by Jones, K. J.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
The brows of mother and child raised.
“Gone where?” asked Angela. “I hope you don’t mean …?”
“No, no. Transferred out. Ben, too. They have left the base.”
“No!” Nia wailed. “They gotta come back.” She looked at her mother. “Make this stop, Mama!”
“I wish I could, baby.”
The adults couldn’t handle what they were in, how could a kid be expected to? To jump from a highly privileged, insulated, and spoiled life to this situation was too much for Nia, Matt understood. This all combined with a cocktail of increasing raging hormones and swirled around with lack of life experience and viewing a parent, perhaps adult friends too, as protectors with God-like powers. Cerebrally, Matt got it. Emotionally … it wasn’t so easy to deal with.
Angela’s fight against the tears became a losing battle.
“Why you crying,” the merciless kid demanded. “You don’t ever cry ‘less somebody died.”
“Hey, hey,” Matt said. “Ease up.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Matthew.”
“Stop it,” Angela said to her.
“No! I’m not going back in there. Not ever. Make ‘em stop! I wanna go back to Charleston. Get Mazy and Ben back here. We’ll be a family again and go back to Charleston.”
Angela stared at the ceiling. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
The child saw the tears and seemed to take them as a sign of her mother’s weakness, so she turned to Matt. “Get me Phebe and Emily.”
Matt’s voice small, “I can’t.”
“Why not! Damn you.”
“Hey,” Angela reprimanded. “Enough. Don’t you talk to him that way.”
Nia scoffed and looked Matt up and down as if he was a lifelong failure as a man. It cut into him. Though part of him wanted to stay with them, another part wanted to leave to get away from the emotional pain Nia caused him.
A nurse officer entered to take Nia’s vitals, and this gave him the excuse to depart with a promise to try his best to help. The warning from the doctor was to give the appearance of distance with his group for everyone’s sake, and he needed to uphold this in front of the nurse officer.
Into the corridor, his mind raced with new information. Peter, Phebe, and Emily had been arrested. Phebe may have killed someone.
“Holy shit,” Matt whispered.
Looking up and down the corridor, he wondered what to do. Where to next?
5.
Mazy and Ben felt fatigued from the emotional and psychological rigors of retelling everything that had happened for what turned out to be a little over ninety days in the Zone. They had to do so to a camera at the orders of the Commandant. Afterward, they met up at the café for some chow before their next stage. They were to go to the helicopter pad in less than an hour and fly to Mount Weather.
Raven Rock appeared to be a city-building placed under a mountain. A café. A store. The offices looked like business offices. Everything normal, except there were no windows anywhere.
The café required money, something neither had given any thought to for quite some time. Since Zoner Marines never seemed to have retained their wallets or cash within wallets – perhaps they used the paper bills for toilet paper – the Corps gave a pay-as-you-go debit card to see them to the next paycheck. The money would be deducted from their pay packets.
“I hope we’re not going to deal with the civilian government over there.” Mazy cut up sirloin steak.
“Yeah, I know.” Ben ate mashed potatoes.
It was risky for them to sit together due to the fraternization issue, but they figured since they were going through all of this process together, and the cafe was practically empty, it would be weirder to not sit together while eating. Sometimes overcompensating was just as suspicious.
Mazy drank a latte the café staff made for her, and she enjoyed every sip of it. The sirloin steak was a real one, not some form of vomit in the shape of sirloin steak from the mess hall at Fort Jackson. They both ate every morsel on their plates, veggies and all, and used rolls to catch any gravy stragglers. By the time they placed their dishes and silverware in the bins, it looked as if their plates had been washed.
Chapter Three
1.
They came for Phebe. It bordered on hilarious. Emily had to go to the far wall as if she was a hardened convict who would wildly attack the MPs. Phebe had to put her hands through the food tray opening in the cell door. Handcuffs on her wrists.
“Back up.”
Phebe did. They opened the door. One had a Taser readied. The other MP had shackles.
“Check this out,” Phebe said over her shoulder to Emily.
“I’m seeing it.” Amusement in Emily’s tone.
Phebe’s ankles shackled together. A chain ran from them up to a waist belt where the chain hooked through an O-ring and onto her cuffs.
“I feel like Hannibal Lector.” Phebe referred to the cannibal serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs.
“Forward,” an MP ordered.
Walking was a whole new experience. The ankle shackles forced mini-steps. Phebe jangled with every movement. More MPs fell in around her as they escorted her out of the jail area into a hall. She burst out laughing. They did not find it as humorous.
Into an interrogation room, they sat her in a hard plastic chair and chained her to an O-ring bolted to the table. She gave the table a shove.
“Oops, sorry.”
Phebe laughed. Not bolted down, but she’d have to pick up the whole table to do anything. Or drag it with her. An image of her doing these things made her laugh harder.
“You find this funny?” a man in Army ZBDUs said. He carried folders and sat across the table from her.
“Yes.”
One of the MPs checked a camera on a tripod in the corner. The guy across from her set a digital tape recorder on the table and turned it on. He rattled off the date and place, who he was and who she was.
“Sullivan,” she corrected at hearing her last name was Marcelino. “I took my husband’s last name.”
“That requires a name change submission.”
“Oh, God.” Phebe scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Hey. This is not the most comfortable position if we are going to chat for a while.”
He wrote something on his yellow legal pad.
“Are you my lawyer?”
“No.”
“I want a lawyer. My father-in-law, in fact. Michael Sullivan, Sr. He’s a criminal defense attorney. A damn good one.”
“Ms. Marcelino, you exist under martial law. Civil rights are suspended.”
“You gotta be kidding me. So … I don’t get a lawyer?”
“Correct. This will be your opportunity to make a statement in your defense. Use it wisely.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“I am not. It has been decided you will be going before a military tribunal.”
“I’m a civilian.”
“This tribunal will take place at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar.”
“What? No Leavenworth?” Phebe laughed. “Big bad me going off to Leavenworth.” Even funnier.
“The United States Disciplinary Barracks facility located on Fort Leavenworth is currently all male. NAVCONBRIG has female facilities.”
“NAVCONBRIG, huh?” Speaking initials as if it was a foreign language tickled her funny bone more. In mocking, deep voice, she repeated, “NAVCONBRIG.”
There was no way this could be real. She had to be dreaming. Vivid dreams happened before, albeit not quite this weird and far off from all of her life experience. Alas, the subconscious mind was a strange place.
A smirk on Phebe’s face, she asked, “What are my charges? Or am I not allowed to know and I’ll soon be put on the torture rack to confess? Yes, I killed JFK.” She laughed. “I confess. And Jimmy Hoffa. And I am, yes, Jack the Ripper. I did it all." She burst out into belly laughing laughter.
He scribbled on his pad.
“What the hell are you writing? It’s obnoxious.”
“Do you feel no remorse for what you have done, Ms. Marcelino?”
“Done?”
“You killed a woman. A four-month pregnant woman.”
“Hmm. She’s dead? Wow.”
He scribbled.
“Oh, c’mon. Stop that.”
“No remorse?”
“Remorse for defending myself?”
“Are you claiming it was self-defense?”
“Absolutely. If she died, she shouldn’t have come at me. Simple, man.”
He scribbled.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Ms. Marcelino, this isn’t looking good for you.”
“I defended myself. My unborn child. And a girl under my protection.”
“You killed the victim, by all accounts, in hand-to-hand, no use of a weapon, hand-to-hand in under thirty seconds.”
“You make it sound like I broke her neck or something. Hello. Mirror. Side of a hard sink. Not my bare hands. C’mon. Why would anyone come at someone’s back in a place like this? With who all of us are? Please.” Phebe rolled her eyes.
“How did you learn to do this maneuver?”
“Learn?”
“Somebody obviously trained you. Krav maga, it would appear.”
A military hand-to-hand mixed martial arts she had heard the guys and Mazy say many times.
“How would you know that?” Phebe craned her neck to try to get a glimpse of his papers laid out on the table. “I could be all kinds of MMA.” Mixed Martial Arts.
“People who are of a certain level of martial arts proficiency are registered.”
“Really? I thought that was a myth.” She wasn’t about to believe anything he said.
“Answer the question.”
“Which was what?” She fiddled with the handcuffs, causing the metal to clank against the table. “What do you do if you have an itch in this getup?”
“You suffer with it.”
“Oh, nice. Torture by itching.”
“Why are you not taking this serious?”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I absolutely am not. You took the lives of two human beings.”
Phebe scoffed.
“Two counts of murder.”
“Murder? Are you crazy?”
“It is under review whether it will be second degree or first degree. As well as extenuating circumstances.”
“Damn right there were extenuating circumstances.”
“Whether it was an ethnically motivated attack.”
“Ethnic … why? Because I’m Irish and Italian. That’s a really low blow. What is this? Nineteen twenty-two?”
He sighed. “That the victim was African American.”
“Well, I think that’s why she attacked me. There’s a thing.”
“That you attacked an African American pregnant woman due to ethnic hatreds.”
“Nia’s black. Helloo. Or are we really splitting hairs on the ethnicity thing? Whether Southern or Northern, their varied backgrounds, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.”
“Racially motivated.”
“Wait a second. Are you accusing me of a hate crime?”
He scribbled.
Phebe grew angry, feeling her blood go hot and her face scrunch into a scowling sneer. “How fucking dare you!” she roared. “You know how many white supremacists I killed?”
He scribbled more. It went on for a while. He flipped the pad page and scribbled.
“Aw, shit.”
Sharing she had killed before probably was not the wisest thing she had ever done.
Where was the logic-based pragmatist who could use her words and often they were big words? Phebe wished for the PhD candidate former self to rise and take control over this.
She was dead. Despite being called Marcelino, Phebe Marcelino was dead and buried. Drink poured out for her at the memorial. Phebe Sullivan knew this. No matter how she tried to resurrect her, the ghost of Phebe Past would not rise. Only the long-timer Zoner known as the Beheader survived.
“How fucking dare you,” Phebe bellowed.
He stopped scribbling and looked at her with fear.
Phebe couldn’t stop the rage. “You people abandoned us in the Zone for months. You force us to leave when we get shit under control and then you put us here.” Her voice came out as a growl of fury. “You treat us like animals. Then when we do what we had to do to survive, you punish us for it.”
He snapped, “You are one of the most dangerous people in this nation, Ms. Marcelino.”
“Oh. Seriously doubt that, dude. When do you people take responsibility for what you did to us?”
“When will you?”
“How fucking dare you!”
Phebe rose to lunge at him. Caught by the O-ring, abruptly stopped her movement towards him.
Two MPs at the door stepped forward, raising their Tasers.
“All of you should face the Zone! See what your government did.” The table shoved towards the man. “You fucking hypocritical, privileged, head up your ass, denial motherfuckers!”
A bolt of electricity. Blackness.
* * *
“What happened?” Emily asked.
“I went Sarah Connor.” Phebe’s head hurt again. Muscles ached from the electrocution.
“What does that mean?”
“You know, from Terminator.”
“Yeah, got that. But what do you mean?”
“Remember in T2 when she was in the mental hospital?”
“Oh, no.”
“Screaming about everyone was dead?”
“You didn’t.”
“A little.”
“Did they needle you?”
“I think it was a Taser, from the feel.”
“Ya know, Pheeb, that’s not good for the baby.”
“Yeah, thinking they don’t care.”
“But you should behave for the sake of the baby.”
They came for Emily.
One MP said, “Goldstein, Emily F.”
Phebe chuckled. “Your turn.”
“Marcelino, face the back wall.”
As Phebe did so and assumed the position of arms spread wide, she said over to her shoulder at Emily, “You repeat that warning after you go through this.”
“Oh, God.”
They shackled Emily. Being only five foot six, she looked entirely ridiculous chained up and surrounded by big MPs. Phebe laughed as she watched them go.
* * *
“What was that about behaving to protect the baby?”
“Oh,” Emily groaned. “Shut up.”
Phebe helped her sit up and rest her back against the wall.
“Second time hurts as bad as the first,” Phebe said.
“Accuse a Jew of a hate crime against an African American!”
Phebe burst out laughing. “Was that your legal argument? ‘I’m a Jew.’ Guessing it didn’t work out well.”
“Hypocritical bastards!”
“Told ya.”
“I said Jews do not do hate crimes. He referred me to Israeli paratroopers. No, stop laughing, Phebe. You could miscarry.”
“Versus give birth at Leavenworth?”
“That’s not where they’re sending us.”
Phebe shrugged. “I can’t remember what it was he said. And you could miscarry too.”
“Not seeing that as a bad thing, honestly.”
“But me?”
“We are all emotionally invested in your baby.”
“Fabulous. Are ‘we’ gonna collect him or her from military prison?”
“Oh, God! Sully’s right. It could always be worse – worse is a bottomless pit.”
2.
Peter suspected they released him because there was nowhere for him to go, in addition to absolutely no evidence against him, but mostly the first part. MPs brought him back to the hangar. He had preferred the jail ce
ll where it was quiet.
Walking the aisle between cots, he spotted he was one kid short in his group.
“Where’s Nia?”
Jayce said, “They never brought her back.” His brown eyes looked wired, intense, and slightly insane.
Tyler and Karen sat with Jayce. Miss Glenda watched over them, Bible in one hand, wooden rosary bead-like necklace in the other. Everyone else in the whole place stared at Peter. Black patches now stood guard at the front. Their gazes rotated from him to the remaining Jersey crew several cot rows away and back again. He suspected they were itching to shoot them all, the kids included.
Peter sat down on Phebe’s cot. If ever alcohol consumed in copious quantities became a psychiatric necessity, this was it. He had water. Not a single vice to soften the sharp edges of life. Three sets of young people’s eyes watched him for an answer to something. He inhaled deep. Time to do some massive adulting.
“Where is she?” Tyler demanded, angry.
“Arrested.” No way to smooth that aspect over.
“When will she be back?”
“Ty, I do not know.”
Karen asked, “Will they be back?”
Peter sighed. “I do not know.”
“Did they not say anything to you?”
“Not really, Karen. It was about getting information from me, not tell me things.” Peter lied. They didn’t need to know Phebe was in such deep legal trouble.
“The bitch died,” Tyler spat. “Everybody knows it.”
Well, maybe they already knew.
“We focus on our survival,” Peter stated.
“Fuck that!”
Many outsiders looked at Tyler for his outburst.
“Ty,” Peter warned. “Black patches.”
“We rescue her.”
Peter faked a smile and called over, “We’re okay here.”
The black patches did not look convinced.
“Ty,” he hissed between gritted teeth, “shut the fuck up and check your surroundings.”
“They took Pheebs.”
Tyler could be an issue if he did not calm himself. Peter’s brain raced through what to do, the presence of the itchy-trigger finger black patches pressing in on him. They hadn’t moved forward down the aisle, but they stared right at the group.
A female voice yelled, “Why is that racist son of a bitch back here?”
A distraction, yes.