Caitlin thought about taking the passenger seat in his Jeep, but climbing into a car with someone who was still obviously over the limit was not something Colonel Murdoch would do. Instead, she sat in the back of a four-passenger Hummer with Musso, driven by the redoubtable Milosz, who seemed unaffected by the ravages of whiskey and cigars. Maybe he really had been suckled on potato vodka as a child.
The direct route between the federal outpost and Blackstone’s seat of power was much shorter than the long and winding detour Musso had taken from the airfield. The transition to the area controlled by the state government could not be missed. The devastation of the Wave and the entropy that ran wild as soon as humankind’s hand was lifted from the world disappeared when they crossed an invisible line south-west of Belton, a small satellite town nestled at the junction of I-35 and Route 190, which ran west to Killeen and the Hood. No rusting car hulks or broken-down machinery marred the landscape here. Out in the fields, hundreds of workers moved along freshly ploughed fields, hand-weeding winter crops. Caitlin wished she had a pair of binoculars. She was certain they all looked like guest workers from well south of this region. Officially, there were no migrants from south of the Rio Grande in Texas.
She settled back into her soft brown leather seat, scavenged from a luxury SUV of some type. The ride was much smoother today, no doubt to the eternal relief of the private rubbing his forehead in the passenger seat up front, who looked like a bullet for breakfast would not have been a bad idea. Each time the radio beeped with traffic, the young man grunted, picked up the hand mike and groaned out a response. Sergeant Milosz ignored him.
Unable to talk openly, Caitlin and Musso were content to listen to the Polish NCO as he gave them chapter and verse on the adventures of his brother’s family on a farm in the Federal Mandate.
‘Is supposed to be cattle farm,’ explained Milosz. ‘But niece has rescued baby lamb and raised it as a puppy because my brother will not have dog in the house. And yet, he allows the sheep, which now goes by the name of Vince, to wander around wherever it pleases. It sits on the couch. Sleeps on children’s bed. And sneaks behind the lounge for purpose of stealthy farting, just like a dog. But with misadvantages of not being trained properly to be in house, and leaving little round pebbles of sheep shit everywhere. Including in my room when I visit. I say to brother and wife they should get rid of this Vince. But they tell me the children love him. I would love him too, with mint sauce and baked potatoes. But does anybody listen to Milosz? No, nobody ever listens to Milosz.’
‘We’re listening,’ said Caitlin from the back seat as they rolled through well-tended fields. The overcast weather of the previous day had cleared, and although it was still cold, the sun shone down hard and bright.
‘Has your family had any problems with the state government?’ she asked as they passed a collection of residences called Cimarron Park. They didn’t appear to be occupied, but a lot of work had gone into keeping down the vegetation and preserving the buildings, giving the impression of a newly built housing estate.
‘Not problems for my brother Radoslaw, no,’ Milosz called back over his shoulder. ‘Resettlement people put them into new strategic village as soon as they arrive and when I visit I have helped them to improve defences. They have seen no road agents. But other families who have been longer tell Radoslaw that agents are fewer now. Have been much smaller pain in ass for maybe three months. Maybe four.’
Musso leaned forward to be heard over the engine noise.
‘Whereabouts are your family based, Sergeant?’
‘They are with six families in strategic village built in old town called Richards. Is north of Houston. Many bandits in there. Radoslaw tells me it was almost as bad as New York for a while. Until the TDF kicked them out.’
‘And the TDF, your brother is happy with the security they provide?’
‘Oh yes, sir. For a bunch of ignorant bigots and rednecks who scrape all the skin of their knuckles as they walk along, the TDF are okay, in the judgment of Radoslaw. Of course, Radoslaw allows Vince the sheep to do stealthy farts behind couch, so perhaps his judgment is not to be relied upon.’
They were deep into the suburbs now, with no sign of any of the security checkpoints or roadblocks. Local traffic had appeared, a smattering of merchants were opening their businesses, and increasing numbers of people were walking the streets, some holding cups of coffee, others carrying bread and milk. It seemed to Caitlin that the Hummer could’ve been touring through a massive, open-air art installation. Life before the Disappearance.
She sat forward too now, her turn to quiz their Polish raconteur. ‘Do you mind if I ask, Sergeant - the other families in the settlement with your brother, do you know where they come from?’
‘Two from Poland, good people,’ replied Milosz. ‘Two more came from refugee camps in England, the working farms. And the others I am not sure. From Seattle, maybe.’
She said nothing in response, preferring to mull over that in private. The families who had arrived from England probably came off a farm not unlike hers and Bret’s. The other Poles would’ve been people like Milosz’s family, descended from hardy peasant stock and selected for the resettlement program because of their familiarity with agricultural work. They might have gained extra points towards selection if they had a relative, like Fryderyk Milosz, who had volunteered for federal service. The final two, from Seattle, she could not guess at.
‘One more question,’ she said. ‘These families down in Richards, are they all white?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the Ranger, without a trace of discomfort. ‘No nig-nogs or sand bandits in my brother’s village.’
*
It took them thirty minutes to cover the distance from Temple to the gates of Fort Hood. As Milosz moved onto other topics, Caitlin pondered Jackson Blackstone.
It made sense, she supposed, for Blackstone to have set himself up in the former headquarters of Fort Hood. The base itself was more easily secured than the civilian town centre, to its east. He had actively recruited among former members of the military for his own migration and resettlement program. The base’s infrastructure had survived well, and with thousands of disgruntled, footloose, former US military personnel to draw on, ramping the place back up to becoming a functioning facility would have been a lot easier than the task Musso faced over in Temple. An additional argument could be made that the Hood was simply too valuable to leave unattended, given that it was the largest existing US Army installation in North America. Roberto didn’t have power projection capability yet, but he would have everything he needed if he were able to get to Fort Hood first.
Still, it said a lot about Mad Jack that his first thought was to go for the guns. There was plenty of evidence, if you wanted to look, that Texas under Blackstone was a militarised society, and nowhere more so than here at the heart of his administration. TDF armed squads patrolled the streets in armoured Humvees, and although McCutcheon kept to his word and their convoy wasn’t stopped, Caitlin noted the telltale signs of semi-permanent checkpoints at least six times before reaching the base perimeter. She had no doubt that random roadblocks could be thrown up almost anywhere within the greater city of Killeen at a few minutes’ notice.
The residents she saw on the drive through Killeen into Fort Hood seemed to care not at all. They had none of the beaten-down, furtive air that usually hung around the subjects of a tyrant. Sparkling under the morning sun, still wet with yesterday’s rain, the new capital of the Texas Administrative Division presented as an advertisement for Arcadia. A white, heavily armed, middle-class Arcadia.