Objects of Wrath

Part One

1

The border between good and evil has always been bloody, but after the bombs rained down, the world entire was an open wound. It was during those bleeding years that I became a man.

There is an abiding sense now, at least here in the Hole, that life is precious and fragile and something to be cherished. Each new baby is cause for a great celebration, with joyous backslapping and dancing, laughter and thankful tears. It has not been so many years that we do not remember how rare babies were, and some of us recall thinking that we would never willingly bring a child into our God forsaken world. Life has not been easy for those of us on the brink, the few that survived the Fall.

We have had to fight for it.

* * *

My father was fond of the expression We make our own luck. But when the lights went out, I was lucky. Had I been born to another family, I would almost certainly be as dead as the rest of the world.

When it began, I was an average thirteen year old, bookish, and overly fond of video games and the idea of girls. It was a constant disappointment to Dad that I did not like the outdoors quite as much as he did. An avid hunter and fisherman, he was the consummate sportsman, far more at home in mountains of any kind than in the confines of a city. His restless spirit could not be contained by the fact that we lived in Miami, far from any real wilderness, nor by the fact that his career as an accountant was an incongruous choice. He worked in an office with a tiny window looking out at other office buildings, but I think he looked past those and saw vast open spaces.

To maintain his sanity, he took frequent trips to the last wild places. He hunted bear in Alaska, hiked the Appalachian Trail, fished in the Everglades, and rafted down whitewater whenever he could. I climbed my first mountain with him when I was four years old, and I still remember the breathtaking view from the top. It was only a small mountain in Georgia, but we both shared a real sense of accomplishment when we made the summit. The leaves were changing, and the rolling Smokies were bathed in soft hues of red and yellow.

This is what it's all about, son, Dad said.

I have to pee, I replied. I think I broke the spell at that point. But I grew to love our trips to the hills; it was a time for me to be with my father and learn and talk and laugh in a way that we did in no other setting.

I shot my first deer when I was ten, not so long before The Fall. I remember being exhilarated and thrilled that morning as we woke before dawn to go on the hunt. We were in upstate New York, somewhere in the northern Appalachian foothills, and had camped not far from a game trail. The rifle had been my birthday present, and I had been dually trained in safety, had murdered countless tin cans and targets before we took the trip. After we extinguished our fire we hiked perhaps a mile along a ridge and waited. We did not have to wait long before a doe came into view, followed by more.

Now? I asked.

No. Wait. You'll see. Patience."

After a cold and wet half hour passed, a magnificent buck sauntered into the clearing below. I could almost hear Dad smile.

Perfect, he said. Don't see many like that around here. Steady and slow. Breathe, then squeeze. Wait till you have a perfect shot.

We were close to the clearing, perhaps thirty yards, but we were upwind and the deer had no idea that they were about to be ambushed. Too close, really because I could see their eyes and they were beautiful, innocent. I had been waiting for this day for years, but as I sighted my gun my hand began to shake and I had to wipe tears from my eyes. Dad did not utter a sound, he just waited me out. I sat there fighting with myself, all the while aiming at that buck. I had decided not to shoot when I did just that.

The buck went down without a sound in a heap, collapsing like a shattered pile of blocks, and the other deer vanished into the brush.

Good shot, Dad said in a husky voice. You hit him in the heart.

I expected him to be visibly happy but instead he had a tear in his own eye. He gave me a slight smile and nod, and I think he knew exactly what had been going through my head. I think he did not really want me to shoot, knew that I would not, and that I had made a mistake. But we never discussed it. If the world had been sane, I probably would never have intentionally killed anything ever again.

2

When The Fall began, the world had been teetering on an abyss for so long that it seemed almost normal. Perhaps the fact that the Cold War had not ended in Armageddon had lulled people into a false belief that clear heads would eventually prevail. There were rumblings and grumblings around the globe as various countries rattled sabers and made nasty threats. Pakistan and India were at odds, each with armies massed along their borders. Warheads armed and pointed. Car bombings in Islamabad and Delhi. Angry Muslims and angry Hindus rioting in the streets. Israel was on high alert, and the citizen army was mobilized. Car bombings, assassinations, mortar attacks, and funerals with small coffins were common images splashed on the news nightly. Iran threatened to nuke Israel from the planet. Israeli fighter jets shot down an Iranian airliner in their airspace; tension was high.

China, which already owned more than half of the United States, aggressively pursued Taiwan and defied the rest of the world. The US set up a blockade, tried UN sanctions, but China did not care. They knew that these were hollow threats and that because of the strength of their economy they could bully the rest of the world at their leisure.

Global warming was still being debated as fact or fiction, and the threat of crop failures as a result of the shift in the ocean currents was real. Weather was changing but nothing was being done about it beyond studies that politicians disputed.

In Europe, the financial crisis at the time had crippled even the most robust economies, and the people lacked any will to fight. They had their own problems to deal with. Appeasement was the rule, as Europe, faced with the threat of bankruptcy and default on debt, spent less and less on defense and relied on the US and the idea of NATO. The economies in France, Germany and England were fraught with inflation, unemployment, and overspending.

In the United States, the people fought among themselves, with red and blue states elevating rhetoric and anger at each other in a way the country had not seen since the Civil War. Fox news on the right and MSNBC on the left, each tearing away at the fabric of society, and the average person caught in the middle and just sick of hearing about it.

I'd really like to declare a news moratorium, I remember Dad saying.

But you're addicted to it, had been Mom's tart response. In fact the news was a source of tension in our household because Mom and Dad were as divided as the rest of the country and along the same lines. News led to a discussion that was really just an argument. Mom, an attorney and political socialite, was what Dad called a mover and a shaker. A goobersmoocher. She was perfectly comfortable in an evening gown at a black tie fundraiser lifting champagne toasts and blithely smiling and lying to everyone in the room. To me she always seemed like an elegant alien being.

* * *

In December of that year we sat down in our living room and watched the late news for the last time. All of the networks were running a breaking story that there had been a coup in Russia, and a small faction of the military had taken over key missile bases. The faction was led by a man no one had heard of; that night was the only time I heard his name and I can't remember it now. But I recall how he shook his fist and ranted for the cameras, claiming that a new Jihad would begin and that Russia would now become a force for Islam.

That will never happen, Mom had said, shaking her head. This guy is crazy.

Her statement was punctuated by a series of sonic booms that shook the windows and doors on our house. That alarmed even my father, who walked out into the backyard.

Good grief, he said. Come out here.

The three of us stood out in our backyard and looked up at the sky. With so many city lights, we could barely make out the stars, but there was no missing the number of fighter jets streaking by off to the east. Thirty or more of them in different formations. They moved fast and at low altitudes, probably just off the coast. We stood and watched in silence for a while and the tension grew. Dad just stared with a grim look on his face. Mom went back inside and poured herself a stiff drink.

And suddenly we could see the stars.

Not since hurricane Andrew had ravaged south Florida had people there been greeted with a true view of the night sky, and it was as startlingly beautiful as it was alarming. All the lights in the city simply went out. I was not entirely sure what had happened, but Dad was very quick to react.

We need to pack. Now, he said. And that was that. I went into my room and filled my backpack with underwear and video games, some t-shirts and jeans, fumbling around with the hurricane candles that Mom had produced from our emergency box.

Don't you think you're overreacting? Mom had said. I mean goodness, it's just a little power outage.

Not like this, said Dad. Look outside; there are no lights anywhere. And the jets? We don't have a real Air Force base in Homestead, so why are they here? No, something serious is happening and we need to get out of the city right now.

Ryder, that is absurd. What about work? I've got a big event tomorrow night, and you know how long I've been planning the Christmas gala. SENATOR Robins will be there. Mom always spoke official titles in capital letters.

Dad just went about the business of packing: medical kit, weapons, camping gear, canned food and lots of homemade dried jerky, the smell of which makes me queasy to this day. He piled all of this neatly on the living room floor, sorted out things he thought unnecessary, added some winter coats and blankets. I knew better than to ask what his plan was, but it was apparent that we were going to be taking an extended trip.

Mom wandered around the house aimlessly, downing her vodka and looking lost. She managed to lay out several designer purses and some of her favorite shoes, and it was obvious that she was about to have a fit when Dad went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. I heard the muffled shouts and urgent tones that I had grown accustomed to, and they emerged minutes later. Mom looked chagrined and angry but she had a real bag packed with real clothes.

Dad strapped his .45 to his waist and handed me his prized Ka-Bar knife, the one he had worn as an active duty Marine. The fact that he had handed me this troubled me more than the fact that we were walking out the door in the dark. I knew Dad was dead serious.

I helped load the truck, a sturdy red Dodge four wheel drive Ram with an extended cab and cabin topper on the back. We three piled in and Dad hit the gas. He muttered to himself as we pulled out of the drive, Thank God the truck started; I was afraid we'd been hit with an EMP attack.

Our street was deserted and dark and we pulled onto Old Cutler Road to head for the Turnpike. There were no streetlights functioning and fortunately few people out. Several police and emergency vehicles blew past us with sirens blaring, but it was not until we got close to the turnpike that we encountered any real gridlock. A tractor trailer had smashed into a white minivan that had gone through what had been a working light. Traffic was at a standstill, with people getting out of their vehicles and shaking their heads. There were no blue lights on the scene, and after waiting for a few minutes Dad simply went off the road and onto the sidewalk. We passed perhaps a half mile of traffic, and then we were on the Turnpike headed north. Florida is a long state, and Miami is at the tip.

Dad kept the pedal to the metal, driving at 90 to 95 in open stretches and immediately driving on the shoulder when things got snarled up near exits and overpasses. Once, a state trooper made a halfhearted attempt to stop us, but despite Mom's protests, Dad never even looked back or slowed down. The cop gave up after a few miles.

We drove all the way to Gainesville without stopping. Near Orlando there was some traffic, but for the most part it seemed that people were not panicking. We saw no city lights along the way, no street lights. The state was dark. Occasionally the radio would squawk on and the Emergency Broadcast System would blare in monotone that we should remain in our homes until the grid was restored, that there had been a widespread power outage (really!) and that people should stay off the streets to allow emergency vehicles to move freely.

We pulled off the interstate in the wee hours of the morning. At a nondescript exit just north of town, there was one small, old gas station, dark and deserted right off I-75. Dad walked around the dingy gas station in the dark muttering to himself. Of course without power, the pumps would be off everywhere. No one would be using a credit card to fill up. Dad emerged from behind the station with a garden hose, used his own knife to pry open one of the metal lids on the ground where the tanker trucks filled the underground tanks. He used the hose to siphon the gas from the tank to fill the truck, spluttering and spitting every now and then when the gas stopped flowing. After filling up, he put the hose in the back of the truck.

Gas is going to be a real problem if this outage lasts, he said. And this truck is a real pig; we've got to fill up every four hundred miles or so.

Would you mind sharing your master plan with the rest of us? Mom asked. Where are we going and why? You got me out of Miami, so tell me why this trek is so important. I think your paranoia is getting the best of you. Is this PTSD? Are you having a Marine Moment?

Well, Dad replied, speaking slowly and deliberately, if I'm over reacting, then you can ridicule me at your next dinner party. If I'm right you can make it up to me later. He pulled back onto the interstate and headed for the Georgia state line.

Right now we're headed to Tennessee to see your father, see how he is fixed for dealing with whatever this is. The Colonel might know something, and we need information as much as anything else. Even if power comes back on soon there are going to be big problems. We can hole up at the ranch and decide what to do from there.

Mom looked thoughtful in the orange glow of the dashboard lights. I guess that makes sense; they'll be glad to see us anyhow. I still think you've lost it.

Evelyn Masterson, my mother, was, as she put it, an army rat. Her father, Duke, was a decorated soldier and had risen quickly through the ranks of the 101st Airborne. He had been stationed in Germany for a time and then after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 he had commanded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Colonel was gray and lean and possessed an almost visible sense of tightly compacted energy although he was then in his early sixties. My father had always displayed an abiding respect for the man. The Colonel was intimidating and stern, and I loved him dearly.

The Colonel, we thought then, had recently retired from the army to his small farm between Clarkesville and Nashville ,Tennessee. The farm had been in his family for five generations, once producing hundreds of acres of tobacco, cotton and cattle, but was now shrunken down to a fraction of its former grandeur. The Colonel still kept a few horses, and the ranch was maintained by Elijah Jones and his family in a seemingly feudal fashion. Eli's family had been working the farm for as long as it had been a farm. But Eli, his wife Mabel, and their kids might as well have been family. Eli was my grandfather's best friend and lifelong confidant. The Colonel had put Eli's eldest son Abe through medical school at Meharry in Nashville. Uncle Abe, as I called him, was a perpetually smiling young black man with a linebacker's build, a scientist's analytical mind, and an irrepressibly comedic personality. Of course I was thrilled with the prospect of going to Tennessee.

The Colonel came from a long line of military service; it was almost as much a religion in his family as the firebrand Southern Baptist heritage from which the Mastersons hailed. His great-great-great grandfather was the famous Bart Masterson, a Confederate Major turned Wild West sheriff. Duke followed the family tradition and joined the 101st in Clarkesville; he was in ROTC at the University of Florida where he met his wife, whom he lost shortly after my mother was born, and raised my mother with the help of Eli and Mabel. He stayed in the army until, he told us, they forced him to retire.

Rather than raise my mother like the son he never had, my Grandfather indulged her in every way that he could, encouraging her femininity and independence, her intellect and social skills. She was a True Southern Belle, as Dad often called her. The Colonel took her with him to Germany, but from the time that she was ten years old until she graduated from law school at Vanderbilt she was surrounded by a southern aristocracy still very much alive in Tennessee Her family name would have been enough for admission into the club, but her own ability to thrive in that environment made her a standout.

Eve Masterson met Ryder Fox during her last semester in college. Dad was finishing his degree with the help of the GI bill.

It was that damn uniform, Mom had said ruefully more than once. You should have seen your father in dress blues. He was absolutely glorious.

I was conceived ten months after they met and nine months after their wedding.

3

We hit our first roadblock the next morning at a nondescript exit in Georgia. Dad was hoping that we could find another unoccupied gas station and pulled off 75 and onto the exit ramp only to be greeted by a town sheriff blocking the intersection with a battered brown Crown Victoria cruiser, a scatter-gun, and several men in hunting camouflage and rifles. No one smiled as we came down to the end of the ramp.

Uh oh, Dad remarked. Let's hope they're not as mean as they look.

Dad rolled down the window and put both of his hands outside to show that he was unarmed, put on a have I got a used car for you smile, and slowly exited the truck.

Howdy, he said agreeably, as if he were about to discuss the recent weather. Hoping that y'all can help us out.

The sheriff looked decidedly unimpressed. Best move on, he replied. He was white haired and paunchy, red in the face, and looked like he was exhausted. He was not pointing his weapon at the car anymore, though.

No help to be had here. No power, no gas, no stores. You can go on to the next exit. Ain't but ten more miles down the road, and they've got a Super Walt-Mart there.

Some of the other men shifted nervously, looking embarrassed but determined.

It's just me, my wife and my boy....we're not going to be trouble, Dad said earnestly. Just need a fill up and we're on our way. We can pay, no problem. He nodded his head. We're headed to Fort Campbell. Can you tell us anything? Do you know what's going on?

The sheriff looked hesitant. All we know is that the power is out all up and down the east coast. Cell phones are down, the internet is down, and people are starting to get a bit crazy. I heard on the radio a rumor that New York and Washington aren't there anymore. And Atlanta is burning already. Looting, rioting and people dying in the streets. Sherman all over again. The National Guard is mobilized, FEMA and Homeland Security are buzzing around in choppers, but nobody in charge is telling us anything. We figure to take care of our own, and that starts with keeping out people who aren't from around here. He pointed at Dad's Miami Dolphin's shirt and said, You ain't from around here. His face started to cloud with an angry resolution as if he had to convince himself that this unpleasantness was our fault, and he got louder as he finished, NOW GIT.

At this point Mom got out, her hands in the air, and in her sweetest, thickest, honeyed voice, said, Now gentlemen, this is not how good Christians behave. We're all American, and that's what matters, right? Let us give you some cash and let us be on our way. Everybody wins and everybody can sleep at night.

The sheriff looked almost relieved, and visibly relented. He shrugged. Well when you put it like that...how much cash?

They settled on five hundred dollars cash and a pearl necklace.

We stayed away from interstates and towns of any size from then on. We cut north and west, staying away from Macon and Atlanta. The back roads were relatively traffic free. Mom drove while Dad and I slept; the terrain changed and the temperature dropped.

In the fading pale of afternoon, somewhere north of Huntsville, Alabama and just shy of the Tennessee state line we learned more about what was going on in the world around us.

We were in rolling hills and the air was