And Thy Mother

by John Bromley

  “So, let’s try this again,” Sam turned to face Mike. “I know he’s Jim Parker, but what about you, son? Got a real name?”

  “Mike Wilkins,” was the reply, as Mike extended his own hand.

  Sam looked at the proffered hand, but did not take it. “Of the ‘Chicago Wilkinses’?”

  Mike, feeling he was being snubbed and not knowing why, answered defiantly, “Yes, but more importantly, Captain in the North American Army.” He offered his hand in greeting again.

  Sam looked toward Jim, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “He may be a rich boy, but he’s also a damn good officer—and my best friend.” This mollified Sam somewhat, and he gave Mike’s hand a half-hearted shake.

  While they attempted to get some breakfast together, they peppered Sam with questions. He also had a few of his own.

  “So, what happened with the truck?” Mike asked, deciding to start off with an easy question. “We thought some of our ‘friends’ hit a fuel tank and set it off.”

  “Nah, that was me,” Sam answered. “I’m real sorry if I threw a scare into you, Jim, by doing that, but around here, you can’t be too careful. I figured, if somebody was watching—and they usually are—they probably saw me drop you boys off yesterday, so they’d be after you.”

  “Which they were,” Mike interrupted, seeing an opportunity to prove to Sam that he and Jim were very much partners in this venture. “But, we were able to take care of a bunch of them without any trouble. Even had one choose to ‘buy the farm’ instead of talking. There may have been others, but they never bothered us.”

  “There were,” Sam said, but did not elaborate. Returning to the original question, he continued, “So, I decided I had to ‘die’, and you had to see it. That way, if you got caught, and they asked about me, my death would be the ‘truth’, as you knew it. So I drove down the road a little, to where it bends to the right. You boys couldn’t see the driver’s door from that angle. Then I jumped out and set off the charge.”

  “Which, I assume, you planted yourself,” Mike prodded.

  “I did, when I picked you up. Remember, when you got in, I got out to ‘check the brakes’? Actually, I was placing that charge on the tank. That, and one other thing.”

  “Good thing we didn’t hit a bump and set it off accidentally,” Jim said.

  “Not much chance of that,” Sam answered. “I know these roads too well.”

  “Do you now? So, what really brings you to these parts, Sam? It sure ain’t hauling dry goods.”

  “I… well, you could say I work here.”

  “You just said, you were afraid that we might reveal your whereabouts if we knew you were alive,” Jim asked. “Who do you work for that could put you in so much danger?”

  “These… goons, as you call them—that you’ve been picking off for the last few days—are from the President’s Secret Service. They’re part of the unit charged with protecting the Wall, keeping people away from it and… what’s behind it.”

  “You know what’s behind the Wall?” Mike asked in amazement.

  When Sam didn’t answer immediately, Jim did for him. “Of course he does, Mike, because he’s the guy who’s been sending us those coordinates all week. Isn’t that right, Sam… or whatever your real name is?”

  “Guilty as charged, boys. That’s the other thing I did while ‘checking the brakes’—fired off the final set of coordinates, which Jim picked up on his phone a few seconds later. And just for the record, my real name is Sam Swenson, although not many people know that. So, don’t be surprised if, somewhere along the line, you hear me being called something else.”

  “Then, ‘just for the record’,” Jim continued, “that was you, inside the Wall last night?”

  “Yep.”

  “And the gun in the back? What was up with that?”

  “It was dark, and I was ninety-nine percent certain it was you coming in, but like I said, around here, one percent will get you killed. These ‘goons’ may seem incompetent to you, but they’ve kept the women behind this Wall for seven hundred years.”

  “And your ‘job’ up here is… what?”

  “I’m self-employed, or self-appointed, if you will. You might call me the resident ‘goon harasser’. I know I can’t take care of them all, because more keep coming. I just want certain people to know that they can’t get away with whatever they want, whenever they want.”

  “You seem to do your ‘job’ very well,” Mike noted. “So, why did you suddenly decide you needed our help?”

  “I never said I ‘needed’ your help,” Sam replied, glaring at Mike.

  “If we’re not here to help you,” Jim jumped in before tempers started to flare, “then why are we here? Last night in the tunnel, you said you were ‘asked’ to bring us here.”

  “I was asked to bring you here, Jim,” Sam corrected, still glaring at Mike. “He just came along for the ride.”

  “All right,” Mike said, putting his food down and standing up to face Sam, “now, normally, I’m pretty laid-back and easygoing, but this guy’s attitude is getting on my nerves. You got a ‘beef’ with me, Swenson?”

  “Yeah, I do, Rich Boy.”

  “Oh, is that it—because I got money, suddenly I’m a lousy SOB?”

  “All right—drop it!” Jim said, coming between them.

  Sam pressed on. “No, it ain’t because you have money—it’s how you came to have so much money. How much you got anyway, Wilkins?”

  “I don’t know,” Mike answered defiantly, “nor do I care.”

  “You know where it comes from, though.”

  “I said, cut the shit!” Jim shouted, grabbing each man by a shoulder and flinging them apart. He pointed his finger at Mike. “Just remember, Captain, that you’re still under my command until I tell you different, and I’m ordering you to stand down.”

  Mike continued to glare at Sam but responded slowly, “Yes, sir.”

  “And you,” Jim said, turning to Sam, “I can’t order you to do anything, but you better remember about that ‘one percent’, and that we’re all on the same side here.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Sam muttered, still staring at Mike.

  Jim ignored the comment. “Before this is over, you’ll be glad to have him here. So, what’s it gonna be? If I stay, he stays; if he goes, so do I. That how it is—take it or leave it.”

  “All right,” Sam said after a few tense seconds, “he can stay.”

  “Glad to see that that’s settled,” Jim said, nodding toward the street, “but we’ll have to save the rest for later. We got company.”

  The three men turned and saw that a military Humvee had stopped on the side of the road. Jim and Mike started to draw their pistols until they saw who their visitor was. The man walked up to them, came to attention facing Jim and rendered a crisp salute, which Jim returned.

  “Captain Barry Keller, reporting as ordered, Colonel. I hereby relinquish command of the Fourth Battalion to you, sir.”

  Once the formalities were out of the way, Jim shook hands with the newcomer, saying, “Glad you could make it, Buck. You remember Mike Wilkins, I’m sure.” Buck did, and they greeted each other like the old friends that they were.

  Jim started to make the other introduction, but Sam beat him to it.

  “Sam Westin,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Captain Keller—call me Buck,” Keller replied, shaking Sam’s hand, but giving Jim a questioning glance.

  “He’s with us,” Jim said, emphasizing the plural pronoun. “What’s the situation back at camp?”

  “General Chambers ordered us to return to base a few days ago,” Buck explained, “and then I got your text message. ‘Chambers not his own man’, and so on. You made it sound like you were in trouble and needed our help.”

  “Very true,” Jim agreed.

  “I dispensed with protocol, and took a vote among the men,” Buck continued. “We decided that you know the general better than we do, and, well… you’re on
e of us, as far as we’re concerned. If you have doubts about him, that he’s not acting in our best interest, that’s good enough for us. The vote wasn’t unanimous, but damn close. And when I said I was going to find you, about fifteen of the guys offered to come with me.”

  “Told you I wanted a little ‘backup’, didn’t I?” Jim asked Mike. “And, here they are.”

  “Don’t mean to rush you, Colonel, but I think it best if we get you and Captain Wilkins back to our camp as soon as possible. This place doesn't seem very safe,” Buck said as he noticed a dead body not far from Mike's sleeping bag. “We'll stow your gear in my truck and you can ride back with me.”

  As they were packing up and putting the gear into the Humvee, Buck said to the civilian, “Sam Westin… yeah, I know that name. Heard General Chambers mention it once or twice.” Surprised glances passed between Jim and Mike at this bit of news. “How'd you hook up with these officers, Sam?”

  “He's helping us with our... situation,” Jim answered.

  “I guess I have to ask—what kind of ‘situation’ requires you to be operating so close to… that?” Buck asked. Clearly, he was a firm believer in all the sensational stories and superstitions he had ever heard regarding the Wall, and was obviously agitated at being less than a hundred feet away from it.

  “Simply put,” Jim said, “we found out that there are prisoners behind that Wall, and we feel they don't belong there.”

  “Prisoners?” Buck asked, surprised. Then his rational mind reasserted itself. “I never heard of such a thing, but if there are, they must have done something really shitty to be put there.”

  “They didn't,” Sam said definitively.

  “You sure about this?” Buck was still addressing his questions to Jim. “You know they're there?”

  “I do,” Sam answered again.

  “You've actually seen these prisoners?” Buck finally asked Sam directly.

  “I have.”

  “If they did nothing wrong, why are they there?”

  “They... well, mostly, they were born different from us,” Jim said, trying to find a way to ease into the story.

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “How did they get there?”

  “That’s gonna take a while to explain.”

  As they continued to load the vehicle, Jim tried to summarize what had taken them a week to learn into something he could tell in a few minutes.

  “First of all, that Wall hasn't always been there. It wasn't built by Native Americans, as we've been taught—it was built by the government. See, about seven hundred years ago…”

  Even in its condensed form, it still caused the loading of Jim and Mike's gear to take much longer than it should have. This was because Buck wasn't shouldering his fair share of the burden. He kept stopping dead in his tracks, overwhelmed by surprise and shock, even though Jim only scratched the surface of the ‘history’ which he and Mike had heard.

  “That's just… crazy,” was the best that Buck could muster at the end. “And, this was all done on the orders of President Kenneth Thompson the First?” The three other men nodded as he pressed on in pure disbelief. “He had the Wall built and all these—what’d you call them… women?—put in there?” More nodding.

  “Doesn't say much for the man, does it?” Buck was mentally seeing one of his icons crashing down around his feet.

  “There's the understatement of the century,” Jim replied. After a few moments, he continued, “Those are just the high points, but we’ll get into the rest later. There’s a lot we ourselves don’t know yet, and I think the only way to learn the rest of it is to go in there—actually enter what the women call the ‘Ghetto’.”

  “You want to go in there?” Buck was still fighting off his fright. “How?”

  “Yeah—how are we gonna do that?” Mike was wondering.

  “Good question,” Jim answered, turning to Sam. “You said you had no more information on computer memory, but could ‘maybe help us’ get more. You say you’ve seen the women, so it follows that you’ve been in there. How do we get in?”

  “There are two ways in,” Sam replied, “an ‘official’ way, and a ‘nobody-knows-but-me’ way. Neither of them is easy.”

  “If I had expected ‘easy’, I wouldn’t have called these guys,” Jim said, meaning Buck and, by extension, the rest of the Fourth Battalion. “So, what’s the ‘official’ route?”

  “Right there,” Sam answered, pointing to the mysterious unmarked building across the street. “You do know what that is, don’t you, Wilkins?”

  Remembering the order Jim had given him earlier, Mike said with forced calm, “I’m going to assume you are flattering me for my intelligence, rather than trying to bait me with another bullshit innuendo about my ‘family honor’, but no, Sam, I have no idea what that building is. Even though it’s not a hotel, they do seem to get a lot of visitors. So, why don’t you enlighten us all, and tell us what that place is?”

  Sam sensed that Mike’s confession of ignorance was the truth, and Mike could tell that Sam was revising his opinion of him. Whatever conclusion Sam came to, he decided to keep it to himself for the moment.

  “As I said, that’s the way in. That’s why the coordinates I’ve been feeding you led to this very spot. The people you boys have been watching all night are now behind the Wall, in the Ghetto. If you wanna take that route, you’re probably gonna need that battalion you called.”

  “Which is why we should make tracks out of here and go meet them,” Buck said, feeling they had delayed too long already.

  The last few items were being stowed in the truck when another verbal exchange took place. Buck overheard it, and even though he didn’t understand it, he could tell that it meant a great deal to Jim. It was strangely exhilarating to know that there was more to this story, and that, maybe, a major surprise or two awaited them all down the road—even Colonel Parker.

  “You never told me, Sam, who it was that asked you to bring me here,” had been Jim’s question. The answer had brought Parker to a standstill.

  “I was asked to bring you here… by your mother.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The ride back to the Fourth Battalion's base was made in virtual silence. Sam had declined to go with them, saying that he had his own wheels, parked out of sight just down the road.

  “I thought that was your rig that blew up right over there,” Mike had said, to which Sam replied in hushed tones, “Nah—stole that one, back east in that last town.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Don't know—don’t care. But, my rig has a few supplies which might prove… helpful to you boys.”

  The main reason for the quiet conditions in the car was that Jim had very little to say. Sam's last comment had caught him completely off-guard.

  “My mother,” Jim said for the third time, as though repeating it would help him believe it. “My mother wants to meet me. My mother knows who I am.”

  Repetition didn't help; he still didn't believe it.

  Buck leaned over from the driver's seat and whispered to Mike, “Don't mean to sound ignorant, but... what's he talking about?”

  “Told you there's still a lot for you to learn,” Mike said. “A lot for all of us, actually. Jim just discovered that one of the prisoners behind the Wall—one of the women—is related to him. He's talking about his other parent.” This didn't help Buck at all, so Mike continued. “See, we've learned that everybody has two parents. One is your father, who raises you, and the other is one of the women behind the Wall—your mother. That is the person who gave birth to you, who caused you to have life in the first place.”

  “So… every baby that's born,” Buck said slowly, trying hard to comprehend this completely foreign notion, “has a mother, who gives birth to the baby. How's that work?”

  “Not exactly sure,” Mike admitted, “but if we can get into this Ghetto, maybe one of them will tell us.”

  “And the father? Where
's he for all this?”

  “He… comes into the picture later,” Mike answered, not willing to get into the whole “fertilizing-the-egg” discussion at this point. “As near as we can tell, when a baby is born, it's either a boy or a girl—that’s the term for a young female. Baby girls are kept within the Ghetto, and when they are old enough, they too begin giving birth to babies. Boys, like we were, are taken out of there shortly after we're born and given to a man, who becomes the father.”

  “So, we—all of us—were ‘born'… in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That means… I have a mother, too?”

  “If you don't now, you certainly did at one time.”

  “Why wouldn't I have one now?”

  “The women didn't go into great detail, but they did say that this ‘giving birth’ process is very taxing on a woman's body. Like us, playing football—as you get older, you lose speed and agility, and eventually you can't do it at all anymore. Same for them—after a certain age, a woman just can't do this ‘birth’ thing anymore.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “They're put to death.”

  “What?? Why?”

  “Because our illustrious ancestral Leader, Kenneth Thompson, decreed that a woman's one and only function is to give birth to babies, and when she is too old to do that, she has no function at all, and must be… terminated.”

  Buck, who was very independent-minded and valued his own freedom of choice very highly, found this answer extremely unsatisfying. He persevered nonetheless, trying to apply his ‘round-peg’ concept of freedom to this ‘square-hole’ scenario.

  “But, what if a woman wants to do other things besides ‘giving birth’? Maybe she wants to… I don't know, grow grapes and start a winery or, maybe, research the virus that Jim said started this whole thing.”

  “She's not allowed to,” Mike answered unhappily.

  “And what if… what if she wants to keep her baby boy?” Buck asked, already knowing the answer, but his voice made it sound to Mike like he knew the idea would be tantamount to treason.