“Won’t do you any good.”
“Why?” Sarah spoke up.
“They’ve got a blockade ten miles yonder, near the outskirts of Riverside. Don’t go there. Those damn soldiers are drugged out, strung tighter than a string on a Texas hambone. They ain’t allowing nobody beyond the barricades, minefields, and barbed-wire fences. They shoot first and then rob you.”
“Just like home,” Lenny displayed a warm smile.
“Welcome to the New World Order,” Henry McNally said. “We’ve all been quarantined. Hearsay is they shoot anyone trying to escape. Fancy that.”
“You’re stranded here, too?” Tommy said.
“Yeah. But not so bad. Though I’m starting to run out of supplies.” The farmer sighed. “My pappy could survive without toilet paper, but I’m having a harder time. I only wish I knew what was going on. My neighbor John said he heard that terrorists had set off biological weapons. Poor John. I found his body dismembered by one of his disgruntled hired hands. Somebody has got to hunt those dirty dogs down and slit their throats.”
“I think we should be moving along,” I stated emphatically.
“Suit yourself.”
I was not going to hang around to be shot, carved into pieces, or gored by a bull. It was time to put some distance between the danger zone and ourselves. Before I could explain this to my group, I heard booming in the distance. At first, I thought it came from a thunderstorm, something that can occur in the summer months. Yet, this was more like a powerful, sharp crack, without much echoing.
“The booming gets closer every day,” the farmer said with a glint in his eye. “Exciting as all get out. A shell almost hit my barn yesterday.”
“Shelling of your farm?” I began scratching my arms again.
“No way!” Tommy’s jaw almost became unhinged. “You don’t mean…”
“Yup, sure do. I just love listening to artillery hammer the ground. Why it puts me right to sleep.”
Lenny and Sarah stood motionless. Rant shoved her gun back into her side holster.
“You should see ‘em tanks, bigger than some two-story farmhouses. Stink up the air like a herd of farting cows. Saw them on the horizon; a whole goddamn army, with armored trucks and artillery. I reckon they’ll overrun my fields one of these days. But I’ll be damned before I run like a scared jackrabbit. I’ll stop them. I’ll pop them with my pea shooter.”
Tommy swallowed. “There’s a war going on?”
“Hell, where have you boys been? Yeah, it’s a war and they fight like blue dog devils.”
“Okay,” I said, nervous. I secretly motioned for the others to grab any gear they managed to rescue from the burning aircraft. Only Tommy had extracted something of value: his brown knapsack. Otherwise, we had almost nothing to carry. We soon took off on a dirt road we thought might lead us to Riverside.
“Hey,” the farmer yelled, lowering his shotgun. “If you all come back this way, bring me some TP. I just hate ‘em dried corn husks. Just too rough on the backside.”
Ignoring the old fool, I turned and joined my friends on the narrow dirt road that likely meandered to the North. It was time to make tracks and discover if the military had actually closed the road to traffic. I had the feeling that there was some truth to the farmer’s fanciful yarns.
“And don’t forget,” the farmer shouted with glee. “Shoot your wife if she overcooks your eggs. That will teach her. She’ll never do that again.”
Lenny bumped into me, looking back at the gun-toting farmer. “Boy, what crock-pot!”
“You mean crackpot,” I said.
“Isn’t that what I said? A cracked-crock!” Lenny laughed uproariously.
I was in no mood to correct Lenny’s butchery of the English language.
Chapter 22
As the sun peeked over the horizon, we woke up and prepared for another exhilarating day of uncertainty. Our makeshift beds were uncomfortable––smelly and oily cardboard and old newspapers, right next to a burnt-out school bus––but the view from our sleeping quarters was of a peaceful countryside valley. As for breakfast, it was a delightful reprieve from normal everyday life. We feasted on four sticks of Slim Jims from Tommy’s backpack and a few outdated vanilla pudding cups courtesy of Lenny’s pocket.
As the temperature increased, we gathered in the middle of a forsaken two-lane highway that Tommy swore would take us into Riverside and then to Los Angeles. The roadway was empty, completely deserted of any traffic, which made us cautious. We figured that someone had to be patrolling the road. Whoever that might be, we did not want to interrupt their daily routine.
Rant was the first to react to the unrelenting sunlight and heat. Contending that the sun was too bright, she pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses from her pocket. She slipped them on and shone with the bad girl glamor. I had to keep reminding myself she was still the same old obstinate Rant. Nothing special about that.
After four hours of knee-pounding hiking, we came upon a large mangled heap of black and green metal blocking the road. From a distance, it resembled a fleet of trucks jumbled together to create a massive roadblock. Crawling along an irrigation ditch, we inched closer and discovered instead a graveyard of burned-out military vehicles that covered the highway and swept into the adjacent countryside.
“Wow!” Tommy scrambled out of the ditch and rushed up to a pile of twisted wreckage, leaped up, and crawled to the top of a bullet-riddled tank. “Wow, man, it’s an M1 Abrams tank. Fricking cool!”
I followed Tommy and soon reached the top of the tank and scanned the immense battlefield. We could easily identify dozens of blackened hulks of destroyed equipment—mobile ballistic missile launchers, rocket artillery systems and armored personnel carriers. It appeared that someone had dropped incendiary bombs. Most of the tires on the transport trucks had melted, leaving the steel rims exposed.
“Look over there,” Tommy instructed. He pointed to the assorted wreckage and identified particular pieces of military equipment. “At least a dozen M104 full-tracked armored Howitzers over there.” He swung around and found himself blinking rapidly in amazement. “And over there are some M270 Launchers. Wow, this is a big killing field. So wicked!”
I just nodded. I had no interest in cataloging pulverized war equipment. Just not my hobby.
“It doesn’t get much better than this,” Tommy burst with joy. “We have a front-row seat. Look at it all.”
That was not how I would have put it. It might be a sweet moment of excitement for Tommy, but I smelled the sour stench of sulfur. It quickly insulted my nostrils and restricted my breathing. The smelly gas was not the only strange thing that I had noticed. An eerie and faintly visible purplish haze hung over the low-lying area. It crept along the ground as if it had a purpose, slithering like a wide column of marching soldier ants. Must be my imagination.
A moment later, I was overcome by another odd sensation. I felt antsy and restless. A feeling of agitation swept over me. I began to question myself. Why was I here? Why was I leading a ragtag band of misfits? I deserved better. It all seemed unfair. I should head out on my own and leave everyone behind. I slapped my head. It had to be the effects of the purple gas.
I sat there thinking and thinking that I was losing my mind. I turned away and watched Rant. She had found something more productive to do. She wandered through piles of dead corpses as if she held exclusive rights to their belongings. Along the way, she bent over and scooped up a dozen or more canteens, taking only the heavy ones laden with water. I wondered if she was on a humanitarian mission or was it more nefarious?
Rant walked back to the others, entering a flat patch of weeds surrounded by twisted, burned hulks of damaged tanks. After dropping the canteens on the ground, she sat and made sure each container was completely full. When her task was completed, she handed a canteen to everyone, except Big Al.
“What about me?” Big Al bellyached.
“You don’t deserve anything,” Rant huffed.
His
hands now firmly tied with shoelaces. Big Al sat in the shade complaining that he was being tortured. He kept insisting that we were obligated to treat him with respect, citing the Geneva War Conventions for humane treatment war prisoners. He shook his tied hands and stared at Rant. “I forbid you to treat me like this. It’s inhumane!”
Rant was beside herself. She showed no intention of catering to any of his asinine whims. Shaking her head, Rant finally turned to Lenny and instructed him to dispense some discipline. “Talk to our captive. Do something useful for once. Give him a tongue-lashing.”
Lenny’s face turned red, his eyes flaming with rage. “I’m no schoolmarm!”
“Just do it!”
Lenny stood up and faced Rant, “No, I will not, you bitch!”
“What did you say?”
“No way, bitch! How many ways you want me say it. Bitch. Bitchy bitch!”
Rant pulled out her handgun, stretched her arm out, and planted the barrel firmly against Lenny’s forehead.
“Okay,” Lenny raised his hands. “I talk nice now.”
“Fine,” Rant said. “Now give Big Al a drink when he needs it. If he needs to be shot, give him that, too.”
Big Al gulped.
“Oh, you give me gun!?” Lenny became excited. “I can shoot bastard. Nooo problem.”
Big Al started to struggle and desperately tried to loosen the shoelaces around his hands. In frustration, he shrieked, “You cannot do that. You can’t trust a Russkie.”
“So, I can trust you instead?” Rant asked, scrunching up her nose, and lowered her gun.
“You can’t just kill me,” Big Al scoffed in a stranded voice. He quickly fell down on his knees, sandwiching his bound hands together as if to pray. Eyeing Rant with a look of disdain, Big Al whined a sad ballad of remorse: “Pretty please. I will be good.” He smiled with a creepy glint in his eyes.
“We can do what we want. We should have lined you up against a wall long ago.” Rant swung her gun towards Big Al’s frightened face. “What say you?”
Sarah sprang up and marched over to Rant. She stomped her foot to get her sister’s attention. When Rant refused to turn around, Sarah elbowed her in the side. “You’re not going to shoot him. Not now, not ever. If anyone takes him down, it will be me.”
Rant took a small step away from Big Al, still keeping her face and gun glued on her intended target. From the corner of her eye, she watched Sarah pull out her handgun. “I make the rules here, Sis! This is none of your business. I get the pleasure to put this rat out of his misery.”
“Not this time,” Sarah snarled. In a flash, the two of them faced each other with narrowing eyes. They pointed their weapons at each other, behaving like two gunslingers circling the other, anxious to see who would draw first. They circled each other for a solid thirty seconds.
I had to do something. I jumped down from the tank, rushed into the small firing circle, and waved my arms frantically. I had to distract them. I had to stop this madness. Everybody had turned against each other, ready to tear flesh like a horde of mad dogs. Even I had started to fall prey to this insanity. The thought of joining Sarah and Rant in a game of Russian roulette had entered my mind. I started to feel around in my pocket for Jack’s small pistol. What a rush! We could have a threesome and find out who had the fastest draw.
I shook my head. I had to fight the desire to slaughter others with self-righteous zeal. I was reacting and not leading. I must have breathed in the purple mist. That toxic chemical was robbing us of our ability to think clearly. I could almost sense a malignant presence that was propelling me towards the darkness of hate and alienation. The trouble was, I found the thought of beating up someone to a gooey pulp both arousing and disturbing. My moods kept swinging between the extremes of brutality and gentleness. We had to flee this place before we found ourselves re-enacting a cheesy horror film with real deadly weapons.
I finally grabbed Sarah and tried to shake some sense into her. I thought I was being gentle, but she mistook my concerns for aggression. Now she aimed her gun at me. I quickly snatched her weapon from her hand. That set off a no- mercy, knockdown, drag-out wrestling match. We landed on the ground and rolled around in the dirt until I was on top of her, holding down her hands.
“Fight it,” I said.
“I am,” Sarah screamed. “Get off me, you fucking bastard.”
“No, I mean the sickness from the hate gas.”
“What hate gas?” Sarah blared out.
“The purple gas in the tank’s deep tracks.”
“You’re lying.”
“Just look.”
“No. I should have killed you the day I married you.”
“That’s so sweet of you. I knew that there was always a romantic side to you.”
Sarah stopped struggling. A thin smile erupted across her face. She turned on her side to get a better look at the shallow trench. She peered at the track ditches behind one of the tanks. “You mean that purplish gas?”
I nodded
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
I simply shrugged. I had no idea if that was the cause of our infighting and bickering. In the past, it only took a tiny spark to light Sarah’s fuse. But at least the scuffle had stopped, and I now had full control of her gun. I stood, lifted up Sarah, and gave her a big hug. Her mood instantly changed.
“You’re right,” Sarah said. “We have to get out now.”
I looked around. Only Tommy was missing. I took a cursory glance from the top of one tank and saw no living soul. We now had to search for him. As we walked through the battlefield, we noticed a flock of blackbirds pecking at a half-burned corpse. They were particularly interested in the dead soldier’s eye. Lenny ran ahead and shoed them away. According to Lenny, the birds were being disrespectful towards the soldiers. It was an eerier sight. The whole field was littered with unburied dead soldiers.
We finally found Tommy near the edge of a deep, round crater. Tommy sat on the crater’s lip, dangling his feet, looking rather downcast.
I sat next to him. “So, what are you doing?”
Tommy turned to me. “Nothing much.”
“We have things to do. Places to go.”
“But I want to stay here and find out when the battle took place.”
I was not an expert, but the pungent smell of burned flesh and the stench of decaying flesh meant that it might have been recent.
“Must have been days,” Tommy said. “Nothing is hot or burning.”
“We need to go,” I tried to get Tommy out of his funk.
“Not sure what to do.”
Before I could add my two-cents worth, Lenny sat down next to me.
“Boy,” Lenny started to brag again. “This reminds me of….”
We all surrounded Lenny and stared at him with a fixed gaze. I had enough of his quaint Russian fairytales. He stopped talking and retreated into silence.
“Something moving to the northeast,” Rant poked me and pointed. “We’re not alone.”
In the far distance, we could see a massive column of tanks advancing down a hillside, gun turrets blazing. We heard the rumble of cannons and the crashing of shells. The sounds of war had resumed. The sky suddenly exploded with rocket fire and aerial dogfights with blazing machine gunfire. Within moments, flaming shards of burning warplanes hailed down like hot-red rivets. We hid under the wreckage of a half-track until we heard the approach of vibrating heavy equipment.
“Let’s go!” I ordered. We had to get away from the area, especially the blacktop roads. The military loved hanging around roads during times of war. They would engulf roadways with troop carriers, tanks, and an uncontrollable urge to shoot something. We ran toward a hilly area and hid inside of a narrow canyon carpeted with clusters of oak trees. There was no reason to make contact with either warring side. For all I knew, both sides might have suffered a dusting of the dangerous purple chemicals.
* * * * *
We followed the canyon for a mile or two
and discovered a wide treeless valley that had miraculously escaped the fighting. As we walked down through the bushy hillside, I noticed something strange about the valley floor. A thin ground fog obstructed our view. It had enveloped the bottom portion of the valley. The color was white, not purple. Not until we had reached the valley floor did we see half-a-dozen craters dotting the landscape. “I’ve seen something like this before,” I turned to Tommy and Rant. “Not good.”
“What did you find?” Rant peered at me.
“Nothing much.” I did not want to mention the bloody blob I had seen in several locales. It would only spook everyone more and force me to relive those awful moments.
“Cool crater!” Tommy ran ahead and slid down its embankment. “There’s something big in the middle.”
“Don’t get too close!” I yelled out to him. “It might be dangerous.” That was an understatement. The object protruding from the sand at the center of the round crater, appeared whitish-brown, and gave me a bad feeling. Incredibly, it had an eerie resemblance to patches of eggs in James Cameron’s Aliens.
“Don’t touch it, Tommy!” I shouted again. Of course, he ignored me and began fingering it like a child with a brand-new toy truck.
“It’s really smooth, but scorched,” Tommy said as he tried pushing the egg-shaped object. Naturally, it was too heavy to tumble to one side.
“Will you please stay away from it!”
“It’s just a rock,” Tommy responded. “Not to worry.”
I was beyond worry. “Don’t you have any sense?”
Tommy grinned, pulled out a dollar, and waved it in the air. “No, just a dollar.”
Rant pulled off her sunglasses and faced me. “He’s really something, isn’t he?”
“He’s just reliving his childhood,” I said.
“Do you think he’ll ever pass puberty?” Rant said callously.
“No, he keeps flunking that class.”
“It feels really hot,” Tommy shouted. He knelt closer and ran the palm of his hand over the shiny surface. “It feels like there’s something moving inside.”
We Are Them Page 25