Charges (28 page)

Vincenzo didn’t have a clue, but he nodded anyway. “So there’s no help down there? No transportation, things like that?”

The man snorted. “Sure, you just have to give over everything you have in exchange for a little cot and three cold meals a day. You know the government. It just takes and takes and takes. Possessions are the new tax revenue, now that cash isn’t worth shit.”

A woman with enormous breasts barely contained by a black Harley Davidson T-shirt approached, the yellow Lab beside her. Her face had a worn-out cast to it, and her eyes were hidden behind oversized sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun had just barely peeked above the eastern horizon. Her faded blue jeans looked painted on, and she wore biker boots. Her brown hair was streaked with bolts of bottle-blond. “What’re you carrying?” she asked Vincenzo.

“Sorry?”

“He’s got himself a Beretta,” Tattooed man said.

“Hold out your hand,” the woman said.

Vincenzo thrust out his hand, and the woman dropped a battered box of Winchester nine-millimeter rounds in it. It felt half full. She then passed him a large hunting knife in a blood-stained leather sheath.

“We did most of the heavy lifting, so that’s all you get,” she said. “We’re keeping the rest of their gear.”

“Okay,” Vincenzo said, surprised they had given him anything. “Thanks.”

“You can top off your mag before you go,” the man said.

Vincenzo’s hands shook as he tried to feed the rounds into the pistol magazine, which made the operation take longer than it should have, but he eventually charged the magazine and slapped it back into the pistol.

“Thanks for the help,” the man said as the woman and dog walked back to the rest of the group. “Don’t forget your walking stick. It’s a nice one.”

“Thanks,” Vincenzo repeated.

The man nodded and set off to join the others. Vincenzo limped over and picked up his walking stick. He then returned to the car and rolled up his pant leg to check out his knee. It was just a scrape, but he rubbed some sanitizer on it anyway, just in case.

He looked over his shoulder and watched as the people from the trailer park removed everything from the dead gunmen: backpacks, weapons, even their clothes. They tossed the bullet-riddled bodies into the ditch on the other side of the interstate. One man with a huge beer belly and a flowing white beard carried a gas can, and he began pouring the contents over the corpses.

Vincenzo adjusted the straps of his hiking pack and resumed his journey. When he had gone a few hundred feet, he stopped, leaned over the concrete divider, and puked his breakfast all over the shoulder on the other side.

21

Six days after Roth and the rest of the cons had broken out of the prison, their number had grown. Just having a running vehicle was enough to get things started. People were drawn to Roth and his crew, despite the guns and the murderous attitudes of some. Those who had something to offer were taken in; those who didn’t were either robbed and killed or just killed. Women were raped, and the ones who were fancied by several of the men were kept for longer-term entertainment. Children were released, even though some of the men would have liked to have had them around, but Roth forbade that. Like most convicts, he didn’t have much use for child molesters. He had to shoot one of the guys for disobeying that edict, and he had made sure everyone was around to see it. In the country he intended to build over the coming years, pedophiles wouldn’t have much of a chance. If there was a subhuman group he hated more than cops, it was kid-touchers. Deep down, Roth thought that was kind of funny, that a soulless killing machine like him had a hidden moral touchstone. He’d never been abused as a boy, nor had his toad of a brother. They had actually been brought up pretty well. But Roth had been born with a demon that dominated him, and killing cops was the only thing that kept it sated.

But hurting kids was a lot different from killing cops. Roth liked the sport of the kill, the thrill of the hunt. Killing children was something that terrorists and degenerates did. Preying on the helpless was no fun, even though it was sometimes necessary. Taking down other predators, now
that
was entertainment.

After he’d made his example of the pedophile in their ranks, the rest of the guys figured out that wasn’t going to play, especially since Roth took three hours to do his grisly work with a blade that was less than two inches long. But the new recruits were an unknown quantity, and while Roth had instructed them to leave any kids alone, he couldn’t be sure his orders would be followed. He would have to watch the men like a hawk to ensure no bad apples ruined the entire batch, because once that forbidden fruit was tasted, there would be no going back.

By the time their number had grown to twenty-six, Roth decided they needed additional wheels. The bus was getting crowded, and he wanted some separation between himself and the rest of the troops. They invaded a farm house well south of the prison, killed its occupants, then helped themselves to the remarkably well-stocked larder. Afterward, Roth found a 1977 Ford F-250 in the barn. Some time and effort had been put into restoring the vehicle to showroom condition. It had premium seating, a rebuilt 460 cubic-inch V8 engine, and a nice lift kit. The high-tech radio and navigation system was garbage, courtesy of the pulse event, but that didn’t bother Roth one bit. He tossed the collection of Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Ludacris CDs into the garbage. One great thing about the event was that it had essentially nullified urban music, something that pleased Roth to no end.

Roth and his crew continued west, pushing across the state of Pennsylvania. A plethora of small towns awaited them, and they cut through them like a scythe through wheat, plundering and pillaging. Whenever they found a law enforcement presence, Roth went to work with the Mini 14 from a distance, then with his pistol, and finally, his blade. He went through clothes at a phenomenal rate, soaking them through with blood as he resumed his war against anyone in a uniform. They collected more weapons and more vehicles: ATVs, dirt bikes, and diesel trucks.

By the time they had slashed their way to within ten miles of Monroeville, a satellite suburb of Pittsburgh, Roth had almost two hundred troops and forty vehicles. Towns fell before them, most only offering token resistance that was never well coordinated and never strong enough to stand up to a veritable army of hardened convicts.

It had been his initial plan to roll up to Pittsburgh and see what was going on. However, when they found a small unit of National Guard troops stationed in Monroeville, that gave Roth pause. While he would love to kill soldiers instead of just policemen, he knew that soldiers—even weekend warriors like the Pennsylvania Army National Guard—could inflict a remarkable amount of damage on his force.

Stretched out in a grassy field atop some high terrain that overlooked the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he saw what appeared to be at least a company-sized force equipped with five-ton trucks and Humvees. Some of the vehicles had crew-served weapons on them, big machineguns with long barrels. While Roth would have dearly loved to obtain that kind of firepower, he hadn’t been fortunate enough to happen across any. And he knew that even half-assed Guardsmen could deny him access to Monroeville with such weapons. They were obviously guarding the turnpike entrance, and someone had spent a good amount of time clearing the roadway of disabled motor vehicles. Clearly, the Guard was expecting more company, and they’d been busy making sure they could accommodate them.

A camp had been set up around what looked like a shopping mall. Roth examined it through the pair of binoculars he’d liberated from a cop several towns back. He saw armed troops on foot patrol and several large trailers with FEMA emblazoned on them. The state had set up a refugee center. Roth wondered how long it would last.

“Looks like the feds are setting up,” Harley said as he peered through his own pair of binoculars.

“Yes. We can’t take them,” Roth said. “We don’t have enough men or enough weapons. We’ll have to save this one for another day.”

Harley grunted. “Thought you liked killing uniforms.”

Roth clenched his teeth. “I do. But this would be suicide. Do you see those vehicles on the turnpike? The Humvees?”

“The Hummers with the guns on them? Yeah, I see them.”

“Those are fifty-caliber machine guns, and there are even some Mark Nineteen grenade launchers. One fifty-caliber could kill every man we have, and while we’re still hundreds of yards away. We might be able to take down some of them, but they’d have their way with us. Plus, they know how to fight while maneuvering. We don’t.”

“Okay,” Harley said. “So no Pittsburgh, then?”

“We’ll move on. We’ll head south and avoid Pittsburgh for the time being. Then, we’ll go west. There are plenty of other towns to take on, and if we stay away from the major highways, we should be able to avoid most military.”

“We’ll have to face them one day,” Harley said. “They won’t just disappear.”

“No, they won’t. But as time drags on and they start to lose control, they’ll start falling apart. Some of them will wind up joining with us, and that’s when we can think about hitting the larger cities.” Roth lowered the binoculars. “Maybe by the time we get to Ohio, we’ll have enough mass to be able to do what we want.”

“Do we really need to get into a large city?” Harley asked. “Do we want that kind of a headache?”

“Not right now. But eventually, we’ll need to. That’s where the people are, my friend, and if we’re going to reinvent the nation, then we’ll need them on our side. Or under our heels. Whichever way works for us.”

“You’re the boss. You got my vote.”

“It’s not a democracy, Harley. You’re either with me, or you’re dead.”

“And I like breathin’. I’ve made my choice. I’m with you in this, Roth. Got nowhere else to go, anyway.”

Roth kept his face expressionless, but inwardly, he was more than pleased. That was what he wanted, to be surrounded by the desperate, the unwanted, the wayward. He wanted those with skills who needed someone like him to channel their prowess toward more useful endeavors. Like so many of his fellow countrymen, Roth had grown to loathe what the United States had become, a shadow of its former great self, a greatness that had been forged by men like him in past eras, men who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted.

Even if it meant thousands more had to die.

That made Roth smile a little bit, though he hid it from Harley.

22

Outside the town of Fredericksburg, Vincenzo came across an unusual migration: several horse-drawn carriages carrying a load of Amish. The men all held shotguns or old hunting rifles, and their wagons were loaded with women, children, and household possessions. Vincenzo thought the procession looked like an Amish moving company.

“Hi, there,” he said as the first wagon approached.

“Hello,” said the old man holding the reins connected to the bridle of the single black horse hauling the wagon. The animal looked hot and uncomfortable.

“Where you guys headed?” Vincenzo asked.

“To my cousin’s home,” the older man said as the carriage drew abreast of Vincenzo.

“Do you know anything about Indiantown Gap?”

The old man glared, his blue eyes full of fury and scorn. His lips compressed into a tight line beneath his beard. “The Army, they took our land in the name of the government. They took everything, our crops, our orchards, our water. We’re lucky to have what you see here.” The old man kept the wagon moving past Vincenzo.

A man sitting in the next wagon said, “Go get yourself a spot in a hot metal trailer, if you want to go to Fort Indiantown Gap. Go be a slave for your stupid president and his politicians. Give them everything you have, and they’ll take even more.”

Vincenzo watched the small caravan plod past. He wondered what that was all about, but the Amish didn’t seem to want to stay and talk about it. Sweating in the afternoon sun, he took a long drink from the Hydro Flask.

He kept going.

###

Vincenzo made it to the outskirts of Fort Indiantown Gap by five thirty. As he walked down the highway, signs began to appear, informing travelers that the National Guard Training Center was open to refugees seeking short- and long-term aid. They stated that individuals in need should contact the personnel manning the checkpoint on I-78 and announce their desire to come into the camp.

The signs didn’t mention anything about property confiscation, as the Amish had insisted the government had done to them. In fact, there were no meaningful details of any kind. Vincenzo decided that was neither good nor bad, since whatever in-processing had to be done was unlikely to be simple, especially where the military was involved. Like most people in the entertainment business, he had a very confused opinion about the military. He had respect for their service, of course, but he also had a general sense that anyone who would put on a uniform every day and do stuff people told them to do just because they could was an idiot. Basically, he and a lot of his crowd believed that only the dregs of society would enlist in the Army. He wasn’t sure he actually knew anyone who had served in the military. Then again, he didn’t really know anyone who had voted for George W. Bush, and the man had been a two-term president, so that probably didn’t mean a lot.

He slowed when he saw the checkpoint, which turned out be nothing more than a series of trucks and several tents that had been raised in the grassy median where I-78 joined I-81. The highway opened up to three lanes in each direction, and there were plenty of stalled cars and trucks everywhere. Garbage was strewn across the interstate, and intermixed with it were shiny shell casings and patches of dried blood. The Guard must have seen a bit of action in the days since the event had occurred. The evidence of violence made Vincenzo uneasy, but he reminded himself that he had shot a man earlier that day.

Perhaps a dozen soldiers were there, backed up by uniformed Pennsylvania State Police in rumpled gray uniforms. He watched the policemen interview a pair of travelers, writing down information on a clipboard. After a moment, one of the police nodded to the Guardsmen, and two of them came forward and took the couple’s hiking gear. The soldiers emptied their bags and began separating items into plastic bins in the back of one of the trucks. They didn’t label the gear in any way, which meant it was being confiscated. There took a weapon too, though he was too far away to see what it was other than some sort of rifle.

The male half of the couple seemed a bit distressed, but he didn’t protest. Once their goods were separated and their empty hiking packs tossed into one of the trucks, the pair was led toward one of the tents. The man went into one, the woman into another. Vincenzo figured it was for some sort of examination.

Okay, Tony. What are you going to do?
He decided he would at least check it out. He headed toward the checkpoint, his walking stick clanking on the cement as he wound his way through the dead traffic. The police and Guardsmen watched him approach, and once he was inside of twenty yards, one of the police held up a hand.

“Good afternoon, sir. Are you armed?”

Vincenzo stopped. “Why do you ask?”

The policeman pointed at him. “Because I see the outline of a pistol beneath your shirt, sir.”

Vincenzo looked down. The butt of his Beretta was clearly outlined through his sweat-drenched T-shirt. “Well, I guess I am.”

“Before you come any closer, sir, you need to remove your weapon and unload it. You should also be aware that you’re under sniper surveillance and that any aggressive action on your part will be met with direct action.”

Vincenzo looked around. The area was fairly heavily forested, and there were many places a sniper
—or snipers
—could be concealed. “I’m not going to do anything when I’m outgunned and outnumbered. You can count on that.”

“Sorry, sir. We don’t count on anything other than you disarming yourself. If you want to continue coming forward, you need to clear your weapon.”

“Tell me what’s going on here.”

“The federal government, in conjunction with the National Guard and the state of Pennsylvania, have set up a support center in Fort Indiantown Gap. The Federal Emergency Management Administration is providing goods and essential services at the direction of the president. Basic amenities are provided free of charge, as well as emergency family, medical, and dental care. The facility is secured by the National Guard, so your protection is guaranteed.” The policeman nodded toward Vincenzo again. “But before you can take advantage of these offerings, you need to disarm yourself.”

“That includes the big stick you’re carrying,” the other policeman said.

“What happens to my gun and my gear?” Vincenzo asked.

“The supplies we have on site aren’t unlimited, sir,” the first policeman said. “In order to participate, you’ll have to surrender your possessions. Any goods that can be used to further support displaced persons will be directed to where they can do the most good. This includes things such as water, food, and medical supplies, excepting prescription medication that is for your use only.”

“So you’re going to confiscate all of my stuff?”

“We’ll be redistributing whatever might be useful and ensuring it gets to those who are in a greater state of need, sir.”

“And what about my pistol?”

“Your pistol will be confiscated, sir. Firearms are not allowed on the property.”

“If I choose to leave, will I get it back?”

The policeman took a moment to respond. “All personal property will be either returned or replaced with an equivalent item, sir.”

Vincenzo grunted. The momentary hesitation told him that the cop was either lying or didn’t exactly believe what he was saying himself.

“What about transportation? I need to get all the way to Los Angeles. Can the government help with that?”

The two cops exchanged looks. “Uh, Los Angeles? No, sir, I don’t think we can help you out with that at this level. The national transportation system has been severely compromised. We have some local assets that can provide limited transportation but nothing headed outside of the state.”

“All right. Is there a chance I could get transportation to the state line? Anywhere headed west?”

“I can’t answer that for you, sir. You’d have to come in and try to make those arrangements with either FEMA or the National Guard.”

“Which means I’d need to hand over all my stuff.”

The policeman nodded. “Yes, sir. You would need to comply with all of our requests in order to proceed past this point.”

Vincenzo cocked his head. “So you’d actually impound my personal property, just to allow me to take advantage of some of the facilities my tax dollars helped pay for?”

Before the policeman could reply, one of the Guardsman snapped, “You don’t get something for nothing, buddy. No free lunch here. You either sacrifice something for the common good, or enjoy your walk back to California. You’ll have to find a different route, though, because we own this stretch of the highway, and you’re not passing through unless you do as you’re told.”

“I met some Amish who told me the Guard had taken their land and possessions, homes, stuff like that. That true?”

“We’re exercising the government’s eminent domain rights where we need to. It was approved last week, part of the emergency powers declaration mandated by Washington. Don’t like it? We’re not interested.”

There was still plenty of daylight left, and Vincenzo was tired of standing in the afternoon sunlight. No one was being particularly helpful, and nothing he had heard seemed to be enough to give up what little he had. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a lot of difference between what Fort Indiantown Gap offered versus what the highwaymen lurking in the area would do to him if they ever caught him.

“Thanks,” Vincenzo said then turned left and walked across the median toward the other side of the highway.

He marched through the grass and stepped over the short guardrail that separated the travel lanes from the median. He didn’t break stride as he mounted the highway and crossed the three lanes then merged into the line of trees on the other side of the far shoulder.

###

The detour took Vincenzo down some back country roads. Farm houses and corn fields made up the majority of the landscape. In front of one two-story house, a man was pushing a manual mower across the front lawn. A younger man and two smaller boys were tending to the flower beds, while a middle-aged woman watched from the shade of the wrap-around porch. A shotgun leaned against the railing beside her. A series of handwritten signs were set up on the property line: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

Vincenzo nodded to the woman as he walked past, and she inclined her head, but her face remained blank. The street was clean and not apparently all that well-traveled, making it look like a still frame of life before the event. He actually started to enjoy the walk. In the distance, he heard the sound of a running engine. It was most likely a generator, which told him that for some people, the event didn’t matter a whole lot. Life went on, and for the first time in decades, farmers were probably going to be some of the most important people on the planet.

Farming... another skill you don’t have,
paisan.

Occasionally, he saw another person or family tending to their home or their fields. No one approached him, but a few waved, and Vincenzo returned the greetings in kind. He made sure to keep the front of his T-shirt over the Beretta. He didn’t want people to know he was armed, though he got the impression that the folks around there wouldn’t freak out over it.

A few miles down the road, he heard another droning noise that was definitely a vehicle engine. A minute later, a red and white tractor lumbered around the curve ahead, rolling toward him on oversized tires at a speed of about twenty miles an hour. A thin-faced man sat inside the enclosed cabin, the windows rolled down. He regarded Vincenzo through the bird-shit-streaked glass, and Vincenzo waved.

The driver stopped beside him. The engine rattled as it idled in the warm early evening. He leaned out of the window. “Hey, there. You come from the Gap?”