by Bob Brown
The ID card was passed to Kenny, who laughed uproariously when he read, ‘Sex: Male’. “You some kinda faggot?” he mocked. Geoff’s laughter joined his own.
Max started to recoil. “What the—”
Quick as a flash, Meena caught his wrist and held tight. She spoke to the whole group, though her eyes didn’t leave Max’s.
“I didn’t want any trouble,” she said. “I just wanted to get home.”
Meena raised one carefully shaped eyebrow when Max struggled against her surprisingly strong hold. With a flick of her wrist, she knocked his hand away and wrapped her long, slender fingers around his throat.
“I’ve been on my feet for the last ten hours. Do you want to know why? Because I have to work sixty hours a week, just to keep up with my rent and buy a few groceries. Why? Because a bunch of jackass, white men decided that a Muslim’s work is somehow less valuable than other Americans’.”
She glared at Max’s friends. “Would any of you accept a job that paid half minimum wage, just to have a job?”
They floundered. “No,” Meena said with a shake of her head, “I didn’t think so.”
Max grunted. She relaxed her grip enough to let him speak. “Get yer fucking hands off me, you fag—”
She tightened her grip. Max’s eyes bulged as he struggled to breathe.
“Wrong answer,” she said. Releasing his hand, Meena brought hers up. Her long sleeves muffled the snickt of a dagger being released. Silver flashed in the glare of the truck’s headlights.
“What the hell, man?”
“Shit. Shit.”
Meena slid the blade up, between the fourth and fifth ribs, then held tight as Max thrashed wildly against her. The seconds it took for his companions to process what had happened were seconds too long. She pulled the dagger free and released the man’s body. Before it hit the ground, she let the blade fly.
Her aim was true; Geoff’s jaw dropped as his fingers groped uselessly for the handle protruding from his chest. He slowly sank to his knees. Blood gurgled up and out of his open mouth.
Kenny looked from one fallen man to the next, his eyes wide. Curiosity made Meena pause. She wondered whether he would run or beg for his life. Not that it mattered. Both options led down the same path. Surprising her, though, Kenny did neither. He fumbled with the cell phone he still held. Forgotten, her ID card fell to the ground at his feet.
Uh oh, Meena thought. She hadn’t considered that option—a dangerous oversight on her part. Meena needed to be a long way away before anyone found the bodies. Though she had no fear of the Agency, people like her did not do well in the criminal justice system.
Launching herself at Kenny, she tackled him in a way that would have made her JV football coach proud. Kenny’s head smacked against the pavement with a sickening crunch. Meena grabbed the would-be assailant by the hair and smashed his head down twice more, for good measure. Glassy eyes stared up at her, frozen forever in a look of fear.
Meena snatched her ID card and rose. Ignoring the destruction around her, she crossed to where the long strand of her hijab lay on the ground. She’d bent to retrieve it when she heard, “Jesus Christ. What have you done?” from behind.
TJ.
She’d completely forgotten about the fourth man. Stupid mistake. Potentially a costly one.
TJ stood beside the pickup’s open door. Meena couldn’t make out his features; against the headlights, he was just a dark shadow. A very dangerous dark shadow, if he made it back into the truck before Meena could reach him. While she weighed her options, she tried to distract TJ with, “You did this. You and your friends.”
Meena judged the distance between them and the verdict wasn’t good. She was fast, but TJ was close enough to the idling vehicle that he’d be inside and away before she could get to him. And, from there . . .
The night erupted in a shower of squealing tires and automatic gunfire. Instinct made Meena hit the ground and bring her arms up to cover her head. Heart racing, she didn’t dare look up until she heard, “You okay, Meena?”
A second vehicle stood across the road. The first truck’s lights lit up a nondescript, dark flatbed. It wasn’t so different from the one her assailants had arrived in, but Meena recognized it instantly as one that belonged to the local chapter of the D.N.A.R. Relief made her laugh out loud.
Daughters of the New American Revolution, a subversive movement that had appropriated its name from a conservative organization with roots in a time when words like “American”, “revolution”, and even “daughters” had very different meanings. Meena had been fighting alongside the Lexington D.A.N.R. since her father’s death.
She was glad to see them. But . . .
“How did you know?” she asked as Carlota, who had crossed the border in her mother’s backpack when she was less than a year old, helped Meena to her feet.
“We got a ping from someone calling the Agency,” called a young woman from the truck’s passenger seat. Rasha, a Syrian refugee, leaned out the window to add, “Since we knew this is the route you’d take home, we figured—”
“You were in deep shit!” Annabelle finished, laughing, as she vaulted from the truck’s bed to join Meena and Carlota. She was a slight girl, younger than the rest, with a bright smile and haunted blue eyes.
Annabelle had barely escaped a certain death sentence when her own parents, insisting it was their “Christian duty”, turned her in after Annabelle returned, bleeding and aching, from an illegal abortion. She threw her arms around Meena. The two had been close as sisters since Meena had gutted a sheriff and two deputies to secure the girl’s freedom.
“Wanna ride?” Annabelle asked when she pulled away.
Meena couldn’t help but smile. “Please! My feet are killing me.”
“I told you not to wear those godawful shoes!”
“Pick your battles,” Meena said as they took up an old argument over whether or not employers should be allowed to force women to wear high heels in the workplace.
They climbed into the back of the truck. The small window that separated the cab from the bed slid open and Rasha thrust her hand through. “Wanna do the honors?” she asked.
Her grin grew. “Do I?” Meena took the grenades her friend offered and pulled the pins as the truck shifted into gear. As they drove away, TJ, Max, their friends, truck, and any sign of an attack disappeared in a burst of fire and twisted metal.
Meena was thoughtful as they made their way through the dark city. The morning newspapers would call it a terrorist attack, of course. In a way, Meena mused, they were right. There would be a backlash, she knew, just like always. And, like always, Meena would weather it because she had to. Because it was the battle she had chosen.
END
THE HISTORY BOOK
Voss Foster
The sun shone bright, for once not tucked behind the endlessly gray clouds and smog. Bright and hot. Sweat beaded on the back of Jane’s neck, soaked into the collar of her T-shirt, and dripped down her spine like a crawling insect. She’d taken advantage of the sunbreak, found a yard sale just down the block.
Now, the slender old woman smiled at her as she walked through the gate. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” Jane offered her a cordial smile, then carried on through the folding tables set up in the old woman’s lawn. Brown grass crunched underfoot where the lawn wasn’t just dust.
Mismatched glassware for twenty-five cents apiece. A rack of clothes that must have been forty years out of style. Jane passed them all by and went straight for the little square table in the corner, loaded down with books. Spines taped together, permanent squares of dust where price stickers left their adhesive behind, covers replaced with cardstock and labeled with tidy letters. Jane sorted through them, looking for anything that caught her interest. Those old books were always so interesting.
She stopped at a history book. It was in decent shape, compared to everything else. Corners worn and fraying, colors faded, but otherwise fu
lly intact. She flipped it open to the front page. A card taped to the inside had names in impossibly tight cursive, so small she couldn’t make them out, and dates stamped next to them. All from the early two-thousands. Approaching a hundred years old. Incredible. She’d heard stories about this kind of stuff at yard sales. Apparently it was her turn.
She grabbed that along with a couple of old category romances—pirates—and carried her finds back to the front, to the old woman. “This’ll do for me. Three books, that’s three dollars, right?”
The old woman didn’t smile. “Could I see that big one you have there?”
“Sure, of course.” Jane handed over the textbook and dug into her purse. “I only have a five. Do you have change?”
“I told him to throw this stupid thing out.” The woman fixated on the book, her lips pursed. “This really shouldn’t have been out here for sale.”
“If it’s a problem, I don’t have to buy it.”
The old woman blinked, flicked her head up. “No. No, it’s fine.” A strained smile crossed her lips. “Just let me mark something out on here. My son of all people.” She chuckled as she picked up the thick black marker that sat on her table. “Really, it’s bad enough he didn’t give it back to the school when the year was over, but to write such nasty things in here. Teenagers.” She made several long strokes across the title page, blacking out some sort of writing, then handed it over. Her smile was still sterile, joyless.
“Are you sure it’s all right?”
“Perfectly fine.” She eyed the two romances in Jane’s arms. “Let’s call those fifty cents each. So two dollars.”
Jane handed over the five and got her change, as well as an old cardboard shipping box to carry it all in. As she walked away, her mind stayed on the oddness of it all. Maybe the woman was senile. Maybe it had just been too long since Jane had gotten out and dealt with other people. Maybe that really was normal.
She was just climbing the stairs to her apartment when a finger of cloud dragged across the sun, obscuring it and darkening the world around her.
~o0o~
Jane sprawled out on her ratty sofa and popped the history book open. She tried in vain to read through the old woman’s blackout, or to make out any of the names on the checkout card. She had guesses, but that was about it. Faded ink and an oddly messy scrawl turned them into nothing but ghosts of what once was.
She flipped to the table of contents, scanned across it. Familiar topics like the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, but no mention of The Great War that she could find.
But her eyes immediately dropped onto three letters: WWI. A few entries later was WWII. She flipped to the page for WWI and scanned across it, picking up pieces of information here and there. It sounded like The Great War. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Sarajevo, trench warfare. But throughout the chapter, it was only ever called World War One.
Back to the table of contents, then onto WWII. She knew it could only mean one thing, but she wanted to see. When mentions of World War Two greeted her, Jane closed the book. It wasn’t even worth the dollar she’d paid for it. Fake history. Crap.
~o0o~
Days passed and the history book sat on Jane’s coffee table. She worked two jobs, and only got one full day off a week. The clouds and smog were particularly thick, and dust flowed across the ground in waves. The world sat in a constant state of dim.
There was really only one thing to do with the book, if she could: sell it. It was still a “vintage artifact,” and maybe the errors would make it worth more. How many could there really be floating around out there? Maybe it was a clever work of fiction.
Jane clacked out “world war 2 history book” into the search bar and waited for the results. A dozen different books on The Great War, some articles theorizing about what could have thrown them into another situation like that, but nothing else. No results. She added and removed search terms. Textbook. Type. Misprint. Vintage.
Nothing ever came up.
Her heart beat hard. Did she have something that was actually . . . valuable? Was that a possibility? She forced her head down out of the clouds, but couldn’t completely squash that glimmer of hope. Maybe the book was rare enough the internet didn’t have anything on it. Unlikely . . . but maybe.
She erased her search and looked for a local antique shop. There was one up town, and she did need to swing by the grocery store a block away, anyway . . .
~o0o~
The man who ran the antique shop was large and round and jovial. And very, very lonely. Jane was the only customer when the bell signaled her entry. The owner raised a pudgy hand high in the air and waved as though they were old friends. “Welcome, welcome! I’m Calvin!”
“Jane.” She walked to the counter, looking at the artifacts filling the shelves. Jewelry boxes, silver mirrors that gleamed under the fluorescent lights, wooden sculptures full of detail, depicting figures she didn’t even begin to recognize. She also looked at the price tags and made sure to stay well clear of touching anything she hadn’t brought in with her.
When she got to the counter, Calvin leaned forward. He had no hair left, and brownish-red spots speckled his hands, but he grinned wide, showing eerily white dentures. “What can I do for you, young miss?”
“Well, I don’t know.” She slipped the book free from her tote bag and set it on the counter. “Do you deal in books?”
“Sweetie, I don’t have room to be picky. If I think I can move it, I’ll sell it.” He pulled the book closer. “An old, beaten up US history book doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I’m going to move.”
“I just thought you might be able to take a look at it. Or know someone who could. It’s . . . well, I think it’s a misprint. A pretty big one.”
“Why would you say that?”
She held out her hand and he gave her the book again. She flipped to the section about World War Two, then handed it back. “This whole chapter is about a war that never happened. I mean, that has to be pretty weird for a textbook, right?”
He stayed silent for a few moments before shaking his head. “Go flip that sign over to closed, would you sweetie? This needs some special attention.”
“What’s going on?”
“I think you have something special, is all, and I’m the only one working here. Can’t watch for thieves or anything and deal with such unique merchandise as you brought in.” He sighed. “Plus you’re the first customer I’ve seen all day.”
“Right.” It didn’t make any sense to her, but she wasn’t going to question. If he thought she had something worthwhile, flipping a stupid sign was a small price to pay. She walked to the door and turned it to “CLOSED,” then back. In spite of all her best efforts, she couldn’t keep the slight smile off her face.
It fell when she went back, saw Calvin dousing the book with a glass of water.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m saving you a shit ton of trouble, sweetie.”
She grabbed his arm and tried to pull it down, but couldn’t budge him in the least. “That—that was mine, damn it!”
Calvin sighed. “How old are you, huh?”
“What?” She couldn’t even comprehend . . . how could he do that? Her book. The longer she stood there, the more sure she was that it had to be worth something. But now she’d never know.’
“How old are you? Twenty-two?”
“Twenty . . . twenty-five.” The pages had turned translucent, the words all but unreadable, now.
“Then you don’t know what you’re getting into with this thing, and you really don’t know what kind of favor I did for you just now.”
“By destroying this book? If you didn’t want it—”
“Sweetie, you and I are going to talk. I’ll fill you in, but you don’t want anything to do with this book.” He squelched the book to the side, closing it, and dumped the rest of the water on it. Out of spite or something. Then he lifted up the little trapdoor in the counter and waved her through. “In
the back.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Listen good: you want to know about the book? You want to know about your misprint? Come with me.”
“And if I don’t care?”
He chuckled, smiling again. “Even if you don’t, it’s too late for you.” His face darkened, smile faltering, and his voice sounded suddenly so tired, worn and rough at the edges. “You saw the book, sweetie.”
Something about that voice dug into her. Jane didn’t know him at all, but that was out of character as far as she’d seen. In that moment, he wasn’t so jovial. He was . . . frightening, somehow. So she followed. Her eyes lingered on the book, dripping wet on the counter.
She followed him into the back room. Calvin pulled out a chair and popped it in front of her. “You drink?”
“Get to it.”
“Fine.” He pulled a bottle over from the corner and plonked it on the counter next to him, then sat in his own chair. “That book doesn’t have any mistakes in it.”
“There’s a fake war.” What was he playing at? “Did you even look at it?”
“World War Two is not a fake war, sweetie. It was real as all hell.”
“Right.” He was delusional. “I’m going to go. Forget about the book.”
“You think you’re safe to just leave?” He shook his head. “I’m protected by logistics, sweetie. They can’t go around and off everyone who remembers the war. Well, maybe they can now, but they couldn’t when they decided it was going off the books.”
A conspiracy theorist. Just what she needed. “If you keep me here, I’ll scream.”
He sighed and lifted the bottle to his lips, drained a measure of amber liquid out. “Let me guess: you went online first thing to see what the book was about? And you got nothing from it, so you brought it to me?”
“Umm . . . yeah.” She wouldn’t let herself believe that was profound, that it meant anything. What else would she have done?
“Government controls the internet. Used to think it was some crazy thing that only happened in other countries.” He snorted. “Half the web’s filtered out for us here in the land of the free.” He sighed and took another drink. “They can make your life hell. Probably won’t come kill you, but they’re onto you. They know that you must know something, even if you don’t believe it. And they don’t like to take chances.”