by Caleb Adams
I did not realize how large an area Sector 4 actually covered. Easily I’d say it was of a size more than four times ours. So when I set out on my own to find him, it took a while. It was a city unto itself. From cables and pipes routed long ago, they had their own electricity and running water. They had a church, but who does not have a church right outside of death’s door. They had a school and a training center. They had an infirmary, a hydroponics lab, commissary, daycare area, reading room. All this they had, and so I knew they must have had a command center.
I walked a little farther and suddenly no longer was I stepping over civilians, but bodies of soldiers. This made me realize I couldn’t be too far away as I understood the retreat by the units of Sector 4 would have been in the direction of the command center. The sounds of the blowflies soon intensified. And no matter how reverently I tried to tread on the ground beneath me, I could not avoid stepping upon charred flesh, a limb, a torso, an errant head. Rarely could I now find some soldier I could deliver to the mother who would be able to say that yes this was my son or daughter? The last line of defense had been met by such a barrage of machine-gun fire and explosives that I wondered if even any of their DNA remained in recognizable strands.
The sign on the partially rusted steel door had a metal plate affixed with the words “High Voltage” and nothing more. It lay about twenty feet from the entrance. It had put up a good fight. Battered and pockmarked, it probably stood for a good half hour before they were finally able to detach it from its hinges and remove it from the command center. I shone my flashlight in. And like I was projecting it down the nave of a devil’s church, the beam lit up a figure disrobed and inverted on a cross. The body had been left untouched, but the head was charred as if it had momentarily been dipped into a blast furnace. To keep from vomiting, I had to look away and so I swept the light around the rest of the room. To the left and to the right were those who had fought beside him. All were pinned to the wall through their shoulders with railroad ties like one would pin butterflies.
I knelt and said prayers for all of them. To whom I prayed even now I am not sure. There certainly isn’t a god who I would worship that would let this happen to any of his children. I walked over to my king. Below his head, neatly folded, was the uniform he had once worn. Next to it were his black combat boots and then his silver forty-five. I took to a knee and swatted away the flies perched upon his face. And then, just as I was about to say one last prayer for him, in a low guttural voice he said, “Kill ‘em all.”
How long he had kept himself alive, I would say perhaps seven or eight days. How he had kept himself from death, I have no idea at all. For those first few days, the pain must have been excruciating. After that, I am assuming he just drifted in and out of consciousness. I took out the gun from my holster and flicked the safety. Men like that know the sound of their own weapon. It must have taken him great effort to move his head to the side. I knew what he meant. I picked up his gun. I fired once and finally let him travel on to another great battle. I admit I stood there and cried like a little boy who had just lost his father. I admit, except for the death of my daughter, I felt the most hopeless I ever had in my entire life.
I walked out of there a different man. For three years, I had led Sector 3 as if we were there only to survive. I led it as if I accepted our lot in life, destined from one day to the next to keep ourselves hidden from those who ruled above us. Now, I swore, we would assume the mantle as Sector 4 had. We would build up our own war machine, and we would train everyone to become soldiers. We would wreak havoc in their homes and in their streets. We would destroy as many of them as we could, even if it meant destroying all of us. Defeat, as he must have believed and I now realize, is a fait accompli if you never come to the fight.
Sunday Morning
Day 17 in the month of Muharram
We found no survivors. Sector 4 had been breached and overrun. It did for a moment cross my mind to occupy the area. And while it was better suited than our sector for living beneath the earth, I couldn’t be certain that the Caliphate hadn’t left a secret passageway for which they could return. So, in the end, I decided to entomb them for eternity, leaving them there like those who had perished on a ship that now rested on the bottom of an ocean’s floor.
Before sealing the hole up that separated us from Sector 4, I assembled a team to make one last sweep to gather up any provisions that we might have missed. Flashlights, utensils, copper wire, batteries, and anything else that could be of use. I told them to be respectful. I told them to think of every dead body as if it was someone from their family. Personal belongings were strictly prohibited. A few hours later, the team began trickling back. I did an inventory of the men. Specialist Smith still had yet to return. I was just about to go look for him when we all heard the sound of footfalls running toward us. We all took positions and drew our weapons.
“Major Adams,” the voice said to me as it cleared the darkness and came into the light. “Two. I’ve found two. Alive.”
“Say that again, Smith.”
“Two, sir. At the far end of the tunnel. An infant and her mother.”
“Jesus, Smith,” I returned. “Why didn’t you bring them with you?”
“I tried, sir. The mother refused to come with me. She told me to go get you.”
“She asked for the commander?”
“No, sir, she didn’t ask for the commander. She asked for you. She told me to go and return with Major Caleb Adams.”
“Did you search her?” I asked. Asked because I knew of no one in Sector 4 except the General. Asked because I thought it was a Caliphate trap. Asked because I thought she was strapped with explosives and waiting for me.
“No, sir, I did not.”
“And of their situation?”
“Sir?”
“Smith, are they well, or do I need to summon a nurse or doctor?”
“They have not a scratch on them, sir. Nor do they seem to be hungry or in need or water.”
“Considering what we have seen, Smith, you don’t find that a little odd?”
“I find it quite odd, sir.”
“Would you go to her and her infant if you were me, Smith?”
“No, sir, I would not.”
“But yet you didn’t shoot her.”
“She presented no threat to me, sir.”
“Take me to her,” I said, not even knowing why I had said it. “After we get to within ten meters, I’ll walk the remaining steps alone.”
“I’ll go with you the distance, sir.”
“It’s an order, Smith. Not counsel.”
We walked a good eight hundred meters. For the first half of that walk, I asked the questions I had to ask.
“When we come within ten meters, Smith, what I am to look for?”
“I’ll point to it, sir. It’ll have a white cloth panel covering its entrance.”
“Is there a hidden room within it?”
“No, sir.”
“Then just an ordinary room? Like the rest of them here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it possible we missed them on our first walk through?”
“No, sir. This was my area. We searched all the rooms. We wouldn’t have missed them.”
“So, she and the infant must have moved to it from another hiding spot?”
“It seems so, sir.”
“How were they positioned when you found them?”
He answered and I asked a few more questions. For the last four hundred meters or so, I was quiet in voice but my mind was loud. I was playing out different scenarios in my head. By the time we got near, I had settled upon two. The first was to come upon her quickly and empty one bullet into her head. The other was to not even look upon her face and roll a grenade into the room.
Specialist Smith halted my movement as if he was a crossing guard and I the child heading across the street. He pointed off to his left. I checked the clip in my weapon again. I removed the safety and I finished the dis
tance. As Specialist Smith had said, she was sitting there with her arms wrapped around her knees. The infant was beside her in a 240 transport case. The two small candles to the right of her were giving off an extraordinary amount of light considering their size. I’m not sure why I didn’t shoot her because, in my mind, I had already pulled the trigger.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am nothing. But she, she is the one who has been sent to overcome.”
She turned her head to look at the infant. I did not turn mine. I was not about to let my eyes stray from her person.
“How did you know my name?”
“I am not sure.”
“Where were you hiding before this?”
“We have been here since they entered the tunnels.”
“And yet while we checked all of the other rooms in these tunnels, yours was the only one that we missed? I find that hard to believe.”
“You think that I am one of them?”
I nodded, or I said, “I do.” I can’t remember now. My gun was still aimed at the middle of her forehead. Her arms were still wrapped around her knees. The infant was still asleep in the 240 transport case. The strangeness of it all for a moment made me think I was in a dream.
“I will need you to pay attention to my next words. They are very important to your life.” She nodded and I continued. “Your position there means there will have to be steps. Each one you are ordered to take will have to be slow and deliberate, so I do not mistake them for anything else.”
She nodded again, and I then directed each of her movements until she was standing in front of me. In the great light of the candles, her dress was more than translucent. I could see her breasts, her stomach, the black tuft of hair between her legs. I could see she wasn’t fitted with explosives or concealing any other weapon. Yet I still, for some reason, uttered my next words. As if I was destined to utter my next words.
“Take off your dress.”
She offered no objections and soon stood before me like Eve. I nodded, and she returned the dress to her body. She spoke then. And her words were terrifying. Terrifying not because of what she said. But terrifying because I was starting to believe someone had handed her a book in which the future was written.
“In three years from this day, you will once again ask me to take off my dress,” she said. “We will laugh. And it will be our first time as man and wife.”
I took her and her infant back with me. We did not speak the entire way. I put them in the care of Specialist Smith and stayed on to help the sealing up of Sector 4. All the while, understanding that in all likelihood someday one of the other sectors would be doing the same for us.
I suppose it was after coming upon the journal entries from the general’s translator that I decided to disobey my own orders about returning with personal belongings. Of course, a moment after taking them, I was already having regrets and reservations. But after coming upon another notebook of writings, this one from young lovers whose story broke me at the knees and had me weeping for hours, I no longer had any qualms about collecting any other personal accounts that I could find. After all, why should their voices be as silent as their bodies? They all lived extraordinary lives and deserved to be heard. So yes, it was I who stole their testaments and compiled them herein. Editing I have done, but liberties I swear I have taken none. This I would say of what you have read. Believe none, believe some or believe all. But this was Sector 4, in both its rise and its fall. This was Sector 4, triumphant in will and inspiration for all to continue on with the good fight.
Major Caleb Adams
US Army, Sector 3
City of Ayla