by Mackey, Jay
“Well, the only thing he talks about is getting back at President Pounds. He blames Pounds for everything.”
I wish I knew the word for it; it’s kind of like “Great minds think alike,” only not really. It’s maybe like, “What a coincidence.” But whatever it is, right at that moment Jerry Pospisil comes through the door.
“Man, you’re hard to catch up with,” he says to me. “I was at your farm, saw your dad. Was at Jake’s place. I finally got you.”
“So what’s up?” I say, not sure I want to hear the answer.
“We need you. Pounds is going to be giving a big speech. Want to guess what it’s about?”
“War?”
He points at me and nods.
“I just had a meeting with Colonel Williams, and he says it’s all bullshit.”
“So? What else is he going to say?”
“I know. He even told me he wouldn’t say if a war really was in the works.”
“Of course. And we’ve got word now, we’re absolutely sure. And we think we’ve got a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something about it. But we need you.”
This isn’t making me feel warm and fuzzy all over. In fact, the opposite. I feel a chill go down my spine.
“Do it.” It’s Rob. He’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen and he’s heard what Jerry just said. “Do it,” he says again. “Do it for me. For Wilson. For all of us.”
So I’m pretty sure he thinks he knows what Jerry is asking of me. I am too. I nod at Rob, turn and kiss Rachel, who’s not expecting that but she doesn’t shove me away or anything, and I leave with Jerry.
41
2 days until the Pulse Anniversary
Jerry and a friend of his, Steph, who looks a lot like Jerry’s other buddy, Len, tall and broad with light hair and eyes, go over the plan when we get to Jerry’s house. Basically, I’m to go to a condo on top of a tall building and take a shot at President Pounds, who’s going to be giving a speech in a stadium below. The one good thing is that this is all around downtown Cincinnati, where I’m from. I’ve been in that stadium. I’ve never been in the tall building, but I know where it is—just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in Kentucky.
My lack of enthusiasm is obvious when Jerry and Steph outline the plan, and they continually emphasize how important I am to the plan. That if Len hadn’t been taken by the Red Hats, he could do the job, but now I am “the man.” I say something about waiting until Len shows up, or finding another sniper, but they say that it’s now or never. The war is going to be announced to a big crowd on the Pulse Anniversary. There’s no other sniper, and no time to wait.
“They’re not just going to say they’re declaring war to some big crowd,” I say.
“Of course not,” says Jerry. “They’ll make some outrageous demands, or claim that the USA has invaded, or something equally fake. Then they’ll have an excuse for, quote, defending our borders, unquote. You know the drill.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Do we have to shoot him?”
“Yes,” says Steph. “He’s the dictator, the one who’s driving all these decisions. There will never be elections, or justice, or peace while he’s in power.” I’m not sure I like Steph much. He seems meaner, less friendly than Jerry or Len. I’m just uncomfortable with him.
They give me Len’s rifle in the morning and tell me to take it out to practice, and to get the sights set for a shot of 750 meters with no wind. So I do, anxious to get out of the house with some time to think.
By midafternoon I’m still feeling a little wonky, not sure if I’m coming or going, so I tell Jerry and Steph that I’m going for a run. They’ve been going over details of the plan for what seems like hours now, and I’ve got my head full. They’ve been constantly trying to build my confidence, but I think they’re just trying to make sure I’m not going to back out on them. They’re not real excited for me to take off, but I insist, and they relent.
“Just remember,” says Jerry as I head out the door. “We leave for Cincinnati in the morning, so make sure you’re packed and ready to go tonight.”
“Sure,” I say, not really thinking about it. What did I have to do to be ready to go? Get dressed?
I hadn’t planned it, but I end up taking a bike that’s in Jerry’s driveway and riding it into Lafayette, to Rachel’s. It’s thirteen or fourteen miles, so it takes me less than an hour as I ride at a brisk pace.
Mrs. DuBonnette is the only one home when I get there, so I chat with her a bit while we wait for Rachel to return from a shift at the hospital. Rob’s at the bike shop, she says, trying to salvage what he can. He’s no bike mechanic, and doesn’t plan to open the shop, but thinks maybe he can sell some of the bikes and bike parts left by Wilson.
Rachel shows up in a half hour or so. I’m relieved, because I’m having a hard time playing like I’m just casually stopping by, when in fact I’m a jumble of nerves. I’m sure Mrs. DuBonnette has no idea what’s going on, or even that Rob and Rachel have been big players in RIP.
Rachel is surprised to see me. She doesn’t run up and give me a hug or anything, but I can tell she’s happy that I’m here. We go out to the porch swing to talk, out of her mother’s hearing.
She doesn’t try to talk me out of going, but my reluctance is obvious. She just talks me through it. I tell her the plan, in as much detail as I can remember. What bridge I cross. When I fire. Which stairway I come down after. All that.
She asks if I still think it’s the right thing to do.
“What choice do we have?” I say. “None. I’ve gone over it and over it, and I don’t see any other way.”
“Do you think Jerry and his friend are trustworthy? Are they holding anything back?”
“I don’t have any reason not to believe them. Jerry’s been with us on all of our operations. So, yeah. I’ve got to trust him. I don’t know Steph, but Jerry’s okay.”
“If Rob didn’t want you to do this, would you go ahead?”
“But he does want me to, doesn’t he? That’s like saying, if Wilson were alive, what would I do, or if the pulse never happened, what would we be doing now? It doesn’t matter. This is where we are. This is what I have to do.”
She hugs me. That’s the first time in a long time. I almost feel happy.
Until I’m out the door, starting my ride back to Jerry’s. She calls out, “Don’t do it, Brady.”
42
1 day until the Pulse Anniversary
It’s quiet on the drive to Cincinnati in Jerry’s pickup. No surprise, he’s got enough gas to get us there. Somewhere along the way I ask him where he gets the gas all the time. He says he’s got a friend who’s always digging up new supplies. I don’t think he means that literally, like digging up the underground tanks from old gas stations, but he won’t say more, so that’s what sticks in my mind.
I can’t stop thinking about how easy it is to drive this route. I see the images in my head of me and my family’s trek from Cincinnati to Lafayette after the pulse hit. It took us many days, and we were lucky to escape with our lives, many times. Poor Dad had that broken leg, and I hauled him most of the way on my bike trailer. It seems like a lifetime ago.
I keep thinking I should be excited about going back to Cincinnati, but my memories are kind of mixed. I have my good friends, like Gordo, my best friend. And my old girlfriend, Britt. Boy, would I love to see her. I think. I’m into Rachel now, though. Britt is hot, for sure, but I’m over her. Anyway, they’re all probably long gone. Life is so different now after the pulse.
And then there’s what happened in those last days. Being attacked, at home, on the road, on the river. The downtown was a mess, riots and fires and who knows what else. No, I’m not sure I’m anxious to go back.
Of course, there’s also the reason I’m going back. I’m definitely not looking forward to that. I’m trying not to think about it. Better to remember the family trek, with all its hardships, than to think about that.
We make good time. Most
of the cars and trucks that littered the highways after the pulse killed their electrical systems have been pushed off the road into the ditches. Just a few times are there big pileups that haven’t been cleaned up yet, and we have to go around on the shoulder of the road or in the median once. It used to be three hours or so back in the days when we’d drive over to Purdue to see Chrissie, so doing it now in just under five hours seems pretty good, especially considering we have some pretty hard rain showers on the way over.
We come into Cincinnati from the west, on I-74, and the exit to I-75 to turn south is closed, so we have to drive through city streets to get to the downtown. Jerry says he wants to go drive around the area where the action will take place tomorrow to get the layout in his mind.
I’m trying to think—how long has it been since I was in that stadium? I think it was when Dad last took me to a Bengals game, maybe five or six years ago. I remember that I quit going to games with Dad because the Bengals were always pitiful and I didn’t like football anyway. But my brother, the middle school football star, loved going to the games.
It’s eerie driving through town. We have to go through some of what used to be rough parts of town, and now there are many burned out shells of buildings. Clearly, either the pulse or the riots that came after claimed this part of town. I hadn’t seen anything like this when we were in Indianapolis, but we were never in the rough parts of town there.
As we get closer to the downtown area things get a little better. It looks like the big downtown buildings are mostly intact, but many of the windows at street level have been busted out and boarded up. That’s understandable; I don’t know where you’d get big plate glass panels these days.
There are people downtown: some are standing around, some look like they’re going somewhere, and some are working at fixing things up. There are quite a few cops on the streets; couple of them are on bicycles and one is on a horse. I say cops, because we’re in the city. But they’re wearing red hats.
The big park on the riverfront has changed a lot. The areas that used to be grass are now planted with things to eat. There are people working the crops down here. Seems strange, in the middle of the city.
The Bengals stadium looks the same as I remember it from outside. The Reds stadium too. We look across the Ohio River at the tall buildings in Kentucky. Jerry points at one and says, “That’s where the condo is. Right on top. Got a good view inside the stadium.”
I nod. I can’t say anything because there’s a huge knot in my throat.
We drive all around the riverfront area, though not over to Kentucky. The bridges are all blocked off. That’s the Great States of America now on the Kentucky side of the river, and you have to go through border control to get to the other side. Jerry says we’ll walk over tomorrow because it’s easier than trying to drive through. We’ll have to have identification—I have my driver’s license—but at least we don’t need passports.
After driving and walking around for over an hour, we head east out of downtown. Steph says we’ll be staying with a friend of his who’s got a house in Mt. Lookout. He’s not sure where that’s at, and is trying to find it on a big paper map he’s got. I help them with directions. I don’t know where everything is in Cincinnati, since my life was mostly in Anderson, one of the big suburbs, but I did have my driver’s license before the pulse, and I know some areas. Like Mt. Lookout, which is a neighborhood not too far from Anderson. Cincinnati has the reputation for being one of the hardest cities anywhere to get around. It’s old and very hilly, so none of the streets are straight, and they tend to change names for no apparent reason.
We drive east along the river and then turn left on Delta Avenue, which takes us to Mt. Lookout square, like a town center in this little neighborhood. It looks pretty good. No boarded up windows or burned out buildings here.
W manage to find the house on a little side street, not far from the square. It’s a little two story Tudor-style house—I know that because that’s what Steph says when we pull up in the driveway.
No one is home, but Steph has a key. It’s dark, of course, but it seems extra dark because the windows are small. There are candles sitting around, which we light. We also find water in big jugs and some apples on the counter in the kitchen. There’s a note that says the gas grill in the backyard works if we want to cook anything.
We sit down in the living area, open the curtains to let in a little light, and go over the plan. Again. And again. I’m about planned out, so I tell them I need to rest a bit, grab an apple and one of the protein bars that Jerry brought, and head up the stairs, where I assume the bedrooms are located. I just want to be alone for a while.
I’m able to catch a bit of a nap, and wake to find that it’s almost sundown. I put on my running shorts and go downstairs, where I find Steph lying on the couch. I tell him I’m going for a run. He doesn’t say anything, but looks at me like he wishes I wouldn’t.
I have a pretty good idea of how to get to where I’m going, but I don’t know exactly how far it is. I also don’t factor in the gigantic hill going up Beechmont Avenue, or the fact that I got in late last night when I went to see Rachel. It was worth it, I tell myself as I walk the last hundred yards up the hill on Beechmont, puffing away.
It takes a while before I get my breathing back to normal once I get to the top. I run through the Mt. Washington business district, which looks nearly abandoned, on down to a right on Burney Lane, which inexplicably changes its spelling to Birney Lane somewhere before it bends to the right. Then it’s just a short way to my old house, where I lived before the pulse.
It’s further than I thought from Mt. Lookout. But I forget all about that and how I feel when I see the house.
I always assumed we’d come back here to live one day, but looking at the house now in the deepening gloom as the sun falls below the horizon, I’m doubtful. The neighborhood is empty. The yards, once so nicely mowed and trimmed, are a mess of overgrown grass and weeds, plus there are fallen tree limbs and leaves blocking driveways and the street. It’s sad. More than sad—tragic.
My house looks intact. The doors are still locked. I go around to the back, up on the deck, where I can see inside the big windows that line the whole back of the house. The piece of plywood that we used to cover the broken glass in the door to the kitchen, shattered when we were attacked by some hungry kids, has been kicked in, leaving the hole it had been covering. The kitchen is full of debris, trash, leaves, torn cushions from the furniture. Animals, probably, I think. There was nothing in there that would have interested any people, unless they wanted used clothes or useless electronics. We took pretty much anything that was edible when we left, and food is really the only thing that mattered back then.
I’m tempted to go in, to look around, but I realize there’s nothing in there that I want. After staring at the hole awhile, I crawl through, go through the kitchen to the garage, where, even in the dark I’m able to find a hammer and a few nails, still right where Dad always kept them on the workbench he built.
I get the plywood back in place, hammer a few nails to secure it, and leave through the same door. It would be too disheartening to look around the house now, especially if it’s in the same condition as the kitchen.
I run up our hill and down the next street over to see Gordo’s house. His neighborhood looks as abandoned as mine. No water, I think. These streets are near the top of a big hill, and the water is probably really deep here, too deep to dig a well.
Gordo’s house looks okay. I think back and realize no one’s been living here for nearly a year. A year ago tomorrow, actually. The anniversary of the pulse. The EMP that destroyed our lives.
I wonder where Gordo is now. Did he ever make it out to his grandparents’ place up north? That’s where he was headed last time I saw him. Will I ever see him again?
A thought occurs to me. After what I’m about to do tomorrow, I probably won’t see anyone again.
I consider running over to Britt’s house.
It’s less than two miles from here, so I could go if I weren’t suddenly so exhausted. But I don’t know. There’s probably zero chance she’d be there, and even if she was, do I really want to see her? What would I say? “Want to fuck?” That’s about all we ever did, anyway. Seems so unimportant right now.
I’m really tired. I go back over to my house, back to the deck. There’s still some furniture out there, and I’ll be damned. Dad’s old hammock is still here, hanging between two of the big support beams holding up the overhang on part of the deck. I climb in, and it still supports me. Wow. I’d forgotten how comfortable this is.
I’ll just catch a little rest here, before I go back. Jerry and Steph will be having a cow if I don’t show up soon. I don’t know, maybe I won’t go back. Let them find some other shooter. I don’t know why it has to be me. I’m nothing special.
43
Pulse Anniversary 9 a.m.
This condo is unreal. It’s on the top floor of a big building attached to the Marriott in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Paul Brown Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals used to play football. That’s where the big speech is supposed to happen, although that’s still a few hours away.
I have a perfect view of the inside of the stadium. This condo is high enough that I can see where they’ve built a stage, down around the thirty-yard line, and the speakers will be facing me. There are people down there now, placing chairs on the stage There are also chairs on the field, facing the stage. I don’t know how many people they expect for this thing, but there’s already quite a few people milling around outside. I guess this whole Pulse Anniversary thing is a big deal. I mean, I know the pulse was a big deal, but I’m not so sure about celebrating its anniversary.