Dead of Night

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Back in the bus, I went to the rear and used the chemical toilet, where the shakes started and where I vomited into the filthy plastic bowl. I rinsed out the bowl. There was a bucket of water by the toilet and I used it to wash my hands and face. Then I went back to the main part of the bus. A plastic shopping bag that said price chopper on the side was on one of the seats. I opened it up and found a hard stick of salami, some bottled water and a piece of cheese. The seal around the water bottle was unbroken, and it looked like the salami and cheese were also firmly sealed.

So what?

If they wanted me dead, I doubted that poisoning would be their method of choice. I sat on the seat and ate the meal, the salami’s saltiness making the wound in my cheek sting. I sipped at the water and saved half the bottle. The tiny bulbs were still burning, and I began to appreciate the ridiculousness of having Christmas lights illuminating this deceptively peaceful and actually deadly little scene. I found the green wool blanket and wrapped myself up. It was getting colder, and it didn’t look like there was a stove or a heater in here. I pulled out my trusty Orwell and started reading. Then I put the book down. There was a commotion of some sort going on outside. I moved over to the other side of the bus, went up to the little peephole. Out under the trees there was a cluster of militiamen, and when they moved I saw that they were escorting four or five men. In the lengthening shadows it was hard to see who they were, but as they got closer I saw that they were all dressed in uniforms. Their arms were bound in front of them, they were barefoot, and on two of them I glimpsed blue brassards on their shoulders. UN forces. Irish, British, Canadian, Hungarian, Egyptian… who could tell?

But they were prisoners now, that was easy to see.

Then things got hellish, quite quickly.

One of the prisoners at the end of the line suddenly spun around and made a run for it to the woodline. ‘Jesus,’ I said out loud. ‘Don’t do it.’

There were shouts and the other prisoners fell flat on their faces. After another couple of shouts one of the militiamen raised his rifle and popped off three or four rounds, the muzzle flashes very bright. The soldier trying to make a run for it flopped to the ground without making a sound. More shouting, and the militiamen kicked at the prisoners lying in the dirt as if it was their fault. A couple more militiamen and some militia women came up and examined the shot prisoner, and he was dragged away. His comrades were kicked again, then dragged to their feet and they started shuffling away once more. Not one of them looked back at the body being dragged away. Not one.

I moved away from the window and then stretched out on the mattress. I stared up at the metal ceiling of the school bus, trying not to think about anything much. Later the lights slowly dimmed until they were barely glowing and I kept on staring up, still trying not to think. I got up and looked outside for one last time and saw that almost all the lights in the camp were dimmed as well.

Night had fallen.

Later in the night there was the sound of helicopters, low overhead. I rolled off the mattress and went to the window again, my heart thumping. A UN raiding party, maybe -God, wouldn’t that be wonderful. A quick search-and-rescue, and I could be out of here in a matter of minutes.

But no rescue arrived. I looked out the window into blackness. All the lights were off, not a single one showing. Damn, the militia were good. The faintest sound of something overhead, and everything went dark. The noise of the helicopters grew louder and louder until I could almost imagine them overhead, searching. If I’d had matches or a flare or something, I think even I would have had the stones to break out and make some sort of signal. But all I had were my empty hands, clenched in frustration, as the helicopter-engine noise started to fade away.

I stepped back from the window and then was startled so much that I almost banged my head on the school-bus ceiling as the front door scissored open and cold air came in, along with a flashlight beam. I remembered the warning I had received earlier about staying away from the window, and I thought this was it, I had been spotted. I’d be dragged out and shot, just like that UN soldier earlier.

‘Hey!’ came a voice. ‘Back away — show me your hands!’

I did just that. There was some confusion up front and a man stumbled forward and slumped onto his knees. A militiaman was behind him, holding a flashlight, the same young guy who had showed me his Smith and Wesson.

‘Hope there’s room at the inn, ‘cause you’ve got to share quarters,’ he said, stepping back outside. ‘And remember the rules. No looking out or sneaking out, or you’re dead men.’

The door squeaked shut and the man in front of me moaned some, and then rolled over and sat up. The side of his face was covered with dirt and looked bruised. He seemed a few years older than me and was dressed in khaki slacks and a dark blue sweater and sneakers. His hair was dark and he had a nicely trimmed beard. He rubbed at the side of his head and looked over at me.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Since I’ve been here longer, I think you should start,’ I said.

‘Ouch,’ he said, pulling his fingers away from his head. ‘The name is Gary Nealon. And yours?’

‘Samuel Simpson.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘And why are you the guest of our fair county militia this fall evening?’

‘I’m from Canada,’ I said.

Gary shook his head. ‘If you were from France, I could understand. But why Canada?’

I folded my arms. ‘Because I was in the employ of the United Nations, that’s why. And you? What’s your story?’

He leaned up against one of the few remaining bolted seats. ‘Ah, I’m here because of a very nasty and dastardly crime,’ he said.

‘Which was what?’

‘Being a schoolteacher and teaching the truth,’ Gary said.

‘Oh.’

He shook his head, managed a smile. ‘Doesn’t sound like much, but in this time and place I’m afraid it’s now a capital crime. Tell me, could I bother you for some water?’

I thought about going back and picking up the plastic bucket at the rear, but looking at what had just happened to him and what he had said, I handed over my bottle of water. He examined it and said, ‘Your last water?’

‘Back behind the blanket there’s a chemical toilet and a bucket for washing up that has some water.’

He started to get up. ‘Then I’ll use that…’

I pushed him down gently. ‘No, it’s fine. Drink from the bottle. I’m sure we’ll get some more supplies in the morning.’

Gary undid the cap and said, ‘Then you’re a romantic, aren’t you?’

‘So I’ve been accused.’

He took just a couple of sips, and then passed the bottle back. He said, ‘Been here long?’

‘Just about a day.’

‘And what were you doing for the UN?’

‘Investigating war crimes.’

‘Oh. Sounds very serious.’

‘It was very serious,’ I said, ‘though it seemed like most of the time we drove around in circles, finding a whole lot of nothing. Until just the other day, when we came upon a TV⁷ crew from Australia that then got ambushed.’

‘Prying eyes,’ Gary said. ‘The first rule of authority. Keep prying eyes away.’

‘They sure seem to be doing a good job.’

‘What are you? A lawyer? A coroner? A forensics investigator?’

I took a sip of my own and then put the bottle down. ‘I used to be a newspaper reporter. Now… well, my job with the UN was to document what we were finding. That’s what I was doing.’

He nodded. ‘How did you get captured?’

‘By being stupid.’

‘Ah, well, most people don’t get captured by being smart.’

I laughed. ‘Good answer. Well, truth is, I had been separated from my unit and was trying to make my way to the interstate, hitch a ride on a UN convoy. I was almost there, about a day and a half without eating, when I stopped at a general store to get some breakfast. Then I was captured at the end of my meal.’

‘Cooper General Store?’

‘Yep.’

‘Ah, the folk who run that are the Saunders family. Very tight with the local politics and militia. Your bad luck to go there.’

‘Sure, bad luck. Beats blaming the people on the ground, right?’

Gary grinned and said, ‘Blame? Samuel, there’s so much blame to go around that we’d need a convoy of tractor-trailer trucks to do the job right. But do you know who I blame? Do you?’

‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, no matter what I say.’

‘Doctor Stanley Milgram of Yale University, more than fifty years ago. There’s your man.’

‘Excuse me?’

Gary kept the smile on his face, like he was enjoying being back in a classroom, even a classroom that was a prison. ‘Oh, I’m sure the name doesn’t mean much to you, but I’m equally sure his experiments do. He was the gentleman who decided to see how far people would go in following orders, no matter how distasteful those orders might be. His studies were so controversial that he was almost forced out of teaching, and his contemporaries—instead of plumbing into what he had discovered and its implications—spent their time criticizing his research and his theories.’

I half-remembered a dull day at an introductory psych course, back in college. ‘Electroshock, am I right?’

If he’d been in the mood to clap his hands, I’m sure Gary would have done just that. ‘Yes, exactly. Electroshock. The active participants in the study were told that their job was to assist in an intelligence-testing session. But the supposedly passive study members had electrodes hooked up to them, and the purpose was to give them an electric shock each time they got an answer wrong.’

‘But it was a fake, right? Nothing was hooked up. The “passive” study members weren’t being shocked at all.’

Another eager nod. ‘Yes, you’re right. But the real point of the experiment was to see how far the active participants would go in shocking a perfect stranger, somebody they had never even met before. They were told that each subsequent shock would be stronger than the previous one, and they could even hear the subjects on the receiving end screaming, and you know what? Most of them kept going, all the way to when it looked like the subjects were going to be severely injured. Or even killed.’

‘A hell of an experiment,’ I said.

‘Yes, yes, a hell of an experiment,’ Gary said, now looking around the school bus. ‘Which brings me to my current state, I’m afraid. I was using Doctor Milgram’s research in my high-school class, and discussed another set of parameters, about another even larger experiment, based partially on his research. The bottom line, of course, is what people will do when they are just following orders, when they don’t see another human being as a real person but only as an object. I even used some materials from the Iraqi prison scandal of a few years back when our soldiers—our brave, wonderful soldiers—were attacking Iraqi prisoners with German shepherd dogs.’

From outside I could hear some yelling, which then stopped. ‘I take it your teaching was a bit more contemporary.’

‘Oh, yes, very current,’ Gary said, his smile fading now. ‘All I had to do was to mention what happened last spring. The attack on Lower Manhattan, followed by the balloon attacks themselves. The electromagnetic pulses wiped out most electronic devices in a good chunk of the nation. In the major metropolitan areas, people started to stream out when there was no more food, no more running water, when the ATMs and the gas stations wouldn’t work. Police were overwhelmed. Governors whose National Guard units were overseas… they threw up their hands as well. Remember the chaos some years ago from that Hurricane Katrina that struck Louisiana and Mississippi? Imagine a thousand Katrinas, all at once, all across a good portion of this country, with no federal help coming. None.’

I just nodded, remembering that day and the grim weeks and months that followed, watching the developing news from my safe home in Toronto, watching the horrors unfold, feeling like a helpless neighbor watching the house up the street get destroyed by fire.

Gary sighed, rubbed his pants legs. ‘Oh, how quickly it all fell apart that week, Samuel. With no official news, no official word of what had happened, rumors spread… and, of course, one thing that made it worse was that nobody took credit for the attacks. There were the usual nut-jobs who did…but even today we don’t know who did it. We just know what they did…’

‘Rough times,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes, rough times indeed,’ he said. ‘Imagine you’re living in a small rural town… say, in upstate New York. Your phones don’t work, there’s no television and no internet, and what news you do get is spotty. Some sort of nuclear strike against the nation… that’s it. And the attending chaos. And you, in this small town, you think you can make it. It’ll be a struggle, but you and your neighbors, you and your small farms and businesses, you can make it by stretching things, by working hard, by muddling through.’

I rubbed my cold hands. ‘Then the refugees show up.’

‘Exactly,’ Gary said. ‘Thousands of people from the big city arrive… people who don’t know where milk comes from, where meat comes from, where almost everything else comes from. They just know they’re frightened, tired, hungry and thirsty. And there’s thousands of them, on all the roads leading away from the big cities… hell, even from some of the mid-size cities. And you, in this little town, you’re overwhelmed. You don’t know what to do. Instead of love thy neighbor, you quickly learn to ignore thy neighbor, move thy neighbor along to the other town, and, soon enough, hate thy neighbor. With cops outnumbered and the National Guard overseas, volunteer militias spring up all across the affected areas. And then the killings begin.’

I looked at this teacher under arrest. ‘You actually went out and taught that? All of that?’

‘Pretty stupid, huh?’ he asked.

‘Or pretty brave,’ I said. ‘Though teaching the truth has often got people into trouble, over the years.’

‘Ain’t that right.’ Gary drew his legs up and hugged his knees. ‘I’ve told you the truth as I saw it, as I taught it. Here’s the other side of the coin, from the patriotic folks who’ve put us in these charming accommodations. It’s not their fault that the bombs went off. It’s not their fault that big cities couldn’t protect their own. And it’s not their fault that they had to organize, reach for their own weapons, when no one else could help them. They had to protect their families and their neighbors, and as rough as what happened was, they did what they could…until the dreaded UN showed up.’

‘Hell of a thing, still, what happened here,’ I said.

The little Christmas lights in the school bus flickered once, tossing odd shadows around the interior. Gary said, ‘We have a tradition here in this fine little country of settling our disputes with firearms. You being from Canada, I’m sure you’re aware of that.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘It’s been said that in your country you conquered your West. In Canada, we negotiated. Hey, I’ve got a question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I saw something painted on the side of a trailer. Red Rules! Saw the same sign a couple of days ago, painted on the side of a house. What does that mean?’

Gary said, ‘You don’t know? Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

His face looked mournful now. ‘Red rules. The motto of the ruling political class. The one overruling symbol of what happened after the bombings. Ready for another lecture, student?’

I said, ‘We’ve got time, I guess. Go on.’

‘All right. Look, years and years ago, when presidential elections were held the news anchors had maps that showed each state. Whenever a candidate won a state, that state would go either red or blue. Pretty soon it was almost a joke: red state versus blue state. People in one state would make jokes about the others, about them being godless fag-lovers or right-wing gun nuts. Then the smart boys who ran elections figured you could break it down even more. Red county versus blue county. But why stop there, right?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Success breeds success.’

Gary nodded. ‘They got it down to red town versus blue town…still more insults, still more hate, still more rough words. Then the attacks… and when the people from blue cities show up in red towns, looking for food, they find well-armed red-town residents, who don’t want to help. Red rules, my friend, at least around here, and don’t forget it.’

‘I won’t.’

‘OK. I answered your question. Now it’s my turn.’

‘Fair enough.’

He shifted his legs. ‘Tell me about your work here. Is it really on the up-and-up?’

‘Excuse me?’

Gary shrugged. ‘This is a time when rumors—either on the internet or on the radio—are the most popular form of news. Rumors are that the UN crews in-country are doing more than just administering the armistice and hunting down war criminals.’

I was getting cold so I took one of the green wool blankets and wrapped it around my shoulders. ‘Well, everything I’ve done since I’ve been here has been on the up-and-up. My unit was investigating war crimes, that’s all. We chased down leads and carried out investigations.’

‘Find anything?’

‘Just recently,’ I said sharply. ‘Like I said, we ran into an Australian television crew that was later murdered. And just before I got separated from my unit one of my co-workers was shot and killed. So, yeah, you can say we’ve found some things.’

‘Hmm,’ Gary said. ‘But the news I heard is that most of the UN units in this area are hunting down mass graves, right? Something called Site A. There’s some sort of deadline coming up at The Hague, and if that Site A is not found the New York militia commanders at The Hague will be cut loose.’

‘True.’

Gary smiled. ‘Well, good luck, then, in finding it.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be finding it tonight.’

‘Of course. And if not you, then good luck to your comrades. I would love to see those militiamen out there get what they deserve.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

Another shake of the head, ‘It’ll take a lot of work on your part, you know. Even with the violence… people still have suspicions about you and your friends. In war, truth is the first casualty. The stories are about mass graves being chased down by nice folks like yourselves, running around in circles. Which is where the rumors start, about what some people think your real mission is.’

‘And what kind of rumors are those?’

‘The usual. That having you in here is payback for all the times that UN and US inspection teams have gone poking around in other countries. That Russia, Iraq, Iran, China, Serbia… Well, you get the idea: all those countries love the idea of coming in here and lording it over these poor Americans. That you’re actually performing intelligence-gathering, identifying National Guard or Reserve armories, as well as militia strongholds. Hell, there are even rumours in some bases the UN crews are confiscating nuclear weapons. Disarming the last world superpower -which is also a rogue nation that ignores world opinion — and finally bringing it to heel.’

‘One-world government, right?’

Gary laughed. ‘Yeah, crazy shit like that. For fifty or so years, among the paranoia class, there’s always been a fear that the UN—which most years is in debt and can’t do much more than design a nice Christmas stamp—would come in and set up a one-world government under control from Geneva. Like the bureaucrats in Brussels overseeing Europe. And so here you are, a little late but running around with your blue berets and blue helmets. Hard not to understand why some people would see it like that.’

Even though I was enjoying the conversation, I was getting tired. ‘Look. We’re not spies for one-worlders in Geneva. We’re just here to help stop the killing of innocent people, and help arrest and convict those who did. That’s all. And that’s what I’m going to tell that militia leader the next time he interrogates me.’

‘Interrogate? Really?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Interrogate. Why are you surprised?’

Gary managed a weak smile. ‘I’m envious more than I’m surprised. That means they think you’re important enough to keep around for a while. Me? Well, it’s a different story.’

I pulled my blanket tighter around me. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They already know my story, know my background. They have no interest in interrogating me. You see, Samuel, I’ve already been found guilty. Of treason, among other things. And the sentence for that is death.’

We talked for a little bit more, and then set up our sleeping arrangements. We both took a mattress and a single wool blanket, and stretched out on the soiled material. I lay there in the semi-darkness, waiting, shivering, knowing it would take an Act of God to get me to sleep this night. A few feet from me, Gary the schoolteacher lay still as well. I could not imagine what was going on in his mind this night. I had become irritated by his endless talking and lecturing earlier, wanting just to lie down and get some sleep, but now I knew why he had been gabbing so much: he was terrified, and needed someone to talk to. That was all.

I rolled over on my mattress, heard some sounds coming from Gary. He moaned and kicked—kicked out so far, in fact, that he actually struck my mattress. I got up gingerly and moved it further toward the side wall of the school bus, near the hump where the left rear wheel was. I gasped as my fingers struck a piece of rusted metal that was sticking up from the floor. I felt my fingers but didn’t feel the telltale warm stickiness of blood so I stretched out on the mattress again, pulled the musty blanket over me, and listened to Gary have his nightmares.

A nudge. I woke up. Gary was standing over me. ‘You should come see this. Hurry up.’

I got up from my mattress, rubbed at the crust in my eyes. My mouth tasted awful and I needed to pee, but Gary’s face was white with shock. ‘Hurry up — back here. I saw it while I was using the toilet.’

He sure had been using the toilet, for the stench was so strong that I had to breathe through my mouth. Gary said, ‘Take a look — over there on the left.’

The rear window of the school bus had received the same paint job as the other windows and, just as before, someone had scraped a little patch clear for a peephole. ‘Look,’ Gary said. ‘Look there.’

I bent down and placed my face near the glass. I had not seen this view of the camp before. The tents were thinned out, and I could see a clump of men and what looked like an open pit. One of the men was dragged from the group by some militiamen and then forced onto his knees. I rubbed at my eyes, not wanting to see what was going to happen next but knowing full well that I had to see it. It was my job. No matter my circumstances or where I was, it was my job.

The man kneeling down by the pit was suddenly left alone by the militiamen. Then another guy came over, placed a pistol to the back of the kneeling man’s head, and fired one shot. The man pitched forward into the hole, helped along by a kick from the gunman, and then another man was dragged over. By now I saw both victims wore uniforms, and that they were from among the prisoners who had been brought in the day before. I stepped back and stood up, not minding the stench at all now. Gary was looking at me, his face gray, his legs trembling. From outside we both heard the sharp report of another gunshot.

‘Welcome to America,’ Gary said.