Foreign Enemies and Traitors (7 page)

 It had been one of the last openly defiant counties between Nashville and Memphis.  The roots of the insurrection went back many years, but as in many other areas, it really took off after the semi-automatic rifle ban.  The Tennesseans had openly flouted the ban, and the repeal of the Second Amendment had only hardened their defiance.  These Southern rednecks were both crazy about their guns and full of hate for the federal government, which was an explosive combination.  Before the two earthquakes, internal ATF reports estimated that Tennessee was at less than 50 percent compliance with the new gun laws.  This was a disgrace compared to states like Maryland and New Jersey, but what else could be expected?  The South was the South, and rebellion was in their blood.  Too many of these hillbillies just would not adapt to the new constitution and its socially progressive laws.  Washington could pass all the laws it wanted, but increasingly, it could not enforce them in any meaningful way.

Then, without warning, the New Madrid fault had broken open with a monthlong series of quakes, including two massive ones.  The population of Memphis had spilled out into the surrounding countryside, foraging for food and shelter.  Across the Mississippi River, St. Louis and Little Rock had not fared much better.  A bloodbath resulted when the waves of urban refugees were violently resisted in the countryside.  The bloodshed after the quake revealed just how unrealistic the gun law compliance estimates had been: the suburban and rural folk were still armed to the teeth.

After the quakes, the countryside around Memphis was initially pillaged by the starving refugees, until the locals had organized and fought back, killing thousands of purported bandits and looters.  Well, as far as Bob Bullard was concerned, every ghetto dweller killed out in the sticks was one less refugee mouth to feed back in Memphis.  Even better, every death could be conveniently blamed on the quake aftermath and the white aversion to black refugees. 

****

Phil Carson sat on the road,
using his pack for a backrest.  While he waited, he sipped water from a plastic bottle that had once carried Gatorade.  After half an hour, a pickup
approached from the west and briefly paused by the tent.  The checkpoint soldiers spoke to its driver while standing well away from the vehicle. 

Finally, the truck rolled slowly up toward Carson and stopped.  The vehicle had been painted in day-glo safety orange.  The letters QV were written in yard-high black letters on both doors.  A gray box occupied all of the truck bed except for a little space at its front.  It reminded Carson of a portable dog kennel, only bigger.  It was made of gray metal, with a window on each side covered with heavy wire mesh.

The driver and a passenger stepped out onto the road, and Carson stood up to meet them.  The driver was a Caucasian whose face was horribly scarred.  The other soldier was a black man with a smooth complexion and alert, intelligent-looking eyes.

He had seen these facial scars before—on monkey pox survivors.  It was like pitting from the very worst teenage acne, twice over.  In many of the islands and ports he’d passed through, people with the scars were prohibited entry, banned like modern-day lepers.  Carson knew this was merely foolish superstition: monkey pox survivors didn’t carry the germs in an active form, and couldn’t catch or spread the disease.  The only dangerous period was the week after infection, until after the skin boils erupted and scabbed over.  Still, victims were often made pariahs, as living reminders of the horror that was monkey pox, with its 20 percent mortality rate and hideous survivor scars.

The pock-faced driver pulled on a surgical mask as he approached, and stopped a few yards from Carson.  Three chevrons on a square rank badge on the front of their shirts meant both were buck sergeants.  Both wore holstered pistols on web belts.  On the opposite side of the passenger’s belt was a small green gear pack with a medical caduceus on it.  Instead of patrol caps, these two soldiers wore black berets.

The driver said, “So, let me see if I got this right: you’ve got no ID badge and no vaccine shot card.  You just appeared out of nowhere, and you don’t even know who you are.”  His Southern-accented voice was slightly muffled by the filter.  He had bright blue eyes above the mask.

“That’s about right.”

“Empty your pockets and dump out your pack on the ground,” the driver instructed without emotion.  He seemed to be in no hurry to approach more closely. 

Carson did as he was ordered, crouching down and emptying the pack.  He spread out its innocuous contents: water bottles, a green poncho, and other very basic gear. 

“Any weapons?” asked the medic.

“Just a pocket knife,” answered Carson, pulling a small folder from the rear pocket of his pants.  He had judged that having no weapon at all would not have been believable, and he was prepared to sacrifice the cheap knife, hoping this might save him from a closer inspection. 

The driver eyed the short blade and said, “No weapons in the QVC.  Sorry, that’s the rule.  Leave it on the ground and load the rest back up.  You might get it back later, you might not.”

Carson repacked the bag while kneeling on the asphalt, moving slowly, as they would expect an old man to do.  When he was finished, he struggled up as if he had a bad back.  It wasn’t a difficult act: after two weeks at sea, the day of hiking over broken ground had worn him out.

The truck’s square cage stopped short two feet from the cab.  “Put your pack in the truck there,” the driver ordered, indicating the open space.

Carson did as he was told, walking close by the scarred man and dropping the pack over the side.  The medic backed away from him, maintaining more than a yard of separation.

“Now pull up your shirtsleeves, all the way to the shoulder.”  Carson did so, revealing on the left side a barely visible smallpox vaccination scar, more than six decades old.  Beneath the vaccination was a faded blue two-inch-wide tattoo of an open parachute with a pair of wings curling up on either side.

The driver studied the vaccination mark and the tattoo, then looked again at Carson’s face.  “That old smallpox vaccination might have saved you.  We almost never saw Cameroon fever in people your age.  But you’ll still need to get the complete battery of new shots.”  He dropped the tailgate and swung open a chain link door at the back of the cage.  “Okay, get in.  Don’t worry; this is just routine.  Anybody who’s going to the QV center rides back there.”

“Am I under arrest or something?” asked Carson.

“No, it’s just SOP.  Standard operating procedure.  Consider yourself lucky: last year we were running busloads.  You’ll probably be out as soon as you’re medically cleared.  It’s just unusual these days to see somebody with no ID badge and no vaccine card, that’s all.  Okay, go ahead and climb in.”

Carson looked at the open cage, the driver with his pistol, the other checkpoint soldiers with their rifles.  It was too late to change his mind about his plan.  At this point running was not an option, and fighting would be worse than useless.  He could only do as he was ordered.  Now, at the actual moment of being detained, he felt that he’d been a damn fool just to walk into Mississippi.  From this point on, what happened to him would be beyond his control. 

The floor was of the same gray metal as the rest of the cage.  He could see now that the entire box could be lifted out of the truck, prisoners and all, by a metal ring bolted on top.  He swallowed hard and climbed up and inside the cage.  The driver swung the two back doors closed and then raised the tailgate, locking him in.  He imagined the box, carrying infected human cargo, being lifted out of the pickup by a hoist.  The people inside the box could be put through a decontamination station…or the box could be lowered into a river or pond, drowning the hapless human debris locked within like unwanted stray cats or dogs. 

He could see out of the wire-screened side windows of the box.  According to the miniature compass on his watchband, they drove southwest until they entered the town of Pascagoula, and then turned right, heading north.  Surrounded by so much metal, the little compass spun erratically, but after many ocean voyages Carson was comforted by its north-seeking needle.  Road signs said they were on State Road 63.  There was very little traffic, and almost no private cars passed the pickup in either direction.  Infrequent buses and trucks made up most of the motor vehicles on the road.  Stake-side farm trucks carried dozens of standing men crammed into their backs.  A surprising number of people walked or rode bicycles on the shoulders of the road.  Some were riding horses or used horse-drawn wagons. 

The truck ascended a high concrete bridge over a wide river.  Carson could see rusty commercial fishing boats tied up to piers below him.  Back down on land, the road continued running straight north, two lanes on each side of a wide median.  More people lined the road.  It looked like a permanent flea market or swap meet, spread out on both sides.

Everybody the QV truck passed had a card-size plastic badge clipped to a collar, shirt pocket, or belt.  The people stopped and stared blankly at the bright orange quarantine truck.  A black child scowled, then hurled a rock that bounced off the side of the cage as the truck passed.  Soon the truck left the heavily populated coastal zone.  Half of the countryside was forested with oaks and pines, and half was in farmland.  Businesses and homes were spread out a few to a mile, clustered mostly around infrequent crossroads.  The truck drove swiftly northward.  Rusty cranes, bulldozers and backhoes were stranded by the roadsides at random intervals, covered with creeper vines and sprouting bushes like ruins reclaimed by the jungle.

At an intersection outside a small town, Carson stared at a man’s body hanging from a telephone pole by a thin rope.  There was a dark mask over his head, and his hands were bound behind his back.  He was dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, with a sandal on one foot.  The man was black, or perhaps his corpse had turned black after his death.  A single word was printed on a cardboard placard fixed to his shirt: COUNTERFEITER.  Carson moved from the side window to watch the surreal scene through the chain-link rear doors, until the man disappeared in the distance behind them.

Roadside billboards, instead of carrying commercial advertisements, were devoted to government announcements.  The messages alternated between boasts of public services restored and stern warnings to potential lawbreakers.  A billboard featured a cheerful multiracial group all giving the thumbs-up sign.  The text above them gave thanks that electric service had been restored to 82 percent of Mississippi.  Other signs featured portraits of a military officer, a stern-faced but rather handsome Creole-looking man.  Beneath his portraits were slogans such as “Together we will finish what we have begun!” and “We will rise together, or fall apart!”

A half hour into the drive, the QV truck made several detours through residential areas consisting of badly dilapidated mobile homes and shacks.  Many nicer homes were in ruins, roofless and open to the elements, with tattered blue plastic tarps lifting above them in the breeze.  Almost every inhabited dwelling had some type of makeshift fence surrounding it, made of rusty chain link, wood slats, or simple iron rebar posts woven with barbed wire.  Simple wooden crosses marked graves in many yards.

People holding an assortment of water containers lined up at a communal spigot.  Barefoot children played in the dirt while around them pigs, chickens and goats competed for what fodder they could find.  Mississippi seemed to have regressed to Third World standards.  All except the smallest children wore the black-and-white ID badges clipped to their shirts.

The land was a checkerboard of small farms, woods, villages, residential areas and open space.  Carson could see that it would have been impossible to hike overland without being detected.  Every other mile he would have been forced to cross a wide creek, a road, or somebody’s field or backyard.  Without an ID badge, he would have been spotted and reported before he made it ten miles, and he felt a little better about his chosen strategy.

The orange pickup crossed an ancient two-lane bridge over a sluggish brown creek, then wound its way back up to the main road, and continued at higher speed.  The truck entered a posted National Forest and soon was driving along a fenced military base.  It slowed as it turned past a cement guardhouse and was waved ahead by the soldier on duty.  Carson read “Camp Shelton” on a sign by the open gate.  The fence around the perimeter of the base was chain link, topped by multiple strands of razor wire. 

Camp Shelton covered a vast expanse, miles and miles of forests and ranges and training areas.  The truck drove past barracks, offices, housing areas, warehouses and motor pool lots full of military trucks and humvees.  Most of them appeared to be out of commission, rusting and cannibalized for parts. 

Beyond a series of unmowed sports fields they came to another fenced enclosure, more chain link and razor wire, and another vehicle gate.  A waiting soldier opened the gate at the approach of the orange pickup truck.  A painted plywood sign attached to the gate read “QVC 5.”  The truck passed a row of general-purpose tents, old olive drab canvas relics, which stirred long-dormant memories of Vietnam in Phil Carson’s mind.  They finally stopped by a U-shaped cement structure that resembled an open-air handball court.  The driver and passenger stepped from the truck, dropped the tailgate and opened the cage.  The black soldier carried a green medical bag on his side.  Both men now wore filter masks over their noses and mouths.

“See the baskets?” the medic asked. “Strip down to your skin and put everything in there.”  A stack of white plastic laundry baskets stood near the open end of the enclosure.

“What about my stuff?  Will I get it back?” 

“Sure, don’t worry,” replied the driver.

Carson undressed, dropping everything into a basket.  In the center of the cement floor were painted-on footprints, three rows by three, enough for nine people at a time.  He’d last seen footprints like that in boot camp, more than forty years before.  Even after all of the intervening years, somehow it seemed familiar.  He already had the short haircut, but this time it was gray.  He felt like he was processing back into the Army.