by Jones, K. J.
“Sullivan is highly decorated. And a black belt in … some martial art, I’m gathering. Suriyasak Muay Thai, what is that?”
“Thai kickboxing.”
The Colonel checked the folder. “A bunch of others. MMA, huh? Didn’t know soldiers could get into those matches. The man is a walking weapon. He trained the pregnant female, didn’t he?”
“Leave them alone. Please. I beg of you. Do whatever you want to me. She’s pregnant. She needs him.”
“She’s not the only one. Now, is this young fella, the one who benefited from the DoD hack, a Lance Corporal B. Pell, who is he to you?”
The Colonel pointed to a monitor which showed the fight on the stern deck of the yacht. Brandon fought back-to-back with Matt in hand-to-hand with the oncoming meth heads, taking down one hostile after another. Wood boards with nails came at them. Makeshift machetes.
Eric hadn’t seen what happened on the stern deck while it happened.
Chris and Ben on another monitor’s footage. Chris grabbed a skinny guy’s legs and heaved him over the side into the water. Ben used a combat knife.
They all were fierce. A battle for their lives.
“They—they felt no pain.”
“That’s obvious. Don’t worry. We sent word ahead. They are all executed.”
“Who?”
“The cannibals. Yes? That’s what they were?”
Eric breathed again, fearing the executed had been his friends. “Yes, they were cannibals.”
The Colonel shook his head with a deep frown. “We don’t need people like that in the United States Armed Forces. But back to this young fella, Pell? Tell me about him.”
“He and Emily met on the island. He was in G-town. Are they okay? Please, tell me.”
“Are you claiming you didn’t know this Marine prior to the island established under the leadership command of …” The Colonel checked the file. “Jackson?”
“If you have all that, then why are you asking me? I have told you everything. Two Marines prior, Mazy Baptiste and Ben Raven. They were cops. That’s all before the Refugee Island.” Eric sighed deeply.
“Let’s go over China.”
“Again, I’ve been to China three times in my whole life and it was all about seeing relatives. My only connection to China is relatives. None of them are involved with the government. My father’s from a fucking fishing village. My mother’s family is in the service industry. Not exactly the heavy hitters of China. That’s why they came to America. Opportunity. Like the brochures say.”
“Your maternal uncle works at a prestigious hotel.”
The shock Eric felt over the Colonel knowing so much now tripled. He even knew about his relatives in China. Eric barely knew things about them.
“Important men of the Chinese government stay at that hotel.”
“You gotta be kidding me!” Eric ranted. “Do you know nothing of Chinese culture? It’s a traditional social hierarchy combined with capitalism net worth. Important government people do not kick it to chillax with lower socially ranked people.”
Chillax, a combination of chilling and relaxing.
Eric continued, “There’s no best buds among waiters and doormen and hotel desk clerks with the higher-ups. Not in China. Even I know that about China. Everybody knows that about China.”
“Your relatives are communists.”
“Oh. My. God. Do they have some other option? Everybody in China is Chinese communist. Some are more equal than others and the whole goddamn Animal Farm nine. Who cares? They are industrializing capitalism carrying a gazillion years of traditional cultural beliefs.”
The Colonel looked unconvinced. He stared at Eric.
“What do you think? We are spying on Southern Baptists to funnel info to my uncle to tell the government because they really wanted the intel on rednecks?”
“Your name –”
“Oh, god.”
“It’s unusual.”
“Not the Viking thing.”
“Usually, Chinese Americans use the Chinese name as the first name and either use the American name as a nickname or as a middle name.”
“My parents are crazy. Caucasians do not have the market cornered on the idiosyncratically bizarre things of parents. They bought my sister retail because she was pretty. They got her McNuggets, for fuck’s sake!”
The Colonel kept staring at him. Though he could be doing it because he had no idea what Eric talked about—retail and McNuggets for Heidi—staring with no reaction persisted as a good way to make some people compulsively fill in the dead air and talk too much.
“When I didn’t want to eat eel, they acted like I had betrayed two thousand years of Chinese history.”
The Colonel let him keep rambling.
“She got a C in a remedial math class. I got an A-minus in an advanced class and they lost their minds as if my future career was in a cardboard box. Who the hell knows about parents? Were yours entirely sane? Mine are crazy.” Eric sadly added, “Were.”
The Colonel finally spoke, “Or people trying too hard to fit in.”
“What? So they named my sister for Swedes? I think you’re a racist, Colonel. If Chinese American parents cannot be crazy like Caucasian parents, then you are a racist. My best friend in the Before was named Bartholomew for his grandfather. My buddy here, Mullen, was Walter. Parents are crazy people. Ever thought that maybe my parents thought it would help us in this new country that has so many racists like yourself?”
A younger officer came in and whispered something in the Colonel’s ear.
5.
“What are you doing, Nie?”
“Shh. I’m trying to psychically tell Mama to use the bathroom at the same time as me. Miss Glenda thinks the other buildings use the same bathrooms. Those other tunnels we can’t go into go to them maybe.”
“Oh.” Jayce watched his little sister in her lotus position, eyes closed. He shrugged.
Though he perceived anything outside of strict Christianity to be nonsense, he would like to be pleasantly proven wrong and psychic stuff could exist. He’d do anything to check on his mother. As the hours crawled by, he grew increasingly concerned they would never be united.
He and Nia had gathered with Karen and Miss Glenda for a prayer circle. However, Miss Glenda had said little things that told Jayce she dipped her toes outside of strict Christianity. He had seen this with his relatives, especially the Gullah side. Too close to paganism in his eyes. Superstition and hoodoo. The Gullah were full-blown Voodoo with bonfires and killing chickens.
Christians were not supposed to believe in ghosts and ancestors watching over them. It sounded Chinese, and they were polytheists and ancestor worshipers … or so Jayce learned in Charleston. He had been taught at his church such things were demons.
Nia was bad enough. She had absorbed too much New Age stuff from her friends. Her spirituality concerned him, but since when did a little sister listen to a wiser, older brother? She always called him stupid whenever he showed his skepticism. When Grandmama found a Wiccan book in Nia’s room, she got a whooping with a switch and then grounded when their mom came home. Grandmama burned the book on the gas grill … and added lighter fluid in her passionate exorcism of evil. The argument inside between mother and daughter halted by a giant fireball erupting off of the gas grill and grandmother screaming.
It wasn’t a spiritually open-minded household. However, his grandmother had been superstitious, and this wasn’t right in his eyes either.
As Nia meditated her psychic powers to call upon their mother, Jayce watched an attractive young woman walk down an aisle. She was part of that ‘rude, mean Yankee group,’ as Nia called them. She had not used the word ‘Yankee’ in the Before, obviously absorbing from Chris Higgins. Jayce wasn’t sure it was a wrong thing to call someone or not. More importantly, if Nia said it to that northeastern group, would they find it offensive and hurt her for it, and if that went down, would Phebe be there to protect Nia but then get herself hurt or in t
rouble? Jayce sighed. This place posed a strange mutation of the Before and the Zone.
He glanced over at Igloo Man. He slept soundly, having received a shot after their meal when he freaked out from people taking back their bags. Igloo Man and Hair Eater weren’t the only people who had gone around the bend. Plenty of other crazy people; albeit, not as obvious as those two.
“Anything?”
Nia opened her eyes. “How would I know, Jayce Jackson?”
“I dunno. Maybe one of those devil books you were reading.” Jayce cocked a smirk, knowing she always riled from such a phrasing.
“I was not reading devil books, mister.”
He laughed. It felt good to laugh as if the muscles in his torso unwound and relaxed a little.
Instead of a monologue on how wrong he was – Nia inherited Angela’s lawyer gene – she smiled at his laughter. She was changing, he recognized, and he had no way to protect her from it. He touched her hair, which was as stiff as hay.
Nia grimaced and slapped his hand away.
“Don’t.”
A big drama ensued the other day when their mother popped back for a visit from midwifery at the other tribe’s camp. Angela was too rough in hot combing Nia’s hair and chastised the child for being a sensitive scalp. So Nia ran off from her and had Phebe and Emily do it. Angela took it as an insult, a sign of losing importance to her daughter. Jayce saw it, but Angela never kicked up a fuss over things.
“I’m going to have a conversation with these Army people,” Nia announced. She stood up.
“Huh? Whoa. Don’t get yourself in any trouble.”
Nia already started her march up the aisle, head high, confidence oozing out of her. The lawyer gene rising.
Jayce shot a concerned look at Peter. “Sul?”
The blue eyes shifted to him. “What is she doing?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know. To talk to somebody about Mama.”
“I’ll go,” offered Tyler.
Jayce snapped, “How’s that gonna work? If I’m not going, why would you?”
The kid shrugged.
“I’ll see what’s up.” Peter grunted over his leg while he stood. It was not part of the disability act.
Phebe picked up her head.
“Keep trying to sleep, hotshot,” Peter told her.
“I can’t.”
“The baby needs you to sleep.”
“Does the baby have a sleeping pill?”
No snarky comebacks came from Peter. He walked up the aisle after Nia.
By the doors, Peter heard Nia’s voice. She gave an officer a what-for on the law. Peter felt proud of her, and he could bask for a second in this since no black patches closed in on the child.
“Martial law does not entitle the United States Armed Forces to keep parent and minor child separated.”
“You can speak with the Brigadier General, miss,” the officer said.
“Where is he?”
“I can put in a request to meet with him.”
Chapter Three
1.
“I want to see whoever is in charge of this base,” demanded Angela. “I cannot be kept from my minor children.”
“I will put in a request to meet with the Brigadier General, ma’am,” said the officer she spoke to in her hangar.
“This will happen when?”
“I can’t say, ma’am.”
“Sixteen- and thirteen-years-old and their mother who has full legal custody of them is being kept from them. This is not acceptable. Are they in that next hangar? I demand to be taken to my children. Now, young man.”
“Again, ma’am, this is not protocol.”
“Sixteen- and thirteen years old, sir. They are children without their parent.”
“Angela,” Monty said from behind her. He watched a black patch looking at her. “Let’s go back to our cots.”
“I will not –” Her eyes shot over to the black patch. “Oh.” Turning back to the soldier, “I hope to hear from your superior soon. Thank you for your attention on this important matter.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Angela grumbled the whole way back to her uncomfortable cot, escorted by Monty.
2.
There couldn’t ever be enough water on a plane to satisfy Eric’s thirst, after being deprived for so long. He sat in an aisle seat close enough to the toilets in the tail to dash when need be. Water intake was not the issue. Feeling the dehydration finally dissipate was.
It appeared the whole back end of the commercial airplane was reserved for those heading to a base somewhere out west. That was all he had been told—an Army base and it was out west. Eric reviewed his draft card several times. And a letter he was given before loaded onboard. Basic training. He had been conscripted once released from interrogation. According to the letter, after boot camp, which had acronyms, he would go to some form of cyber division, which had a code instead of words, and he’d be the immediate rank of specialist.
The officer who finally convinced the Colonel of his innocence had to be in cyber. That was the officer who explained the code meant cyber and the acronym meant basic training. The guy had walked the Colonel through the log, explaining precisely what Eric had repeatedly told him. A gap, a hack, and a different coder.
What would happen to Peter, no reassurance was given. The Colonel’s threat gnawed at Eric.
He had been flown on a Black Hawk—rather exciting itself—which took him far away from the Zone. Eric couldn’t detect how far or, without a watch, how long they were in the air. But then the soldiers rushed him into a commercial airport. Through the building and onto a plane parked on the tarmac, where a bunch of other people were rushed on board too. At least he had been allowed to clean up and wear fresh clothes before shuttled into civilization.
The airport felt surreal. All the time in the Zone it felt as though there was no civilization out there anymore.
Yet, so many shops closed and so few people traveled. Eric suspected it was not three in the morning since he caught the sight of daylight. The whole place seemed just like the wee hours of travel. He would have liked to grab a newspaper – see what had been going on outside the Zone. Or at least a date. No chance of it. Whisked through and onto an airplane. Now off to who-knows-where.
The guy next to Eric didn’t know. He had to be cyber, too, for he had a terrible case of the nerds. He made Eric and Mullen look like Peter and Matt, in attractive muscular appearance and coolness factor. The guy had already knocked his soda into his own lap and his replacement nearly onto Eric’s. If Eric’s hand-eye-coordination wasn’t so good at catching the drink, he would have had a wet crotch again.
The guy across the aisle was a gamer. The sort that lived in his mother’s basement. Though he weighed three times as much as the nerd and enough facial hair to supply the nerd and Eric with full beards, he had as much suave and cool as the nerd.
They told him their names. In through one ear, out the other.
Eric didn’t want to tell them too much about himself. Not even that he was pegged for cyber. After his ordeal with the Colonel, he feared the middle-aged man would jump out of the overhead compartment, proclaiming, “Gotcha! I knew you were a Chinese spy.” The nerd and the gamer didn’t look like future chums with whom to share his torture interrogation.
He missed Mullen. He could share this with Mullen. And Jayce. And Tyler. Those guys would listen with rapture to his story. But not these strangers. He had the distinct impression they had not been through the Zone. The nerd guy was too nervy, and the gamer just too fat.
Young women around Eric’s age were the next row up, and they looked at all the guys as if they were walking unwanted sexual advances. They could be geek girls. Even nerd programmers. They sounded like programmers from what he overheard of their conversation.
There was a time in the Before when surrounded by programmers would be a very happy space for Eric. He could converse about any number of topics with them. And girl coders, the holy grail. But
now they felt alien. They were not his tribe and they were not Zoners. They hadn’t been through what he had.
Or maybe he was now the alien.
“You don’t talk much,” said the fat gamer.
“Nuh. Just enjoying my water.”
“You slurping up enough of it. Where you been, the desert?” The fat gamer guy laughed.
“Something like that.”
The young women turned around and looked at him. Eric nodded a greeting.
“What’s the date?” he asked all of them.
They said the day of the week.
“No. What month is it?”
“Really, dude? Why don’t you know the month?” asked fat gamer guy.
“Oh. My. God,” one of the girls exclaimed. “You’re a Zoner, aren’t you?”
“Whoa,” said fat gamer guy. “For reals?”
Eric sighed and nodded.
“Whoa,” said the nerd. “That’s so cool.”
Another girl said, “Tell us what it was like. Is the news right?”
“Probably fake news,” the first girl said.
The idea was terribly daunting to recap the last … they hadn’t answered him on the month, but he figured in the neighborhood of three months had gone by, based on Phebe’s pregnancy. She had begun to show, and that had to mean three months.
“What month is it?” Eric repeated.
“April,” the first girl answered. “Were you caught in the Carolinas outbreak?”
Sipping his water, Eric then shook his head. “North Carolina. Wilmington … in North Carolina, not the one in Delaware.” He cringed, not knowing why he added Delaware, since she already said Carolinas. But whatever, he shrugged it off as meaningless.
Their eyes widened and they made sounds of shock and amazement.
“So, dude,” said fat gamer guy, “you’ve been in the shit since the very start?”
Eric had never noticed before how much his generation of totally and completely civilian people would use military lingo like ‘in the shit.’ It didn’t make them seem badass to him, just stupid wannabes. Would he have thought this before? Probably not. Indeed, he had done it too. Now, he owned those terms, having earned them. A different man he was now, and he felt it.