Without warning

Was it his imagination or did the Municipal Tower seem to be even more overrun with military uniforms than he’d thought when he first came in? Kipper shook off the thought. No sense getting paranoid. A lot of the support staff were scurrying about on fast forward. A few saw him and looked relieved, others seemed even more frightened and just put their heads down, hurrying past.

The soldiers didn’t seem to be intimidating anyone. Indeed, some of them looked pretty well spooked, too. But their very presence, in full combat gear, including their weapons, was enough to put the zap on anyone’s head. And what the fuck were they carrying arms for anyway, what did -

Kipper pulled up in confusion. He’d been so angry, so unbalanced by the meeting with Blackstone and McCutcheon, that he’d stomped right around the corner into the Planning Department. Cursing quietly, he retraced his steps to the city engineer’s office, his office, a small suite of rooms behind a plain dark wooden door inset with marbled glass. It felt like a holy sanctuary right now. He pushed through, praying that he’d find no military people inside, with their feet up on his desk and guns lying on top of the filing cabinets.

Instead he found Rhonda, his secretary, a large and formidable African-American presence in a room full of frightened white folk.

‘Kipper! Thank the Lord at last!’ she cried out when she saw him. ‘We were beginning to worry they’d arrested you as well.’

‘Not yet, Ronnie. Not just yet. So you’ve heard then?’

He smiled wearily at his team, or what was left of it. Barney Tench, his deputy and old college bud, who looked about as glum as Kipper had ever seen him; Marv Basco, the sanitation chief, a dead ringer for Larry from the Three Stooges; Dave Chugg, water, who looked a lot like Curly to Marv’s Larry, at least when you stood them next to each other; and Heather Cosgrove. Sweet, fragile, freaked-out little Heather.

‘Whoa. What are you doing here, darlin’?’ Kip asked in surprise. ‘You should be at home.’

‘I wanted to come in,’ she said, sounding preternaturally calm. He wondered if she’d been medicated.

Barney shrugged and shook his head. ‘I dropped her at her apartment, Kip. But she talked some dumb grunt into giving her a lift back in.’

Kipper sighed. ‘Okay. Heather, I’m not sending you home again. But you shouldn’t be here. You’re in shock. Go and sit yourself down on that couch over there and do not get up again. Ronnie?’

His PA nodded and bustled the girl as gently as she could over to the old brown couch in the corner. Heather didn’t really protest or resist. When he thought about it, Kip understood. She had no friends or family in Seattle. Her work colleagues had been caught behind the Wave in Spokane. The only people she had left in the world were here, in this office. It would have been cruel to send her out again.

‘So. You’ve heard about the council?’ he said, addressing the room.

They all nodded and mumbled that yes, they knew about the arrests now.

‘Did you know you’ve been drafted?’ he asked Basco and Chugg. ‘You’re on the Executive Committee now.’

‘No. Nobody’s told us anything,’ replied Chugg.

Kipper rubbed his neck, which felt stiff and very sore. He noticed he still had a smear of dried blood on the back of his hand. ‘Well, I met the guy behind the coup d’йtat a few minutes ago. General Blackstone.’

‘He’s here?’ asked Barney.

‘Yeah. Hiding down in the deputy mayor’s office.’

‘Did he have any explanation for this morning?’

‘Said it was a fuck-up, and we should get over it.’

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Ronnie, who considered ‘heck’ and ‘gosh, darn it’ to be pushing the boundaries of decent language. ‘He said that?’

‘Close enough,’ said Kipper, as he leaned back on his desk. ‘He pretty much threw everything back on us. Said if we didn’t want the city to die, we’d have to step up to the plate.’

‘And what about the councillors?’ asked Barney.

‘I have no idea. He’s got them detained for protection or some crap, somewhere. I dunno what that means, short or long term.’

‘Well, it sounds like this asshole feels perfectly free locking up people he doesn’t get on with,’ said Tench. ‘What’d you tell him, Kip?’

‘I didn’t give him an answer either way,’ he replied, chewing his lip. ‘And I’m not happy. I’m a thousand fucking miles from happy. But he’s right about one thing: no matter what we think of him, we have a responsibility to the city. We still need to get a handle on food distribution. As of right now, there is no market solution to the problem of empty shelves, because most of the market disappeared behind the energy wave on March 14. Priority number one is food. We have enough in aid shipments coming through, if it’s distributed rationally. If not, this city will die. It’ll tear itself apart before we can work out how to feed ourselves.’

He paused to look around. Heather had closed her eyes on the couch, but he had everyone else’s undivided attention.