Water Wars Chapter Two

It’s been a month, maybe longer, since I’ve traveled far from my apartment, for various reasons. Food is scarce and hard to come by. Water is an even bigger problem. What water I had managed to scrounge and steal and stash away is almost gone. Speaking to a group out on the street one night, a guy suggested we build a system of cisterns and barrels to collect rainwater for everyone in the neighborhood. It was at that moment I realized most of us are not equipped to handle the ugly and rapidly unfolding reality we are living in. I swear to God, every day I see some of these guys, smart men, and women I know well, looking skyward, waiting for the rain that don’t come, like a poor kid waking up Easter morning and realizing the damn bunny skipped his house again. I used to mock these people, but more now I envy their unrelenting faith. I’ve no faith. Mine dried up like the San Joaquin River. It’s dust now where I used to believe in something, some higher power. Now I look skyward and when I do, the empty, sunny, unrelenting and heartless sky tells me to go fuck myself.

I know a guy who is adamant in his belief it will all turn around. He points to the dust bowl a hundred years ago. He’s one of the ones who looks west to the Pacific and skyward daily. It don’t come—ever. It just don’t come.

I’ve decided to steal what I can and stay close to protect what little I’ve got. With the power out most of the time now and every store and shelf picked clean for at least the surrounding ten to twenty miles, I see no reason at all to stay.

Rumors of water and a better life in the mid-west are exaggerated from what I’ve heard. They say the road getting anywhere east is a free-for-all. It’s all so localized, coming apart in slow motion. At first it was not much water, then the heat caused the power to fail, power grid failures led to businesses closing, then people didn’t have money for even the basic things, and the stores closed up, then the looting and riots began, but the weird thing was the cops left us all alone. They were focused more on protecting what was still functioning. The riots got worse and more widespread. That’s when I hunkered down and started to hide, never venturing more than my place or out to scavenge or Jane’s apartment. She stays there alone, still, living on some false hope her husband will bring her kids back. Her kids aren’t coming back. We ate a squirrel last week…

We all need to get out of here.

I ran into a guy who had been back east. His family is up in Maine somewhere. He said while it was oddly warm there, sixty-five or seventy degrees in January and no snow for two years, they still had water and life was normal for the most part. Food, especially fruits and vegetables, was expensive as hell, but it was nothing like here in the southwest.

I saw him on the street yesterday. He’d come back to get his wife and two kids and head back to Maine. He told me on the TV they report of the southwest ‘drought’ a few times a week, but no one seems to know the extent of how things are here. He flew back to Washington, but he said the cancellations and flight delays are so bad he’s considering trying to drive. He was stranded for a week near Jackson Hole Wyoming. I said, “Nice town!” His answer was, “Not anymore…”  The look on his face conveyed he realizes the threat to his family, no matter what option he chooses. Staying, flying out if you can, if you have the money or driving are all becoming very dangerous. There is no good option left.

I stayed the night with Jane. I tried to sleep on her dirty, gutted couch. The springs poked me in the back all night. It didn’t matter. It’s too goddamn hot to sleep. I went into her bedroom about sunrise and sat on her bed for a long time. When she woke, she smiled for a moment, forgetting we now lived in Hell. I told her it’s time to make a move or die. She sat on the edge of her sheetless sweat-soaked bed, naked. Her ribs were sticking through her flesh and her arms looked like small bones covered in loose, dirty skin. The room stunk of our body odors. We passed a joke, blaming the other for the smell.

“I’m going to get us a ride out of here, Jane. I’ll be back.” There are no kisses or hugs or even “good lucks,” thrown out. It’s not like that here, not now. Maybe at one time this could have been some kind of romance, but not now. Now people bonded together for survival, to steal what they could and for one to keep watch through the night while the other tried to rest. I don’t think anyone sleeps any more. We just nap in the relentless heat.

I leave Janie to pack what little she has and head out on foot to see if I can sign on to drive a tanker from the springs in Kansas back here. Part of me thinks this story of springs is another myth, a lie. The guy I’m looking for is a customer of the bar I worked at before that, too, closed down. It’s a pretty dark day when the bars close down.

I walk down abandoned streets, rows of small single-family homes and blocks of apartment houses, two or three stories tall. These used to be pretty tree-lined streets. Now, the trees are dead or dying, lawns are burned to a crisp and dust. Cars, gas tanks bone dry line the streets, a few have been burned, others gutted for parts. It was like that for a while, guys stripping cars clean for parts, tearing apart homes for copper and appliances, then that stopped. The stolen stuff might get money, but money lost a lot of value, and there wasn’t a lot left to steal. Sometimes I scrounge the abandoned houses and apartments. People often leave canned food. That’s like finding gold. Even if you have money, water is impossible to come by. Many people left for places nearer any water supply. I hear there are tent cities lining what was the Nooksack River and down to Whatcom. But, I’ve been told if you try to get anywhere near any of that water now, you’ll get shot. A few have been. Nobody seems to give a good fuck about much these days.

I’ve got about two gallons of fresh water I stashed at Jane’s. I paid fifty bucks a gallon for them. Two gallons of water and a duffle bag full of dirty clothes. My life savings. It is more than time to make a bold move.

The trucking company is located down off Route 11, not far, a couple of miles but a brutal walk in this heat. Making my way through Ocean View Cemetery, I find myself envious of the dead who are buried here. This used to be a nice spot to take a bottle of wine and a girl and smoke a few joints, sit on the close-trimmed grass, backs against an ornate headstone and look out at the Pacific inlet and the San Juan Islands. There were pathways lined with flowers and palm trees. Now this is burned dead to dust. It seems everything that was once lush and vibrant is now dead.

As I’m leaving the cemetery and about to cross Route 11, a truck, a big old military truck I recognized as a canvas topped M35 deuce-and-a-half from my army days, and it is loaded with men; as they approach, I see they are armed men, heavily armed. The truck stops, blocking me from crossing the road. It is too hot to put up with any kind of shit from the National Guard today. The sun is directly overhead, and it has to be a hundred and ten degrees, even hotter than that on the blacktop. Out of the passenger side of the truck cab jumps a man dressed in quasi-military gear, but definitely not National Guard. He’s got some kind of assault weapon strapped around his neck and shoulder. Pointing the barrel at my head, he begins a series of rapid-fire questions, in a strange accent. Who am I, what am I doing, how many are with me… stuff like that. I look at his face and mannerisms. I can’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark Wayfarer sunglasses. I yell back, “Shoot me, motherfucker! Do me a favor!” The soldier wannabe raised his sunglasses to his forehead and lowers the rifle and I get a better look at his face. “Felix? Eres tu?”

The man drops the rifle to his side and, looking back at me and through a smirk, spits out, “Sammy, is that you? Dude, you look like shit. You’re so skinny.”

I take a deep breath, relief I think… Felix walks in close to me and extends his hand, and says, “Man, I ain’t seen you in a year. Are you still working at the bar?”

Felix was one sinister mother fucker. I didn’t know him all that well. I knew him well enough to keep my distance from him. He may have been a quarter Hispanic at best. His mom’s family was from Russia or Poland or someplace European, but he always acted like he wanted to be Che Guevara when he grew up. Even back when things were good, he was always talking about some revolution and overthrowing the government.

“Nah, man, that shutdown about six months ago. Nobody has money for bar drinks. Nobody has money for anything. I’m trying to figure a way out of here and back east. When did you join the Army?”

Felix laughs, “Fuck the government bro, this is my army. We are heading back out to Nooksack River. We have a place there. Armed as fuck. We were pulling a few hundred gallons of mostly clean water out of there every day. The stream is very low, so that option is quickly going away. I can still hook you up. We are selling this muddy river water for twenty dollars a gallon. I got to tell you, though, the stream is drying up along with the cash. When all this drought shit started, we were selling clean water for five bucks a gallon, making a killing, but now nobody has any money or any water. Now I hear some guys are selling it for fifty a gallon. People can’t drive out to the river, no gas or no money for gas, so they are hunkered down in their houses and apartments and killing each other and stealing.

“Motherfuckers killing each other for a gallon of water, man. I saw a guy last week stabbed right through the heart. The guy who killed him did it for a gallon of fucking water. Gangs now, one-time lawyers and grocery clerks and school teachers all gone feral. Busting into people’s homes, cutting motherfuckers and stealing what little there is to steal until the next day some other gang comes to take from them what they stole. You ain’t seen this over by you?”

“It’s getting like that now. That’s why I decided I have to make a move. I’m hoping the guy, what’s his name, Harmon? I’m hoping he can give me a truck and some fuel. You remember Jane? You met her at the bar. She used to come in there and pick up drunks and fuck them in the ladies’ room when she was fighting with her husband. She is coming with me. She’s in bad shape.”

Felix grins. “You know, bro, we all tapped that tree, right?”

Felix had put his sunglasses back on and gone to the truck to get me a pair. Stolen from a local drugstore, he tells me, with a misplaced pride. I appreciate the gift. The sun is overwhelming.

“Felix, I don’t care who she fucked or didn’t. It’s not like that. You should see her, man. We’re all broke. She’s broken worse. The husband took her kids. If I don’t take her, I’m pretty sure she’ll kill herself.”

He looks around, back at the truck, then the road, pausing as a pickup truck loaded with ten to fifteen people in the back passes slowly by us. He says, “They’s all headed south, don’t know why. What little water or food to be had there is all in the hands of them rich-bitches and the National Guard. I used to think me and my boys was bad-ass, but these people here and now gone crazy. Too crazy for my blood. This truck gets six miles a gallon and I ain’t got no car. I’m thinking of heading east, too, but how? We can’t stay here, we can’t go. Me and my boys got a plan to get us all the water we need. Not sure I can trust you though…”

Calmer now, hands in my pockets looking down at my shoes, I comment, “So, no more ‘Viva la revolución,’ Felix?”

He looks at me hard. “Nah, man, they broke it. They broke it all. I have family back in New York. I was talking to a cousin last month, the news there talks about the drought, but not the extent. They will do a story about a family rationing water, no stories about a whole town, a state, the whole fucking west going dry. My cousin says it’s all planned. They don’t want to incite panic and riots back there where things are still somewhat normal. Some people know. The cost of produce from here was through the roof and now nonexistent. The government and the news media are trying to keep the reality contained. There are no news stories about armed National Guard in the streets of Queenstown. It’s coming for them too, back east, everywhere, but the government is trying to contain it. Call me crazy, that’s why our power and internet have been cut or limited. They want to contain the story as long as they can. I think it’s so they can control the water supply. They know what will happen when the truth is fully out in the light of day.”

Felix takes a cigarette from his cammo t-shirt and offers me one. I light it and gag. “How old is this fucking thing, Felix?”

He says, “We found a few cases in an overturned truck out on Highway 9. These may be the last we’ll ever see, so smoke it up, pendejo. Have you been out on the roads this month? It’s carnage, man. And you want to drive east with a tanker? You’ll be killed before you get to Arizona.”

Bro, he continues, “We, me and my boys, we got a plan to get water to the people. To help these dying bastards. Dying kids and old people. Money is worthless. Water is what matters. I can get my people enough water to keep them alive for a while. Maybe by then the government will figure out how to un-fuck this mess. Until then, I need to take a chance.

I smile, “In a weird way, Felix, it sounds like you want to do Che proud. What’s this plan?”

As Felix begins to speak, a small convoy of semi-trucks passes us on the highway, heading south. Felix points, “Look at them trucks, bro, look close in the cabs!”

Squinting in the relentless sun, I see there are three people in each cab and the trucks are driving in a close convoy, never more than ten feet separate them. As a big old Freightliner cabover passes, pulling a box trailer, I see the two passengers are holding rifles, what look like machine guns or assault rifles.

“It’s like that now, man.” Felix shakes his head and walks in a circle. “I’ve got good boys with me. Two types of freight is coming through here now. Big tankers pulling water down from Canada and gas and diesel tankers. All bound for the south, where there is still enough money to buy things like that. Water is going for mad money down there, like a hundred a gallon. At least it was. I think many of the rich bitches have left town. That’s the deal, bro. It’s all changed now. It didn’t happen all at once, it was slow, like cancer. If you’re here and you know how bad it is, you know, you really fucking know. If you are back east or even part of the south where it’s still somewhat normal, you don’t know. It’s come apart, all come apart. We won’t see these convoys much longer. Nobody going to risk getting killed to haul this shit when the only people left are as dead-ass broke as we are or protected by the National Guard. Trust me, the power, they still got water and gas. The rest of us, we’re plain old fucked right out of luck.” As the last of the convoy passes, I ask Felix, “So, was that water or gas or diesel in those trucks? It’s not like they have big letters painted on the side!”

Felix is agitated by my question. “Gas man, that was gas. Sometimes they mix it up, water and fuel, but that was all gas. The box trailer was probably refugees headed south. Things are a little better, not much, in Mexico.” Felix smiles at that thought, brings another old, stale cigarette to his lips and lights it, laughing he says, “Refugees trying to sneak into South America across the Mexican border. Fucking imagine that!”

I ask, “How do you know? How do you tell what’s in the trucks?” Turning and running back to the cab of the army truck, grabbing his rifle off the front seat where he’d placed it not long after deciding he would not kill me, now he returns to me, again pointing the gun at my head screaming, “I just know, we just know. We know, don’t fucking worry about it. Are you in, or do I shoot you here?”

“I’m heading east, Felix. I’ve got no war with you. Shoot me if that gets you off. I’m going to see if Harmon has any trucks. I’ve got to get Jane to Canada. I can’t see any reason for me to not try it out there for a while, either.”

I turn and walk away. “Felix yells as I walk away, “He’s dead, man, Harmon. That big dumb fucking peckerwood. A gang came up from San Fran, took him out, all his trucks and shit. Go over there and see for yourself. While you were hiding in your apartment, jerking off and dreaming of Janie, the world changed, bro. It changed fast and hard and now it’s different.”

I keep walking the mile or so to the lot where Harmon’s trucks and trailers were parked. Felix didn’t lie. An empty lot with three burned out Quonset huts, gutted and still smelling of smoke. The lot is littered with papers and chairs and office furniture. Looking to the back of the yard, a chain-link fence has collapsed, and its gate creaks and waves in the hot wind. The blacktop, so hot it’s started to bubble and ooze its tar, is covered with stains that I first figured were oil, but I’m afraid may be blood. A burned-out pickup truck is flipped on its side and I’m afraid to look inside because I think I see a body or two, and it’s hot, and the whole truck yard smells of spoiled garbage and rotten flesh. I duck into any structure or car or truck that doesn’t look to be holding bodies, looking for water or food, but I find none.

I turn from this ugly scene, walking back to where I met Felix and his boys. Hoping they are gone. I want to sneak back through the cemetery and back to my street and Jane and tell her the plan has changed.

The old army truck is nowhere to be seen. Four men sit in tattered and ripped aluminum woven lawn chairs under a dead palm tree. The sun is low enough in the afternoon sky now that the dead trees and buildings afford them a little shade. In one chair, I see Felix. I assume the others are his boys. As I approach, he waves me over. “Sammy, boy, was it like I said?”

“Worse man, what the fuck? It’s like this now everywhere?”

“Yeah man,” he stares at the burned grasses under his feet. “While you was all up in Janie’s shit, hanging out in your love shack, we been in a war brother. It’s like this every day. We are at war. What the fuck did you live on the last couple of months?”

Standing before them, still on the gravel path that would take me home, I answer, “When I saw it was going bad quick, I took what money I had and bought a shit-ton of canned food and bottled water. I stayed to myself the past few months. Eating little, a can of beans or corn a day and as little water as I could to stay alive. Jane is in worse shape than me. I’ve got to find her some water. I’m sure her kidneys are fucked up… we may be nearing the end now, huh?”

Felix looks at me, more seriously than I’ve seen him before. “You told me once at the bar you could drive a truck, right?”

“Yeah man, I’m a regular concrete fucking cowboy, why?”

Felix says, “We can use you. Wait till the rest of the boys get back. I’ll hook you up with a gallon. You in, right? You hang with us. We’ll get you all the water you need. We’re sitting here now, counting the trucks coming by. “Hector here,” and he points at a skinny kid in the chair next to his, “he has the tankers and contents all figured out. They don’t mark them like they used to, but he knows the system now. You hang with us. You’ll be fat with water, you and your sweet Janie.”

About half an hour later, the army truck returns.

The conversation while waiting was a mix of how did this happen? Is the government coming to help us? Can we get anywhere east alive…

Felix goes to the back and pulls out a bag. In it are a couple of cans of beans and two one-gallon milk jugs filled with dirty water and a 9mm pistol. “You better go if you’re going, Sammy. Be back here in the morning. You’ll have all the water you want in the afternoon, but you better run your ass home now. They’ll kill a motherfucker for a gallon of water and not even blink.”

I take the bag with the offered gifts, or bribe, or prepayment, I wasn’t sure. I knew Janie needed water, and I needed water, and the beans would be a feast. I thank Felix and do a quick jog back to Janie’s through the cemetery.