by J. D. Palmer
He stops speaking, eyes caught in a memory out over the mountains. When he looks at me it’s the same jaded eyes I see in the mirrors I avoid now.
Then he smiles.
“It’s hard, that’s for sure. But I like this.”
“Like what?” I don’t understand what he is getting at.
He waves a hand. “This. Everything. The downfall.” He pauses. “And I think you like it, too.”
My knee-jerk reaction is to shake my head.
“No.”
“It’s not an insult. Or a bad thing,” he says gently. “Before all of this we were so… constrained. If you make a mistake you immediately come under scrutiny from an endless amount of entitled eyes. Justice was a distorted ideal that never saw the light of day. Now, everything is stripped bare. It’s clean. Even if it’s chaos.”
I listen to these words and feel them resonate with me. Perhaps it had been my best kept secret, even from myself. You aren’t supposed to glory in death and destruction. But it had given me something. Purpose, I guess. And a direction.
“I didn’t want all of this.”
“Neither did I, but we aren’t running around trying to put everything back exactly the way it was. Because there wasn’t anything for us, before. I swear there were two types of people; those who never raised their head out of the mire of money and materials and cars and fucking shit. And those who wanted a little danger. Those who wanted to need and be needed for more than just another warm body. Something was wrong with the world, man, something was fucking wrong. Then this happened and… I don’t know. I feel at home. I feel like I was born for this. So no, I ain’t walking away.”
He sees the look on my face and laughs. “Fuck you, I’m drunk and I’m tired.” He gets serious again. “There are people, our people, who have survived. All over the U.S. And they might not know about this, about them fucking Chinese pricks coming over here and trying to invade. And that’s great. I hope they never hear of it.”
I see it so clearly. The charisma. The confidence he has in what he is doing and in himself. The magnetism of someone who is at peace inside themselves. Hell, part of me wants to enlist in his guerrilla army of the last of the Americans.
The other part of me wants to run away from this man, away from the danger and mayhem he embodies.
“So you have a plan?”
He smacks a hand down on the bed of the truck and gives a little chuckle, but he doesn’t say yes or no to my question. I suppose he doesn’t need to.
Mickey falls asleep on the back of the truck and I leave him to go catch a couple hours myself. I crawl into the small bed in which I woke up and pass out before my head hits the pillow.
I’m woken by a gentle hand shaking my shoulder. A feminine form looms over me, silky hair hanging long and loose brushes my cheek. The sunlight makes a halo behind her head and my breath catches at the beauty.
“Jessica.”
I grab the hand on my shoulder and pull her towards me, my other hand cupping her waist to draw her in. I’m blinded by my need for intimacy and a release from all the darkness that has clouded our days and I don’t notice her body going rigid.
“I need you.”
Beryl’s hand slams into my chest and she pulls away from me, eyes wild. She wasn’t expecting that. Wasn’t expecting me to pull her down.
Oh no…
“I’m sorry. Hey, I’m sorry.”
She takes two steps away and turns her back to me. I see her shiver and I feel sick to my stomach. I caused that.
I collect myself, piecing what just happened together as my drunken mind tries to wake itself. Oh fuck.
“I’m so sorry, Beryl.” She shakes her head and stares at the floor, gathering herself. I wait for her to say something. Eventually she waves for me to follow her outside, eyes avoiding mine. I quickly pull on pants and follow her. Dammit, what’s wrong with me?
Wind gusts outside and the ground is wet from a recent downpour. The mounds of dirt that sit next to shallow holes in the ground are nothing but sloppy mud now. The men and women who dug them filthy.
They stand in a half circle around the graves. Mickey and, to my surprise, Theo stand in the holes. Arms and chests caked with mud, the two men carefully lower the bodies inside. I take a spot next to Josey and bow my head. I don’t want to see how far away Beryl stands from me.
There is more anger than sadness in this crowd. Dark looks under a dark sky that bely dark thoughts. Exhaustion has been replaced by anger and the desire for revenge on those who murdered their friends. There is no room for grief.
Mickey and Theo climb out and Mickey puts his hands behind his back and stands rigid, eyes straight ahead as he salutes the graves. The company follows suit.
“We no longer live in a world where we give out medals or flags to the families. Our deeds are not written down and recorded for future generations or for history lessons. But we knew these men and women.”
He casts fierce eyes around the group. “WE knew them. We knew them for their bravery and their commitment. We know them for their sacrifice. So it is up to us to engrave their history onto our hearts and carry that forward with us as we continue to do battle.”
Silence as the wind whips through the group. I think Mickey is going to say something more but then he grabs a shovel and starts to fill in the holes. Our group stands to the side, unwilling to intrude as the company fills the trenches and tamps down the earth.
They don’t mark the graves.
The last bit of dirt is mounded and Mickey tosses down the shovel and runs muddy hands over his head. It has begun to rain and he looks up, taking in the droplets as they mat his beard and soak his shirt. When he looks around the group his blue eyes glimmer like ice, narrowed and purposeful.
“The enemy has made a move to expand their territory. That ain’t gonna happen. You all know your duties, hop to it. We move out tomorrow.”
There isn’t a cheer so much as there is the silent roar of approval, men and women splitting away to stalk towards their assignments.
“Why aren’t you marking the graves?” John asks quietly.
Mickey is brusque. “Ain’t no need.” He begins to stride away but John cuts him off.
“What are you going to do?”
“Make ‘em pay. That’s what.”
John steps in front of him again. “How? You’re twenty soldiers. There has to be some way to talk to them. You can’t throw your lives away.”
Mickey looks him in the eyes, beard bristling as a smile curls up his cheeks. “Fuck, you got that little faith in us? You wonder why we’ve been here and not staying on the move? Risking them finding us? We made this our base for the last couple weeks for a reason.”
“What’s here?” Josey asks the question, as confused as the rest of us.
“Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Nuclear weapons testing facility.”
My shoulders tense as he turns around, a gleam in his eye.
“We got ourselves some shit to level the playing field.”
Chapter 29
Mickey takes in the shocked silence with a grim look. He had told me it was a bomb. I didn’t know the word nuclear was attached. Out of my periphery I see the courtyard aswirl with activity. Supplies loaded into trucks, guns being cleaned and packed. We move to the side as men maneuver a large crate into the back of a huge truck. They move very carefully.
“Holy shit.” Theo captures the feeling perfectly.
“I’d like to ask if any of you all would like to stay and help. We can’t do it alone. This will get to you sooner or later, but fuck I can’t force you to fight.” Mickey speaks softly, calmly.
Were it not for Jessica, my family, I would be tempted. I would want to stay if it’s true that it will affect my loved ones eventually. But will it? Is it true? And does it matter? Is America at war if America doesn’t exist?
“What are you going to do?” John sits off to the side. He rubs his arm and slowly rotates his injured shoulder.
John ignores the last comment. “No, what are you going to do with the nuclear device? It’s just for leverage, right? Scare them into leaving?”
Mickey shrugs, brushes the question off. “We’ll do whatever we have to.”
John is persistent. “What are you going to do with it?”
Mickey glances around our group, eyebrows raised. “I think I found the Democrat in your group.” He laughs a bitter laugh. I see it now, a sadness behind his eyes. And a commitment to the plan.
“It’s not that fucking fragile, get it in the goddamn truck!” He yells at his men before turning back to us. “Tomorrow morning we are going to smuggle that thing into the heart of San Francisco.”
“Would you really set it off? Here?” John is almost apoplectic, working himself into a frenzy as he asks the same question over and over again.
Mickey is done with him. He simply shrugs again and John stands up and approaches him.
“You can’t. You can’t do—”
Mickey grabs John by the shirt, his calm demeanor crumbling in the face of exhaustion. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do, motherfucker. I will put you down right here.”
John doesn’t back down but he changes his tone.
“Think of the damage and… lives lost. The animals and the people and the earth. Everything around the city for miles. We don’t know why they’re here. Maybe they aren’t here to invade. Maybe they…”
Mickey takes a breath in and holds it, eyes locked on John with a sense of profundity. I think he wants to kill him. Exhaustion and death and now a man saying lives have been lost for nothing. That what he is doing is wrong.
John thinks that Mickey is doing this callously, unmindful of the massive change he will make on what’s left of life on the western seaboard. John is unable to see past the cavalier mask that Mickey wears to disguise the sleepless nights, the crushing weight straining the shoulders of an overburdened soul.
Would that make John feel better about it? If he knew it was a hardship? Or would he still press the issue?
Mickey lets out a puff of breath, eyes hard, before slowly releasing his hold on John. His fingers pull out his chew and he packs it with angry thwaps, slowly and deliberately stuffing a large wad in his mouth before wiping his fingers on his pants.
“Listen to me fucktard. Death is the order of the day. I don’t know what’s what in the rest of the world. But this is still America, I’m still American, and I will die defending this soil if need be. And if that means I gotta carry that nuke in there and set if off myself, I will.”
John huffs. He looks about him, as if someone will step in and help him talk sense to Mickey.
“What gives you the right to do this?”
Mickey is genuinely confused. He grabs John by the arm and forcibly marches him up the small hill on which we are perched. We follow. I pray that he doesn’t shoot John in the head. He gets to the top and shoves John forward and points towards the distant skyline that is San Francisco.
“You see that? You see that city? There isn’t anyone in it but the enemy. An enemy that I watched execute two of my men when they tried to approach them with a white flag. An enemy that killed the men we buried this morning. An enemy that has invaded our country and looks like they’re setting up to stay.”
He takes a deep breath, eyes intense, and I watch him put a stranglehold on his anger. Fingers clench and eyes blink as his will tamps down the flame. Not extinguished, but coals that smolder and glow forever in the background. His is a fury harbored closely, dearly, too precious to vent on someone like John. The fuel that provides him with the energy to continue.
“So we can destroy the cancer right here, right now,” he continues. “Or we can deal with them for the rest of our lives.”
John doesn’t say a word, he just stares out at the city, a weary frown on his face.
“You ain’t got more to say? Anything about their lives?”
John remains quiet. Mickey backs away from him, looks out at the city, a brief moment of silence between the two men.
“You think I want to do it? I don’t.” Mickey speaks softly, eyes still out over the distant cityscape. “I just don’t see that we have a choice. Fix this, then we can rebuild the country.”
Josey steps forward.
“I’d like to stay. Fight.”
I didn’t see that coming.
Mickey nods approval. “Rah. There we go. Anyone else?”
I shake my head. “Sorry Mickey, I need to get back to my family.”
He nods. He knew I wasn’t staying. “All right, come on Josey, let’s get you equipped to stack some bodies. The rest of you are welcome to share some grub tonight if you want.”
It’s already late in the day and the rain has yet to let up. The group looks at me, hope in their eyes. They don’t want to go back out into the cold silence any more than I do. I nod and I see the relief. We would have to go and find food anyways.
Another excuse I tell myself.
Mickey strides away without a backward glance, Josey taking a second before trotting after him.
John is still agitated.
“Let it go, John.”
Steven nods. “Ain’t our call, bro. Not unless you want to stay.”
John looks back and forth at us. Explodes. “How does this not bother you? Some guy, some idiot barely out of his twenties with a nuclear fucking warhead. That he will use! Jesus, how can you be so casual?”
I don’t know how to respond. The world has been exposed as cruel and terrible. But there is no good and evil. Just chaos. And there are choices we all will have to make, hard choices, for good or bad.
“He is doing what he thinks is right. And I… I don’t know if he is wrong.”
“And when he shows up in Montana and nukes you for not giving him what he wants what will you do?” he snarls at me.
“And what if the Chinese show up?” I spread my hands, exasperated. “John I don’t want this either.”
“Really?” He is furious, the words hissing out of his mouth. “You seem pretty content to stand by and watch people kill one another. When will you think it’s enough?”
I sit next to Josey and draw a map of western Montana on a piece of paper.
“Here is Somers. It’s where we’ll be, in case you decide to get out of here.”
He is thankful. I can tell he has his reservations about leaving a group he knows for a group he doesn’t.
And the whole going to blow up a city thing.
“There’s only one bar in town. Del’s. I’ll leave a message there for you if we leave or something. I’ll even buy you a drink.”
He laughs. “Just text me, what’s with the note leaving shit?”
He then gives me a hug and an odd little bow to Beryl. He punches Theo in the chest. “Better hit the gym, Teddy, you’re looking a little small.” He winks at us and walks over to join his new band of brothers and sisters.
I am going to miss him.
John doesn’t eat with the group, nor does he accept the plate of food Steven brings him. I pull Steven aside and ask him if he thinks John will still come with us. He nods, “Just give him time. He’ll be fine.”
But he seems worried.
Everything is ready to go in the morning, for us as well as for the soldiers. Bags are packed and guns cleaned and oiled. Nervous anticipation cloys the air with tension. People pick at food with no appetite. Jokes that aren’t funny are laughed at with a panicked eagerness. Some just sit and stare at the floor.
Josey disappears down the hall, returns twenty minutes later with a guitar. His entrance is heralded with cheers and requests, a wave of relief washing across the room as the blessing of music is offered. Better to lose oneself in song than to dwell on your death. Or causing death. Or wondering how, or if, you should say goodbye to the people around you.
Josey sings country music and men stamp their feet and Sheila lea
ds Mickey out into the middle of the cafeteria and makes him dance. I don’t know what style you would call it; Sheila more intent on leading, dragging Mickey around the floor in a flurry of sexuality and violence that slightly stresses me out. Mickey finally picks her up and wraps her around himself, swinging her around as he plods an awkward dance step. Hoots and hollers and more people join them on the makeshift dance floor.
A lithe Latina woman approaches me and holds out her hand and lifts a chin as if daring me to refuse. I don’t. I couldn’t. It would demean what could be their final night on this broken earth. I dance with her and allow myself to lose myself in the movement, the alcohol, and the music.
I grew up swing dancing, courtesy of my mother, and I spin the girl around the floor until she is too dizzy to stand up straight. She drags me to a table and we take shots of tequila and introduce ourselves. Her name is Maria and she doesn’t speak much English. So we shake hands and take another shot and continue to dance.
Theo lumbers out into the middle of everyone and does his best to figure out how to twirl and step with the country music. He knocks over numerous people and eventually is planted in place by a blond with curly hair who dances around him. He gives me a grin and a shrug. “Damn white people music.”
Beryl is approached but shakes her head, a terse smile as she tries to hide her discomfort. Steven sits with her and I’m glad she has company. I feel guilty but I don’t know why, or how I could possibly alleviate it. Fear and doubt, frustration and love, anger and a sense of doom. Tangled threads of thoughts and emotions knot in my brain until I give up on unraveling them. I find another shot of tequila in my hands and I embrace the offered oblivion before rejoining the others on the dance floor.
Josey slows the music down. He sings “Wagon Wheel” and everyone links arms and sways, those who know the words sing out with him and the group is knit together, those broken and damaged made whole for one song.
He sings “Where were you when the world stopped turning” followed by “Troubadour” and the cafeteria is silent as we sit or stand and pass bottles to each other. Mickey fades to the back of the group, arms crossed and blue eyes remote.