ankles. ‘Well, well,’ said Karen. ‘How’s Waikiki beach today?’ Peter didn’t even answer. He sat himself on the end of the sofa, clutching himself as if he was beginning to feel the cold, and looked steadfastly miserable.
‘You want a drink?’ asked Ed. ‘There’s some bourbon left, or a little sherry.’
‘No. No, thanks,’ Peter told him.
Della said, ‘You’re not in cell block eleven yet, Peter. Don’t look so unhappy.’
Peter looked up. ‘You think I’m unhappy because of that? You think your half-assed threats of arraignment mean anything at all? You can stick your arraignment, right where the camel stuck his dates. I’m worried about my mother, if you must know. I tried to call her this morning, but all the lines to Washington are out.’
‘I got through to LA just now,’ said Ed. ‘Maybe they’re only out for an hour or two.’
‘What do you care?’ asked Peter.
Ed stared at him. ‘I care because I have people of my own to think of, just the way you’re thinking about your mother. Now, have a drink, for Christ’s sake, and stop looking so damned depressed.’
They had been staying at South Burlington Farm since early Tuesday afternoon, and the tension between them hadn’t been improved by the rapidly-worsening famine bulletins on the television. There was sufficient canned and frozen food at the farm to keep them going for another week or two, if they were lucky, but after that they knew they were going to be out on their own. They had hoped to be able to stay for a month, but the President’s announcement on Wednesday evening had meant that over sixty per cent of their food had had to be thrown away. Ed had opened all the suspected cans and dug the food into the ground, in case they were tempted to open them later, when they were hungrier, and far less anxious about the risks of botulism.
On Tuesday morning, after capturing Shearson, they had stopped just outside of Fall River at a roadside diner, where Della had put in a call to the FBI office in Wichita. There had been no reply, she said; so she had tried calling Kansas City. The bureau chief there had told her not to risk bringing Senator Jones across country to Kansas City until the famine situation had ‘normalised itself. He had warned her not to try handing him over in Wichita, either since there had been fierce demonstrations and looting in the centre of town, and the Mayor had declared an area bounded by 13th Street to the north. Hillside Avenue to the east. Pawnee Avenue to the south, and the Highway 81 bypass to the west, totally under 24-hour curfew and a shoot-on-sight regulation for anyone found on the streets.
Ed had painstakingly bypassed Wichita by driving south on 77 to Winfield, and cutting across home to Kingman County through Wellington and Harper. Shearson had sat in the back, sweating and complaining; Karen had fallen asleep with her head against the Chevy wagon’s window. Peter Kaiser from time to time had said, ‘This is completely illegal, you know. We have the right of habeas corpus. Even derelicts have the right of habeas corpus.’
Della, still holding the pump-gun across her knees, had said, ‘I hope you’re not trying to tell me that you’re as good as derelicts. Even derelicts live their lives by some kind of a moral code.’
Shearson had grumbled, ‘Don’t women make you ill. A rotten woman is as bad for your stomach as a rotten steamer.’
Ed had been nervous, approaching the ranch again. He had wondered for one hopeless moment if Season and Sally had made it back to Kansas, but he knew damned well that there were no flights from California, or anywhere else for that matter. He had also wondered, more realistically, if the farm had been looted while he was away, or burned by vengeful neighbours who had seen his Sunday-evening broadcast and assumed that he had somehow been involved in Shearson’s Blight Crisis scam himself; or if Willard and Dyson and Jack Marowitz had decided to abandon the farm and head for the city.
He had stopped at the gates to South Burlington. A large, crudely-scrawled notice-board had been erected by the farm insignia, proclaiming: PRIVATE LAND – TRESPASSERS SHOT. He had driven the Chevy Suburban a short way along the dusty entrance-road, and then stopped, flashing his headlamps and sounding his horn.
Slowly, keeping the wagon covered with a shotgun, Dyson Kane had emerged from behind the nearby fence.
‘Dyson!’ Ed had shouted out. ‘It’s me! Ed! I brought a few friends along with me!’
‘Friends, he calls us,’ Shearson had remarked, with heavy irony. ‘They’re very droll these farmers, aren’t they, as well as mischievous.’
Dyson had taken a few suspicious steps nearer. ‘They really friends?’ he had asked. ‘None of those people are holding a gun on you, are they?’
‘It’s all okay,’ Ed had answered. ‘Look-this is Mrs Della McIntosh. She came around at the weekend.’
Dyson had walked right up to the side of the wagon and taken a look inside. ‘Well, now,’ he had said, reaching across to shake Ed’s hand. ‘And isn’t that Senator Shearson Jones you’ve got in back?’
‘That’s right,’ Ed had told him. ‘I’ll tell you all about it up at the farm. You want a ride?’
‘It’ll have to be later,’ Dyson explained. ‘I’m on guard duty right now. We had two or three pretty nasty bunches of looters around yesterday afternoon. They’re looking for anything they can lay their hands on – particularly livestock. They’re all armed, too, and if things get any worse I reckon they’re going to start killing people.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘You’ve got something to drink out here? Do you want me to send some sandwiches down?’
‘I could go a couple of BLTs,’ smiled Dyson. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have any L and we’re all out of Ts. But you can send one of the kids down with a round of B.’
‘You’ve got it,’ Ed had said, and driven the wagon the rest of the way up to the farmhouse, with red dust trailing from the wheels.
Apart from occasional bands of scavengers. South Burlington Farm hadn’t seen much of the disastrous rioting and burning that had scarred America on Sunday evening and Monday morning. Kansas wheat farmers, those who lived on their spreads, were quiet and reserved and dogged, and they met disaster with quiet God-fearing bitterness, rather than hysteria. Out here in Kingman County, there had been too many droughts and too many lost crops for folks to panic when they heard there were tough times up ahead.
Still, Willard had taken sensible precautions. As well as arranging a guard-duty roster, he had brought in some of the farmworkers from outlying houses, and given them temporary accommodation in his own cottage, and in the apartments over the stables and the garages which used to be occupied by stable-boys, in the days before motor-tractors and Jeeps. He had put Jack Marowitz in charge of rationing, and Jack had divided up the remaining food supplies on the farm according to their nutritional value and the size of the farmworkers’ families. Four families had chosen to leave, and join their relatives in Hutchinson and Emporia and Lehigh; and since most of the acreage was blackened now, and rotting, and there wasn’t the slightest prospect of a harvest, even a drastically reduced one, Willard had given all of them permission to go. In all. South Burlington Farm had been left with twenty-three men, women, and children, apart from Ed, Della, Karen, Peter Kaiser, and the obese and slumbering senior senator for Kansas.
Ed had called his mother in Independence five times, hoping to get her to join them, but each time the phone had rung and rung and nobody had answered. He had had to give up.
Peter Kaiser said, ‘You can’t hold us here for ever, you know. Sooner or later you’re going to have to do something positive.’
‘That’s for Della to decide,’ Ed told him. ‘She represents the law around here.’
‘It doesn’t matter to me if she represents the International House of Pancakes. She can’t legally hold us without formal charges and without giving us the chance to call a lawyer.’
Ed crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray that had been given to him in New York by Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. ‘Where else are you going to go?’ he demanded. ‘Out there – where people are tearing each other to shreds for the sake of a few cans of baked beans?’
‘I have to get back to Washington,’ Peter protested, sulkily. ‘I have to get back and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop me.’
‘Talk sense, for Christ’s sake,’ Ed told him, ‘If there was any kind of law and order out there – don’t you seriously think that someone would have come looking for Senator Jones by now? A senator disappears, nobody knows where he is, and it’s hardly even mentioned on the news. It’s a jungle outside of this farm, Mr Habeas Corpus Kaiser, and a bright young man like you ought to have the sense to realise it.’
Peter abruptly stood up. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘I’m going to walk out of here and you can’t stop me.’
Della stepped forward, her hands on her hips, her big breasts swaying under her shirt. ‘If you so much as take one step out of this room, Mr Kaiser, I’ll blow your head off.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ said Peter.
‘Wouldn’t I? This state is under martial law. You’re a dangerous suspect attempting to escape FBI custody.’ Peter shook his head. ‘I think you misunderstood me. You wouldn’t dare because, without me, you wouldn’t have a case. I’m your evidence, apart from those papers you stole, and you know it. So I’m not frightened of you, Mrs J. Edgar Hoover. Not one bit.’
He turned, and walked determinedly towards the door in his flapping khaki pants. Della, almost casually, reached for the pump-gun which she had left propped against the bureau in the corner. She raised it, pumped the action, and said softly, ‘Freeze, Mr Kaiser. You’re under arrest, and if you attempt to get away I’m going to have to shoot you.’ There was a formality in the way Della spoke to him that made Peter hesitate. Halfway through the door, he paused, and looked at her over his shoulder. She was standing with the gun raised to her shoulder, the sights marking his head. He licked his lips, as if he had just finished drinking a bowl of particularly nasty tomato soup.
He stood where he was for what seemed like a whole minute. Then he turned around, and went back to the sofa. ‘The day they started hiring whores for cops, that was when the whole legal system went down the tubes,’ he said. ‘Can you believe this hooker, being a cop?’
Della kept the gun levelled at him, but Ed stepped forward and laid his hand on the barrel. ‘That’s enough, Della. You may be an agent of the law, but this is my house, and that’s my sofa, and I don’t particularly want to have holes blown in it.’
He raised the barrel of the pump-gun until it was pointing at the ceiling, although she tried to resist him. He looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘You understand? Because this is the time when people are going to start making their own laws, like they did in the frontier days.’ Della didn’t answer, and lowered the gun. Peter Kaiser, from his place on the sofa, watched them both closely, but said nothing at all.
*
That night, Thursday, Ed was woken up by the deep, distant coughing of shotguns. He sat up in bed, and listened. There was another shot, and another. He shook Della’s shoulder, and said, ‘There’s a firelight going on out there. Can you hear it?’
She raised her tousled head from the pillow. ‘It sounds like it’s coming from the main gate,’ she said.
Ed swung out of bed, and switched on the light. He tugged on his jeans and a T-shirt, and opened the top drawer in his rococo-style bedside table. Della, pulling on an old red sweater of Season’s, watched him sharply as he took out a Colt .45 automatic, and checked the magazine.
‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘A family heirloom?’
That’s right,’ he told her. ‘My father bought it to keep my mother in line. Now, let’s get out there and see what’s going on, shall we?’
Peter Kaiser was already on the landing when they opened their door, in a large pair of blue undershorts with green flowers splattered all over them. Blinking at Ed, he said, ‘I heard shooting. Did you hear shooting?’
‘Just keep your head down,’ said Della. ‘Don’t forget you’re a valuable witness.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Peter.
Ed ran ahead of Della downstairs, and opened up the front door. They crossed the verandah under a sky that was dark and windy and heavy with cloud, and Ed led the way across to the farm’s Wagoneer. He swung himself up into the driver’s seat and started the engine without even waiting for her, or opening the passenger door to let her in.
‘There’s no mistaking that you’re the boss around here,’ she complained, as she clambered up, and laid her pump-gun down on the Jeep’s floor.
Ed twisted the Wagoneer around the asphalt in a squittering curve, and then roared off towards the entrance road and the main gates.
‘They’re threatening my farm,’ he snapped, thrusting his hand into his hair and brushing it back off his forehead. ‘Don’t you understand that? Or have you never owned anything you cared that much for?’
Della said, ‘I’ve never owned anything. There never seemed to be any point to it.’
Ed wound the window down. They could hear the shooting quite clearly now – sharp, argumentative bursts of machine-gun fire, countered by the deep blasts of shotguns. The night air was warm and dusty, but it was dark too, with clouds covering the moon, and it was difficult to make out what was happening up ahead. They could smell gunsmoke drifting their way on the fresh easterly wind.
In the light of his headlamps, Ed saw somebody lying in the roadway. He pulled up, opened the Wagoneer’s door, and jumped down. Della said, ‘What is it? What have you stopped for?’
Ed didn’t answer, but crouched his way forward beside the Jeep’s front wheel, and then scuttled out to where the man was sprawled out in the dust. There was blood everywhere, most of it dried in dark Rorschach prints, but some of it still wet and globular. Ed carefully eased the man over on to his back, and then he saw who it was.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, through his teeth.
It was young Jack Marowitz, dead. He looked as if he had been hit five or six times in the chest by a machine-gun, because the front of his yellow college sweatshirt was mushy with blood. As Ed turned him over, a strange sighing noise came from his perforated lungs.
Ed heaved the body over to the side of the road, and then crouched his way back to the Jeep. The firing was much closer now, and he could hear unfamiliar voices shouting something which sounded like, ‘Get behind them! Circle around them, George! Get behind them!’
Della said, ‘What’s happening? Who was that in the road?’
Ed slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and revved up the Wagoneer’s engine. ‘Jack Marowitz, my crop adviser. One of the best in the business, as far as I was concerned.’
‘But what’s going on? Who shot him?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds like some kind of a raiding party. They’re over there on the right, most of them. At least it sounds that way, from the gunfire.’
‘Where are your people?’
Ed drove cautiously ahead for three or four hundred yards without lights. As he drove, he pointed to the fence which ran alongside the entrance road on the left-hand side. ‘That’s where Dyson was hiding himself yesterday, so I guess that’s where they are tonight. It was Willard, Jack, and one of the garage hands on guard duty until three o’clock.’
There was a brief snatch of firing, and a sudden rattling of bullets against the side of the Jeep. Ed immediately swerved off the track, and stopped the vehicle beside the protective camouflage of a clump of stunted bushes. He pushed open the driver’s door, and scrambled quickly out into the grass, followed by Della.
A shotgun banged loudly off to the left, and Della raised her head a little to see if she could pinpoint where the shot had come from.
‘Those are your people, aren’t they, with the shotguns?’ she asked.
Ed nodded. ‘It sounds like it. Did you see where they were?’
‘I think so. Down behind the fence there, about five or six uprights along. The other people are using M3A1s.’
‘You can tell just by listening?’
‘Every gun has a distinctive sound of its own. And remember I’m trained.’
Ed said, ‘How many of them do you guess there are? Six, maybe?’
‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Della. ‘More, probably, by the way they’re firing.’
Ed thought about that. Then he said, ‘In that case, I think we’d better go back and get some reinforcements. There’s no way that four of us are going to be able to hold off that many of them.’
‘I think it’s time to back off,’ said Della. ‘We don’t have any proper cover here or any spare ammunition. Can you call Willard, and see if you can get him to hear you? Tell him to make his way back to the farm.’
‘Listen,’ said Ed, ‘who’s giving the goddamned orders around here?’
‘Have you got a better idea?’ Della demanded.
There was another burst of light machine-gun fire, off on their right. The raiders were encircling them now, trying to cut off their escape back to the house.
‘If we don’t get out of here now, they’ve got us,’ said Della. ‘So what are you going to do? Call your friends, or die gallantly?’
Ed looked at her intently, trying to make out her face in the darkness. ‘If any of us come out of this famine alive,’ he said, ‘what the hell are you going to do with your life?’ Della said, ‘Call them! If we don’t run, we’re going to have to fight.’
‘I asked you a question,’ insisted Ed.
‘Do you really think I’ve got the time or the inclination to answer you? But if you must know, I’m going to give up the FBI and do what I always wanted to do. Marry, settle down, live in Bluefield, West Virginia and raise children and flowers.’
Ed said, ‘Bluefield, West Virginia?’
He was going to say something else, but he was interrupted by a fast, sharp burst of bullets. Six or seven of them struck the Jeep Wagoneer. They heard the side windows crack, and the high, squeaky hiss of a punctured tyre. Then they heard someone calling, ‘Get over that fence. George! Along the back!’
A man came running past the Jeep, doubled-up, holding a grease-gun, and panting as he ran. He came so close to Ed and Della that he almost kicked Della in the face – but he overshot them by two or three paces before his mind registered that what he had seen on the ground could have been two people. He skated to a halt on the grass, turned around, and just had time to raise his gun before Della rolled over on to her back, lifted her pump-gun, and blew his stomach into rags of bloody intestine.
‘That’s it!’ clipped Della. ‘Now, let’s get the hell out of here!’
‘Willard!’ yelled Ed. ‘Willard – we’re over here and we’re making a run for it!’
Della’s gunshot and Ed’s shouting instantly attracted a whipping, whistling swarm of machine-gun fire. They lay flat against the turf as dust sprayed up all around them, and bullets penetrated the sides of the Jeep in a hurrying series of flat-sounding clonks. Another tyre burst, and Ed snarled at Della, ‘I thought you told me that couldn’t happen?’
Ed raised his Colt .45 and strained his eyes to see what was going on in the darkness. Through the bushes, he could see most of the split-rail fence where Willard and the garage-hand were hiding themselves; and he thought he could see somebody huddled by the roadside, although it was impossible to see if the man was alive and dangerous or dead and safe.
There was a long, tight silence, broken only by the occasional whistling of the grass in the wind, and by the rustling of birds, or gophers, or impatient gunmen. Ed whispered to Della, ‘There’s no sign from Willard. Maybe they hit him.’
Della raised a cautious hand, and said, ‘Wait.’
They didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later, they heard someone running towards them. Ed lifted his head and saw two men sprinting fast and low alongside the split-rail fence. In front, holding on to his stetson hat with one hand and his shotgun in the other, was Willard Noakes; and just behind him was Ed’s young garage-hand.
Ed fired twice into the air, to distract the raiders, and he was answered by a crackle of bullets. But then there was another sound – the snap of a rifle. It fired one ranging shot, then another; and then Willard collapsed in a jumble of arms and legs. The garage-hand bent over him, and Ed heard his voice on the wind like the voice of an anxious fledgling, saying, ‘Willard…’
Ed started to get up, but Della seized the sleeve of his T-shirt.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance. For my sake – for your wife’s sake – just stay where you are.’
Ed slid back down on to the grass. He was sure he could hear Willard moaning. And that wasn’t just anybody, hit by a bullet and hurt. That was Willard Noakes, one of his father’s closest buddies – the man who had taught Ed just about everything he knew – the man who had listened to his problems and given him friendly advice, and never once betrayed himself or South Burlington Farm or the good straightforward state of Kansas.
You could never have said that Willard Noakes was a great man, or even a half-successful man. He was lonesome, as a rule, and unlettered, and when he wasn’t working or sleeping, he was watching television. But it took an effort of will that was almost muscular for Ed not to risk the bullets that were flying around that night and run across to tell Willard that he had always been loved, and respected, and that he wasn’t going to die alone.
There were three more rifle shots. Snap – snap – snap. The garage-hand half-rose, batting his hands at the air as if he were trying to catch moths. Then he fell into the darkness, and Ed couldn’t see him any more.
Della said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Ed. I mean it, darling, otherwise we’re going to be pigfeed.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘The two back tyres on the Jeep are flat, but I guess I can still drive her back to the farmhouse. I just hope they haven’t shot up the engine.’
Della looked up. ‘They’re trying to surround us. I can hear one of them over there, in back of the fence. Can you hear that? Like, rustling. If we’re going to make a run for it, I think we’d better do it now.’
They waited for nearly ten seconds; their hearts galloping, their breath shallow. Then Ed touched Della’s shoulder in the darkness, and said, ‘Let’s go!’
Della scrambled up first, and threw herself into the open door of the Jeep. Ed was up next, and he had started up the motor even before he was sitting in his seat. With the driver’s door swinging wildly, the Wagoneer jounced off the rough grass verge, and bucked its way on to the road. The rear hubs grated and bumped on the hard-packed soil, and when Ed thrust his foot down on the gas, the tyres slithered out from under the rims like agonised black snakes; but they were away, and heading back towards the farm as fast as the crippled Jeep could travel.
Now, for the first time they saw the raiders they were fighting. Out of the shadows, on either side of the road, men came running out of the grassland, carrying rifles and machine-guns. They wore quilted jerkins and jeans, and most of them had scarves tied around their faces.
‘Can’t you get this damned thing to go any faster?’ fretted Della, as the Jeep ground laboriously along the track.
‘With two flat tyres? You want miracles?’
‘For God’s sake! We’d be quicker on foot.’
A hail of machine-gun bullets smashed the back windows of the Wagoneer, and showered them with broken glass. Ed pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor, but although the engine screamed, and the back wheel rims screeched on the road, he couldn’t get enough traction to take them clear of the running raiders. If the Jeep hadn’t been four-wheel-drive, they probably couldn’t have got it to go at all.
Two well-aimed rifle bullets penetrated the driver’s door, with a sound like warping tin, and one of them buried itself in the upholstery of Ed’s seat. He said, ‘That’s it. We’ve had it That’s the end.’
But Della whooped, ‘We’re losing them! Ed, look we’re losing them!’
Ed turned. They were travelling at almost twenty-five mph now, and the raiders were gradually falling behind. One or two of them had stopped already, and were raising their rifles and their machine-guns to their shoulders to give the Jeep a final scattering of fire.
‘It’s too far now,’ said Della, with relief, settling back in her seat. ‘They’ll never get the range. Not with those peashooters.’
It was then that the Jeep’s tortured transmission gave out a hideous clashing noise, and locked solid. The vehicle jolted to a stop, and wouldn’t budge, even for Ed’s frantic jugglings with the T-bar shift.
‘Out!’ Ed shouted at Della. ‘We’ve got a good start on them – we can still make it!’
They were out of the Jeep and running before any of the raiders realised what had happened. But as they pounded along the dirt track towards the dark huddle of the farmhouse buildings, they heard the sporadic crackling of M3Als behind them and the denser, sharper report of rifles. Ed – even though he was running – could feel the night air herringboned by bullets. For the first time that night, he thought, ‘God – they’ve got me now. I don’t stand a chance. I’m going to die right here, right now, as suddenly as Michael died in his car.’
He could hear Della running along beside him – her bare feet slapping on the track. He could hear his own painful gasps for breath. He closed his eyes and pelted along faster, totally intent on survival, totally intent on living and on seeing Season and Sally again.
Then – there was another fusillade of gunfire. But this wasn’t behind them. This was ahead, from the farmhouse, and from the stables. This was the bellow of shotguns and the light twig-snapping sound of handguns. His own farmhands, shooting back. The firing from the raiders broke off abruptly as they scrambled for cover, and Ed and Della found themselves running through the night in unnatural silence, as if they were trying to escape through the muffled darkness of a nightmare.
They reached the asphalt yard, and then they were stumbling up the steps of the farmhouse verandah, accompanied by an ear-splitting salvo of covering shotgun fire.
Dyson was standing by the door, and he opened it up for them as they came running along the front of the house. Then he quickly slammed it behind them, and locked it. Ed said simply, ‘Shit. Thanks, Dyson.’
Inside the farmhouse, the atmosphere was alarmed, and everybody was tight faced with tension. Even Shearson Jones had come down from his bed, and was sitting in Ed’s armchair, wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe that scarcely met over the white moon-like curve of his belly. Peter Kaiser was perched on the arm of the sofa next to Karen, with his arm around her – an affectionate gesture to which she responded by sitting up as rigidly as possible.
Dyson, following Ed and Della into the living-room, said, ‘We heard the shooting. Then we heard you go out to the front gate in the Jeep. I was trying to get the boys together – armed and ready – when we saw you coming back.’ Ed’s chest was still heaving from their last desperate run. He said, ‘Dyson, I’m glad you did. That blast of scatter-gun fire – well, that just about saved our lives.’
Dyson was carrying the light hunting rifle which he usually used for popping off shots at rabbits and rats. He went across to the window, parted the drapes, and peered studiously out into the night. The Jeep was already alight, and rolling tongues of orange flame were pouring out of its blackened carcass like a grotesque demonstration of fire-eating.
‘There’s a whole lot of them out there, Ed,’ Dyson said, quietly. ‘Twenty or thirty maybe. I counted the muzzle flashes when you were running in. There’s no way we can hold them off for very long.’
Ed said, ‘I’m not going to try to hold them off.’
‘You’re not even going to try to save yourself?’ asked Shearson Jones, in his fat, unmistakable voice. ‘What are you going to do? Let them scavenge the few supplies we have left? Lie low while they rob us?’
Ed turned around. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘those raiders out there undoubtedly outnumber us. They sure as hell outgun us. If we tried to hold them off, they’d either starve us out, burn us out, or simply shoot their way in. Well – you can take your pick, senator, when it comes to the kind of death that you want. But right now, I personally don’t feel like dying at all, and I don’t suppose that a whole lot of the folks who work on my farm feel like it either.’
He turned to Dyson, and said, ‘They got Willard, and they got Jack, and they got that garage-hand you sent out there. I don’t even remember his name.’
Dyson said unhappily, ‘When they didn’t come back with you, I kind of assumed that was the way it was. Damn it, Ed, that really makes me feel like hell.’
‘Me, too, Dyson,’ said Ed, laying his hand on his shoulder.
Dyson said, ‘That young boy’s name was Gerrity – David Gerrity. He was the best we had when it came to stripping a tractor. Well, so Willard told me. I’m only the pilot.’
Ed looked back at Shearson. ‘We’re going to have to make a break for it,’ he said. ‘You can either come along with us, or you can stay behind. That decision is entirely up to you. But we’re going to load our wagons with all the remaining foodstuffs on this farm and head for the west coast.’
‘The west coast?’ asked Della. ‘Surely it makes more sense to head for Washington. They’ll have government there – some kind of law and order. And besides, I want to turn Senator Jones in to Charles Kurnik in person There’s no point in going to the west coast.’
Ed said, ‘My wife and child are out on the west coast. I want to find them. Once I’ve done that, I want to try to get out of the United States, either through Mexico or by sea. Believe me, Della, you only have to listen to the news bulletins. You only have to see what happened tonight to two of my closest friends and workmates – Willard and Jack. There’s no point in pretending that things are any better in Washington. They can’t be. They’re probably worse. And what the hell is the point of holding on to a fraud suspect in a nation where they don’t even have enough police to stop people murdering each other?’
There was a burst of gunfire outside, and somewhere across the yard a window broke.
Karen said, ‘I believe we ought to stick together. I think we’ll have more of a chance that way.’
Peter Kaiser rolled up his eyes. ‘No wonder history has no eminent lady philosophers,’ he said. ‘With the possible exception of Xaviera Hollander.’
Karen looked up at him. ‘Do you want to stay behind?’ she asked. ‘If all the rest of us go to the west coast, do you want to try to make it to Washington on your own?’
Peter looked back at her, and then shrugged. ‘It depends,’ he said sulkily.
Ed said, ‘Dyson – how many wagons do we have? And how many cars?’
‘We’ve got the Chevy wagon you brought back from Fall River. Then there’s the Big Dooley that Carson’s left here when they were shifting tree stumps. And four – maybe five family pick-ups and sedans. One El Camino for sure, and a Mercury Marquis.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed, ‘this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to load the pick-ups and the trunks of the family cars with as much food as we can. We mustn’t forget water and fruit juices, too. Then we’re going to get everybody into their cars and ready to go, and pull out of here in a convoy, shooting all the time. With any luck, we should be able to clear the farm without any casualties.’
‘With any luck,’ echoed Peter Kaiser, sarcastically, pulling a morbid face.
Shearson said, ‘Listen, Mr Hardesty, I may be technically the prisoner of your fancy-woman here, formerly my fancy-woman, but that doesn’t mean I have to take instructions from you. It’s essential that Mr Kaiser and I return to Washington; and if you’re not prepared to come with us, then I’m afraid we shall simply have to go without you.’
‘You wouldn’t get ten miles,’ said Ed. ‘Don’t you watch the television? Haven’t you seen what it’s like out there?’
‘Your concern for my well-being is touching,’ replied Shearson. ‘However, I’ve been looking after myself for a considerable number of years, often through situations that have been a good deal stickier than this one, and I think I can manage without you, thanks.’
Della said, ‘Really, Ed, we ought to try to make it to Washington. I know your wife and daughter are in Los Angeles, but I have to take Senator Jones in to the Bureau. There won’t be any hope of arraigning him if I drag him out to California. He’s probably thought up twenty ways of killing our indictments anyway – unusual and stressful arrest, that kind of thing. We really ought to try.’
Ed looked at Dyson, who shrugged, and then at Karen. ‘Going back to Washington doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ he insisted. ‘The whole city is practically under siege, the way they’re telling it on the news. Right now, we need to get ourselves somewhere with a good climate, fertile soil, in case we have to resettle and start growing our food again from scratch; and somewhere that’s close to the ocean and the border. Sure, I want to go to Los Angeles for personal reasons. But it’s going to be safer, too, to stay in the West. I’d stay right here in Kansas if I could – but it’s dry, and the winters can be hard, and from what’s going on outside, I’d guess that we can expect raiding and looting parties for a long time to come.’
‘Do you seriously think that California’s going to be any better?’ asked Shearson. ‘Los Angeles is burning, San Francisco has turned into a latter-day Sodom, with plenty of Gomorrah thrown in; San Diego’s become a looters’ paradise.’
From outside, there was a crackle of heavy, sustained shooting. They heard upstairs windows break, and the sound of running feet. Dyson Kane went to the window again just as one of Ed’s farmhands came into the room, carrying a shotgun that was still smoking, his face bright with sweat and excitement.
‘Mr Hardesty, sir,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘It don’t look like we can keep ’em back much longer. Jerry’s been hit in the arm, sir, and the rest of the boys ain’t really up to gun-fighting.’
‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is. Dyson – can you get those vehicles loaded up, and parked in a line, ready to roll? Mr Kaiser – Karen – you want to get out there and help?’
‘I’m not doing anything until we’ve settled which direction we’re heading,’ said Peter, folding his arms.
Ed turned to Shearson. The senator gave him a fat, condescending smile ‘The same goes for me, Mr Hardesty; and you know darn well that if I stay, and Mr Kaiser stays, then it’s your fancy-woman’s bounden duty to stay too.’
There was more shooting outside, and a child screamed. Ed snapped at Dyson, ‘Get moving. I want those wagons loaded up before it’s too late.’ Then, without hesitation, he tugged his Colt automatic out of his belt and held it up in front of everybody in the room as if he were demonstrating it to a group of benighted natives.
‘I’m going to make one thing straight,’ he said. ‘On this farm, I’m in charge of everything and everybody. I’m in charge, and I’m also responsible. That’s the way it is, even when we don’t have a crisis on our hands. But right now, we have, and that increases my authority even more. This country isn’t safe for people to wander around on their own, particularly women, and particularly obese senior senators with a price on their heads. Our society’s broken down into tribes, and the way I see it, each tribe has to hold together to survive. This is our tribe, and unless anybody wants to argue about it, I’m the chief. Now, we’re ail getting out of here, we’re all helping to load up the wagons, and then we’re all heading west.’
Shearson, gripping the arms of his chair to support himself, slowly rose to his feet He stood there for a moment swaddled in his bathrobe, breathing loudly and hoarsely with the exertion of getting up.
‘Mr Hardesty,’ he said, ‘my late father once told me never to argue with fools, ignoramuses, or people with loaded guns. Since you fall into all three categories, I don’t think I have any alternative but to comply with your wishes. Mrs McIntosh – shall we light out for Los Angeles?’
Della, furious, stalked out of the living-room ahead of any of them. ‘Well, now,’ Shearson said to Ed, pulling down his eyelid with his finger in a gesture of shared confidence, ‘I seem to have made the right decision. Anything that infuriates an agent of the FBI can’t be all bad.’
*
At the same time that Ed Hardesty’s farmworkers were trying to hold off the raiders who threatened South Burlington, a small and simple tragedy was taking place in a dilapidated frame house on the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The house had once been neat and proud, part of a row that had all belonged to International Harvester workers, foremen and supervisors and chief engineers. Now it was overshadowed by unkempt sycamores, and a rusty rundown Nash was parked in the driveway. This was where the welfare cases lived; the tired single-parent wives with their second-hand strollers and their dime-store dresses; the paraplegic husbands who could do nothing more than nod and shuffle, and whose sick pay had long since run out.
Number 8 was the home of John Frederick Walters, his wife Elizabeth, and their three daughters, Alice, Wendy and Jenna. Alice was the oldest, at six; Wendy was three and Jenna was six months.
John Frederick Walters, who always gave his name as ‘John Frederick Walters’, was thirty one, and a skilled electrician. At least, he used to be a skilled electrician, until 1972, when he was rewiring a house in the better part of Fort Wayne, and the owner came back half-drunk from a business reception, pulled the main switch, and electrocuted him. He was lucky to be alive. But there was a twisted burn all the way down the right side of his chest, and even after months of hospitalisation his left hand still felt a little numb, and he still dragged his left leg in an odd, teetering walk that made people in supermarkets give him a wide berth, in case he collided with their carts. Until the famine crisis on Sunday, he had worked in a Thriftee Superstore on Paulding Road, but it had been burned to the ground in the early hours of Monday. Now he was holed up with his family at Number 8, with no electricity, no telephone, no mail, and only a transistor radio with weak batteries to keep him in touch with the horror that was sweeping the outside world.
He was still sitting in his yellow-papered living-room at midnight on Thursday, listening to an extended news bulletin about the day’s disasters. Thirty-six people had died when their overloaded airplane had snagged power lines over Columbus, Ohio – turning their attempted getaway from the United States into a mass cremation. Anything up to 100 people were feared dead after fire had swept a condominium in Miami from a looted supermarket next door. Washington was almost unapproachable – the US Marines had sealed off every highway from the outside world, and were threatening to shoot interlopers on sight. The President was out of his oxygen tent, but his doctors had told him he had to rest for two or three more days at the least. It was ‘expertly estimated’ that between seven and eight hundred Americans had died during the day from violence directly related to the food shortages.
From the outside world – from Europe, from the Far East, from the Third World – there was awkwardness and hesitation. They stood by while America slowly collapsed from within, like unwilling witnesses to a coronary. The Queen had sent a message expressing ‘the grave concern of the British people’, but the reluctance of America’s erstwhile allies to assist her was becoming increasingly and embarrassingly obvious. Already, trade envoys from Italy, Sweden, and West Germany had made special visits to the Soviet Union, and the dollar was no longer being quoted on the world money markets. The Secretary of State, in a rare fit of temper, talked of alliances that had taken ‘fifty years and one hundred fifty billion dollars to build; and only fifty minutes to tear down.’
John Frederick Walters listened to all this carefully, leaning close to his indistinct radio set. It was a hot, airless night in Fort Wayne, and most of the rioting and looting that had ravaged the town during the earlier part of the week had died down. There were no more supermarkets to break into; no more police cars to burn; and the fear and panic were collapsing of heat exhaustion. Still, John Frederick Walters could hear police sirens howling eerily out over on Tillman Road, and he knew that if he went to the top of the house, to Alice’s room, and opened the window, he would be able to see the Lutheran Hospital burning over on Fairfield Avenue. He had heard it from Old Oliver, his next-door neighbour, that seventy people had died in that fire, suffocated in their beds like fumigated bugs.
He heard the stairs creak. He switched off the radio set and sat up straight, his thin hands laced together in his lap. He was a very thin man altogether – although he had weighed almost 185 pounds before his electrocution. His face was pale as water-chestnuts, and he had odd straw-coloured hair that stuck up at the back, as if it were charged with static. He looked an electrocuted man – as if his brain were still in that black hiatus between switch on and switch off – as if his bodily fluids were in stasis – as if his nerve-endings were recoiling and recoiling from that first fry of voltage.
His wife Elizabeth was standing in the living-room door. Her face was angular and white; her eyes as shifty and haunted as Edith Piaf, or a painting by Munch. She wore a cheap new quilted robe with orange flowers on it, Woolco’s ritziest. The last time he had taken her out was in February of 1972, for her birthday, when they had gone to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, and eaten Chinese.
She said, ‘Jenna’s hungry.’
John Frederick Walters looked at her. He wondered why she had come all the way downstairs at midnight to tell him that. He knew Jenna was hungry. They had scraped out the last can of formula that morning, diluting it as much as they could, and now there was nothing. There were no emergency food centres in Fort Wayne. If you wanted anything at all, you had to drive to Indianapolis, and the Rambler’s battery had been flat for weeks. Besides, what chance did a cripple have of fighting his way through to the food supplies?
‘Have you tried breast-feeding her?’ asked John Frederick Walters.
‘I tried. But there’s hardly anything there. I haven’t eaten in two days myself, John Frederick. I can’t give milk out of nothing at all.’
John Frederick Walters reached for the red Lark packet by the radio. There were two cigarettes left in it and he shook them, wondering if he ought to have one now, or if he ought to save both of them for later. In the end, he slid one out, tucked it between his lips, and lit it one-handed with a folded matchbook. He puffed smoke.
‘There’s nothing left, Elizabeth. That can of franks we gave the kids today, that was it, and from what the news has been saying, we shouldn’t even have risked that. They could go down with disease, die.’
Elizabeth stayed where she was in the doorway, nibbling at her lower lip. She peeled the skin off it in strips until it bled. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t anybody care? You’d think they’d come around with food parcels. I mean – we’ve got three children here. What are we going to do?’
‘The whole town’s a wreck,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘No police, no ambulance service, nothing. How the hell can anybody expect them to bring around food parcels?’
‘But we’ll starve,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘The three girls will starve.’
John Frederick Walters stared at the burning cigarette in his hand. He felt giddy from nicotine and lack of food. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess we will, unless something happens.’
‘But what do people do in India, places like that? Cambodia? They starve, sure, but they sometimes scratch some kind of a living.’
‘They know how, that’s why,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘They know how to live on a small bowl of rice, how to make it last. They’ve never seen a T-bone steak in their lives, and they’d probably puke up at the sight of it if they did. They know how to grow the damned rice, too. Do you know how to grow rice? I mean, if you do, get out back and get planting. We’re all gonna need it.’
Elizabeth stared at him as if she hadn’t heard or understood a word he was saying. She probably didn’t. She said, slowly, ‘There’s some Alpo I bought for Florence’s dog. There’s a can of that left.’
‘Alpo? Are you kidding? You can’t eat dog-food.’
‘But how can I produce milk if I don’t eat? Can’t you hear her screaming up there? What am I supposed to do? Stand by and watch my children wasting away? I don’t know how you can sit there apd smoke and listen to that stupid wore-out radio and let it happen!’
John Frederick Walters stared at her coldly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess you don’t know, do you? You don’t know that this whole world’s fallen in on us, and because we’re at the bottom to begin with, the entire weight of everything falls on us cripples and incompetents first.’
She looked back at him, her mouth patchy with blood. Then she turned without a word and went through to the kitchen.
He switched the radio back on, and, listened to a short bulletin about a shooting outside of Los Angeles. Fifty police had ambushed a band of vigilante looters, and slain all of them, including eight women and a child of twelve. Most state highway patrols had now formed themselves into anti-looting squads, hunting down looters and killing them on sight. What the bulletin didn’t mention was that almost all of the recaptured loot was divided up amongst the arresting officers, and the district attorney’s office, and anybody else the highway patrols considered to be ‘close and special friends.’
It was still possible to buy certain foods on the black market. An NBC reporter had paid seven hundred and fifty dollars for a can of Chicken of the Sea at a warehouse in Brooklyn, and he had been offered whole canned hams from Denmark and the United Kingdom for well over one thousand five hundred dollars each. Pots of Marmite, the British yeast extract, were selling at sixty dollars and upwards.
John Frederick Walters switched off the radio again, puffed twice at his cigarette, and then stood up. He limped unevenly out of the living-room, along the narrow corridor with its scenic print of Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey, still splattered with dried-up tomato sauce from the evening two years ago when he had thrown his pasta at Elizabeth in a fit of frustrated temper. He opened the kitchen door, and there Elizabeth was, sitting at the table beside the cheap cream-painted dresser, her fork raised, her eyes staring back at him in defiance and fright.
In front of her was a plate – one of the nice white octagonal plates that Elizabeth’s mother had given them for a wedding gift. There were only three left, out of eight. The plate was heaped with brown glistening lumps of meat. On the draining-board was a red-labelled can, with an open lid.
John Frederick Walters walked into the kitchen, and around the table. Elizabeth kept her eyes on him warily, her fork still poised.
‘Is that Alpo?’ John Frederick Walters asked harshly.
Elizabeth nodded.
John Frederick Walters went to the draining-board and picked up the empty can. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘you could do worse. It says here that it’s a complete and balanced diet. So why don’t you go ahead – eat it.’
Elizabeth hesitated for a while, biting at her lips. Then, in jerky slow-motion, she dug her fork into the dog food and lifted up two gravyish chunks. John Frederick Walters stared at her unblinking and said nothing.
Closing her eyes, Elizabeth put the dog food into her mouth. She slowly began to chew it, moving it from one side to the other, her eyes still closed, her empty fork held up beside her.
‘You’re lucky,’ said her husband, in a shaky voice. ‘Do you know how lucky you are? That’s an expensive brand. Some brands are nothing but fat, and tubes, and minced up gristle. Mind you, I should think that even Alpo has its fair share of offals.’
Elizabeth chewed and chewed, tried to swallow, and gagged. Saliva and half-chewed dog meat trailed from her lips.
‘God,’ breathed John Frederick Walters, ‘what are you doing? What about Jenna? How’s Jenna going to survive if her mother doesn’t eat dog meat to turn into milk? How are any of us going to survive?’
Elizabeth was weeping. She gagged again, and held her hand over her mouth to keep the food inside.
John Frederick Walters told Fort Wayne police officers early Friday morning that ‘I acted quick.’ He said, ‘I never thought the day would have to come when a wife of mine would have to eat dog food to nourish our baby, and I never thought the day would have to come when my girls would go without a meal. I’m not rich, I know that, and we could never afford much since my accident, but this is America, isn’t it? How come suddenly there was nothing to eat, and no prospect of nothing to eat?’
As Elizabeth choked over her mouthful of dog food, John Frederick Walters pulled down the frayed cord which was suspended over the stove for drying the girls’ undervests during the winter, twisted it twice around his hands, and then once around Elizabeth’s neck. She fell backwards to the floor, hitting her head on the beige linoleum. Her eyes bulged at John Frederick Walters in horror, but she was unable to speak, unable to breathe, and her face turned grey and shiny, the same colour as grey leather shoes. After five minutes, with the string cutting into his bare hands John Frederick Walters decided she was dead.
He went upstairs, leaving Elizabeth lying in the kitchen. Alice and Wendy shared a bed in the small second-storey bedroom over the living-room. They were both asleep in the darkness, in their white flock cotton nightdresses, and John Frederick Walters stood at the end of the bed watching them – their upraised wrists, traced with blueish veins, their thin ankles. He reached down and held Alice’s bare toes in his hand, gently and lovingly. He wanted to kill them, he knew he had to, but he didn’t know how. How do you kill children you love? How can you instantly end their lives without hurting them?
He picked Wendy up, and carried her sleeping into the bathroom. Her arms lolled beside her as if she were already dead. He felt as if he were mad, or drugged, or even as if he were someone else altogether. Supposing there wasn’t really a famine at all? Supposing his radio had been telling him lies? But he looked around him at the white enamel bathtub with its green-coloured stain; at the can of lavender talcum powder with the rusted rim; at the fingerprinted mirror where Elizabeth had plucked her eyebrows and he had always shaved. And even if the radio was lying, what the hell was the use of a life like this, for any of them?
He took a safety-razor blade between finger and thumb, and then sat on the toilet seat with the sleepy Wendy on his lap. She mumbled, ‘Daddy… what are we doing?’ but he shushed her soothingly as he stroked her forehead, and then gently but firmly gripped her hair and slit her throat, as deeply as he could, from one side to the other. She didn’t even protest; didn’t even seem to realise what was happening. But then there was a sudden explosive gargle of blood and air, and the whole bathroom was arrayed in red. He dropped Wendy off his lap, in horror and utter fear, and she lay kicking her left foot against the side of the bath, kick, kick, kick, as she died. It was like watching a run-over dog die, only a thousand times worse, and he reeled with the dreadfulness of it.
‘I didn’t lose my resolve, though,’ he told the police. ‘I knew the rest of them had to go, too.’
He went upstairs to the small attic room where Jenna slept in her pink-painted crib. He had spent hours on that crib himself, sanding it and decorating it. Just above Jenna’s slumbering curls there was a transfer of a grinning burro, wearing a straw hat.
John Frederick Walters was glad that Jenna had gone to sleep again. He doubted if he would have been able to kill her if she was crying. He leaned over her crib, kissed her, and then pressed a pillow against her face for what seemed like a half-hour. It was probably only five or ten minutes, but it was enough. Jenna May Walters died of asphyxiation, aged 179 days.
Alice was the last. Alice, too, was asleep, and all she said when he softly opened the collar of her nightdress and held the razor-blade against the side of her throat was, ‘What time is it?’ Then the sheets were stained with ever-widening darkness.
The police stopped him on Anthony Boulevard, trudging north. His fingers were stuck together with dried blood. They held him up against the car while they searched him, and then they sat him down on the curb and subjected him to an impromptu interrogation. He admitted murdering his family, and offered to take them back to Number 8 so that they could see for themselves. They sat him on two spread-out sheets of week-old newspaper in the back of the car, and drove him south again.
Under the emergency powers granted to the Indiana police during the state of national crisis, patrolmen were permitted in what they considered to be ‘extreme circumstances’ to administer summary justice and execution. The two patrolmen who had picked up John Frederick Walters were in little doubt that the homicides at Number 8 were (as they later put it) ‘extreme in the extreme.’
At seventeen minutes past two on Friday morning, they asked him to kneel in the middle of his back lawn, which he did. They asked him if he had any last wishes, and he told them that he had one Lark left, in the living-room, next to the radio, and that he would appreciate the chance to smoke it. They conferred, and then said no, they didn’t have time to watch him smoke a cigarette. Then one of the patrolmen lifted a .357 Python revolver and blew John Frederick Walters’ brains into the peonies.
*
Just before he went to bed at dawn on Friday morning, the Vice-President was handed a lengthy and detailed medical report on the long-term effects of severe dietary deficiency in the United States. He was reminded that a moderately active male between thirty-five and sixty-five required 2900 calories a day; and that a woman between eighteen and fifty-five requires 2200. An estimate of available food supplies showed that even with careful conservation, and even with an intensive programme of agricultural revival, there would be less than one quarter of the necessary calories available to each American man, woman, and child during the coming six months.
In practice, there would be far less. There was no question at all that ‘approximately 85 million people’ would have to go without food supplies altogether, and live off whatever they could scavenge. ‘We are going to have to face up to the fact that the world’s most technologically sophisticated society; a society capable of visiting the Moon; a society which only two weeks ago measured its anxieties in terms of breast-enlargements, jogging, psychological self-acceptance, and Howard Jarvis; is now going to have to accept the degrading spectacle of nearly a third of its citizens digging like hogs for roots.’
The report warned of rickets – a softening of the bones caused by a severe lack of vitamin D and calcium. ‘This can lead to a bending of the bones under the weight of the body and the application of normal muscular pressure. Hence the bow-legged appearance of children suffering from malnutrition, and the flattening of their ribs, which can contract their chest cavity, so that their liver is pushed outward, causing the distinctive “pot-belly” of the underfed.’ Rickets, the report continued, was also responsible for the high, square, intellectual-looking heads of starving children, along with their small-featured faces. Their teeth generally appeared late, and rotted away early.
Scurvy, or scorbutus, was another risk. Although it was very well known that scurvy was caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, and although in normal times it could rapidly and easily be cured, there was now a danger that many Americans would have to go without fresh fruit and vegetables for anything up to six months, and that would leave them ‘wide open’ to infection. The symptoms included bleeding gums, stinking breath, extravasations of blood in the skin, and even bleeding from the eyes, nose and anus. Scurvy patients were liable to suffer anaemia, agonising ulcers on their arms and legs, and, if they were still untreated, exhaustion, chronic diarrhoea, and fatal failure of the lungs or kidneys.
The medical report remarked that ‘the United States is now inevitably entering a period of disease and death that can only be described as medieval.’
At 6.35 a.m., the Vice-President took two sleeping-pills and went to bed on a cot in the small room adjoining the Oval Office. He asked to be woken at 10.35 a.m. precisely.
Through the bullet-proof glass of the White House windows, with their unreal submarine tint, he was unable to hear the brief rattles of heavy machine-gun fire over by the Arlington Memorial Bridge.