Twilight Zone Anthology

by Serling , Carol

  “I can’t shake this feeling we’re being tracked,” said Gimme, scanning the valley behind them.

  “Maybe I should swing back,” said Brown. “I can get behind the hill over there, go around. You guys see if I’m followed.”

  Gimme laughed. “Who do you think you are? Rambo?”

  “No, I can do it.”

  “Relax, Brownie,” said Gutierrez. “You don’t have to prove yourself anymore.”

  “I’m not trying to prove myself. Shit. I just think we can do that. I can do that.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Gimme. “You went from being, like, yellow, to now like Superman.”

  “I’m not Superman,” said Brown. “But I have the iPod.”

  Gimme smiled, then got up and walked a few feet away to take a leak.

  “It’s not the iPod,” Gutierrez told him.

  “It is,” said Brown. “It’s—I know you think I’m nuts. But it’s got some special power. And it came from nowhere. I thought my half brother sent it, but he didn’t. It came out of nowhere. I think God or some part of the universe sent it. Whatever—it’s turned everything around.”

  “I gave it to you,” said Gutierrez. “I was trying to cheer you up.”

  Brown stared at him in disbelief.

  “I did,” said the corporal. “You were so depressed. Your butt dragged every morning, every night. I wanted to get you going.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I’ve had it. I just never used it after I got the Nano.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “I don’t know.” Brown stood up.

  “I can name every song on it.”

  “How do you explain the songs that don’t play until the hajji show up?”

  “That’s your imagination. All the songs are there.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Gimme came back. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothin’,” said Brown. He pulled the earphones up and slipped them in. Wherever the iPod had come from, there was something about it—call it magic, a miracle, God—call it whatever.

  It was special. It could last forever on a charge, for one thing, much longer than any other MP3 player by far. And then there was the music, which he knew couldn’t be explained.

  Brown began walking along the hill toward the east, thinking about whether to cross over the valley and look for any Taliban following them. He couldn’t disobey an order, though.

  Just then he saw a glint in the hill opposite them.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing.

  There was a puff from the slope. A mortar shell whistled through the air.

  • • •

  Brown knew instantly what he had to do. He didn’t think about it. He started to run down the hill, in the direction of the valley. He would swing around, come at the bastards from the rear.

  It was the right thing to do. He should have done it earlier.

  Corporal Gutierrez yelled at him, but his words were drowned out by the explosions. Brown guessed he was telling him to stop, but that made no sense, and he didn’t. He ran as fast as he could, welcoming the tightness in his chest and the burn in his thighs.

  It wasn’t until Brown had gotten across the valley and onto the far side of the ridge that he realized how stupid his idea was.

  Corporal Gutierrez had called in for support, and as Brown climbed the slope, a pair of F-16s doused the Taliban position with five-hundred-pound bombs. The explosions sounded like cracks of thunder, shaking the hill and bringing up a cloud of smoke that turned gray as it rose over the ridge. But there was no stopping now—Brown kept moving, locked in the course he had set. To turn back would be to deny everything that had happened over the past few weeks, to once more become a coward.

  And to deny the power that was guiding or at least helping him. He believed, he simply believed. It had no logic; it might have no rational explanation, but he knew that the iPod was definitely saving him, was definitely helping him be the soldier he needed to be. Maybe Gutierrez had given it to him—there really was no reason for him to lie about that—but what the iPod did could not be explained.

  The back of the ridge flattened to a gentle slope as Brown moved east. The scrub vegetation was sparse; there’d be little cover if the Taliban fighters were still alive. He trotted forward, then started to run, heart pounding.

  Megadeth gave way to Slayer.

  Then silence. Then a song that sounded like something from Jane’s Addiction’s early years, something he’d never heard.

  Brown dropped to his knee, M4 raised. He held his breath.

  Two, three, five Taliban came across the side of the hill, scrambling down.

  Brown waited a beat, wanting them all to appear first.

  The second man in line turned.

  Bullets ripped from Brown’s gun. He swept up in a line, swept back. His fingers flew to the mag. He reloaded, fired again. And again.

  They were dead, all dead, every one of them. Dead.

  A song by Starkweather began blaring in his earphones.

  Corporal Gutierrez and Gimme were waiting at the bottom of the hill when Brown came down. The chopper was approaching in the distance.

  Gimme’s face was a smile, an entire smile.

  “You da man.” Gimme laughed. He hugged Brown, squeezing him. “You da fuckin’ man.”

  “How many?” asked Gutierrez.

  “Five, Corporal.”

  “Relax, Brownie. It’s all right. I ain’t mad. Much.” Gutierrez laughed. “It’s okay.”

  Brown nodded. He felt—“solid” was the only way to describe it, as if he were a building and every nail, every screw, every bolt had been tightened and perfectly adjusted. He was not a coward. He might not be a hero—he couldn’t quite see himself fitting into that definition—but he was definitely a soldier, and a solid one.

  “It ain’t magic,” said Gutierrez. Then he hugged him.

  “Thanks, Corporal,” said Brown.

  He smiled.

  The chopper was close.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Gutierrez.

  Brown pushed the earphones into his ears. He smiled. “Looks That Kill” was playing, the same song that he’d heard when he first listened to the iPod. He’d heard it dozens if not hundreds of times.

  He fell into line with the others.

  “Watch for snipers,” said Gutierrez.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Brown. “I chased them off. Ain’t nothing going to happen now—I got the iPod.”

  He pulled off his helmet and wiped some of the sweat from his hair. The day had gotten hot.

  “Yo, watch for snipers,” barked Gimme.

  “Relax, man—ain’t nothin’ happening to us,” said Brown.

  The chopper was coming in low on the other side of the hill, drowning everything out. Brown couldn’t hear the music.

  Then he realized that it had stopped.

  “What the hell?” he said, looking down at the player.

  A single shot flew from the hill behind them. Brown heard it—a long, sleek whistle, the sound of a guitar string breaking under stress.

  Then he fell to the ground, killed by a bullet through the back of his head.

  Alerted by the Black Hawk, another F-16 came in and dropped a fresh bomb load on the hill where the sniper had fired from. Gutierrez and Gimme picked up Brown’s prostrate body and carried him between them all the way around to the other side of the hill, where the chopper was waiting.

  Gutierrez unclipped the player from his dead soldier’s body, holding it in his hand as the helo took off.

  The iPod had turned Brown around, there was no question about that. It had made him a good soldier, the soldier he’d needed to be.

  It seemed to have stopped playing. Gutierrez put his thumb on the switch and turned it off, then back on. The little power light remained off.

  “Broke?” a
sked Gimme.

  Gutierrez flipped it over in his fingers. He pushed the large dial, turned it on and off again, but couldn’t get it to play.

  “Battery ran out,” said Gimme.

  Gutierrez nodded. He closed the player in his hand. He couldn’t help but think he was responsible for Brown’s death. The kid had needed something to believe in, magic, and Gutierrez, by accident, had given it to him.

  Was that wrong? If he hadn’t, Brown would never have become the soldier he was capable of becoming. But he wouldn’t have gotten stupid, either; he’d never have removed his helmet, or made himself such an easy target. Really, it was a miracle he hadn’t been killed earlier.

  “What you told him was the truth, Ray. That player was just a player,” said Gimme, who was staring at him. “There wasn’t anything special about it. Just a player.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gutierrez felt a sudden impulse to throw the iPod out the open door of the helicopter. He reared back.

  “Hey, Corporal, what are you doing?” asked the door gunner.

  Gutierrez stopped. He opened his hand, revealing the iPod.

  “You’re not going to throw that out, are ya?” asked the gunner.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit, I’ll take it.”

  “Battery’s dead or it’s busted,” said Gimme.

  “Hell, you can get batteries for these things online cheap,” said the gunner.

  “But if it’s broken—”

  “I’ll take a shot. What do you have to lose?”

  Gutierrez handed it over. Then he sank back on the bench.

  When they landed, the gunner jumped out with him and stopped him on the tarmac.

  “Hey, you sure it’s okay I take this iPod?” he asked. The player was clipped to his vest, and the phones were in his ears.

  “Yeah. It’s busted.”

  “No way, man, listen.” He pulled out one of the phones. “ ‘Looks That Kill,’ man. Motley Crüe. You got good taste.”

  Gutierrez glanced down at the iPod. The power light was green. Fully charged, fully functional.

  He stared for a full five seconds. Maybe there was something about that iPod after all. Maybe he should take it back. Destroy it.

  He raised his hand to take it.

  “Gotta go,” said the gunner, turning back and hopping into the Black Hawk. “Thanks.”

  The helo roared upward before Gutierrez could say anything else.

  Corporal Ray Gutierrez. A good soldier, an excellent leader. A brave man. But he will spend the rest of his life thinking about courage and foolishness, and wondering where the boundaries lie. More critically, he will ponder his own responsibility for the death of a brave soldier, and wonder what role he played in the fates of others as they met their fears, battling chance and destiny in. . . the Twilight Zone.

  Everybody knows someone like Karl Eggar, a man with the right answers for everyone else’s problems—or at least so he thinks—but who never gets as much respect as he thinks he deserves. This weekend, though, that’s all about to change for Karl. He’s going to be proved right in a way even he couldn’t have expected. . . .

  I

  t feels good to swing hard, to feel his muscles flex and the blade of the ax bite deep into the wood. It feels even better that it’s the old apple tree, the one whose apples have never been any damn good, puny and sour. But the blossoms, she always says, it blossoms so nice—it makes the whole yard look pretty! Yeah, and who gives a crap about that?

  Well, today he’s made his mind up. If there’s one upside of having lost his job down at the salvage yard, it’s that he doesn’t have to pretend to care about anything around here that isn’t pulling its weight. The apple tree is a perfect example: a few useless blossoms versus the need to bring down the heating bills next winter equals the tree is history.

  As he finishes setting the cut wood onto the pile, which is getting impressively high, he sees her watching from the window. Oh, God, that face. Like he was killing a family dog instead of just taking down an old eyesore of an apple tree. He gives her a mocking smile and wave, a little twiddle of the fingers. She turns away.

  He married her. He must have—everybody tells him so. But he doesn’t really remember it happening and certainly doesn’t remember why. Sometimes, listening to her complain about all the things that (according to her) he should have done and hasn’t, or shouldn’t have done but did anyway, he has a sudden fantasy of just taking a big old swing at her with his fist, like something out of a Popeye cartoon, hitting her so hard she just flies away and he never has to hear that voice again.

  He even sees it with a caption, like one of those rumpled, xeroxed cartoons they used to pass around at the yard in the days before the Internet: “Bitch in Space.”

  “That’s just great, Karl,” she tells him as he comes in and sets the ax in the corner of the kitchen. It needs to go out to the garage to be oiled and resharpened and put away properly, but he’s going to have a beer first because he goddamn well deserves it. He wipes sweat from his face and the back of his neck. Maybe two beers. He’s had only a couple today so far and it is Saturday. Is there some law that says you have to have a job to enjoy a few beers on Saturday?

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just great. Spend an hour chopping down a harmless tree for firewood in the middle of July instead of doing something useful. It’s ninety goddamn degrees outside—what do we need firewood for?”

  He ignores her, feels the beer sliding down his throat, icy and perfect. If only there were a way to pour cold beer over his whole life. Yeah, drown the bitch with it . . . or at least drown her out.

  “Have you done any of the other things I asked you to do? Did you call the exterminator?”

  “We don’t need any goddamn exterminator. Do you know what those cheating bastards charge? It’s just a few ants.”

  “Just a few?” She stares at him like he’s crazy. “If you were ever in here for any longer than than it takes to open another beer, you might have noticed that we’re being overrun by the creepy little things. Look. Look!” She’s waving her arm like her turn indicator is broken. He rolls his eyes, which just makes her more pissed off. “Look in that sink, damn you!”

  He takes a long swallow of his beer, hitches his pants up, rubs some sweat from the small of his back, and ambles over to the sink. It really would be nice just to plant her one, a shot in the nose to straighten her right up. Yeah, he’d probably go to jail, that’s the way things are nowadays, but oh my God it would be like a dream come true. . . . “So what?”

  “Do you happen to notice about a thousand ants in there?” She points at them like he’s stupid—like he really doesn’t see them. “And in the cabinets, and on the table, and all over the floor. It’s gross, Karl, it’s goddamned gross and disgusting! I can’t walk across the kitchen without stepping on hundreds of the things!”

  “So why do you want to pay an exterminator if you’re doing it yourself?” A good one. He laughs.

  She slaps him stingingly on the arm. “You’re not funny, you mean bastard!”

  For an instant—just an instant, but it rushes through him like a wildfire—he almost does hit her. Things go a little bit upside down, like when he sometimes gets up too quickly, gets dizzy, and almost falls. “Don’t . . . don’t you ever do that again,” he tells her, with enough of his true feelings in his voice that she backs away a few steps, like a dog trying to decide whether to bolt.

  “I want those things out of here, Karl,” she says, but whining now like a stuck-up kid. “They’re disgusting.”

  “Oh, they’re in the sink, isn’t that too bad,” he says, mocking her. “Did it ever occur to you, you lazy bitch, that all you have to do is turn on the water and wash ’em down the drain?” He does, using the rinsing hose to send all the little, leggy black creatures sliding and swooshing away to a watery death. “Bye-bye, you little fuckers.” He turns to her. “See? Problem solved.”

  She’
s gone pale now, her face cold and hard. She hates it when he calls her “bitch”—as if it wasn’t the best possible name for someone like her, someone who was pretty damn cute in high school but has long since gone fat and mouthy, just like her chain-smoking, vodka-gargling mother, but who also puts on airs like she’s too good for him because she watches Oprah and reads an occasional book.

  “Why are you so hateful, Karl? It’s not just ants in the sink.” Her voice starts to rise. “What about the ones on the floor? What about the ones on the counter, and in the damn cabinets, and in the goddamned sugar bowl, Karl? Huh? What about that?”

  Why don’t they think? he wonders. Why can’t they think? Because all this Oprah, Dr. Phil, everything’s-about-feelings bullshit clouds their minds, that’s why. Not a one of them can think about things logically, make a plan, solve a problem. . . . “Oh, Jesus, shut your mouth for just a minute, Norah—I know it’s hard for you, but try—and I’ll show you what to do with the goddamn sugar bowl.”

  The ants trek across the table in a wavering line. You have to admire their focus, if nothing else, he thinks. They’re like him, in a way—small, maybe, but tough and strong and well organized. They’re carrying little grains of sugar from the bowl across the table and down onto the floor, then off to their nest or hive or whatever they have. It’s kind of funny, really. If you’re an ant, finding that sugar bowl must be like winning the lottery.

  He puts his hand under the sugar bowl to lift it. The plastic table cover is sticky and it grabs at the hairs on the back of his hand. Something hot and red flares in him again. “No wonder we got ants everywhere. This place is filthy. Now, pay attention, stupid, and I’ll show you something. Ants in the sugar bowl, big problem? I don’t think so.” He goes to the sink and dumps out the sugar, stands for a moment, sweat on his face and his heart beating strangely as he watches the little black shapes dig out of the pile of white crystals on the floor of the basin. Then he sluices them away with the rinsing hose.

  “Empty the sugar bowl,” she said. “Real clever, Karl. God, it’s just like you always say, men are just smarter. I wonder why I never thought of it? And when I want to put sugar in my coffee, or on my cereal, why, I’ll just go scrape it out of the drain. Brilliant.”