--- Osbie Z, cont'd ---

But even that, you know? We could have managed if it was just about the food. We could have managed the cold. We probably even could have even shouldered the Dirge. It wasn’t any one thing which by itself caused that season to hurt. But all of them came together at once and took the knees out from under us. By February, two thousand three had already earned its name, and it hardly got better until the end. We called it the Year of Gnashing Teeth.

No body forgets… nobody can forget that first night when Hell started singing. It’s not something I can describe to you, and I’m happy from my heart to my digits that you never had to know it. Grace provident, grant that you never will. It was like the Argument, certainly, in the sense of the vector of its affect. But it wasn’t – it carried no opposite. It was just... a malice of its own kind, I guess.

It called to us in the night. When we were alone. When the wind was still. It clawed at you when you were weakest, and when you wanted so very much to give up. Our psych ologists and iatrists, which I suppose we still had floating about, tried to explain the Dirge. They called it psychogenic schitzoaffective melancholy disorder, and PSMD for short. The thought was that the world-wide stress had mixed up with our sudden and new internet overdose, and we were being whipped up into a psychosis. I mean, truly that didn’t make much sense. Not everyone had internet, as much as we like to think they did; and the power was out often enough to leave us starved of our megabits and spilt back into real life.

I remember this one television show (talk show, we called it), where they had a whole panel of smarties piped in over telephone or conference or something. And for a minute they’re all talkin’ over each other, eager as feed-time hogs to tell us how one or the other knew better what PSMD was, and was caused by, and such and so forth. Then one man in the corner, who’s clearly the crazy one (because you’ve always got to have one for the ratings) makes this snort so loud everyone else goes dead quiet. This man, by the way, is clearly sauced (which makes it even better).

So he says, and it was just beautiful, he says, “y’all gone and pickled your thinkers? A two hunnerd foot nekkid man stepped on Sydney Harbor. Big boy threw a whale at Port whatever in Papua New Guinea. There’s a flying lightning chicken-snake our there – and I heard honest to god, it’s off stealing cocaine from the cartels. PSM Baloney. It’s wizards, you morons. We got wizards fiddlin’ with our” (gosh darn) “brains!”

I don’t mean to make light. The Dirge wasn’t some joke. There was nothin’ funny about all the folks we lost. I mean, with my job and all, and maybe I shouldn’t say this, but it’s true that I found a couple. You know, people. After. I came pretty close to quitting.

A lot of things happened that winter, like I said. Crime went up, and um, that meant we were strugglin’ with the same problems we thought we fixed by the election. Fires got bad too. Every tree in town (and I mean all of ‘em) got felled for heat or cooking, and not all houses were built right for burning wood like that.

I don’t know how much I should talk about it. There just wasn’t enough for everyone. And maybe my family was okay, but… the things you might expect to happen when folk are upset with their government happened. The things which happen when your government ain’t got no time or patience for contrariness: well they happened too. All the dividing lines of tongue and creed and color were stressed near to the breaking, as if the word neighbor itself was under trial.

Meanwhile we were still in the middle of mass migration, but this time it was being driven by the footsteps of (clawprints of?) the ’Vaders. That was roughly about the time that the Yucatan, which used to be what we call a peninsula, got sunk. That’s partially exaggeration, but the truth was dramatic enough. Next, Leilung carved up round the curve, deeper into Mexico. The whole way he went, he was drivin’ desperate folk out in front of him. That’d been true from the beginning, of course, but now folk were learnin’ to think of gettin’ a head start.

The evacuation of Mexico city was a disaster all its own, even if I didn’t have attention to spare for it. We’d had politicians screaming about the border crisis, practically declared war on our southern neighbor. But by then, and with the spitting image of a wrathful god of the Toltecs riding hard on their backsides, why should they have cared about our opinion at all? A million people easy poured into Texas, lookin’ for a chance to live. Even so, Texas was not kind to them when they did.

I suppose I should stop and include some small happiness to keep things from getting too bleak. So: we got horses in town. There was a whole program to start bringin’ back draft animals into the economy. I got to pet them, and feed ‘em, and got my first chance to ride one too.

The world kept turning. We were all so connected to each other, but still so far away. I got a message from a man in Idaho, through my work e-mail. He wanted us all to revolt, that means betray your country and split off. Two days later a police detective came to our office (deputized on behalf of the FBI), to make sure there wasn’t anyone who was inclined to sympathize. He was not polite.

That was just here. Over the oceans, there was craziness which overwhelmed the attention span. I never even mentioned Israel. Russia was goin’ full apocalypse cult. But the biggest and latest wildness that overcame our airwaves was when communists took hold in middle Africa; they declared themselves a new soviet federation of the Sahelian. Truthfully, I don’t think it was any of our business; what with as much trouble was at our doorstep, and what struggles everyone else was sharing, and as folks have a right to choose for themselves how best to survive in a time of crisis.

But our people twisted themselves into pretzels of hysteria over that news. It was ridiculous. We almost weren’t even payin’ attention when the dragon crossed the final border into Texas.

The American Navy met Leilung for the second time outside of Corpus Christi. We’d just christened two new battle ships in the experimental Zumwalt class, and an aircraft carrier which launched up wood-composite fighters that ran on sunlight. They held with courage and dignity, and saved the people of that town when no one thought they could. But our cost was too high, and the dragon paid too little. To our grief, and after all that expenditure, we gained little more than a detour and a reprieve.

The city of Galveston has a long history of stubbornness. All the things we might admire, like determination, and optimism, and all that. That town had been hit by hurricane after hurricane, for a hundred years or more. And those folks never quit, they kept building back. Galveston, city of the gutsiest sons-of-guns you could ever find. Galveston, poor souls, rest in peace.

We lost all the way inland up to Houston. The army and National Guard gathered up as best they could to give us another Corpus Christi, but it wasn’t enough. The night-time curfews started then, and the first official rules of martial law. Our city council was deposed in favor of a panel appointed by the governor, and the draft was called to recruit four percent of all living and able bodied men to make war.

Dad’s hair went white. Mom suffered from leaning too much on the courage of drink. I took a lash from causin’ trouble after dark.

When news came in that the titan was beaten back out of Vietnam, our people rustled up the gumption to make one last defense, and we staged it outside of the great city of New Orleans. Mom never prayed before the ’Vasion, but she was clutching an icon of the Virgin Mary in her hands as we gathered at the Library and watched the Battle at Baton Rouge-Lafayette. The broadcast – well it wasn’t that the government wanted us to see, it was that they couldn’t stop our media any longer. Even if it meant seeing the fall of our united states, we deserved the truth of what we were facing and demanded it.

For the first time, I saw why we called the enemy invincible. He curled through the sky with the happiness of an eel. He rolled and danced, and cast a shadow so long it probably measured in acreage. The footage crackled and peeled with the yellow of his Opinion, as our cameras had still not adjusted to the corrosive emission of juice. He hung there, and our boys lined up their artillery, and then…

Despite his size, Leilung slipped through space as the thunderbolt. There and then not there, everywhere along a mile long ribbon of destruction. His intention cut like swords, burnt like starshine. Shishkebabed, and fricasseed everything that stood against him. He was so fast.

But our boys were brave too. They kept shootin’, they kept holdin’. And though we were not capable of understanding the limit which we pushed Fulminous Thunder to, at last it was reached. With a roar, the dragon was turnt northward again. He dove into the Mississipi River to escape, and the river colored green and gold with his blood and his flavor.

We held our breath for a moment. Allowed ourselves those brief seconds of relief, of pride, of gratitude. And then we remembered the path by which the great American waterway runs its course. The emergency klaxons blared within the hour.

Memphis, Tennessee and all outlying municipals were to be emptied. By order of the President, and the Governor, we were to be evacuated into the east.