American War

by Omar El Akkad

  THE FREE SOUTHERNERS ARRIVED at dawn: a convoy of soldiers dispatched from Atlanta. They rumbled through the gates and into the camp. Behind them came trucks and aid buses bearing the symbol of the Red Crescent, and behind those came a couple of journalists.

  The soldiers disembarked from their trucks. They were boys and young men, many of them having never seen a day of fighting. They walked among the corpses and the pyres, dumbfounded, their weapons drawn at phantoms. Quietly, the foreign observers and the journalists began to count and document the dead.

  The sun rose over Patience. The survivors, some mutilated, others dumb with shock, crawled from their hiding places and the places where they’d been discarded. The staff who’d hidden in the administrative building emerged holding the flag of the Red Crescent above them, screaming their affiliation.

  Sarat walked around the building and when the Reds saw her they raised their weapons and told her not to move. One of the soldiers ordered her to get down on her knees. Sarat stood, soaked in blood.

  When one of the camp’s staff saw her she told the soldiers to lower their weapons.

  “She’s one of the refugees, she’s one of the refugees,” the woman said, rushing toward the girl.

  “Sarat, honey, put that knife down,” the woman said. “It’s done. It’s over.”

  Sarat turned her gaze from the boys and their guns to the woman. She pushed the woman aside and walked into the administrative building. She descended the stairs and walked to the office where her sister hid. She knocked on the door three times, then twice, then once—a secret knock they’d shared for years. Slowly there came a shuffling sound from the other side of the door.

  “It’s me,” Sarat said. “They’re gone.”

  Dana opened the door slowly. She saw her sister.

  “Oh God,” she said. “What did they do to you?”

  “Let’s go,” Sarat replied.

  She led her sister out of the building. The Southern soldiers were in the courtyard, putting out the fires and searching the tents.

  The soldiers covered the bodies and what was left of them with white cloth and then placed them on stretchers and carried those stretchers to the beds of the waiting trucks. Men with masks over their mouths and noses kept a tally on clipboards. The journalists took pictures of the dead and asked questions of the survivors, who looked straight through them with flint-lacquered eyes. The handful of unharmed survivors were ushered quickly onto waiting buses.

  When she saw the carnage, Dana screamed. Sarat took her in her arms and buried her head against her chest.

  “They killed them, didn’t they?” Dana cried. “Mama and Simon. They killed them.”

  Sarat guided her sister in the direction of one of the buses, where a handful of survivors sat in silence.

  “Go with them,” Sarat said. “If Mama and Simon are alive, I’ll find them. If they’re dead, I’ll find them.”

  One of the surviving camp workers came to where the twins stood. “You can’t stay, Sarat,” she said.

  “I’m gonna bury my people,” Sarat replied.

  “The soldiers are taking care of them. They’ll be treated with respect. But you have to leave here, Sarat. It’s not safe—they might come back.”

  “I’m staying. If you don’t like it, have them shoot me.”

  Sarat turned to her sister. “We’ll be together again soon, I promise.”

  Dana retrieved a handkerchief from her pocket and tied it around the wound on Sarat’s left palm. She hugged her sister.

  “Beautiful girl,” she said.

  Dana boarded the bus. Sarat walked to Mississippi, toward the smoldering remains of a fire. She walked past the tents, many of them slashed open, their doors broken down. She choked on the smell of burning.

  She reached her own tent. The door had been kicked open and the Chestnuts’ belongings lay strewn on the beds and on the floor. But there was nobody inside.

  Sarat crossed the dirt footpath to another tent down the way, the place where she believed her mother might have gone the night before to see her friends. Here too the door had been broken open.

  Sarat paused at the threshold. She tried to steel herself for what she might find inside, tried to preemptively imagine her mother’s body, the life gone from it. But she was incapable of making herself imagine it. Instead, her mind recoiled and offered only a feeble, child’s defense: My mother cannot be dead because she is my mother. Everyone else can die but not my mother.

  Sarat stepped inside the tent. There was blood on the floor and blood on the walls, but there were no bodies.

  Outside, by the tent’s broken door, she saw lines in the dirt. Wide swaths, like the beginnings of infant canals. Without following the trails, she knew where they would lead. In the distance, not far away, smoldered the blackened remains of a large and dying fire.

  THE SOLDIERS WORKED QUIETLY. She worked alongside them, numb to the world around her. She helped cover the dead in white cloth and carry them to the waiting trucks. The bodies were placed atop the beds and when the beds were full the trucks were dispatched south and new ones came to take their place. By nightfall the murdered had been cleared and the fires quenched and the survivors dispatched to some far-off hospital.

  Most of the soldiers were ordered back to Atlanta but some were left to stand guard over Patience. The ones who were ordered to remain cursed their luck for having to spend the night in the camp. The dead were gone but the smell of them lingered. The echoes of them lingered.

  Sarat walked north. In Alabama there were also soldiers stationed at the now gutted fence but one was asleep in his chair and the other was watching a movie on his tablet and neither noticed her presence. The soldiers seemed certain the men who’d done the killing would not return. In the distance behind them the floodlights of the Blues, so bright one night ago, were dark.

  Sarat entered the tent in which she and Marcus had kept their pets. She saw that the mouse had fled, but Cherylene the turtle remained in her pen.

  She picked the animal up, but it did not retreat. She walked with it back to the center of the camp and placed it on the seat of the last remaining bus. There were only a few people left in the camp now: men and women with gloves and face masks who continued to document the killings. They took pictures of bullet holes in the sides of the buildings, of dried stains in the dirt.

  Sarat returned to Albert Gaines’s office. She closed the door behind her. In the camp the smell was of fire smoke but in this room it was of other things: fine wood and old ink on paper and patent shoes and well-ironed suits.

  Sarat closed the door behind her. She tore the maps from the walls. She flipped the table. She pushed the bookshelves over and pulled the fine prewar suits from their hangers and smashed the plates on the floor. She ripped apart the old antique books, shredded their pages and broke their spines. Then she sat on the floor and wept.

  In a while the door opened and Albert Gaines entered the room. He stepped over the broken bookshelves and around the upturned table and sat on the floor opposite Sarat. He appeared as though from another world, his prewar suit immaculate, untouched by dirt or blood.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “Did your family survive?”

  “My mother’s dead, but I can’t find her body,” Sarat said. “My brother’s dead, but I can’t find his body.”

  “They call themselves the Twenty-first Indiana,” Gaines said. “They’re a militia, not enlisted, but there’s no doubt the Blue commanders knew what they…”

  “Stop talking about them,” Sarat said. “I don’t wanna hear about them anymore. I don’t wanna read about them or memorize their capitals or learn how they did us wrong.”

  “Then what do you want to do?” Gaines asked.

  “I want to kill them.”

  Sarat buried her head in her hands. She never saw the faint smile that, in that moment, crossed her teacher’s lips.

  Excerpted from:

  WAR OFFICE—FINAL COMPENSATION RULING ARCH
IVE

  Case Number: 091682

  Applicant Name: Chestnut, Martina (Deceased/NOK Application)

  CASE SUMMARY:

  A) Claim Agreement

  The Final Compensation Ruling issued by the Condolence Payment Department of the Joint Compensation Office (hereinafter referred to as “Payer”) is issued under the Domestic Claims Act in the case of MARTINA CHESTNUT and 3 dependents (1 FA Male; 2 Pre-FA Female) (hereinafter referred to as “Payee”). The Ruling is accepted by both parties and constitutes final and irrevocable settlement in relation to the incident outlined in Section B. The Ruling and claim payment determination are made at the sole discretion of the Payer and are nonnegotiable.

  B) Incident Details

  Payee was impacted by an incident at a Red Crescent–administered Mississippi refugee facility (“Camp Patience”). As determined by the Investigation Office, the incident is classified as Class 2—Serious; Contained. Incident Attribution is Other/Undefined.

  C) Nature of injuries

  Chestnut, Martina (FA Female): Deceased

  Chestnut, Simon (FA Male): Displacement; Class 1 Injury (Head)

  Chestnut, Dana (Pre-FA Female): Displacement

  Chestnut, Sara (Pre-FA Female): Displacement; Class 4 Injury (Left Hand)

  D) Payment Schedule

  Payee is hereby granted residence allotment (Charity House 027, Lincolnton, Georgia) for Displacement (3 or more). Payee is also granted $5000 for Death. Payee is also granted $2500 for Class 1 Injury. Payee is also granted $100 for Class 4 injury.

  E) Release and Withdrawal

  This Ruling implies no admission of fault by any arm or agency of the Federal Government (See Appendix A “Gesture of Regret Policy: Terms and Conditions”). The Payee hereby relinquishes any right of recourse in relation to this matter.

  III

  October, 2086

  Lincolnton, Georgia

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a mark where the devil left him. They came from miles to touch it, to kiss and caress the fissure in the forehead, to see the broken Miracle Boy. Sometimes they sat in silence, the only sounds coming from the kitchen, where the caretaker Karina Chowdhury hummed ancient gospels as she worked. Other times the men and women who came to see the boy prayed, and other times they too sang. And sometimes in the grip of paroxysm they cried and called him by their own children’s names. The boy let himself be their vessel. He sat unspeaking, the shivering hands upon him, serene as a cloud.

  The house was built by the river, near where sunken Joy Road once met Chamberlain Ferry. There were others like it, northwest as far as Elijah Clark and southeast almost to Augusta. They were simple ranch houses of cheap wood and vinyl siding—prefabricated homes: the material brought in on barges that floated down the Savannah. Only thirty had been built since the start of the war, and in the years that followed, one had burned to the ground at the touch of lightning and another was erased when a war Bird fell from the sky, defunct but still deadly. The rest of the Charity Houses were occupied by refugees from the furthest reaches of the Southern State—winners of a dark lottery; survivors.

  In the spring, when the storms were weak, the Savannah ran brown with mud. Although Augusta marked the last deepwater port along the river, often the smaller carriers went as far inland as Hartwell. They moved upriver in the shadow of the quarantine wall that sealed off South Carolina. The ships moved slowly, their cargo of grain and solar panels and smuggled weapons guarded by Mag soldiers or rebels or freelance arms.

  KARINA ARRIVED in the morning, her Tik-Tok bouncing along the dirt road that led from Lincolnton to the edge of the spit where the Chestnuts lived. She arrived at the house to find its occupants still asleep.

  She turned off the television and cleaned up the plates from the previous night’s dinner, then she went to the kitchen. Everything was in its place, just as she’d left it the night before. A dusting of sorghum flour lay on the island counter. Every night she sprinkled a little on the counter and memorized the shape in which it rested. And every morning she checked the landscape of the flour against her recollection, and in this way was able to deduce the passing of ghosts. She looked at the flour; none had come.

  A back door and three sagging steps led from the kitchen to the sloping riverside yard. It was not a yard, in truth, but an expanse of land—seemingly unlimited in all but the river’s direction. It stretched outward from the home’s small garden through the shrubbery and into the spits and slivers of nearby woodland through which the Savannah constantly cut new avenues of egress.

  There were no neighbors for miles, no spillover from the fierce fighting up in Tennessee, and no visiting townsfolk from Lincolnton or anywhere else. But for the people who came to touch Simon’s wound and pray, there were almost no visitors of any kind. The only eyes that watched this place belonged to the family that lived there, the guards manning the towers along the Carolina wall on the other side of the river, and the rebels who came by boat every week with food and supplies.

  Once, during a rare moment of candor, Miss Dana told Karina that all their lives the Chestnuts had lived at the feet of rivers and walls. Always bounded, always trapped—trapped by movement, trapped by stillness.

  In the yard, the morning light burrowed deep into the gray trunks of the maples. The trees were thin and sickly and shivered in the passing breeze. Every once in a while the branches would shed a blood-colored leaf, and Karina would chase after it for safekeeping. Secretly she set her collection to dry between the pages of an old Bible she hid under Simon’s bed. When the leaves were crisp and brittle she crushed them into the boy’s chamomile tea. She believed the red leaves healed, and she believed Simon was healing.

  This was her job—a caretaker of the Chestnuts’ home and a caretaker for Simon Chestnut, the Miracle Boy. She was, nominally, an employee of the Free Southern State, although she could never rely on Atlanta to pay her wages on time or pay what she’d been promised. But still she did the work. She was a nurse by training and in the early and middle years of war she nursed Southern survivors.

  ON THIS MORNING the river was blue and rippled white with the reflected undersides of clouds. The air was moist and smelled of earth and exhaust and the other smell, the one that came from beyond the wall. A dredging barge lumbered slowly upriver, a black tail in its wake. In the months following the storm seasons the barges moved up and down the river, altering the geography of the riverbed.

  Karina slipped off her sandals and walked to the edge of the river. Here the soil was caramel and cool against the soles. She watched the sweep of the current, the vast lumbering arm. On the other side of the river a young man in a decrepit Sea-Tok was anchored near the base of the Carolina wall. He tagged the wall with red spray paint: “KAB.”

  In the Augusta docks the quarantine wall was a vibrant mural, but this far inland the dull gray concrete was largely untouched. Overhead, the guards at the towers looked at the young vandal, indifferent. Had he decided to run a hook up the thirty-foot barrier and climb over into the Slow country, they probably would have let him. It was only the people trying to leave South Carolina they cared about, and whenever the rifle fire rang out in the night it was always only on one side and only for one purpose. In Lincolnton they said the ragged riverside forests here were overrun with the ghosts of near-escaped Carolinians, but in truth this was some of the safest country in all of the Red.

  Karina stepped back from the riverbank. She checked on the vegetable garden. A week after she had told Miss Sarat she planned to try growing vegetables, a rebel skiff arrived with bags of thick black soil. It was rich eastern soil, and in it Karina tried growing beets and radishes and rhubarb and lettuce and southern peas. But even when she watered them dutifully and the heat and deluge did not overwhelm them, their roots refused to take hold in the foreign-born soil.

  But on this morning she saw a shootlet: a single fetal sprig had broken forth from the earth. The green of it was pale, ghostly, and she knew it would not survive.
But perhaps somewhere beneath, where the roots grew, it would leave behind some kind of genetic inheritance, a map marking, and perhaps the next thing she planted in that place would grow a little more.

  SHE TURNED FROM the garden. She saw Cherylene shuffling slowly across the yard. For a while, when she’d first started working for the Chestnuts, Karina wondered why the weekly supplies so often included boxes of snails and crickets. Then one day she saw the turtle waddling in the garden.

  Karina returned to the river. Near the banks there sat a portable desalination box. It was the size and weight of a refrigerator; the rebels had to use an old fossil tugboat to bring it upriver. It sat on a block of two-by-fours, its snout dipped into the brackish river.

  Karina unfolded the butterfly panels and set them in the direction of the morning sun. Slowly they inhaled the light. The machine awoke, and soon the vacuum started to whirr. The machine began to cleanse the river water, soiled with salt far outland, where the ocean intruded on the sunken country.

  On solar power the box produced two gallons of drinking water an hour, the contents dripping slowly into blue jugs. On old fossil fuel it ran twice as fast. Karina knew Miss Sarat ordered that the house run only on old prohibition fuel, but the panels did the job well enough, and whenever the young woman disappeared for weeks into the northern forest along the Tennessee line, Karina made do with the givings of the sun. Miss Dana was only equally adamant on the topic whenever her sister was home, but seemed not to care one way or another when Miss Sarat was gone. So whenever Miss Sarat returned, the house rumbled again to the sound and smell of the decrepit diesel generator. There was no use arguing about it. Miss Sarat had no interest in compromise.