Against Gravity

They came to a halt in front of a soldier who ticked off Kendrick's name on a clipboard. Then he was guided to a vacant seat. Nobody seated around him looked at all happy to be there, except for one elderly individual who was gri

Taking the seat next to him, Kendrick felt a tingle of familiarity. He eyed the people around him surreptitiously. They were a mixed bunch, mostly in their thirties or older, although there were a couple too obviously young even to be out of their teens. Some were black, some were white, some Hispanic, some looked poor, others rich, and about the only things they appeared to have in common were their worried expressions.

With armed guards hovering just a few feet away, they didn't talk much – understandably.

Suddenly the old man turned to Kendrick with a smile. "How are you doing?"

Kendrick nodded back, but he wasn't in a mood for conversation.

The old man awaited a response for a few moments, then shrugged and looked away again.

Every now and then, somebody else, looking as confused and distraught as Kendrick must have done, was marched in and seated among them. When one started to argue, Kendrick listened carefully to the response from the soldier with the clipboard: he said that emergency martial laws had been enforced until the threat to the nation could be assessed.

When the argument started to look like it was getting heated, another soldier stepped forward with his rifle raised. The implicit threat sent a cold chill through Kendrick.

He turned his attention back to the interviewing tables. Whenever they finished questioning someone, that individual would be escorted off through a door at the opposite end of the building.

Again, he couldn't see that any of them had anything particularly in common: they could have been housewives, doctors, petrol-pump attendants, anything.

Kendrick clasped his knees, his head filled with thoughts of his wife and his daughter Sam. He hadn't eaten in hours – usually he picked up breakfast on his way to work – but even though it must have been edging towards late afternoon he still didn't feel at all hungry.

"Thing is, we were right," a voice next to him said unexpectedly. Kendrick turned to find his elderly neighbour staring at him with bright, alert eyes.

"Sorry?"

"Sorry is the last thing you should be. Name's Marco. How you doing?"

"Kendrick Gallmon," he replied automatically.

"Not that guy writes for the Washington Free Press?" the other asked, his eyebrows raised. Kendrick nodded in reply. In any circumstances but these, it would have been nice to have his name recognized. Outside of Washington, and whoever subscribed to the Press's eepsheet newsfeed, generally nobody knew who he was.

"I read your column every week," said Marco. "Pretty critical of Wilber, aren't you?"

"Any other time in history, he'd be given psychiatric treatment for preaching the end of the world. Instead, we vote him in as President. I think you could say I was critical, yes. But who was right about what?"

"Sorry?"

"You said 'we were right'. Right about what?"

"About the crackdown. After this morning, over on the West Coast."

Kendrick stared back, his face blank.

"Ohh." Marco nodded gently. "You haven't heard, have you?"

"I heard something on the radio." As they continued talking in quiet whispers, Kendrick studied Marco more closely: a deeply lined face with a strong jaw, and clear blue eyes that danced with intelligence. The hair stood up in a white shock from the top of his head. Given his apparent age, he was dressed in reasonably current fashion, and he gave the impression of caring about his appearance. The more Kendrick considered him, the more he started to look familiar.

"Marco?" he said at last. "I know you: Frederic Marco, the writer. You wrote The Contortionist." It was a book he'd read over one long, languid summer in his teens.

"Listen," said Marco impatiently. "You didn't hear what happened in LA?"

"Los Angeles? What's happened to it?"

"What's happened is that it isn't there any more," hissed Marco, his grin not faltering for a second. "Can you imagine that? No more Sunset Boulevard, no more Beverly Hills, no more Venice Beach… I liked Venice Beach, but now it's all gone." He nodded his head wonderingly. "Imagine that."

"But what happened?" asked Kendrick, a sick feeling spreading through his stomach.

"Got nuked," said Marco, and his smile faltered briefly. "Probably by film critics." The grin resurfaced.

"Nuked?" It was such an outrageous-sounding piece of news, but somehow Kendrick believed it. All it needed was for him to cast his mind back over what had happened to him over the past few hours to see how serious things might be. No more Los Angeles? Feeling like he was performing a part in some movie, as if this were all play-acting, he asked, "Who?"

Marco shrugged. "Beats me. Take your pick of suspects. It won't be the Chinese, not after the way they fell apart. That leaves pretty much any political or religious group with a grudge, or perhaps terrorists, or any other random bunch of crazies you care to pick. But to get back to my original point, we were right – people like you and I – about what was going to happen to this country once the shit really hit the fan."

All the while more people were being escorted into the shed, and more led away Marco continued. "This country's been going to hell for such a long time, nothing's going to change that now. People starving in this country, diseases we thought long gone being reintroduced ten times stronger, the climate all changed and the Gulf Stream fucked, four localized nuclear wars in Asia – just count 'em." He held up one fist and, pushing up four fingers, pointed at them in turn. "Four! And the environmental disasters leaving millions dead in the Midwest. We're sailing down the river towards the sharp rocks, but still acting like everything's going to be fine. Wilber being elected President is the icing on the cake – or the death stroke, maybe."

Marco leaned in a little closer. "Frankly, Kendrick, we're fucked, and somebody just hammered the last nail into the coffin. Ain't none of us here going to get out of this mess alive."

Kendrick bristled. "That's just paranoia."

"Look, listen to me," said Marco, placing a hand on his shoulder. Kendrick felt uncomfortable at the unexpected intimacy of the gesture. "You're a journalist, and people with jobs like yours are only secure so long as what you're doing isn't seen to be against the national interest. President Wilber gets to decide what the national interest is. That means right now the national interest is rounding up everybody who could have any kind of co

"I don't understand what you're saying."

"What I'm saying, Kendrick, is I'm seventy-six years old. I've had a long life, and I've been very good at making enemies. In some way or other, all of us here, without even knowing it, have made ourselves somebody's enemy. I always said life in this country was a losing battle, because it's always the guys with the guns who win. That's why I'm doing what I'm about to do. It's important that you understand. That you remember, for me, if you ever get out of this."

Kendrick felt sudden heat rising in his face. He watched as Marco stood up, drawing the attention of the several guards observing them all keenly.