Violent Peace: The War With China: Aftermath of Armageddon

by David Poyer

  “You can put your headphones on now,” she told him.

  Andres settled the headset over his ears. A series of tones was sounding. The missile was initializing.

  Then a separate tone, a lower, ominous hum, almost an om.

  “Warhead confirmed live,” Zein said. “Standing by to fire. On your command.”

  The agent looked down again on the scene below, remote and at the same time intimate, and shook his head slowly. Teddy, you stupid fuck, his lips formed, though he didn’t say it aloud. You could have come home a hero. Had a nice retirement. But no, you had to be stubborn.

  If only this could have ended differently.

  He’d tried to make that happen. That it hadn’t been enough was not his fault.

  He nodded. “Do it,” he said. “Do it now.”

  * * *

  TEDDY was limping back toward the second vehicle, where his rebels were gathering around something on the pavement. Chagatai, he assumed. Off to the side his horse was groaning, lying on the hot asphalt, blood still pumping down its side. He flipped the safety off the AK and placed it against the beast’s brow. It rolled tormented eyes to stare up at him. “Sorry, horse,” he said, and fired. The labored breathing stopped.

  He was limping toward where his men were stripping the marshal of insignia, weapons, decorations, even the uniform jacket, when he felt something strange. Sensed a sudden brightness, all around.

  He caught a flash from the corner of his eye and looked about him, puzzled. A flicker.

  Then he looked up.

  The light was so bright he could barely squint into it. So hot it drew dazzling rings around itself in shifting colors of the rainbow, inside his eye.

  He stared up, entranced, wondering. Until all at once he understood.

  It was a laser.

  He knew then, and let his breath ease out. His shoulders sagged. He glanced at the closest tank, maybe fifty yards away. He wouldn’t reach it in time. Not if they were already illuminating. That came only in the last second or two before impact.

  He started to raise a finger, a final ironical salute; then changed his mind. Instead, he lifted both hands, palms up. In the gesture of submission. Of resignation.

  In that moment, a voice spoke to him from the sky once again. One of endless compassion, endless love. And endless understanding, of everything he had been and everything he had done.

  There is no chance, it told him again, as it had on a mountain in the freezing dark, under the remorseless stars of the high and empty mountains. There is no choice.

  You have always done My will.

  He understood, then, that this turn of the page was all in the Plan. Had been, from the foundation of time and the universe.

  He still didn’t understand how he could live his life by his own decisions, yet be part of some larger design. But now he accepted that it was not for him to understand, or even to question.

  All he had to do was submit.

  He spread his arms wider, palms up, welcoming whatever was to be, whatever was fated to come.

  The light burned hotter above him, ever more brightly, like a descending sun.

  Teddy Oberg, the Lingxiu al-Amriki, watched his fate descend. As his last moment ticked away he stood immobile, offering himself, enjoying the final instants of his life. Until sound and sight and thought itself ended, in an all-obliterating flash of transcendent and transforming light.

  21

  The Eastern Shore, Maryland

  HECTOR’S sitting in the lot, back at the VA center. It’s still open, even this late in the day. There are still cars here. One has to be the counselor’s. The pendejo who screwed him, and grinned while he did it.

  The gun’s on his lap. Loaded, safety off, with twelve rounds in it. And two more full mags beside him on the passenger seat, along with the bike lock. He figures that ought to be enough.

  Getting hold of one wasn’t hard. Three phone calls, a discreet meetup behind a long-abandoned, tumbledown barn, and the local, the redneck, had handed it over. He said it was his dad’s, but Hector figured it for stolen. A heavy old pistol, the bluing worn, but he’d function-checked it and fired several shots out into the cornfield before handing over thirty of the flimsy hundred-dollar bills. All that was left of his mustering-out pay.

  Which leaves him pretty much high and dry.

  But he won’t need money after today.

  He sits in the rusty Kia with the engine ticking over, ta pocketa, ta pocketa, and sees himself killing them all. Imagining it unfold, like a movie. Sweat rolls down his face. The fan works, but the air conditioner’s been busted for years. So it’s just hot air blasting over his face and legs.

  Yeah. All of them. The fucking whiteass counselor, who fucked him over. The snotty black bitch at the counter. Every bitch at every counter, and all the losers sitting in the fucking blue plastic chairs with their dicks in their hands. Shoot them fucking all. Do the world a favor.

  Except for the old lady who’d let him go ahead of her in line, if she’s there today. She was the only human being in the place. The rest of them, waste of oxygen.

  “Let’s go do this, Hector,” somebody says. He’s not sure who. Somebody else in the car. But there’s no one else with him.

  His finger flexes on the trigger. He sees the bullets hitting, the blood flying, the shocked, disbelieving faces. The screams. They’re trying to get away, scrambling under desks, clawing at the door. But he’s secured it behind him with the bike lock. Nobody gets out.

  Only he can’t see what comes after that. How the movie ends. Eating the gun, probably. Muzzle will be fucking hot, after three mags rapid-fire. Save the last round, stick the pistol in his mouth, end of story, roll the credits.

  That’d send a fucking message, all right.

  But a nagging thought keeps him from opening the broken door and stepping out into the sunlight. Yeah, he’s pissed. And righteously so. But is he really this far gone? Far enough to kill a bunch of civilians?

  Not that he hasn’t killed civilians before. He blinks.

  The hill was tangled jungle once. Now it’s blasted-down matchstick trees and exposed rock with a coat of raw, wet, harrowed soil. The orange mud glitters with steel fragments and ammo casings.

  Another wave of enemy pushes up from the ground, as if growing from the soil up through the stumps and craters of the shattered jungle. But these shadowy forms look different. Helmetless. Weaponless. Hector adjusts his Glasses.

  Old men, kids, women. They stumble forward, glancing back fearfully as someone screams at them from behind.

  Hector drags a sleeve across his face, wiping away blood and tears, sweat and powder-grime.

  The enemy’s driving Taiwanese from the villages ahead of them as shields. They emerge from the smoke holding one another’s hands, families together, helping each other over fallen trees and between shell holes.

  The Marines will have to machine-gun women, children, old men. Or be overrun.

  In his pocket, Sergeant Hector Ramos fingers a plastic rosary. Whether they hold or not, he won’t be going home.

  He remembers now how sure of that he was, back then.

  But now he’s home after all. Yet he wishes he was back there, in a combat zone, where the world at least made some fucking sense.

  He sits shaking in the old car, greasy sweat slicking his face, the musky stink of mouse piss and mold filling his nostrils. Thinks about taking another pill, then remembers: he threw them away. They didn’t work anyway. He can’t sleep. He feels guilty, angry, afraid, 24/7. Maybe finishing himself off, at least, isn’t a bad idea.

  He lays the gun aside and covers it with the towel he keeps in the car to wipe the sweat off. Sips some water from his CamelBak.

  He sits there for a while longer, watching the front door of the center. Waiting for at least the fat white counselor to come out. Hector needs to take care of him at least. Even if he doesn’t do the rest.

  A car noses around from the back and passes him. Too late, h
e realizes the guy in it is the white guy. Leaving for the day. He’s missed him. “Fuck,” he mumbles.

  He uncovers the gun, looks at it, clicks the safety off, and puts the muzzle in his mouth. Then presses it to his head. No, bad idea. Seen too many guys just blinded, wounded. You can never be sure where the bullet’ll go after it hits the skull. So it’s his mouth again. Yeah. Just like that. Between his teeth.

  A crazy sense intrudes: he’s been here before. Crouching in the dark, watching a monstrous toad … yeah.

  In the eco center in Taiwan, the night the POWs beat Lieutenant Hawkshadow nearly to death. Glass glittering in the light of his flash. Bizarre shrunken forms drift in a clear fluid: reptile embryos, snakes, insects, amphibians in a fluorescent rainbow. And a jar of two-hundred-proof alcohol, or maybe ether, the label’s in Chinese. It sears the membranes of his throat. He chokes, gasps, snorting, barely able to breathe through the fumes.

  Then he’d charged his carbine, and put the muzzle in his mouth … except … what had happened after that?

  He blinks, shaking.

  And yet here he is again. Ready to do it.

  But he can’t seem to get it up enough to actually pull the trigger.

  “¡No me jodas!” he mutters. What the fuck is wrong with him?

  The faces. Some are smiling at him. Others, mouths stretched wide, seem to be shouting. Breuer. Titcomb. Conlin. Schultz. Vincent. Orietta and Truss, Troy Whipkey, and Lieutenant Hern. Bleckford, who killed himself before they ever reached a war zone. Sergeant Clay. Patterson, Karamete, Ffoulk, dead on Taiwan.

  Suddenly Hector goes still.

  For the first time, he can make out what they’re calling.

  “We miss you, Hec.”

  “Come on. This way. We got point.”

  “Shit, okay. It don’t matter,” he mutters at last, and shoves the pistol into his pocket. Covers the spare mags with the towel. He’ll only need the one anyhow.

  He gets out, leaving the car unlocked, and heads out into the field beside the center. Time to walk away from Hector Ramos. Leave the bastard behind, and not look back.

  It’s a big empty field of some kind, that’s all. Maybe part of a farm once, but deserted and overgrown now. The weeds stretch back to the woods, which begin a couple hundred meters from the road. A narrow worn path, not much more than a deer trail, leads toward the pines and cedars. He follows it, pistol dragging down his pocket, thumping against his thigh.

  Back there. In the woods, in the shade. Someplace cool. There’ll be ticks, of course, but he won’t be around long enough to worry about them.

  The wind rises, cooling his sweat-soaked scalp. It ruffles the grass, which has grown pretty high. It rustles gently around him, the seed-heavy heads nodding. This patch hasn’t been mowed in a long time. There are little blooms, too, scattered amid the grass and small bushes. Wildflowers.

  He walks more and more slowly. Looking down at them.

  They’re just weeds. Some purple, some blue, some white. A few, orangish yellow. Amarillo y oro.

  But they’re … he doesn’t know the words. They’re just … there.

  When the wind blows, they nod and sway. The constant, gentle motion … he can’t look away.

  Somehow, they seem to sympathize with him. As if they know.

  He has no idea what’s happening. But when he looks at the flowers, he doesn’t see the faces anymore.

  He turns off the path and stops. Now he’s standing among a patch of tall yellow flowers. They come up to his waist, so the nodding, swaying blossoms softly brush his outstretched fingers.

  What’s going on here? He stares down openmouthed at them. What the fuck, over?

  But the comforting feeling grows. As if these plants know what’s happened to him. As if they care.

  Like they’re drowning out the ghost voices. Saying, You’re not so bad, wey.

  He slides the gun out of his pocket and cocks it. Holds it to his face again, then his chest.

  Only now he feels even less like doing it. And the flowers don’t want him to. They’re swaying in the wind, like they’re dancing for him. Smiling up at him. It doesn’t feel like he’s so alone. Or maybe that there’s more to all this than he’s thought about so far.

  It’s hard to put into words.

  And even weirder, he feels … happy. Deep down, like it was buried there. Like a Marine buried in his foxhole by a shell. But when you dig him out, he looks up and grins, and he’s okay.

  Finally Hector whispers, “Oh, fuck this.”

  He stands in the field for quite a while, holding the gun but not pointing it anymore. At last he decocks it. He thinks about throwing it away, but figures that wouldn’t be a good idea. Kids might play out here, in the woods, in this vacant lot.

  Back at the center, he hauls the creaking rusted door of the Kia shut again with a bang. Stuffs the gun into the glove box. Puts the car in gear, and heads back home.

  The used tire he bought at M&W starts to thump. It’s out of round or something. Maybe coming apart. And yet the weird joy he felt in the field persists. It’s like he learned something out there. Or relearned it, something he’d lost sight of.

  “Fuck,” Hector whispers, but he’s not really angry at the car anymore.

  * * *

  HE stops at Royal Farms for a twelve-pack, but remembers when he’s at the counter that he’s almost broke. Just enough for a quart bottle. He drinks half sitting in the car, gulping it down, looking straight ahead. Trying to get a handle on what’s just happened.

  The tire holds long enough to get home, so he’s relieved.

  But as he nears the house a car he doesn’t recognize is hulking in his mother’s driveway. He tenses. It’s a prewar Escalade, a huge black Cadillac, with blacked-out windows that can’t be legal.

  Three men leaning against it straighten as he pulls in.

  It’s too late to turn around, but Hector steers away as he pulls in to put as much distance and time between them as he can. He flips open the glove compartment again.

  One of the men waves. Hector recognizes him.

  Mahmou’, his old enemy from the Line.

  The arrogant asshole who’d bullied him, back when he’d been young and scared.

  Hector grins, remembering the last time they met. It had ended with the former bully on his knees, bleeding from nose and mouth, begging not to be hit again. On the way back from the bar Hector’d tossed Mahmou’s car keys and wallet into a flooded ditch along the road.

  He sobers. Tucks the pistol into the back of his trousers. Slams the door behind him.

  Then he recognizes the second man. And that’s an even bigger surprise.

  “Hec-tor, my man. Come on over here.” The heavyset Latino lifts a hand. His good hand, the one he didn’t lose in an ice-crushing machine, years before at Farmer Seth’s. Older than Hector remembers, his long gray hair slicked back. Today, instead of factory coveralls and a red bandanna, he wears a black suit, despite the heat, and a bright yellow sports shirt without a tie. Gold shines at his wrist, at his ears, around his neck. He looks … prosperous.

  “José,” Hector says. “How you doing, boss?”

  “Come here, mi hijo. Mi hermano. I am so glad you have come back safe.” His former foreman opens his arms wide.

  Hector allows himself to be embraced. Allows the pistol to be gently taken from him and handed to Mahmou’. Who smiles, and sets it carefully on the seat of the Escalade.

  José catches Hector’s glance. He barks a laugh. “There is bad blood? I understand. You don’ been friends. But I need all my friends to be good. Now the two of you, make pax.” José shoves Hector and Mahmou’ together.

  The Arab holds out his hand. “Bygones be bygones. I don’ hold no grudges, I deserved it for hittin’ on your girl fren’. I did.”

  Mahmou’ introduces the third man, a huge black whose bare arms bulge with muscle. They’re scarred with the same darkened lacework that the others have, including Hector. From the spurs and beaks of the
chickens. “Lebo here, he come on the Line after you left.”

  “We all carnal,” José says simply. Meaning, of the same blood. “Children of the Line.” He waves his hand, and Hector notes the black butt of a handgun at his belt when his jacket lifts. “You been down to the plant, Hector. I heard. You ain’t thinking to go back?”

  “Thinking about it,” Hector says. Guarded, like.

  “Army ain’t got nothing for you?”

  “Marines,” Mahmou’ corrects his boss. Getting back a glance, but no more.

  José grins again and pats Hector’s arm. “Marines. You done your duty, bro’. Been to la chingada. Now you home, but they don’ do nothing for you, wey? I heard. Yeah, I hear everything goes on around the Shore.”

  “What do you need, Boss?” Hector asks, but he’s pretty sure he knows. Or at least has an idea.

  José hitches up his pants, a writhing gesture, since he has only the single hand. Hector remembers that habit. The foreman drove them hard in the carmine light, where the Line pulsed and whirred and droned.

  It looks like these days José and his crew are into something that pays better.

  “Let’s get in the car,” his old supervisor suggests. “It’s too pinche hot out here, buena onda? You okay sitting with us, talking?”

  “Sure.” Hector’s neck’s prickling, but it seems like the least unsafe thing to do right now. And really he’s not concerned. He’s been in worse situations. Lebo pats him down again, not too closely, but hesitates when he feels the phone. He holds out a hand, and after a second Hector hands the cell to him. As he goes to set it carefully on the front stoop, Hector climbs in after José, into the front, while the other two take the back.

  José asks about his mother, and about his brothers, and Mirielle. It doesn’t sound like he’s gathering intelligence, but Hector catches the meaning. It’s a veiled threat. He answers carefully. These people remember him at seventeen, but he feels like he’s lived a hundred years since then. He waits for what they’re really here about.

  And pretty soon José slides around to it. “You know, mi hijo, we never made much money working for Seth. It was a negocio, you know? A paycheck. But some people I used to know got in touch. Now we in a different line of business.”