Left to worm my way through the dark corridor, I used the pocked concrete wall to feel toward the iron door. Finding a tubular handle, I turned the knob and entered a boxed-in hallway. Another closed door in front of me flickered with a needle of light escaping through a keyhole, and my eyes lit up with excitement. In the box of darkness between prison and day, the world opened up, its presence a meager few yards away. I wondered what the day would hold behind the closed door. My nose sensed the humidity in the air. My skin contrasted the stickiness of it to the coolness of the underground. I sniffed the heat, sensing the boil of greenery and heavy pollens in the air. Ears once again filled with stridulating cicadas and the voluminous sound of buzzing flies.
Slowly, I cracked open the second door, and a pool of light burst inside. Then I crept into the world of the living, shielding my eyes with my right arm. I used my left hand to feel along the wall. Finally, my fingers bumped into an iron ladder leading out of the underground tunnel. I tried opening my eyes to climb up the ladder, but the stinging daylight forced them closed. Squinting, I grabbed the rungs of the ladder and climbed into the world of weapon and war, a heart intent on once again being part of it.
After thirty minutes of sitting in a clump of grass listening to the incessant buzzing of a swarm of flies, the forest slowly unrobed itself. My eyes awoke under the booming sun. A sweep of green from the forest bush appeared. Then, through a slat of thin trees standing like spires, slowly a human form sitting on a tortoise-sized rock came into focus, the familiar nine-inch Bowie with the duct-taped handle reflecting spears of the sun. My vision cleared further in acceptance of this new birth, and I found myself twenty yards from the edge of the clearing. There I had stood rigid in line. Now, here again, my eyes gazed upon the stubborn foot stepping out of line for Seee’s challenge, saw time rusting away while my comrades moved forward.
As I walked into the clearing, the buzzing of flies grew louder. In the middle, high up on a stake, neck sunk in deeply, the head of a person appeared, unrecognizable at first because of the mass of flies all over it. I picked up a dead branch and swatted away the swarm. The stench of rotting flesh caught in my throat. I swatted again and again because the black swarm buzzed away only momentarily, but up there I saw the head of Bunker, black eyes rolling back in their sockets, a bloated tongue bubbling out of his mouth, flies and maggots all over it. My friend Bunker—his head kebabed on a skewer.
I circled the encampment, eyes fixed on the centerpiece. Kumo whittled another stick with the gleaming Bowie, glaring at me as I walked by. There was a frog with yellow and black-spotted leopard-skin at his feet laid out flat, arms and legs elongated and broken, but the creature was still alive, its tiny lungs inflating its hapless body.
“Look at you,” Kumo said, fletching the stick. “You’ve thinned out.”
“I’m on a diet.”
He snorted out a laugh while attaching an iron arrowhead to the tip of the shaft and tying it with a piece of twine.
“You’re a funny man,” he said.
I circled Bunker’s blackened head once more while Kumo finished the arrow. Then he rubbed the arrowhead over the skin of the frog and sheathed it in a quiver lying behind the rock where a bow had been laid out. “You seem dazed. Shall I push you in a direction?”
“Why would you do that?”
“The course you’re on is leading you nowhere.”
With his knife, Kumo stabbed into a basket of leaves, slid one into his mouth from the blade of the Bowie, wadded it up and sucked on it close to his gums. I looked back at Bunker. The mass of flies ate away at his head again, a moveable black veil over the decaying skin. A string of them attached like pearls to liquescent flesh melting off the neck.
“So what about Bunker’s head up here, Kumo?” I raised my voice while pointing to the swirling mass of flies bubbling around the head.
He scoffed at the question. “From a slice of paper, the world folds over into a Mobius strip. An ant travels along it. But only the ant who feels gravity knows which side he’s on.”
“You think I have no gravity?” I asked.
“You seem to be orbiting, where in contrast, I know where I sit. The stone feels my weight.”
I stopped circling and stared fiercely at the man. “He was a friend of mine. What did he do to deserve this?”
Silence from Kumo. The mid-morning sun slid higher into the sky. I thought about the deceit of the darkness. My internal clock told me it was late afternoon.
“You will perhaps tell me what happened?” I asked.
“It isn’t my place to do so.”
“Why not? You can’t speak for yourself?”
Silence again.
“He was a friend. A friend deserves more respect than this.” I stepped toward the stake.
“If you touch what is not yours to touch, you act with dishonor,” he said, finally breaking his silence.
I moved closer to the stake, ignoring him. The swarm formed a cloud around me, buzzing incessantly, trying to burrow deep into my ears. Kumo whistled—a birdlike call made with an arching tongue. I swatted away the flies and turned to see Kumo’s bow drawn, stretching with tension, the arrow close to his cheek between two fingers. His right bicep flexed while the left arm remained rigid and taut. Then I saw a streak and only afterward I saw his finger had let go. The arrow sailed by my head, a soft swishing sound as it flew by. Before I could blink, he had another one loaded. I stepped closer to him, out of the circle of flies.
“It will not be a pleasant death,” he said. “And with this one, I wouldn’t bet on a miss.”
My eyes turned cold. Gazing over to the woods where my Lazarus-self had just been resurrected, I retreated a step. “You would kill me for honoring a friend?”
“You will learn your place here, or die.”
I watched his fingers curling around the arrow, mounted in the shooting position against the bowstring.
“I don’t need permission to kill you.”
“Seriously, you would put an arrow in me for that?” I retorted.
“You have not learned our ways.”
The sound of rustling bush under heavy footsteps came, and Briana burst through the trees and sped past us, turning her head only briefly. Both of us paused a second. We heard more footsteps approach. Seee ran through the trees breathing heavily, but then came to a stop seeing us. Others, lathered in sweat with crimson cheeks, followed at his heels. The group arrived in quick succession, bare-chested, garbed in running shoes and sucking wind.
“What is the meaning of this?” Seee asked, regarding us.
“He wants to take down the head,” Kumo said.
Seee glanced at me harshly. “The head stays. It is a warning for those whose egos are too large.”
The men remained motionless, gazing at me with blank expressions, as if Seee’s words were sacred. “Is it too much to ask to respect the dead?” The men’s faces shifted from apathy to callous scowls. My castigation felt like banishment, as if my return had torn the familiar fabric of the camp. I glanced at Brock and Split, and in their severe faces I saw clearly that I was the apogee of the circle of friends, usurped for another authority.
“Can’t we all just get along?” one of Seee’s men called out with a comedic twang to his tone. A few snickers popped out of the group. For an instant, a look of exasperation appeared in Seee’s eyes before he said, “Merrill, enough.” But the tone contradicted the statement and seemed to be a license for what was probably habitual truancy with rank and order. Merrill, with the lopsided grin, seemed to be above the law.
“Respecting the dead requires asking the same question of the living,” Seee replied. “If you want to plead your case, plead it with Uriah. He has the final word. It is he who owns the mouth of the insolent.”
The slumped-over, wretched man panted for breath. Plodding through the forest to the finish, he had been the last man to arrive. He bent over gasping for air like a drowning man unable or unwilling to speak. Uriah—the weak a
nd wheezing Elephant Man who seemed to almost make a joke of the place. I remembered his words to Bunker the day I was thrown in the hole, You’ll be the first one I make an example of. Could this be the man who had lopped off Tomray Bunker’s head? Seee read my expression, walked up to me, pressed his thumb into my shoulder. “Never underestimate the power of will,” he said. “This lesson I hope you’ve already learned.”
The day drifted by and the opportunity to speak with any of my comrades passed. Merrill showed me around the camp. We walked up to an area he called “out-of-bounds,” saying it was mined. Then we hiked another mile and came upon a small, isolated farm. Here stood a stable; wandering farm animals; grazing horses. An older, graying man came out of a small cabin. I asked if this was the guy who ran the place.
“We all take our turns,” Merrill said.
“So this guy’s part of the training?”
“No, but he’s part of the camp.”
We hiked back the way we came, through a cluster of bamboo trees and back into the jungle.
“So you take a good punch,” Merrill said.
“My idea wasn’t to show off those talents.”
He laughed. “For the one stepping forward, it’s a sad day without that talent.”
“So what about you? How’d you get here?”
He stopped and smiled at me coyly. “Slow down, woman. This is our first date. I don’t put out on the first date.” Then he laughed out loud again and continued walking.
We continued for a bit. “Kumo doesn’t seem like he’s taken to me.”
“He thinks you’re bad news.”
“Why does he think that? What have I done?”
“Are you bad news?” Merrill said eyeing me. I looked over at him, but before I could reply, he said, “Let me give you a piece of advice. We might seem isolated out here, but we actually know quite a bit.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“In time, you’ll see.”
As dusk fell and the sky swept the dying day away with a swirl of pink and orange clouds, I walked into the dilapidated plywood shack buried in the woods with trees smashing out of its roof, later known as the Tree House. Conroy and Burns were alone, huddled in a corner speaking in whispers. The place was cleared out. Even Mir’s centerfolds on the wall had been stripped. Conroy and Burns saw me and broke apart. Conroy smiled, walking up to me with his hand extended, saying, “Good to see you. Most people thought you were dead.”
The kindest greeting I had received from the dregs of the day, I accepted Conroy’s hand, shook it, and asked, “Where are the others? They look like they’ve abandoned this place.”
“They have,” Conroy said. “No mosquito netting here. Everyone’s set up either tents, or tarpaulin and hammocks. Most guys are camping a bit north of here. Split, Brock, and Mir are a ways northeast. Me and Burnsy and a few others are a bit south.”
Burns had a shaky look to him, and a long neck that made his eyes seem wide as coins. He had a scrubby forehead, oily hair and a stubbly face, pale lips that quivered, an overactive tongue moistening them as they twitched. Conroy was more inviting compared to the stewed-up Burns. He had smooth, green eyes, the type to put one at ease.
Unable to hold my curiosity I asked, “So what happened to Bunker?”
Conroy shook his head as if still in disbelief. Before he could answer, Burns cut in. “He challenged Uriah.”
“What kind of challenge?”
Conroy said, “I wasn’t there to see it, but some words were exchanged. Bunker had been riding him, taunting him. Then he slipped into ass-kicking talk.”
“Seee overheard,” Burns said. “Challenged Bunker to step up and make a real challenge.”
“After more mouth from Bunker, the next thing we know they’re out there in The Pit.”
“The Pit?”
“A bit west of here,” Conroy said. “A big swimming pool-sized hole dug out where two people jump in, but only one comes out.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Burns said. “He chopped off Bunker’s head in about two seconds.”
“Swords?” I asked.
“Bunker had a shield as well,” Conroy said. “Uriah—just a samurai sword. It was over before it started. Uriah knew what he was doing. That much was clear.”
“Bunker was the one who charged,” Burns explained. “But Uriah somehow sidestepped him. When Bunker turned, the shield was only up to his neck, and then…well, after it was over, Seee jumped in The Pit and lifted his head high-in-the-sky and says, ‘The mouths that talk too much do so without bodies.’ So that’s about the highlight. Some guys shipped out after that.”
“Who?”
“Kasim, O’Donnell, Rigby, Sharaf, Edwards, and Chloe Manning,” Conroy said.
So the pack had thinned, I thought. Kasim and Edwards weren’t a surprise. Nor Rigby, after he was flattened by Kumo’s stone. I thought Chloe would have stuck it out for Bunny though. Now Briana was on her own. Burns remained silent, eyes following a dragonfly darting around the room.
“Any idea why each of them decided to bail?”
“Kasim and Edwards were dismissed,” Conroy said. “O’Donnell and Rigby left on their own accord. Chloe…well…she just wasn’t made for this shit.”
“Don’t you find any of this strange?”
“How so?” Conroy asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still trying to put my finger on it.”
“I’m still trying to figure out the purpose of any of this,” Conroy said with a laugh. “Have you seen the TV yet?”
“No.”
“They’re dragging it out at night. Beaming out NSA Director Titus Montgomery clips. It’s not a perfect image, but you can tell it’s him. It’s causing quite a stir with the camp.”
“Why?”
“General Montgomery is a piece of work,” Burns said. “Talking about internment camps and juicing instigators and shit like that.”
“This is top-secret shit,” Conroy said, his eyes flashing. “A man’s got to ask himself, how are we allowed to be watching this? And furthermore, who gave them clearance to access it?”
“If it’s there, why shouldn’t we watch?” I asked. “Are we afraid of the truth?”
“I don’t think any of us are. But as you’re saying, something feels wrong about it, about everything here.”
“I guess I’ll have to judge for myself,” I said. But Conroy was gazing at me with an upturned lip. He stood that way for some time, nodding his head up and down with a coy, smug smile on his face. I stared into his set of multifarious eyes shining the color of obsidian while a sort of unspoken acknowledgement lingered between us. A duality of purpose wafted about the air that had no language, but was clearly seen in our body movements. Our eyes communicated as if they were made out of tongues, untraceable signs where deniability were its nouns, blurred meaning its verbs, and arcana its adjectives. We were two bishops placed on Pelletier’s chessboard, our role to take out the king. Although we couldn’t speak of it directly, there was an incognito recognition bubbling to the surface, one that we would never speak about. The sweet secret of treachery was best withheld.
Chapter 8
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
-George Orwell
The first days were running, war games, and field work. Then days of jumping off cliffs with a river below you, the goal to try and latch onto an overhanging rope before you hit the water. We plunged into other jumping exercises—rock climbing, tree jumping with ropes and nets. Sometimes no nets. Seee was giving us hard lessons in escape training, growing balls so we wouldn’t be afraid to jump. Not surprisingly, Split loved these exercises the most, never giving a jump without a net a second thought.
Next, we were taught how to map an exit plan, think improvisationally if things ever fell apart. We learned advanced Krav Maga, how to turn defense into offense, Traxler c
ounters they called them. Next, we underwent stress inoculation and enhanced interrogation techniques.
The others had already gone through the exercise of killing chickens. Many funny stories could be heard about headless chicken dances throughout the camp. But when I finally joined the men, they had just begun killing goats. One man would stand over the animal and attempt to soothe it by softly petting it. But the animal was wiser than this and quickly began bleating. Another man would hand over a hammer, and it was used to bash in the skull. The first time I watched Brock do it, I found myself shivering at the sound of the horrifying crack. Once over, and the goat lay limply on the ground, it was simply a matter of cutting the throat and watching the blood gush out while it hung from a tree. That first day, I skinned it, cut out the innards, stabbed it through a spit, and roasted it over a fire. My arms were lathered to the elbow in blood and the sticky messiness of animal slaughter. All of it a very new sensation—the foul smell of innards, the gooeyness of blood and guts, what a liver or heart felt like when you squeezed it in your hands. Soon we would graduate to the squeal of live hogs as we chased them with our hunting knives. As time passed our taboos about killing grew into tasks or routine.
Then one day, the robots came out. We started with a DARPA BigDog and advanced to Petman humanoid models. We didn’t know where they had come from, but we learned how to fight them. Loaded up with paint pellets at first, rubber bullets later. Mistakes were costly. The first step—disengage their eyesight and heat sensors. If you wanted to use an electric magnetic pulse, it had to be done at close range. Terrain-capturing shields could cloak you under electric eyes, but we only learned how to use these after we employed other diversionary tactics.
Beyond the robot skirmishes and gore of killing farm animals for our meals, we had rest hours where we spent time reading Hagakure, the book of clan studies, The Art of War, and then books on history, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War, the American Revolution and Civil War. We read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and speeches by George Washington. Seee didn’t let our minds linger, saying he was modeling us after the Romans, the first army to think, and he relished listening to our debates.
The Cause Page 8