by Jones, K. J.
He nodded. This attention felt unnerving. He just wanted to drink his water and maybe take a nap. It had been a long day.
“You need to teach us,” the second girl said. “When we get to the base for boot camp, we need to be trained.”
“Won’t the Army do that?” asked the nerd. He looked at the back of the seat first girl leaned over and would not look directly at the girls as if they were the sun and would blind him.
“Dunno,” Eric answered.
A male voice on the PA, “This is your captain. We’re about twenty minutes out from El Paso.”
The programmers exchange a look.
“Texas?” Eric asked.
“Nuh,” the fat gamer guy answered. “They said something about Colorado.”
3.
“When were you deployed … Atlanta, right?” asked Ben.
“Yeah. Um, Pez, you remember?”
“It was, like, March. No. Maybe February.”
“That would be a no for him too.”
Ben lounged on his rack. Beneath him, the bunk of a scout sniper, Pezzimenti. He went by Pez. Across from him, another scout sniper, Darsi. Brandon’s bunk was over Darsi’s. All the snipers were in the sergeant rank sphere, but they didn’t hold that against Lance Corporal Pell. They were brothers of the Zone.
The USMC Re-Activated barracks had been filled with guys from the Zone. Fort Jackson was US Army. What to do with all these Marines they found?
Pez and Darsi had been in Atlanta, Georgia. And abandoned there. They told the story. Left on a rooftop, searching the sky for their ride. Radios contacted no one but dead air. A burning city below. Gas clouds filled the valley-like streets between tall buildings. Below was death. Above, nothing.
It remained nothing at sun up. They had been left behind. Pez and Darsi were not the only ones left behind. The barracks had more from other rescued cities.
“Everything’s a goddamn mess,” said Pez. His New Jersey accent strong.
He told them he came from someplace called The Pines. It meant something special to him but lost on all those not from his state. Montana and South Dakota—and Kansas, as Darsi said he was from—they knew nothing of Joisey.
The Piney told them he was Italian about a half dozen times. It grew into a joke.
“Even for Italians?” Darsi asked.
The others laughed.
“Go fuck you’self.” But Pez laughed.
“Man, anyone know the month?” Darsi yelled out.
“No” was the communal response.
4.
Mullen spotted familiar faces in the crowd waiting to load on a plane. People from the central North Charleston tribe. He squeezed between strangers standing around to reach his allies. They recognized him and shuffled to allow him into their group.
“So … here we are.” Mullen cringed at his ultra-white comment. The coolness still evaded him.
“Yeah,” said Kanesha. “Here we all are. Damn it.” She squatted down on the floor to relieve her legs. Strangers filled the seats.
“Question is,” said Jerome, “where are we going?”
“Like they tell us shit,” she said.
“They took your hair?” Mullen asked her.
“They took yours worse.”
Mullen rubbed his shaved scalp. From the reflections he caught in the terminal wall-to-ceiling windows, he looked like one of the knob heads the guys talked about. It was not a becoming look for him. Yet, on the men standing around him, bald looked much better. Jerome may have had his head shaved in the Before since his naked scalp wasn’t as pale as Dre’s.
“Think I should put in for MP?” Jerome asked.
“Wow,” said Kanesha. “You’re already making career plans.”
Dre chuckled. “When a man makes plans, God laughs.”
“Yeah,” Kanesha said. “Don’t jinx us with plans, Jerome. You’ll make the plane crash deep in zombie land.”
“That’s paranoid,” Jerome exclaimed.
“Why aren’t you?” she retorted.
Mullen said, “Paranoia doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”
“Exactly,” Kanesha said.
Mullen looked around but did not see Mackey. He was of the right age and physical quality to be drafted, so where was he?
“You seen Mackey?”
Jerome scoffed. “The criminal was arrested.”
Kanesha rolled her eyes. “You are such a cop, Jerome.”
Mackey was needed to lighten the mood, Mullen concluded. Eventually, the two grumpy pants, Jerome and Kanesha, were going to start yelling at each other. They both looked and sounded irritated to the ninth degree.
Vi stood quietly next to her brother, listening, but her gaze a thousand miles away. She must have healed from the gunshot wound that happened a while back in Charleston. Mullen suspected they wouldn’t take her otherwise. Or maybe they would… who knew anymore.
Day 2
Chapter One
1.
An absolute night of hell. Not since it all began had they lacked so much sleep. Dark circles under Phebe’s tired eyes concerned Peter. She needed more sleep than everyone else in Charleston, and now she got barely enough for one person, never mind creating a brand new one. If he could have raised Cain to get her what she needed, he would have. However, doing such would undoubtedly make things worse, so he was forced to swallow his frustration.
The teenagers were whiny and cranky. They snapped at each other as they made their cots. Orders to make their cots came right after the lights flashed on and the bellowing to get up started. Now they shuffled in lines to use the bathrooms. Each aisle went one at a time. For some the wait was painful. Their full bladders ready to explode.
“You learn some good bladder control around here,” said Miss Glenda.
Their aisle was second to last. The wall of the hangar an aisle away from them. As they waited, Peter scanned, this time uninterested in the people. He memorized the layout. His gaze rested on an emergency back door at the end of his aisle. A red bar across the door, he suspected it sounded an alarm when pushed open. He counted how many cots back to it and tried to estimate the meters. What was behind it? Getting a look outside was probably going to be difficult.
2.
Matt and Chris went for breakfast in the military mess hall. The cafeteria looked like a horde of people had already gone through. The staff put out new metal trays of eggs and home-fries and other warm breakfast foods. Regular Army had already been through.
On the line, Matt and Chris took all the warm foods and doubled up on meats. They both took milk and orange juice, in addition to compulsory coffee. It had been months since they had milk and OJ.
Finding vacant seats across from each other at a long table, they dug in without speaking. All Zoners dug in as if someone would take it away from them. More than five minutes of chomping and chewing passed before the din of conversation began among the Army Re-Activated.
Matt continued his guilt over Stanton.
“Ain’t like they hit on me,” said Chris.
“Except that time. Remember? You asked Sully what a bear meant.”
“Oh. Yeah. That was fucked up.”
Matt laughed. “Yeah. It was fucked up because you were so fucking clueless. No gaydar for you at all, man.”
“Yeah. But you laugh. Remember when you beat the shit outta that guy?”
“Oh, c’mon, Chris. Don’t bring that up. I was drunk off my ass. Rural Georgia around Benning was not a gay parade hot spot, but somehow the only gay guy in the whole area finds me, taking a piss between cars in a parking lot of that shitty ass bar we just came outta.”
Chris laughed. “All I seen is you just start whaling on this guy.”
“He was explicit and aggressive.”
“Yeah. Don’t be needing to come up on a man when he got his cock out like that.”
“No. Especially a really drunk man just back from Iraq.”
Chris continued to laugh. “Remember Sully?” He imit
ated Peter’s accent. “’Everybody get in the cah. There ain’t cameras. Let’s go.’” Full belly laugh.
Matt shook his head. “Asshole. I feel really bad about it.”
“You feel bad about everything. Remember, Sully had that nasty stank-ho girl trying to get with him. Nasty skanky whore, that girl. But she was the only civvie witness, so he had to take her with us. Got her so fucking drunk, she could never be a good witness for the cops.”
“The things we do for friends.” A chuckle from Matt, despite himself. “He didn’t fuck her, did he?”
“He wouldn’t fuck her with another man’s cock. No, he got her drunk and left her in a chair somewhere.”
“I should not have done that.”
“You were young. We fuck up shit. You never done nothing crazy on them fucked up Ay-rabs when they done their blowjob offering shit. Hate that. But look at what I done. Threw a motherfucker through a glass door over a whoring wife I ain’t even liked. My whole career fucked up. Facing charges and shit.”
“You could’ve ended up in Leavenworth.”
“Don’t you think I was thinking about that? Pacing my fucking cell over that?”
“Sully got you out of that shit.”
“He a good man.”
“With good connections. Even got his father to help out.”
“His father used to men worse than me,” said Chris.
“They’re criminals. You’re just a hot-headed dumbass.”
“Ain’t you the pot calling the kettle black, as my mama used to say.”
“Aw fuck. Shut up, Chris.”
“You think I’m gonna let you sit here with all this dang guilt of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck that. We do the best we can. We fuck up. Then we pray repentance and give it to Jesus. He knows we all fucked up. Just try not to do the dumb shit again.”
“Hmm. Ever think about becoming a preacher, Chris?”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.”
Matt laughed.
“What would that be?” asked Chris. “The First Baptist Church of Fuck Off?”
“Something like that.”
“Bottom line, just don’t be running your mouth, doing that discriminating shit again towards them gay boys. You feel bad over Stanton, don’t do the shit again.”
“Life really is that simple for you, isn’t it?”
“Dang right, son. Y’all just make shit more complicated.”
Matt shook his head at his friend, wondering what went on in his one-dimensional mind.
Chris scanned around, glaring. “What the fuck do we do?”
“In what way?”
They stood with their trays and moved to the garbage cans to dump the leftovers, then drop the trays, plates, and silverware in large plastic basins.
“Any way,” Chris answered.
“I have to go see the medical chief.”
“For an exam?”
“No. For work.”
“You got orders?”
“To see him, yeah.”
“No. Orders orders.”
“I wasn’t told that.”
“What if they separate us? Even us two?”
They headed towards the double swinging doors and out of the mess hall.
3.
Colorado. The air felt dry. Not a drop of moisture. This was new for a born and raised North Carolinian, a land of humidity. Mullen felt a little light-headed. Was that what dry air did?
Fort Carson looked similar to Fort Jackson, minus a giant wall encircling it. Unimaginative buildings were the architectural décor. Clean, well-organized streets running through the base.
The place was truly flat. Except there were mountains. Very close by mountains which randomly stuck up out of the ground. Mullen had been to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, but they didn’t look like this.
He and his shaved head followed the line into a building. Men and women separated inside. They were then marched to showers. As if the delousing at Jackson wasn’t enough, now it was full body.
“Do they think R140 is contagious from the skin?” Jerome asked.
Mullen felt uncomfortable having a conversation with another man while stark naked among a group of naked men in a communal shower. He tried not to think of the rumors about black men’s penis sizes and prevented himself from glancing down. If it was true, he could wreck his already limited confidence levels.
He glanced horizontally and spotted some white guys who had quite questionable tattoos. One had a swastika back piece. In Mullen’s mind, he groaned. They were the white supremacist tribe. In the same shower as the majority-black central North Charleston tribe. This could go wrong in so many ways. He hoped it wouldn’t turn into naked men fighting in a shower, as that would be a sight he wouldn’t be able to un-see.
Fortunately, everyone felt so unnerved about what they were in, they all ignored each other, and the communal naked showering went off without a hitch. Onto a new wardrobe.
There were no fat guys among Zoners. Not even an overweight guy. Three months in the Zone (rumor had it was now April) managed to be a very good diet program. Running around, fighting zoms and each other, and walking everywhere, a good fitness program.
Their rubber-framed dog tags and name tape were already made. That was quick. Mullen wondered if they had the machinery to punch out tags on the base. Was there a machine shop here? What they would not have given for a good shop in Historic Downtown Charleston.
Dre and a white supremacist accidentally bumped into each other. They pretty much growled at each other. Great, Mullen thought. They were totally going to make fast friends with each other.
They had all their gear in brand new rucksacks, which had digital camouflage from a previous war and did not match the new digital camouflage. Their personal luggage was nowhere to be seen. Though some guys fiddled with the stupid padding, no one voiced how stupid the padding was. Everyone seemed to want to just get on with things and learn how painful and/or ridiculous this would be.
Jerome remained grumpy pants, mumbling about his sister and nieces and nephews. Mullen didn’t think beyond the present moment. The idea of never seeing his group again … it just didn’t seem real. Angela once said to him, “Jesus protects the innocent and the not-too-bright.” She seemed to have directed that at him.
After wardrobe and toiletries came sitting in a classroom, rejoined with the women, and pretending to pay attention to a soldier talking at the front. They received reading material. Jerome flipped through the materials, looked at Dre, and shrugged. Nothing useful. Everything was about the Army and being a soldier. Nothing in materials or in the lecture about the war they had already been in for a quarter of the year.
It was rather like taking guys out of a war to teach them how to do the war properly with matching outfits.
Everyone behaved themselves. Mullen’s vision of them breaking into a classroom brawl, though amusing for him to imagine, did not manifest. They sat segregated, with him as the odd guy out. He was the white guy who sat with the black people.
They were brought to their new barracks, gender-separated again, and Mullen received a wonderful surprise.
“Eric!”
“Mullen!”
They hugged and laughed and jumped around in a circle as if overexcited eight-year-olds. Then released each other and looked around at everyone watching them. Serious loss of cool points.
“Your head looks stupid,” Mullen said.
“So does yours,” said Eric.
They descended into rubbing each other’s heads and giggling. More cool points dropped off.
“Where’s your bunk?” Mullen asked.
“Here.”
A man yelled, “This ain’t a fucking sleepover.” One of the supremacists.
“Is that …?” Eric asked.
“Yeah,” Mullen responded. “The Nazi tribe.”
“Wow.” Eric then asked with a funny look on his face, “Are the meth heads here too?”
“Okay. Um, our people? Sully?”
“He’s alright,” said Mullen. “As far as I saw when we were separated.”
“Did they put him back in the Army?”
“No. Why?”
“I got a lot to tell you, dude. I’ve been through the shit. We put our gear into our footlockers here. You should do this, then we can talk. We have mess hall soon. This is some downtime.”
“What are they going to do with us?” asked Mullen.
“They haven’t started training us. We’ve been waiting, I guess, for y’all.”
A white supremacist lounging on his rack nearby scoffed, probably over an Asian using y’all like a Southerner. Eric dismissed his existence.
Mullen, who had grown vastly more observant over the months, noticed it all. He turned to look at the guys he knew in north Central Tribe, insuring they watched. They did, to his relief. He and Eric needed allies.
As if the tension wasn’t enough, a non-Zoner black guy made himself known. He spoke in undiluted ghetto as he tried to befriend Dre. He came from Detroit. Lower, very lower class Detroit. And lacked several teeth.
Dre looked at him, and his gaze rolled over to Jerome, who shook his head.
“Look, man,” Dre said to the guy. “I’m church-going.”
This seemed to mean something. The ghetto guy nodded and stepped away.
Jerome spoke up, “If you call our females ‘bitches,’ they will beat the black off of ya.”
Dre laughed.
The ghetto guy liked the word bitch for women.
Jerome continued, “They are Zone women. They put up with no bullshit and no disrespect.”
The ghetto guy’s eyes widened. “All y’all from the Zone?”
“Yup. That white boy and the Asian kid are too.”
Dre added, “And those Nazis there too.”
As dark of skin hue as the ghetto guy was, he appeared to pale several shades. An ashen look rose in his face. His gaze shifted to the white supremacists, trying to use indirect gazing to check them out without them noticing. He gulped.