“There it is,” her father announces. The truck hops a curb and descends into the border park lawn, tearing muddy grooves in the weedy grass. They drive past the booths where glorified mall cops once pretended to interrogate nervous college kids. How long will you be staying? Are you carrying any alcohol? Where were you on September 11th?
All that quaint border-crossing pageantry is over now. There is only one question still of interest to the gatekeepers of nations:
Are you infected?
The Tahoe rolls to a stop in front of the gate and Julie’s father gets out. He approaches the black glass scanning window with his hands upraised. “Colonel John T. Grigio, U.S Army,” he shouts. “Requesting immigration.”
The wall is an impressive feat of construction for something built in such desperate times: thirty feet of reinforced concrete running from half a mile off the coast of Washington to somewhere deep in dedere deethe Quebecois wilderness, and the whole length of it garnished with razor-wire. The “gate” is just two tall slabs of galvanized steel, fitted flush to the concrete to make any prying or tampering impossible. Not that the automated guns mounted above it would allow the attempt.
The scanning window emits a few beeps. The guns twitch on their arm mounts. Then silence.
Julie’s father glances around expectantly. “Colonel John T. Grigio, U.S Army,” he repeats, “requesting immigration.”
Silence.
“Hello!” He lowers his hands to his sides. “I have a wife and kid with me. We came from New York by way of the north and middle territories and have much intel to share. Colonel John T. Grigio, requesting immigration!”
A red light blinks on behind the black glass, then fades. The twin surveillance cameras wobble briefly but remain pointed at random points in the grass, as if fascinated by some caterpillars.
“How old was that Almanac?” Julie whispers to her mother, gripping the seat to pull herself forward.
“Two months,” her mother says, and the tightness in her voice pushes Julie’s heart underwater.
“We have skills!” her father yells, his voice filling with an emotion that startles her. “My wife is a veterinarian. My daughter is combat trained. I was an O-6 colonel and commanded federal forces in twelve secession conflicts!”
He stands in front of the gate, waiting with apparent patience, but Julie can see his shoulders rising and falling dangerously. She realizes she is seeing a rare sight: a glimpse into her father’s secret bunker. His hopes were as high as his wife’s.
“Requesting immigration!” he roars savagely and hammers the butt of his pistol into the scanning window. It bounces pitifully off the bulletproof glass, but this action finally elicits a reaction. The red light blinks on again. The surveillance cameras wobble. A garbled electronic voice fills the air—ARNING—SAULT RESPONSE—ETHAL FORCE—and the guns begin spraying bullets.
Julie screams as geysers of dust erupt inches from her father’s feet. He leaps backward and runs, not toward the truck but into the grass of the park. But the guns don’t follow him. They spin on their arms, strafing the road, bending downward and bouncing bullets off the steel door itself, then they abruptly go limp, barrels bouncing against the concrete.
Julie’s mother hops out of the car and runs to her husband’s side. They both stare at the wall in shock.
FILE, it declares in its buzzing authoritarian baritone. RESPONSE FILE CORRU—RETINA SCAN—AILED. REQUESTING RESPONSE FROM FEDERAL AUTHORIT—ASSWORD. ASSWORD—EQUIRED. WORK VISA. DUTY-FREE. APPLE MAGGOT.
The guns rise.
Julie’s parents jump into the Tahoe and her father slams it in reverse, lurching backward just as the guns spray another wild arc across the road. When they’re out of range he pulls a sharp slide in the muddy grass, flipping the Tahoe around, and they all pause to catch their breath as Canada’s border goes about losing its mind. The guns have stopped spinning and are both pointed down at the same spot, diligently pounding bullets into the dirt.
“What the f**k?” Julie’s mother says between gasps.
Julie digs through the duffel bag on the seat next to her and pulls out her father’s sniper scope. She runs it along the top of the wall, past coil after coil of razor wire, scraps of clothing and the occasional bits of dried flesh. Then she sees an explanation, and herligion, an heart finishes drowning.
“Dad,” she mumbles, handing him the scope. She points. He looks. He sees it. A uniformed arm dangling over the edge of the wall. Two helmets caught in the razor wire, one containing a head. And three city-sized plumes of smoke rising from somewhere beyond the wall.
Her father hands the scope back to her and drives calmly toward the freeway, steering clear of the gun turrets that bristle from the Peace Arch. His face is flat, all traces of that unnerving lapse into passion now gone. For better or worse, he is himself again.
After five minutes of silence, her mother speaks, her voice as flat as her husband’s face. “Where are we going.”
“South.”
Five more minutes.
“To where?”
“Rosso’s heard chatter about a fortified enclave in South Cascadia. When we get in radio range we’ll check in with him.”
“What happened?” Julie asks in a small voice. Her only answer is the roar of the tires on the cracked, leaf-strewn pavement of I-5 South. There are dozens of answers for her to choose from, everything from anarchic uprising to foreign invasion to the newer, more exotic forms of annihilation that have recently graced the world, but the relevant portion of every answer is the same: Canada is gone. The land is still there, and maybe some of its people, but Canada the safe haven, Canada the last vestige of North American civilization, Canada the new place to call home—that Canada is as lost as Atlantis, sunk beneath the same tide of blood and hunger that drowned the home she fled.