The Ending is Everything

by Aaron M. Carpenter

  “No, not all of them anyway, some of them. Some were taken because of what they did in the camp.”

  “Five hundred out of one hundred thousand isn’t so bad.”

  “Oh, we have a whole list of others, but nowhere to put them. So, we just have the eye in the sky and the surveillance team to track them. We have about one hundred empty cells, strictly for those that act out in camp and after that, I don’t know what we can do. Especially, since the camp is just going to get worse.”

  “Why’s that?” I said. I knew why, but I wanted to verify my thinking.

  “You were in the camp right?” he asked, and I nodded. “For two weeks? You had three meals a day and two showers?” I nodded in confirmation. “Well, that is about to change. The water supply was temporary, so the showers will soon be over. The food is a donation from the Red Cross and other organizations. And that can’t last forever. There is already talk about cutting that back to twice a day.”

  “It was never meant to be permanent,” I said, more to myself than him.

  “Damn right, but, unfortunately, no one has any idea what to do. At least that’s the impression I get from the Lieutenant.” He paused and looked off into the distance, as the sun set and before I was to walk the prison, with my squad. “Just get them ready and yourself as well.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Where are you from Sergeant?” Private Gooding asked while we were walking between a row of prison cells. The cells looked more like large dog crates, with one cot, and a small porta-potty, the kind you would find at a camping store like Bass Pro Shop, nothing more than a bucket with a toilet seat on top, and a tarp for a roof. A six by ten space, fit for a dog and I suppose, now for human beings. I tried to not think about the injustice of this. There was no judge, or jury for these poor souls. I understood the logic behind removing the bad apples from the crate before they destroyed the batch, but this seemed, well, un-American.

  “I’m from Rancho Cucamonga,” I said.

  “Where’s that?” The young soldier, Private Gooding said, with the air of a scholar in desert camo.

  “Right over those mountains,” I said and pointed. The one thing I stressed to these young men in the past week, was, while at the camp or here at the make-shift prison, you were not soldiers. You were guardians. Lethal force was only necessary for extreme circumstances. Use the uniform to intimidate. Never use your weapon. This is all antithetical to a soldier, but it’s the only thing that I could add, that was unique and different, from what they learned in the military and read in the verbose procedure document.

  “That’s right, I heard you were in the camp.”

  “Yep. I was.”

  “What was that like?” he asked.

  “Like being in a refugee camp, only with sitcoms on TV,” I said. Gooding, it seemed, could not decipher if I was joking or not.

  “For real,” he said, and I just laughed and continued my walk. “There were TV’s?”

  “Yes, they installed them the day-”

  “Blake!” a voice said to my left. A voice I recognized and hoped I had misheard. I turned to the cell where the voice came from and in the early evening light, helped by bulbs overhead, I saw a blonde-haired man lying on the cot. He stood up, and I realized, in horror, that it was, in fact, a voice I knew. The man who was one of my closest friends. A man who should not be here. Zero.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  12/5/2024 - 12/10/2024

  No. This wasn’t happening. He was supposed to be long gone. They all were. If he was here, did that mean Kaitlyn? Jenna? Drew? Alicia? The Children? Ethan? That can’t be. He promised me.

  “Blake?” Zero asked, standing at the door to his cage.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What am I doing here? What the fuck are you doing here?” Zero said. Then gave me a look up and down. “You know, besides being in the fucking Army.”

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “No, I mean. Why are you here?”

  “I went looking for you. We thought they took you.”

  “What?” I said. This made no sense.

  “You disappeared. We all started asking around.” All of them? “I eventually got fed up with all their bullshit and got into it with some jock asshole at the main entrance,” Zero said. “I got a few punches in, then the next thing I know, there were.” He stopped and smiled. “Well, there were some douchebags who look just like you do now, all over the damn place and I was handcuffed, a bag placed over my head, and here I am. I thought they were just gonna execute me. After all the rumors going round. Woke up here a few hours ago.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I said.

  “I just told you.”

  “No. I mean you were supposed to be let go. I made a deal.”

  “A deal? Let go?”

  “No one came and talked to any of you?”

  “Nope. We just thought you disappeared.”

  “Motherfucker!”

  “Sergeant?” Gooding asked from behind me. I forgot he was still there.

  “I need you to go on. I will catch up with you later,” I said. Gooding hesitated. “Now Private!” He turned quickly and continued on. I shouldn’t leave him alone. We’re supposed to be in pairs.

  “Sergeant?” Zero said as he gave me a cockeyed look.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good for you.”

  “Not so much. Now. I need to get you out of here.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But, I will think of something.”

  “Well, at least I finished what I set out to do.” He gave a half-smile. “Found out what happened to your ugly ass.”

  “Damn, I missed you,” I said.

  “It’s only been a week.”

  “Seems longer.”

  “Yep. Everyone’s getting anxious. I don’t know how much longer I could take it.”

  “You like it here better?”

  “At least here, I know where I stand. Those smiling FEMA people were beginning to freak me the fuck out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Not much else to say, besides. “I’m sorry.”

  “Bah. Fuck it. If you thought joining the Army. Again. Was gonna get us out, then that makes sense. But, it makes you wonder who you’re dealing with. Fucker’s gonna play with you like that.”

  “I, technically, didn’t have a choice. I’m still property of Uncle Sam. For another three years. I told them, if they didn’t let you guys out, I would rather be thrown in jail then join up.”

  “So he fed you some bullshit lie and you signed up.”

  “Something like that,” I said, ashamed at my naivete. My cockiness. They needed me? They only needed another body to do as they say. I calmed myself and asked, “How is everyone?”

  “Alright, I guess,” Zero said and shrugged. “Oh. Jenna found her dickhead boyfriend, so they’ve been hanging out. I think Ethan is pissed, but he won’t talk about it.”

  “Aaron?” I asked, even though I already knew.

  “Yeah. He’s such a douche,” Zero said, and we both laughed.

  “Look. I’m gonna get you out of here. One way or another,” I said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But, we are not staying here any longer than we need to.”

  “We?”

  “Yep. I ain’t staying here any longer either. They lied to me. Fuck em.”

  “That’s my Blake.”

  “Nope. Not gonna happen,” Sergeant Brown said. The man in charge of the prison.

  “Why not? I can vouch for him” I said.

  “Vouch for him? What do you think this is? The mafia? He punched a FEMA volunteer, then resisted arrest.”

  “Come on, you know we all want to punch some of the FEMA workers.”

  Brown laughed. “That’s the truth. But, it doesn’t change anything. I don’t even have the power to enact such a release, even if I wanted to. Sorry Sergeant. I can’t help you.”

  I spent the next th
ree days doing everything in my power, to try and find a way out for Zero and myself. To the Army, I acted no different than the previous week. I did my training and gave the go-ahead for my squad to be assigned at the camp. I was stuck with them until the new recruits arrived, then they would be passed on to another squad. We were assigned a shift to patrol the perimeter of the camp from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. It wasn’t ideal, but I used the free time during the late afternoon, before I went to bed at 5 p.m., to scout the compound. There was only one problem, even though this version of the Army seemed to be less organized, concerning top-down communication, it was still highly organized. Everything you did was categorized, and surveillance was everywhere. I had no idea how to make an escape.

  I spent most of lunch and dinner with Zero, along with fifty other inmates. I got some wide-eyed looks from a few of the soldiers at the compound when I grabbed lunch from the regular side of camp and then walked over to the prison side to sit with Zero. Zero and I would sit and eat, then talk for a good thirty minutes, as the prisoners were given thirty minutes after lunch for exercise. For a prison, it was slack. Then again, these weren’t prison guards walking around, but trained, well, sort-of trained, soldiers. The prisoners hardly ever gave much trouble.

  It was during this time that Zero updated me on the camp situation. Everyone was making the best of it, but he could tell tension was growing. Kaitlyn was quiet and spent most of her time with the children, Natalie and Jane. Drew, Alicia, and Kaitlyn spent most of the time together in the tent, leaving Ethan, Zero, Jenna, and Aaron, to see them only during the hours for food. Ethan wasn’t happy when Jenna and Aaron met again, so Zero spent most of the time with him.

  “He, sort of changed,” Zero said.

  “How?” I asked, sitting at a table in the prison mess hall, on Saturday, the seventh of December.

  “Moody as hell. I think we all were, but with him, it was a night and day difference. I knew he always had a crush on her.”

  “He had a crush on Jenna?” I asked.

  “Where the fuck you been?” Zero said. “I mean I know you haven’t been around, but yeah, since high school.”

  After some more discussion on the well-being of my friends, I began to wonder about Zero himself. A few times, I caught him staring off into the distance and then I would say something, and it was like a light switch went on and he was back to being Zero. His incarceration was beginning to take effect on him, and I knew I had to get him out soon.

  “I’m still working on getting you out of here,” I said. “I just. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “I know.”

  I got up and prepared to leave, as the bell to end dinner went off and said, “Be aware and ready, it may happen at any time. At any moment.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. You say go, and I’m fucking gone.”

  By Sunday, the eighth of December, I had begun to get depressed, and the lack of sleep wasn’t helping. I would spend my night along with one hundred other soldiers patrolling the edge of camp in the early morning hours. When our shift was done, the morning shift of a hundred soldiers came. Five shifts of one hundred soldiers, with overlap during the lunch and dinner periods. After my shift, I would return to the compound via transport trucks.

  I never did see the lovely Specialist Simpson, again. There were times when I did think about her. What was she a specialist in? Driving Ford trucks? In fact, I never saw that truck again. I spent most of my time driven by men, who looked just as happy to be here as I was.

  On returning from the camp, we went to the Armory trailer to turn in the M4A1 rifle. Which was like checking out a library book. Every time you checked out the automatic rifle, you were responsible for it, and a GPS system tracked you and the gun. If there was ever a discrepancy, you were in deep shit, to say the least. Why the checking out of weapons, from a central hub? It seemed there was a shortage, so they had to recycle the rifles. Maybe because the National Guard stole their weapons as well. Supposedly, more were coming, but there, again, we ran into some communication issues with Washington or wherever the big bosses were located now. At least we all had our own M17 handguns, which was a SIG Sauer P320 automatic. Again, GPS embedded in the gun, as well as somewhere in our uniform meant you could not be more than ten feet from your weapon at any time without a big red light flashing somewhere at the compound and you were in deep shit. The handgun was either on you or in your locker at the small armory lockers at the end of each row of tents. No weapons allowed in the tents themselves.

  After my shift in the morning, I would walk the compound. At ten, would resume the lecture training. Lunch. Range training. Dinner. Then bed. I saw nothing to raise my hopes. Everything was locked down.

  Oh, I imagined many ways we could pull it off. But, most of them made me out to be Rambo, and while I counted myself a decent shot, that route would end up with many people dead, including Zero and myself. While I hated the Colonel for lying to me, I had nothing against the men and women wearing the uniform working with me. Would I kill any one of them to save Zero’s life? I would think so. Would I kill them to get him out of a prison cell? No. Probably not. I would just have to bide my time. Hope something happened that would provide an opportunity.

  On Monday, December ninth, approximately ten in the evening, that opportunity appeared. I was awoken from sleep by a loud siren going off. It reverberated throughout the compound. Then an announcement, “All personnel needs to report to the Transport area. This is an emergency situation. Please see your squad leader and head to the transport area. This is not a drill.”

  By the time the announcement repeated I was dressed and ready to go. Private’s Jensen and Gooding burst into my tent right as I was putting my boots on, over my tired feet.

  “What’s going on?” Private Gooding asked.

  “It’s an emergency, Private Gooding,” I said, trying to remain calm. This was it. This was my chance. “Something’s going down at the camp.”

  “What?” Private Jensen asked. Fucking moron.

  “How the hell do I know? I was sleeping like the rest of you,” I said, as I grabbed my tactical helmet and placed it on my head. “Get the rest of the squad and meet me outside as you would be for a shift at the camp, in one minute.”

  “Yes sir,” They said simultaneously and left the tent as quickly as they came in.

  Twenty seconds later, all were accounted for just outside my tent. One thing I will say for them, they cared, and they were ready to go.

  “First, we go to the central armory. Hopefully, they still have some big guns for us. Then we go.” They all stood looking at me wide-eyed. “Let’s go.”

  We turned at a nice trot to the large Armory, which was located right next to the transport area, on the southern side of the house. It was a long concrete driveway probably used for storing an R.V. or a large boat. Outside the central armory, we found a long line of soldiers. But, it went quickly. In an emergency, checking out the weapons was, apparently, unnecessary. I smiled. This was just getting better and better.

  After ten minutes in line, I was handed an M4A1 by an old man, I had never seen before. Maybe he didn’t know these were all supposed to be checked out. He had the insignia on his shoulder of Captain. I almost laughed. So, this was the captain. I had not met him once since I had arrived.

  “What do you need Sergeant, you’re holding up the line?” he said, with a distinctly Northeastern accent.

  “Do you have any of those stun guns left, I prefer not shooting U.S. citizens?” I said, and the old Captain looked me over.

  “Well, you may need to. But, yes, I have a few,” he said and handed me one.

  “Thanks,” I said and grabbed the tiny, small, felt like a toy, stun gun. This was the same model I saw used in the camp by FEMA workers. I had seen them, on the shelves, but never saw anyone check one out before.

  I was then rushed outside and met up with my squad. They were in line for one of the transport trucks, that had just returned. All around me the
soldiers were talking. Rumors flying.

  “Sounds like the whole camp exploded. People rioting,” A soldier, I did not know, said, in front of me.

  Just as we were about to hop in the back of the truck, I stopped. Private Jensen had already climbed aboard.

  “Shit,” I said. “I will have to catch up with you there.”

  “What do you mean?” Private Jensen asked.

  “I have to grab something,” I said. Jensen, Grayson, and Thompson were now in the truck. “Go on. If we somehow don’t meet up. Latch on to one of the squads and tell them what happened. Oh, and try not to shoot someone.”

  They all looked like I had told them Santa Claus wasn’t real. For a second, I did feel sorry, but I had bigger fish to fry. I nodded at the five of them, turned around and ran back to the main compound and headed toward the makeshift prison.

  As I came around the main trailers separating the soldiers from the jail, I slowed down to a walk. I had to be careful now. The last thing I needed was someone wondering why I was headed in the wrong direction. I was working on blind hope, that there would be no one manning the GPS tracking post and the fact that one soldier was not on his way to the camp would not be noticed, or even if it was, I had to believe no one would care. They had bigger fish to fry as well.

  I arrived at the outer cells and noticed all the prisoners were awake and standing around, talking amongst themselves. One asked me what was going on, I said I don’t know. Other’s seemed to be worried about their families, since they, rightly, made the connection that an emergency alarm like that meant something was going down at the main camp.

  At the center of the prison block, was a small tarp-covered canopy, where Sergeant Brown was stationed. He was the one that monitored the soldiers coming and going. The prison intake. The lunch schedules and most importantly, the locking and unlocking of the doors to each cell.

  I made my way north so that I could approach from behind. I saw no other soldiers. All troops in an emergency were to head to the camp. The prisoners were behind bars at this time of night. Nothing to worry about.

  I crept up behind the small station and saw multiple monitors set up with night vision so the warden could see all sections of the prison, even at night. Brown sat in a large office chair and was reading a book by the overhanging lights, that wound their way around the canopy’s roof. I hesitated. I didn’t know how to unlock just one cell so I would need him to cooperate.