Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  “What?” she asked.

  Casey Schmidt held the cordless phone up. “Phone. For you.”

  Teenagers clustered around the kitchen table still playing Monopoly. The game had progressed quickly. Motels sprang up everywhere around the board.

  “Gimme a sec.” Jenny finished pouring and put the saucepan in the sink on top of the mountain of dirty dishes that never seemed to go away despite her best efforts. She and the dishwasher were barely able to keep up with the demand for clean plates, bowls, and silverware. She tried to clean pots and pans as she went.

  Megan and the other counselors were talking about getting school going again to provide a larger area for the teens and also to provide a stable environment. At least the cafeterias at the facility there were equipped to handle the feeding workload.

  The microwave timer dinged for attention. One of the guys got up from the table and pushed by Jenny. When he opened the door, the smell of buttered popcorn filled the room in a fresh warm wave.

  Jenny sealed the thermos and wiped her hands on a towel. She made her way toward Casey and the phone.

  “Who is it?” Jenny asked. Her first thought was that it was Megan calling to let her know not to come to the hospital because Leslie Hollister had died. Jenny didn’t know what she was going to say if that was the case.

  “A guy,” Casey answered. She was thirteen and gangly with a serious overbite. Having her blonde hair pulled up in pigtails made her look even younger.

  “Did you get a name?”

  Casey shook her head. “He didn’t give it. Just said he wanted to talk to you.” She eyed Jenny speculatively. “Do you have a boyfriend?” “No,” Jenny said crisply.

  During the last few days she’d been inundated with personal questions. That came from her acceptance as an authority figure, Megan had said. Kids wanted to know adults so they could better understand them and the perimeters they were allowed, and then how far they could push those perimeters.

  Jenny figured it was a lot like a prisoner finding out how far he could push the jailer. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” She took the phone before Casey could ask why not, which she was certain would be the next question out of the younger girl’s mouth. Holding the handset to her ear, Jenny said, “Hello.”

  “Jenny? Is that you, girlie?”

  As always when she talked with this man on the other end of the phone connection, Jenny’s stomach twisted with relief and dread. She felt relieved because she knew he was still there. Not vanished. Not dead. But she felt dread because of all the bad memories of him. As soon as she felt that, guilt came charging up from the rear to the head of the line.

  She worked to keep her voice calm and level. “It’s me.”

  He waited a second, and she could imagine him taking a puff from his cigarette. “Do you know who this is?” He’d been drinking. She knew at once because when he drank, he liked to play games that he thought were cute.

  “Of course I know who this is, Dad.” Jenny hated his games.

  Sometimes he did it to prove how much smarter he was than she, and sometimes he did it to be cruel.

  “Thought maybe you might have forgot. It’s been days since I seen you.”

  “I called every day, Dad. Three and four times a day after the phones here started working again.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. Weird how CallNotes work. I mean, you can leave a message even when a guy’s phone isn’t working.

  ’Course, he don’t get it till the phone’s up and working again.”

  Jenny turned and made her way to the utility room. The noise from the Monopoly game and the crowd of movie watchers made having a conversation almost impossible. Not wanting anyone to see her talk to her father because he always had such an emotional effect on her, and especially when she was tired, she opened the utilityroom door and stepped out onto the small stone patio Megan had told her Goose and his friend Bill had laid one summer.

  Plants lined the patio area. A plastic tarp covered the gas grill. Dishes that people had abandoned littered the patio table and chairs. Farther back, a tire swing hung from a thick branch, a sandbox held a collection of Tonka toys, and a small fort flew a black pirate flag that had faded in the sun. Jenny had seen a picture of Chris and Goose inside the fort. Both of them were dressed as pirates, carrying plastic swords and wearing eye patches.

  “Are you all right?” Jenny asked.

  “Do you care?”

  Guilt slammed into Jenny like a fist. Even though she knew leaving Fort Benning was next to impossible and would have caused stress between her and Megan—in addition to leaving Megan overwhelmed by the number of teens she presently had staying at her house—Jenny had felt glad to have a reason not to leave.

  “Of course I care.”

  “Seems to me if you cared, you’d have come home sometime over these last few days.” Her father’s accusation was flat and hard.

  “I couldn’t come home. Have you watched the news?”

  “You know I try to stay away from that. Buncha depressing people with sad lives is what it is.”

  Like yours is any better, Jenny couldn’t help thinking before she could stop herself. Then she immediately felt bad. He was her father and she was supposed to love him. I do love him, she told herself fiercely. And that was the truth. However, the truth was that she also didn’t like her father much most days. Loving someone and liking him were totally different.

  She said, “I know you don’t make a habit of watching the news, but with everything that has gone on, I thought maybe you might have watched.”

  “I didn’t.” He paused, and this time she could hear him take a drag on the cigarette.

  “A lot of things have gone on. Things that you should have known about.”

  “Oh, I know about them,” her father said. “Had a guy come to my door a day, maybe two days, after you left. A church guy. Started telling me that the world had up and ended and we were all going to hell.

  Now ain’t that somethin’? Man shows up at your door and tells you you’re going to hell.”

  Goose bumps prickled across the back of Jenny’s neck. “Did you do anything to that man?” Her father had attacked door-to-door salesmen and bill collectors who had shown up at their home before, and had spent time in jail and in anger-management classes as a result.

  “Nope,” her father declared. “You’d have been proud of me, girlie. I didn’t lay a finger on him. ’Course, it helped that he was a lot younger and faster than me.” He cackled with maniacal glee. “But Dog, now, he gave that feller a run for his money before he reached his car. Yes, sir, ol’ Dog surely did.”

  Jenny walked to the edge of the patio and sat cross-legged on the stones. The greasy smell of the gas grill tickled her nose. Even miles away from her father, she felt helpless and trapped.

  “Where are you at, girlie?” he asked in a soft and hoarse voice. “You had me scared plumb out of my wits. Truly you did. Thought you was up and gone like all them other folks. Somebody told me only the good folks disappeared. Figured surely you’d be one of ’em.”

  Jenny closed her eyes and wished that she’d been taken with all the others. From everything she was seeing, the good people, the ones who had truly believed in God, were the ones who had vanished.

  Was it that I didn’t believe in You enough, God? Or was it that I’m just not good enough? According to a lot of people, Jackson McGrath wasn’t worth the gunpowder it would take to blow him up. Many of those people had assigned the same kind of worth to his daughter. She’d heard stuff like that from the time she was just a girl.

  “So, girlie,” her father said, “when are you coming home?”

  Home. The thought summoned up images of the battered and paint-faded apartment she and her father were currently renting. They didn’t have enough money or credit between them to actually own a house, and that was a sad piece of business. But her father had ruined his credit even before Jenny was born, and he’d ruined hers last year within months of her turni
ng eighteen. Collection departments still sometimes called her at home and at work if they could find out where she was working. Kettle O’ Fish, the restaurant where she’d worked with Joey was new, so the collectors hadn’t caught up with her yet.

  “As soon as I can,” Jenny said.

  “Yeah?” His tone became doubtful and aggressive. “And when would that be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m at Fort Benning. The military police have the post locked down.”

  Her father was quiet for a moment. She heard his lighter flick and knew that he’d lit another cigarette. “Do you need me to come get you out of there, girlie?”

  “No. I’ll—”

  “They can’t just keep you locked up there. Ain’t const-constitutional.” He slurred his words slightly.

  Her father always managed to speak properly until he became falling-down drunk. She figured he’d been drinking while she was gone, but hoped that he hadn’t. Pressing her ear closer to the phone, she heard country-and-western music in the background. She knew the sound; she’d heard the music plenty of times before because her father liked to frequent those places where it played at all hours on a worn-out jukebox. “Where are you?”

  “Home. I’m to home is all.”

  “No you’re not.” Some of the frustration and anger that swept over Jenny washed away the guilt that had weighed on her since she’d recognized her father’s voice.

  “Girlie, are you calling me a liar?”

  “If the shoe fits.” She expected him to blow up at her and hang up. But since she’d grown up and started paying part of the bills at fifteen, she’d stood up to him. Her behavior had made him angry, but her independence had also made him fearful. That was why he’d started his latest pattern of manipulations.

  Instead of getting angry or threatening her, he waited a bit, just long enough, then he laughed like they’d just shared a good joke. “Never could fool you, could I?”

  Not often, Jenny silently agreed. Only those few times I made the mistake of thinking I could trust you. Memories of those times still hurt.

  “I’m at this little place around the corner from the house,” her father said. “Can you believe it? All these people up and disappeared and ain’t nobody quite knows why. Big businesses all over the city are closed down right now, but this little place just kicks the doors open and welcomes in the weary and the worried. It’s funny when the most dependable place in the world is a joint.”

  The places her father frequented were always around the corner from the house. Even when they were halfway across Columbus.

  “Which little place?” Jenny asked. She knew dozens of them: bars, saloons, taverns, and pubs. Over the years, she’d pulled her father out of too many of them. Even if he couldn’t drive, even if he couldn’t walk, he always remembered how to get hold of her at home or work or school.

  “Butch’s or something like that. A hole-in-the-wall is what it is. Got no class at all. Change the roll of toilet paper in the john and you’ve upped the décor. Wouldn’t bring a dog here. But they got a pool table, a jukebox, and a lady bartender that’s full of sass. My kind of gal, only she don’t know it yet.”

  And if the lady bartender was looking her father’s way, Jenny knew he’d give her a big wink. Just to keep her on her toes, according to him.

  “You shouldn’t be there,” Jenny said, but she knew her protest was already a lost cause. Her father always found a reason for patronizing those kinds of places.

  “The end of the world is upon us, girlie. Where else am I gonna be?”

  “You might try church.” Jenny didn’t know where that suggestion had come from. She’d tried to get her father to church before but he wouldn’t go. He’d never accepted Christ’s mercy or been baptized.

  “If I was to walk into a church,” her father said, “the building would more’n likely fall down around my ears.” That set off another gleeful cackle.

  He’s had a skinful, Jenny thought morosely. “Dad, listen to me. You should go home. Just put the beer away and go home.”

  He took a deep breath. “Well, now, I would. I’d do exactly that. Except there ain’t nothin’ and nobody there. Get mighty tired of looking at four walls. I got to tell you that.”

  “It’s not safe to be out at night.” Jenny had paid attention to the news all evening. Violence still filled the streets. The police and the National Guard advised everyone to stay home and had imposed a curfew. But the news stations reported that large groups hunted through the streets.

  “Just as safe being here as it is at home. And the company’s looking mighty fine. Ain’t you, darlin’?”

  A woman’s voice sounded indistinct in the distance against the background of country-and-western music.

  “Dad, please. For me.”

  Her father was quiet for a moment. “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m scared to.”

  Jenny remained silent, praying that he wouldn’t start in the way she knew he was going to.

  “You know why I’m scared, girlie?” her father asked in a tight, hoarse voice.

  “No.” She had no choice about answering. This was her part of the cycle her father had thrust them into. Her hands shook, and she felt the hot warmth of tears on her cheeks. Just like always, she felt so helpless. She hated that feeling more than anything.

  “I’m scared,” her father said slowly, “because I almost did it this time. When I thought you was gone.”

  Jenny shook as she cried. She wiped tears from her face with the back of her free hand.

  “I couldn’t bear it, girlie, if I knew you were gone. It would cut the heart right out of me.”

  Jenny knew her father meant what he said. Some days she felt that the only reason he was still alive in spite of his pain and his weakness and his alcoholism, with the misery of guilt that echoed those character flaws, was because she was there. Most of the bills got paid, mostly on time, and meals were put on the table because of what she could provide. She knew he couldn’t take care of himself.

  “I almost did it,” her father repeated. “Had that pistol settled in nice and tight up under my jaw. I was just four pounds of pressure away from saying sayonara.”

  “Dad.” Jenny’s voice came out as an agonized croak.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” her father said. “I’d never have felt a thing. Here in this world one minute and on to the next faster than a New York minute.”

  Jenny pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her free arm around her legs. She pulled tight, hugging herself.

  “You know the only thing that kept me from doing it?” her father asked.

  Pain seized Jenny’s lungs so tightly that she couldn’t answer.

  “I couldn’t do it, girlie, because somehow I knew you was still here.” He cackled again. “Ain’t that something? Somehow, I knew you was still here and it was just a matter of time till I found you. I went home today and the phone was working. Found your messages on the answering service, and here I am talking to you. That’s almost enough to make a man get religion.”

  Shaking and scared, Jenny wiped her face. “Dad, I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Please, please don’t—”

  “Why, girlie, they ain’t nothing going to happen to me. You just get on back home and everything’s going to be right as rain.”

  “I can’t leave here yet,” Jenny said. “The army isn’t letting anyone in or out of the post tonight.” She snuffled.

  Her father was silent for a moment. “That’s fine then, girlie. I’ll just hook up with you tomorrow. I’ll give you a call and drive on out that way to pick you up. Then you can tell me how you ended up on an army base in the middle of all this confusion.”

  “All right.”

  “And this here bartender, why she’s taken a shine to your old man.I can tell. I know when women are interested. Maybe we’ll both have stories to tell tomorrow.”

  “Just take care of yourself,” Jenny said.
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  “You got a deal. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He paused. “I mean, unless you don’t want to see your old dad.”

  “I do,” Jenny said, and the answer was half right. She wanted to see him, but she didn’t want to see him, too. Her heart ached, but she didn’t trust him. She felt bad about that. He was her father, and he had taken care of her the best he could after her mom had run out on them. But his best wasn’t very good. Still, despite everything, she loved him. As usual when she talked to her dad, she felt as if she were all ripped up inside. “I do want to see you,” she managed to say. A big part of her even meant it.

  “Then you be ready tomorrow, girlie, because I’ll be out there tomorrow bright and early to pick you up.”

  “All right, Dad,” Jenny whispered. “I’ll be here.”

  Her father said good-bye and hung up.

  For a while, Jenny sat on the stones of the Ganders’ patio. She hugged her knees to herself and stared up at the star-filled sky. Not all of the power was back in the city yet, and the base ran black at night. Most of the light pollution was gone and the stars shone brightly.

  She cried for a time, till that pain was once more used up and she felt empty. She could cry it away for a time, but it always returned because the hurt never healed. She didn’t want to lose her father, and she didn’t want to hate him. But she was scared that she was going to do both.

  16

  United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post

  Sanliurfa, Turkey

  Local Time 0603 Hours

  “I don’t have anything to say to you, Captain Remington.”

  Standing in front of the CIA agent seated in the chair, Remington looked down at the man, reminding the guy who had the upper hand. A large part of command, of the whole issue of control, was about body language. He was standing, free to walk around, and the agent didn’t dare move from the chair. Even his superior officer had gotten the boot.

  “You do,” Remington accused.

  “My superior—”

  “Is off nursing a sore stomach,” Remington interrupted. “If he’d had any real weight to throw in this operation, I’d have already felt it.”