Houston, 2030: The Year Zero Page 5

  Chapter 5

  Thus, they had finished with all the database hits in the eastern part of the Slum. Noon was approaching, soon it would be too hot to walk.

  “How about I feed you lunch?” Mark offered, “you deserve at least this much – for all the trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, sir. I would be patrolling the beat anyhow. But yes, it's stupid to refuse a free lunch. Do you eat Korean? I can show you the best place in the Slum.”

  They cycled for another fifteen minutes. The dirt path suddenly ended at a paved road. This was the GRS commercial center: a marketplace with little shops and cafes.

  Kim proudly pointed around. “See? This part is Koreamerican! Still a slum, I take that! But much cleaner – isn't it?”

  He was right: the concrete pavement was nicely swept, no garbage piles, and no poo in sight.

  The cafe's name and everything else on an enormous signboard were in Korean; Mark only recognized the web address and the telephone number. The establishment was indeed very popular, and all the tables were occupied, but the owner quickly went to the back and brought the officers two plastic chairs and a little table, obviously reserved for the special guests. They ordered Tubu Jigae – a spicy soup with tofu and Kimchi cabbage on the side. The prices were reasonable: two hundred and twenty dollars for two portions.

  While waiting for the food, Kim pulled out a box with local tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. Mark did not smoke. He belonged to the tobacco-free generation: back then, smoking was forbidden almost everywhere, and steadily went out of fashion. Now everybody started smoking again. Since the Meltdown, there were no global tobacco companies anymore, and the tobacco had to be grown locally. The Houston variety was not too good, and – expensive. Sometimes, Mark wondered why the youngsters bothered with this poison, considering all the trouble involved.

  Suddenly, they heard grinding noise of skateboard wheels on concrete. A young Afro-American woman on the skate rolled in front of them and lifted her red plastic bucket: “Change for Vets, officers?”

  The woman had no legs and pushed the skate with two chunks of wood in her hands. For a moment Mark thought she was a fake. He heard stories about unscrupulous beggars who boasted they were mutilated in the Army and not at the 'Fill. Upon the second glance, he changed his opinion. The woman was no older than twenty, in pristine Navy Service Uniform, and with an authentic Purple Heart pinned on. Her collection bucket had a genuine Salvation Way shield and a serial number. No doubt she was a real military vet, not a pretender. The Mark and Kim simultaneously reached for their pockets.

  “Thank you for your donations!” the woman gave them a mockery salute, touching her garrison cap with the fingertips. Then she pointed to Kim's cigarette, “sorry bothering you once more. I'm desperate for a smoke! Got plenty of stuff, but no paper left. Can a brave sailor spare some ammo for his former shipmate?”

  “How the hell did you guess I was in the Navy?” Kim handled the woman his tobacco box.

  “And how did you guess we are both ‘officers’?” Mark added.

  The legless smiled. “Two identical police-issue bikes parked next to each other. Two men at the table, one – in the Police uniform. How difficult to add two and two? As for the Navy, just a lucky guess. From that lighter – left on the table. An anchor and a ship name: USS Punishing. The younger man is the only smoker, so he must be from the Navy, what else!”

  “Wow!” Kim picked his lighter.

  “But here I could be mistaken. Let's say, you got the lighter as a present or bought it at a flea market. Still, for a sailor, it's real hard to separate from such a souvenir, – almost like abandoning a ship without the Captain's orders… To make it short, I took my chance. Apparently: spot on!”

  “Bloody awesome!” Kim said, “if not for your skin color, I would bet a million you're a grand-grand-granddaughter of Mister Sherlock Holmes himself!”

  “For your information, shipmate, Mister Sherlock Holmes is a book character, not a real person. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used his hospital colleague for a prototype. As for the skin color, the black skin comes from the dominant genes. To put it simple, once you're black, all the offspring is black, does not matter what color the partner is. If my grand-grand-grandfather Sherlock really existed, all he needed was a little tourist trip to Jamaica. Even easier: there were enough emancipated black girls in London during Sir Arthur's time…” While explaining literature and genetics to Kim, the woman pulled a piece of paper from Kim's box and expertly made herself a cigarette, not with his tobacco, but her own. Kim clicked his Navy lighter.

  “If you want, I can roll you a To-Ma-Gochi, too,” the woman offered, returning the box to Kim, “I have a nice blend: grass and tobacco, three-to-one. Medicinal purposes only…” Texas proudly held a title of the last American state to legalize unrestricted marijuana usage. Offering Grass to police officers was still in-fashion.

  “Not while I'm on-duty, sailor.”

  “Oh, they still don't allow the Police to smoke legal stuff? OK, not now. I can make you one, and you enjoy at home tonight.”

  “I prefer tobacco.”

  “No worries, shipmate. If you don't mind, gentlemen, can I sit here for a while? I don't need a chair…”

  Mark nodded. The woman slid from her skateboard to the concrete and used her Salvation Way bucket as an armrest.

  “I have not seen you around my beat. Where are you from?” Kim asked.

  She giggled. “From the Dumpster-of-Caribbean, what else? Do you know what she is?”

  “Sure as hell,” Mark said. “My eldest son took a free cruise on her, not too long ago. Only, they halved you from below, and him – from above.”

  “Oops, I'm sorry. I didn't want to be offensive… Really I'm from Detroit, Michigan.”

  “Did you volunteer? For the Navy?” Mark asked.

  “Volunteer? You may put it this way. Not like I had much choice, LOL. Detroit is like a ghost town now. In Mich, there is no food in the winter, simple as that! Dad left us when I was three months old. Mom died recently… Not a place to call home.”

  “I didn't know the things are so bad in Michigan,” Mark said, “there is nothing on the news.”

  “Who would put the freaking Mich on the news? Imagine, from the Dumpster, they wanted to ship me back to Detroit. Gave me a railway pass: two weeks across the country, with all the stops. I asked them: for bloody what? And if I want to stay here? If I simply get into my wheelchair and roll out of the port? They said: no, you won't, because this chair is not yours! See that label? Property of USNS Santa Lucia. Your wheelchair, Miss, – it's in your city of origin! You will get a brand-new chair upon arrival. Oops!”

  “They wrestled your wheelchair away?” Kim shook his head.

  She grinned, “Yessir! Dumped my sore ass on the asphalt, just like that.”

  “Bastards!”

  “I don't blame them. They're still in the Navy – under orders. Lucky, a Salvation Way rep came to the port: you may benefit from a set of wheels, sailor. So I got my skateboard. Frankly, I prefer it to the stupid wheelchair. It can go places no wheelchair can access. Besides, a new perspective in life. From below!” She pulled on her To-Ma-Gochi and slowly blew the smoke through the nose: “excellent Grass, way better than in Mich. Still don't want one?”

  Kim waved his fingers to decline the offer. “And how did you end up here in Sheldon-Res?”

  “Rolled on my skate!”

  “What? All the way from Galveston?”

  “Just joking. It was by pure chance.”

  “Pure chance?”

  The legless made another puff from her cigarette, “Yep. After the Salvation Way lady gave me the skate, I went to shake her…”

  She noted Mark's raised eyebrows and clarified: “I mean: shake my new skate, not the lady! The shake is a sea trial, a Navy talk for a test run. Ended up in a bar with other vets. The Moonshine wa
s OK, but I miscalculated. Different hull displacement!”

  “What do you mean?” Mark was still confused with her naval lingo.

  “Displacement. The body volume. How did you call it? Halved?”

  “Rude joke, forget it.”

  “No, I like it. Really! Must remember, it's so-o-o cool. Halved! Drink after drink, and here I am: with only half of my body volume, but a full load of 'shine inside. No idea, how I got to the bus station. Opened my eyes in the morning. Oops! I slept on bare concrete, hugging my skate! No money, pool of barf, you got the picture.”

  “Rough night.”

  “To be honest, I was never so drunk in my life.”

  “You have a perfect excuse,” Mark said, “it's not like every day they cut your legs off and dump you on the street.”

  “I guess, you can call it a special occasion! Anyway, I had nothing else to do in Galveston, but no money for the bloody ticket. Then, one omnibus driver offered me a free ride. Where the hell to? Sheldon-Res, Miss. OK: Sheldon-Res. Anything is better than Detroit.”

  “And you decided to stay here?” Kim asked.

  “At least for a while. I love the South! Imagine: here you can sleep on concrete with nothing but your skate, and still wake up alive and well in the morning. I always hated snow. Got myself a bucket from Salvation Way. Senior Officer said: as a collector, you have potential, Miss. Apparently, legless girls collect donations better than legless boys.”

  “Five years ago, in the Navy,” Kim said, “I was told they never send girls in harm's way. Only air carriers and naval bases. Support duties… So what happened to your legs – a freak accident?”

  The legless giggled. “Support duties! Depends what you call a ‘support duty,’ sailor. Our girls give support all-right. Fire support, hey! I was a gunner! River monitors, Piranha-class.”

  “Piranha-class? Those mosquito boats?”

  “Yep, the space is tight. That's why we have all-female crews now. But besides the accommodation, Piranhas are not too bad: fast, reliable, and the armor is OK. Small firearms, even an RPG – no problems! If with a Russian or Czech grenade, then – maybe, but the Chinese-made – just a joke, and we didn't give a damn. Then, the guerillas got themselves those portable laser-guided missiles. Probably, a Chinese crap too, but a guided missile is not an RPG! They hit us from the aft… Our starboard gunner only screamed: ‘Incoming! Missile launch at five o'clock!’ Whack! An ammo loading hatch in the aft, the armor is weaker. On those monitors, if you don't know, a crew of seven: two in the gun turret up-front and five – in the superstructure. Out of five, only I survived, and four others – in pieces…”

  “And so: you ended up on the Dumpster?”

  “What else? Garbage like me – straight to the Dumpster!” She made a long pull from the cigarette, closed her eyes for several seconds, and exhaled a puff of sweet-smelling smoke. “Woke up already – halved,” giggling, she moved her hand back and forth as if cutting the imaginary legs from the body, “no complains, the Chainsaw did his job quite OK…”

  “Chainsaw?”

  The legless puffed her cigarette again; now she was obviously under influence, and her speech was getting disjointed. “Chainsaw! Some smart-ass on the Dumpster invented the name for the goddamn surgeons! Like in the old horror movie… A maniac with a chainsaw: who is the wounded here? Boo-ha-ha-ha! One cut, – no legs! Nurses, this one is ready to go! Ne-e-ext!”

  The cafe waitress arrived with the ordered lunch and proceeded placing bowls on the table. She said nothing, but looked at the legless vet with obvious disapproval.

  “Disregard this crap, officers. Sorry. My To-Ma-Gochi! It makes me telling all kinds of nonsense. Funny!” The vet's cigarette burnt almost to her fingers. She extinguished the stub on concrete. “Don't let me spoil your lunch, officers. Thanks for your donations, the smoke, and the talk, but I'd better get rolling… Rolling, rolling, rolling, a-ha…” She threw her truncated body back on the skate and set her red bucket between the stumps.

  “See you around,” Kim replied. The legless waved to them and pushed her skate between the tables, collecting more donations. Then, she returned to the road and continued towards the next roadside cafe.

  “She is cute,” Kim said, watching the skate-bound vet.

  “She was even cuter before they chopped her legs off,” Mark mumbled digging into his bowl of spicy soup. The legless vet story made him upset. He briefly imagined Pamela or Samantha, being without legs and riding a skate like this. Goddamn generals. Now sending girls to war!

  “I don't know how bad it is in other places,” Kim said, “but in GRS, one out of three families has someone either killed or wounded in action. Why are we fighting so many little wars at once? Amazing, how the U.S. of mighty A. got itself in such a deep shit in such a short time.”

  “Our neighborhood is the same: every third family,” Mark nodded, “our family too. Did I tell you about my William?”

  “You did, sir. How is he coping?”

  “Not too bad, considering… Well, we are not alone. The same bloody story – twice a year. A young fellow gets drafted. Bang! He is back, short of an arm or a leg. Or even worse: the family gets a nice letter from the Pentagon and a little parcel with a medal. Postmortem! You are what: twenty-four, twenty-five? How much do you remember before the Meltdown?”

  “I remember it was bloody great. Piece of cake. Perhaps, I was too little to remember any bad things. The GFC I didn't see at all, – I was only three at the time,” Kim said, also digging into his Tubu Jigae. “We lived in Charleston, West Virginia, in a rich neighborhood. A huge mansion for a house. My brother and I went to a posh, boys only, – private school. Jackets, neckties, and Eton straw hats! My Dad was a branch manager in a bank, Mom – a consultant auditor. Both made good money. After the GFC, Dad did not lose his job, just the opposite, got a promotion. He said, we had to start an alternative investment, which was pretty much all I cared about the freaking GFC.”

  “An alternative investment? In what?”

  “Dad stopped at Walmart three times a week and bought food. Canned beans, canned meat, macaronis, flour, and dry milk – that sort of stuff. He filled the basement with non-perishable food. An entire shelf full of toilet paper, I am not kidding! Also, we had an electric generator and two barrels of gas – in the garage… Now I think my Dad awaited the Meltdown to happen.”

  “Did the investment work?”

  “Not bloody much! After the Meltdown, both my parents lost jobs, but it was OK: the shops were empty anyway. We started using the stuff stored in the basement. Two-three cans a day. Dad calculated we had enough for at least four years… Shit no! Two months later, we were robbed.”

  “Like a bank robbery?”

  “At the gun-point! Perhaps, the neighbors learned of our ‘investment,’ and got jealous. Six robbers: two women and four men, all in ski masks. My Dad tried to fight back and was shot dead. At the basement stairs…”

  “Oh shit!”

  “They locked my younger brother and me in the bathroom upstairs and told Mom they would send us after Dad if she disobeys. She helped loading our stuff into our cars… We had Dad's sport utility and Mom's Daewoo compact. The robbers loaded both cars, and two or three of them would drive off, back in few hours. They filled the cars from our own gas barrels! Frankly, I still wonder why the bastards didn't kill us. We were left with nothing, just one sofa and empty cabinets, which could not fit into the SUV.”

  “Did you call Police?”

  “Sure. They helped: sent a coroner truck to carry Dad's body away. It was all.”

  “In Houston, it was the same,” Mark said. “People called 911 and got nothing. But: what could we do? The Police cars had no gas – imagine!”

  “We chopped our furniture to keep the fireplace going,” Kim continued. “Mom ran from charity to charity, but most places were closed. Nobody had f
ood, who would donate? Mom said: if we stay in Charleston, we won't survive the next winter. Thus, we went. Eighteen-wheelers drove in large convoys – not to be robbed. One trucker took us all the way to Houston. We settled in GRS. They didn't call it Garret Road Slum yet, and it was much smaller – only about a mile along the road…”

  “Must be a culture shock.”

  “You bet… Mom got a job at the 'Fill. From a financial auditor – to a rag-picker! We rented a corner. Imagine living in the same room with seventeen other people – after having a mansion! Our first day in school – the Null's Middle. We came in those first compulsory uniforms. I shined my shoes, just like in Charleston. Bang! The bullies said: you look too bloody neat. We have rules here. And the first rule: No show-offs. They brought us to a pond of crap behind the school grounds. This damn pond still serves the same purpose: for the sissies.”

  “Were you the sissies?”

  “Undeniable. What else can you be in a posh private school? Well, now I think our brand-new school shoes triggered the entire show. First thing first, we were ordered to take the shoes off. The big boys said they would throw them into the latrine. Likely, the bastards just hid them and later sold at the flea market. Anyway, shoes off – and straight into the crap. They cut our uniforms with razor blades. Back then, boys had only razors, not knives. Half of the school assembled to see the sissies being properly initiated into the Null's Middle. OK, how much better, everybody agreed. Now the posh private school sissies can blend in.”

  “And your Mom?”

  “First, she almost killed us: for the missing shoes and ruined uniforms. Second, she went to see the Principal. He said: oh, no worries, just a little joke, the boys do such things all the time. Teens, peer pressure, you must understand. He couldn't do anything, and he didn't care. We didn't have much choice either. The only alternative was not to go to school at all.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Had to blend in, what else? Mom washed and patched our uniforms, so we looked neither better nor worse than anybody else in the class. We had to go in flip-flops and got regular detentions – for the dress code. I admit, attending Null's gave us practical survival skills: kill or be killed…”

  “The schools are still a mess,” Mark nodded, “but at least they are not so damn crazy about uniforms anymore.”

  Over the last ten years, the school uniform rules have been gradually relaxed. By now, most kids went in assorted military second-hand. The footwear, considering the mild climate and ‘temporary difficult economic situation,’ was declared optional. Mark's younger kids often went to school barefoot. Not so that Mark could not afford three pairs of tire sandals, but the No show-offs rule stood, even stronger than during Kim's times. The unlucky kids in slightly better clothes were quite at risk of bullying from ever-barefoot and rag-clad urchins from poor slum families.