by D. J. Molles
Yes, the bridge over the Roanoke River. The one he’d been stationed at with his crew, trying to stay a step ahead of reports about a convoy of military vehicles heading in their direction. A convoy of supplies, according to the man they had captured. Nick was his name, Clyde recalled. Chalmers had tortured him until he told them everything, and to be honest it hadn’t taken long. Chalmers never took very long to get people to tell him the truth. He didn’t waste time getting down to brutality. His was instantaneous and unrelenting. Clyde had stood outside Chalmers’s little farmhouse where he had the man captive and all he’d heard were the man’s screams and not once did he hear Chalmers ask a question. Not until the man named Nick was begging him to let him talk.
He’d told them about the convoy, and how they were heading to that bridge, though he seemed to not want to say why they were going to that bridge specifically, and Chalmers didn’t appear interested enough to pursue that line of questioning. Chalmers had only wanted to know how many men, and how many guns, and how much supplies, and what kind of supplies.
Food. Water. Medicine. Fuel. Guns. Ammunition. Ordnance.
The man named Nick had never answered the question as to why that convoy full of supplies was heading toward the Roanoke River, but Chalmers’s eyes had been alight with a panicked sort of greed. He didn’t care about the reasons, even if Clyde did. Chalmers only wanted to take the convoy. They rarely had the chance to take a target so rich, even if it was more heavily guarded than they were used to.
Then Chalmers had carved words into the man’s chest and given them instructions to set up on the bridge and send him out on the road to meet his old friends. Chalmers didn’t actually want to scare them away. He wanted to goad them into a reckless fight.
And for a moment it seemed to have worked. Clyde was standing there in the woods with two of his squad mates, watching the road when they saw the Humvee come hurtling around the corner, heading for the bridge. But there had been no convoy behind it. The Humvee made a screeching U-turn, all its windows open, bristling with rifles, the turret on top chattering heavily away at them. Clyde had hit the dirt and watched the earth around him become speckled with bark and wood particles as the heavy machine gun tore up the trees over his head.
He’d found LaRouche that night as he patrolled the woods that bordered their encampment at the bridge. He’d captured the man, a sodden wreck who seemed on the verge of taking his life and being done with it, reeking of booze and madness. He’d taken his prisoner back to the main camp.
Later, he’d heard about the helicopters.
They came in fast and wiped out the bridge, and everybody in the encampment. Marine helicopters, he’d been told. Two men had been on a ranging patrol, trying to see if they could catch sight of the convoy with all the supplies again, and they had returned to Chalmers with this report, and ever since it had reached Clyde’s ears, he had unconsciously listened for the beat of rotors in the air.
Now, as he kept catching his bearded comrade glancing in the mirror, he wondered if he, too, was looking for those helicopters. Looking for dark specks in the sky to suddenly raise up over the tree line and come after them, rockets and chain guns blazing.
When LaRouche had made his warning, and Chalmers had ordered their immediate withdrawal, Clyde had taken off running, disturbed by how readily Chalmers seemed to trust LaRouche. Clyde himself wondered about the man’s loyalties and could not decipher where the man stood. Wherever it was, he was holding something back from them.
But Clyde had done as he was told and had run through the camp, shouting, “Grab what you can! We’re hitting the road in five minutes! Five minutes! Everyone get the fuck out of here!”
The call had been taken up by others and soon Clyde could hear the command, made in a hundred different voices, echoing around the camp. And when he heard that, he stopped shouting and started trying to find a vehicle to take out of the compound.
In the truck, with dawn taking the sky and storms coming, and no fucking clue where the rest of their people had gotten off to, he looked into his rearview mirror and locked eyes with the girl in the middle of the backseat, directly behind him. The girl with the green eyes that called herself Claire. She stared right back at him, her green eyes mournful in a way that he did not expect. She, of all people, he thought would have looked at him with a sort of pleasure in this moment, as though silently acknowledging that they had gotten what they deserved.
She had not said a word since he’d found her standing outside the cages with the other women. She’d begged him to take them, and he had been conflicted for a moment. Here was a truck that was just as easy to take as any other vehicle. But in this truck were only the women. And when Chalmers judged him on how he had performed, how would he view Clyde for taking the women as opposed to a truck with supplies or weapons?
The truckload of women was essentially a truckload of mouths to feed.
In the end, expediency had won out. The truck was there, the keys were there, and he was ready to go. As he had cranked the truck, the sound of the engine had called others to him. Claire had jumped into the backseat, and he had allowed that only because he didn’t have the time to shove her in the back with the others. Then the cab of the flatbed truck was suddenly filled with men clambering to get in. Filling it up with their bodies and their packs full of food and water and weapons so that there was barely room to move.
They were not the last to leave the camp, but they were still far behind the main column that had left with Chalmers. They had driven at dangerous speeds through the back roads in the last direction that Clyde had seen the main column headed, but he had yet to even see the hint of taillights ahead of him.
Are we lost? Are we by ourselves now?
He looked into the rearview mirror again and saw Claire still staring right back at him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he wanted to know. For reasons that he could not explain she gave rise to old feelings. She resurrected something in him that he thought he had killed a long time ago. And he resented it. Bitterly.
Who the fuck does she think she is?
How dare she look at me like that!
For the very briefest of moments, his thoughts flashed back and it was like they were dreams rather than memories and even the few months that had gone by since they had been his reality seemed like geological ages. He remembered her.
Haley…
The one that he did not want to remember. The one that he refused to think about as if his mind were a castle and his shame a wall and she the siege force. Every night in the darkness she tried to creep over his walls, tried to sneak in on the backs of others.
Was it her that Claire reminded him of?
I don’t wanna think about it. I don’t wanna think about.
Please just leave it alone…
He remembered her face in colors and textures and concepts, but not in its totality. He could see blood, though. So much blood. And a box cutter in his hands. And he could hear his own voice, weak and tremulous, saying he was sorry. And he felt the cold floor of a convenience store. And the hot air of a summer night. And the thing, the thing cradled in his arms…
LEAVE IT ALONE!
“Where the hell are you taking us?” the bearded man said suddenly.
Clyde snapped out of the memory like a man startled from sleepwalking. He slammed on the brakes. The ABS kicked in, the tires chirping across the roadway as everyone in the back cried out in alarm, a chorus of yelps and screams and tumbling bodies and hands slapping for purchase on the windows and seats. The van lurched to a stop in the middle of the road.
In an instant Clyde saw all of the things he had done, the good and the bad, the truly evil, the inhumane. And he saw the things that others had done in front of him. The things that Chalmers had done. And LaRouche. He saw an old man on his back, spitting blood and snot and whiskey and drowning in his own vice.
Shock and disgust become rage over time.
Clyde was shaking, but not from fe
ar or adrenaline. He shook because he could barely control himself. He stared at the man with the beard and imagined the man’s throat opening and the life spilling out of him. He saw himself doing it. With a box cutter.
“Get out,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
“What?”
I gave him a chance. He didn’t take me seriously.
He shoved the shifter into park and in one swift motion reached across the center of the van, swiped the man’s rifle away from his clutching fingers, and drove a fist into his throat. The man gagged and choked. Clyde felt his anger rise, like an animal tasting blood. The weakness of this other man only spurred him on. He shoved the man into the door and unlatched it so the door sprang open with the man’s weight against it. He tumbled out of the van onto the pavement. Clyde leveled the rifle at him and pulled the trigger.
The trigger would not depress.
“No!” the man croaked, one palm held out to stay his execution. “Please!”
Clyde realized the safety was on. He saw the man on the ground in front of him, but he was visualizing the old man with the whiskey bottle in his throat. LaRouche had shown no mercy. LaRouche had been brutal, and it seemed that he had been shown favor for it. Perhaps what goes around didn’t come around. Maybe might made right. Maybe the meek didn’t inherit shit and everything went to the strong and the malevolent.
He flicked the safety off and shot the man four times.
The voices behind him cried out in surprise, but then were deathly silent even as the last shot echoed. He reached over the seat and closed the door. The man was still alive, screaming, kicking his legs, but Clyde was through with him. He sat back in his seat. His hands were shaking when he pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. Then he pulled off and left him there. And it wasn’t until a mile down the road that he felt the faintest notion of regret.
TWENTY-ONE
LATE
JERIAH WILSON AWOKE TO Dorian’s face, staring down at him with concern scribbled all over his features. He was standing over Wilson and shaking him by the shoulder. Wilson came out of sleep like a drunkard. The previous day and night had been long and strenuous, both physically and mentally. Wilson and almost every man in his crew were delirious with exhaustion. And like a drunken man he reeled for a moment, swiping Dorian’s hand from his shoulder as his brain slowly reasserted itself.
The very next thing that he noticed was that it was light out.
Yesterday, they’d bought their time by rushing through a bridge demolition that was so quick and haphazard it made Wilson clench his sphincter as he activated the detonator. But it went off without a hitch and then they had made a sprint for the next bridge, as the sun was slinking off toward the western horizon. They made it there while it was still light, skirting the edge of a small town called Weldon and hoping to God that whatever was in there—if there was anything—would not hear them, or at least choose to leave them be. They didn’t hear a peep from the town as they worked, and it seemed that their luck would hold. They had hoped to get the bridge rigged and blown, earning themselves a two-bridge lead. But darkness had fallen after rigging only the first two I-beams, and the dark made it treacherous to continue. Wilson had not wanted to use light for fear of attracting attention from anything in the town that lay at their backs. They’d made camp a half mile from where they’d rigged the explosives. The bridge was a longer one, so even at that distance they were still sitting at the base of the bridge. It wasn’t technically necessary—“C4 is completely stable,” Lance Corporal Gilmore kept repeating—but everyone felt a little better not sleeping right on top of it.
Wilson had slept in the bed of the LMTV. He usually slept in the Humvee, but he’d been developing a crick in his back and thought it would be good to sleep with his legs stretched out and his back straight, rather than slumped in the tight seat of the Humvee. It wasn’t as warm, though, and the cold metal bed of the LMTV soaked through his clothes and blankets alike and chilled him all night long.
Now he could see the sky was clear and cobalt. Not just the gray of dawn approaching, but the brilliant blue of dawn already passed. All around him, he could hear everyone else coming out of their sleep and uttering swears as they kicked off blankets and unzipped sleeping bags, everyone in a sudden rush to be upright and moving.
Wilson came upright out of the pile of blankets he’d slept under. “What the fuck?”
Dorian looked pained. He had taken last watch. No one set alarms to wake them at dawn. It was the last watchman’s job to go around and wake the camp up to another cold dawn. But here they were waking up at least an hour past, with bright morning sunshine hitting them from the east and dark, ominous clouds encroaching from the southwest. There was only one explanation for this.
“I fell asleep,” Dorian said lamely. “But listen…”
“Fuck!” Wilson threw his blankets off and grabbed his rifle. “We’re already behind the fucking wire and then you go and pull some dumb shit like this!”
“Listen!” Dorian almost shouted.
That stopped Wilson. Dorian rarely raised his voice for any reason. Clutching his ice-cold rifle, Wilson looked at the other man with a furrowed brow. Around him, the others must have heard Dorian’s raised voice because they too had fallen quiet for a brief moment. Wilson was about to tell him to spit it out, but then realized that Dorian had nothing to say.
He had only wanted Wilson to listen.
To listen to that sound.
Like the sound of a rolling river.
“I woke up as soon as I heard it,” Dorian said, a miserable look coming over his face, his hand flying up to clutch his head. “I’m sorry, man. I fucked up. But we need to get the fuck out of here. Or… or…”
“Or what?” Wilson didn’t want to sound angry, but the words came out like the snap of a whip. He swore again and walked to the end of the LMTV’s bed, where he looked over the side at their small encampment and started searching for the sight of Gilmore’s desert camouflage.
He saw the man rolling, still bound up in his bivy sack, out from under the HEMTT tanker. He thrashed for a moment like he was caught by his own bedding and then finally extracted his legs. Then he looked right up at Wilson with a hard look in his eyes. He raised his hands, his mouth asking the same question Wilson had asked.
Wilson swung down out of the LMTV, Dorian’s screwup forgotten for the moment. Wilson ran to the Marine, cursing the whole way until he was close enough to speak without shouting. Gilmore was kicking his feet into a pair of boots glistening with hoarfrost. His rifle lay on the bivy sack next to him.
“Don’t fucking tell me,” he said. “Just don’t fucking tell me.”
“They’re coming.” Wilson looked out at the bridge. He could see slim sections of the opposite bank to either side, but he could not see any movement. “Maybe we have time…”
“We don’t have time for shit.” Gilmore came to his feet. “They’re gonna be on us before we can get anything accomplished.”
“What about the charges from last night? How much of the bridge will that blow?”
Gilmore snatched his rifle up into his thick hands and slung into it. “No idea. I’ve never half-assed a demo before. P is for Plenty—you’re supposed to give it more than you think it needs. I dunno. It might just make a hole on the side of the bridge.”
For the first moment, Wilson felt the chill of the morning—not quite as cold as the previous night—and the stiffness of sleep still clinging to his face. He rubbed it vigorously, groaning. “Fuck me. Fuck me. We’ve gotta blow what we got.”
Gilmore grimaced, also staring out at the bridge now.
“Otherwise it’s just a waste of fucking ordnance. We’re not getting the shit down. It’s already there and rigged. We might as well hook up a detonator and see how much of the bridge it will take down. Maybe we can take some of them with us.”
“You mean wait until they’re on the bridge?”
“If it’s not gonna blow the whole bridge an
yway, we might as well get something out of it,” Wilson argued.
“If you wait for them to come on the bridge, then you have to be watching it.”
“So?”
Gilmore looked around. “There’s really not a safe location to watch the bridge from.”
“You mean safe from the blast?”
“Yes,” the Marine said, a little exasperated.
Wilson shook his head. “It’s the best of a bad situation, man. I gotta take some of those fuckers out with the blast or this will be for nothing. And from where I’m standing, it might not be the textbook distance, but I should be okay.”
Gilmore squinted, calculating the distance between them and the blast. Calculating how many pounds of explosives were going to go off, and how many yards per pound they would need. He wobbled his head back and forth, but there wasn’t time for a calculator and a pencil and measuring tape. Wilson had already made the decision, and time was slipping quickly away from them.
“Okay, okay,” Gilmore finally said, nodding. “It’ll be close, but you should be okay. We just got to get the detonator wired up.”
The previous day, before turning in, they had made sure that the I-beams they had rigged with explosives had also been fully wired with det-cord. All that was necessary now was to splice in a new line of det-cord, run it back to the relatively safe location, and then hook up a detonator. It was a five-minute job at most.
Do we have five minutes? Wilson wondered, but even as he thought it, he was running for the back of the LMTV that held all of their ordnance. Gilmore was beside him, his mind made up, and Dorian was running to catch up.
Wilson clambered up into the back of the big vehicle and grabbed a roller of blue det-cord, tossing it behind him to Gilmore, who snatched it out of the air like it didn’t weigh thirty pounds. Wilson turned to Dorian as he ran up and pointed away to the rest of the convoy.
“Dorian!” he shouted. “Me and Gilmore got this!”