by Jones, K. J.
Alpha, apparently named Tierra, sucked from between her teeth, holding Phebe’s eye contact.
“Next time, bitch.”
“Easy to find,” Phebe called after her.
Karen let out her breath once the Jersey crew fully vacated.
“What was that?” the young Southerner asked.
“That,” Phebe said, “was the North. I grew up in it.”
“That is very different from South Carolina.”
“Hmm.”
Nia yelled from her stall as she peed, “Why can’t people just get along? There are enough problems.”
Miss Glenda laughed from the next stall. “Outta the mouths of babes, child. God bless you.”
Phebe worked to repress the surge of adrenaline. She found the flood had felt good. The fight craving within her. She had seen the move to do on the hand and snap the wrist in a calm, utterly emotionless way as if her brain had turned into Wiki-Combat. She breathed in and out, despite the smells, to calm her heartbeat.
* * *
A march to the mess hall. Karen and the Jacksons were all eyes to search the crowd for their parents. But it was the same people as their hangar bay. Including the Jersey crew, Hair Eater, and Igloo Man.
Taking up their trays, the group shuffled along the buffet service line to select from dishes of overcooked food under heating lamps. Soldiers wearing hairnets scooped foodish-looking stuff onto plastic plates and served them across the metal pass. There was not much selection.
“Is that chicken?” Jayce asked.
“If chicken should be gray,” said Nia.
“I’m a little scared of eating this food, y’all.”
A white woman of milky white skin and toe-head blond hair carried an ebony child with her. She catered to the two-year-old and spoke with a gentle voice as if she was the mother. The Jersey crew eyed her and the child hard, then obnoxiously laughed, making mean cracks that were too riddled with history. This felt like high school with higher stakes.
Maybe high school in a men’s prison. White supremacists and black supremacists in the same place. Peter would have laughed and mentioned a betting pool. Except he worried Phebe was going to be one of the first to throw down from the report he received from Karen and Nia about the bathroom confrontation. If he could guarantee his people weren’t in this, there could be betting. And much humor to be had.
Then there were the black patch soldiers. They were back, guarding them, fingers on the triggers of M4s with safeties flipped off. What was it about the cafeteria that required their presence? He wondered if they would shoot everyone. It wasn’t as if anyone had any value since they were rejected by the draft.
Bad times.
Hostiles everywhere.
“I don’t want any of that chicken,” said Phebe. “Can you double the mashed potatoes?”
“See your card?” asked the guy behind the line, wearing a hairnet despite having short hair.
Phebe lifted the card for him to see its pinkness.
He ducked away and plopped an Ensure on her tray.
Peter burst out laughing. “Is it warm chocolate? Your favorite?”
“Fabulous.” She touched it to check whether it was cold or not. The temperature made a world of difference in taste. Lukewarm. “Em, you get one, too.”
“Better than that chicken.” Emily showed her pink card and received one.
“I’ll take your chicken,” said Tyler.
“Growing boy,” Emily told the guy. “Give him mine, please.”
The guy behind the line plopped Emily’s thigh onto Tyler’s plate.
“Your buddies from the bathroom are all preggers too,” Peter said to Phebe. “Pink cards and Ensure.”
They finished the line and stood as a group, scanning for a table.
“Make sure to use the cane more,” Phebe hissed.
“Hard to carry a tray.” Its handle hung from Peter’s arm.
“Do it anyway.”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re right.”
“Tyler, Jay, help him with his tray.”
“Why?” Tyler asked.
“That is an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Peter laid on the limp as he followed his wife towards a table with enough seats for all of them. The nearly-albino woman with the ebony toddler were at it. Miss Glenda followed them at her slower locomotion.
“Hello, Marisa,” Miss Glenda greeted the mother. “How is he?”
The little boy smiled at everyone, then ducked his head under the tabletop and jumped up, laughing. Amusing stuff for a toddler.
“He slept the whole night through.”
“Better than I did. I want you to meet these new folks.”
After introductions, Marisa said, “Glad to see another mixed group.”
Glares came from segregated tables. Peter fought the urge to burst into laughter. Humans were funny people.
“Can I ask, you and the baby?” asked Nia.
“I knew his parents. He would have died if I didn’t pick him up after they … ya know.” Her gaze downcast as if for respect for the dead.
“Do you have more of your group here?” Nia spooned mashed potatoes with lumpy gravy into her mouth.
“They were taken by the military, including my husband. I wasn’t because of him. I’m all he has.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Miss Glenda said. She had finished her prayers and dug into the bad food.
“We didn’t pray,” Jayce said to Nia.
Nia waved her brother away. She wanted the intel on this new place.
“We should eat fast,” said Marisa. “They only give us an hour. Then another hangar of refugees comes in.”
“Another one?” Nia asked. “Maybe that’s where my mother is.”
“They won’t let you linger. They treat us like sheep.”
“What about all this internal tension?” sophisticated Nia inquired.
“I heard you all had a run-in. News gets around fast.”
“I believe a group from Charleston just added to those problems.”
Peter chuckled, hearing Nia. She seemed such a kid, but she noticed things. More so than her brother did. Jayce shoved food into his mouth at a startling rate.
Tyler, despite his eyes watching, did, too.
Growing boys.
Except when Jayce’s gaze followed someone. An attractive young woman, the other priority for a growing boy his age. Tyler hadn’t fully hit that stage. He was the thief of the Penthouse magazines from the Molly’s bathroom, but he hadn’t discovered girls close to his age yet. Good thing, since he sat next to one.
“Do you have family outside of the Zone?” Nia asked.
“Cousins in Minnesota,” Marisa answered. “I wish they’d let me try to contact them.”
“Can we use a phone?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Nia shot a furrowed brow scowl at the others.
“We don’t even know where we go from here.” Marisa bit her lower lip. “We saw light at the end of the tunnel. If we could just learn to farm, we’d be okay. Then they came, the soldiers.”
“We were the same.”
“Damn them.”
3.
“Chris!”
“Dang, kid. You got me almost worried.”
Chris and Matt man-hugged in the barracks, slapping each other’s backs.
“Thinking some motherfucker black patches shot your ass for misbehaving. Sit, kid.”
Matt was so relieved to see him, he forgave kid.
“I got this scrawny ass motherfucker to change bunks with me.” Chris pointed to a young guy. “Ignore him. He a PFC.”
The guy said, “Thank you, Sarnt.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Matt smiled. Chris was being even more charming than usual.
Across the aisle, Kevin Alden lounged on his bunk with his eyes closed. He laughed.
“This over there, the sergeant Nazi motherfucker, he alright. Wave at the medic, ass
hole.”
Without opening his eyes, Kevin waved.
Matt scowled at the bunk neighbor. “Nazi?”
“Yeah. He one of them from back in Charleston.”
“The people who targeted Phebe?”
“Sit the fuck back down.”
Chris reached his big hand up to Matt’s shoulder and shoved him down. Kevin opened his eyes and watched Matt for trouble.
“You gonna be forgive and forget?” Matt demanded of Chris.
“All the shit changed. We in some crazy shit here. Crazier than our usual crazy shit. We may need allies.”
“Where is everyone else?”
“They all over the fucking place, far as I know. Sully got himself staying with the girls. Smart sonbitch, he is. He went extra crippled. You know how he does.”
“Phebe?”
Kevin said, “Didn’t know she was pregnant.”
Matt huffed. Nostrils flaring. “You mean when you tried to kidnap her and she had to jump from a moving car?”
“Nobody told her to jump from a moving car.”
Chris shoved Matt down again. “Leave it in the past, kid.”
Kevin smiled. Piercing blue eyes on Matt, seeing he could get under his skin so easily.
“You may need a medic, son,” Chris told Kevin. “Don’t piss on what you may need.”
Kevin shrugged.
“What are you, Southern fucking redneck bonding?” Matt demanded of Chris.
Chris’s blond brows raised. “You seen this fucking place?”
“Actually … no.”
“Got your eyes closed when you land?”
“Couldn’t see much from the plane.”
“Plane? What fucking plane?”
“Yeah. They took us here on a plane. How’d they take you?”
“Chinook. All of us in a fleet of Chinooks. Oh. They shot up them meth heads. Right at processing.”
Kevin chuckled.
“Who did?” Matt asked.
“Them black patches ain’t none of us recognize. We reckon they some kind of new killing squad type bullshit. A bunch of hard dick boys wanting to shoot unarmed people.”
Still lounging on his cot, Kevin said, “That must be who all the AWOLs were running from, we reckon.”
Matt’s green eyes hardened as he looked at his enemy.
Chris asked, “You got Ange and the Doc with you?”
“Ange, yes. Dr. Jenkins had a coronary. I could only temporarily stabilize him.”
“Probably dead now,” said Kevin.
“Shut the fuck up,” Matt snapped.
“Just saying.”
“Ignore the dickhead Nazi.”
Kevin chuckled at Chris’s nickname for him. Thin-skinned, Kevin Alden was not.
“All these here the re-activates from the Army, we reckon,” said Chris. “There a guy up yonder, he so far gone from re-activation time that it’s just a load of bullshit. They would’ve taken Sully. He got that cane. Ya know, the cane.”
“Who was taken?” Matt asked him.
“The recruits … Mullen.” Chris laughed. “That boy tried everything. Saying he pissed his bed and was gay and all kinds of shit.”
Kevin blew out air in disapproval.
“Oh,” said Chris. “Reminds me. Stanton killed himself before we left.”
“What?” Matt gasped.
“Sure enough. Straight razor, I heard.” Chris imitated cutting wrists. “You seen Wong?”
Matt stared off. “He committed suicide?”
“Who? Wong did?”
“Stanton killed himself?”
“Yeah. I just told you that. Keep up, boy.”
“Was it due to me?”
“What?”
“I was mean to him.”
“Huh? Anyway, you seen Eric? Ya know, Wong? He unaccounted for among us. You had him?”
“Did I cause him to do that?”
Chris’s brows shot up again. “Just guessing, the whole thing of his whole fucking world going upside down probably the reason.”
“I was so cruel to him.”
“Aw, hell no. You ain’t doing that guilt bullshit you do.”
“Hate the sin, not the sinner.”
“Matthew, you need to be a preacher sometime in your life.”
“I hated the sinner. I was wrong.”
“Wong? Chinese kid? Likes computers?”
“Do we have a chaplain?”
“Get the fuck off my cot.”
Chris shoved Matt off.
Kevin laughed.
“Dang guilt-ridden motherfucker.”
4.
“What did you do with them?”
“Mr. Wong, I’m trying to help you.”
“Where is everyone?”
Eric sat handcuffed to a chair in the dining room at the Star Gate House in Historic Charleston. Apart from the sounds of soldiers, the house stood quiet. Too quiet. His people were gone. The china cabinet armory emptied. Glass shelves broken from the rough treatment when emptying it.
A colonel sat across the table from him. He drank coffee from a Wedgwood cup the girls liked to use. The French press on a tray, just as Phebe and Emily used to do.
“Mr. Wong –”
“I already told you! Check the computer log. It wasn’t me.”
The chickens were gone. The rooster too. When they marched him in, taken off the yacht handcuffed, the faux door to the piazza and gates to the laneway stood wide open. The chickens may have escaped. Or maybe the soldiers already took them for a meal.
Humvees rolled around all the streets. A military invasion. He had seen the helicopters leave, but the soldiers told him nothing.
“All I did was hack her system. Not the D-O-D’s. The log would tell you that. You already know she’s dead. You dug her up, for Christ’s sake.”
Body bags lay on the overgrown lawn. Several of them. The smell told they were old bodies. Rats came in to investigate them. But one body bag did not smell. A recent dead. Someone from his group, but no one would answer any of his questions on who.
Eric wished he could see his friends again. Hard to think beyond the anxiety of who laid out there, dead.
“I didn’t have electricity when the DoD was hacked. I was in Wilmington, North Carolina, at a marina.”
“How do you know when the DoD was hacked then?”
“Pretty damn obvious afterwards. After you people tried to gas us to death. And you killed the brown pelican. Everybody knew on the island.”
“This island is?”
“The one you napalmed. My sister died!” Eric’s voice broke in emotion.
“You have a lot of animosity towards the United States Armed Forces?”
“You’re kidding me, right? How many times have you tried to kill us?”
“You are like those rats. Keep surviving.”
“Fuck you, Colonel!”
“Thirsty, Mr. Wong.”
The Colonel pushed a glass of water closer to Eric. He had been using it as torture for hours. Eric felt very thirsty. But he could give no answer that satisfied the man.
“Read the goddamn printout in front of you. Get somebody to read it to you.”
A stack of printer paper at least two inches thick laid on the table.
“I know hackers can change the system log.”
“Oh, my god! I cannot imitate another coder. Look at the coding. That’s hers. A big cease of activity and then a hack of her system. Different coding starts up.”
“Tell me about China.”
“You are fucking kidding!” Eric roared.
“I can do this for hours. I’m not thirsty or need to piss.”
“What’s next? Waterboarding me? Torture produces false confessions.”
“All day, I have.”
“I already fucking told you. My parents immigrated with my father’s company. They owned a dry cleaners in Wilmington. Three children. My sisters are fucking dead. My parents. My grandparents … everyone is fucking dead. Except me. What do
you not get?”
Eric screamed up to the ceiling in frustration.
The Colonel sipped his coffee and placidly watched.
Spittle on his lips, tears streamed down his face. “I killed our parents. I couldn’t protect my sisters.”
“Why did you kill your parents?”
“They were infected. They were gonna kill my sisters. Dad was coming at Ronnie.”
“Ronnie.” The Colonel checked his notes. “Veronica. Your oldest sister. The member of the cult.”
“Yes. Goddamn it to hell.”
Eric broke into sobs. The packed-down pain he had been harboring exploded from his chest and consumed him.
A soldier stood at ease nearby and watched. He approached the Colonel and whispered in his ear.
“Bring it in, in about five minutes,” the Colonel said.
The soldier left the dining room.
The Colonel refilled his cup from the French press.
After several minutes, he said, “Private, wipe the kid’s face with a washcloth. That’s disgusting.”
As the private did so, others carried equipment in.
“Give him a sip of water.”
Eric greedily followed the glass for more than a sip. He had long ago urinated himself since they wouldn’t release him for that either.
He sat, broken, and watched the equipment assembled. Monitors came alive, showing several CCTV footage. Eric gasped. The fight with the meth head cannibals on the yacht.
“You got some badasses,” said the Colonel. “I am proud to claim them as United States Armed Forces created.” He pointed to someone on one of the monitors. “Except for this girl.” He pointed to Phebe. “What’s the thing hanging down on her?”
Eric’s dry throat hurt to speak. “Phe-Phebe. Pregnant. To protect the baby.”
“This man does not look disabled to me.”
On the screen, Peter jumped over Phebe and fought the crazy people, using her machete.
“I hear he is trying to claim disability at the camp.”
Eric’s eyes widened.
“I show this and he will be back in the Army.”
“No-no. Stop it! What are you doing to us? Yeah, he can fight. But do you require him to walk, cos that’s a problem.”
Eric felt panicked. He knew Peter made sure to fail the physical fitness on the USNS Comfort, and he suspected Peter was trying to do it again. Under normal circumstances, the Army would never look at him again. This was a far cry from normal circumstances, and they would not care if an experienced soldier became forever handicap or died.