Medora Wars

by Wick Welker

  “They know we’re here. I think three of our men are down out there, and the Americans are creeping up closer to our position. Everyone else is now out there trying to hold them off.” Malik looked over at the shattered casing of the phone that Atash had thrown on the ground. “Who were you just talking to?”

  Atash inhaled quickly and held his breath for a moment. “I’m not sure, Malik.” There was, for a moment, a glimpse of uncertainty that Malik saw at the small wrinkles that formed under Atash’s eyes. Cracks of doubt clustered around his face. “Well, what did they say?” Malik asked.

  The wrinkles around his eyes flattened out as the calmness returned to his countenance. “It was the Sirr.”

  “What?” Malik said.

  “He said… that we must move from here.”

  “Move?” Malik said calmly as he looked down at the remaining hostages on the floor and wondered about how many hundreds of American soldiers were flooding around them in different parts of the building.

  “Yes, we must take the weapon, and move from this location.”

  Malik paused, trying more than ever to read Atash’s face. “Are you sure that was the Sirr?”

  “Malik, you question me now? Now, in this moment of trial?” Atash lifted his automatic rifle into Malik’s belly. “Doubt me, one more time.” Atash flared his nostrils as he looked into Malik’s eyes.

  As Atash’s gaze pierced into Malik’s, dulled images of his ex-wife cleaning their old kitchen came to his mind. He remembered rubbing her pregnant belly and tapping on it with his fingers. His son’s small face flooded his thoughts. The feelings of remorse and self-loathing that he expected did not overwhelm him as they usually did. He had always thought that he would have a sense of triumph over his own ego but he only felt emptiness. He would’ve been content dying with that emptiness if it weren’t for the cracks that he saw around Atash’s face. As brilliant of an actor as he is, Malik thought, this man does not know what his next move will be. He is, at this moment, more lost than I have ever been. “Brother… we die together.” Malik smiled and put his hand on Atash’s shoulder. He noticed Elise once again trying to wriggle her way free from the unguarded group of hostages. “Our witness is trying to escape.”

  “Ah, we can’t lose her yet.” Atash turned and saw Elise now inching away like a worm. He sprayed a brief shot of bullets above her head, which popped on the concrete wall above her. She froze in place and meekly rolled back to the group of hostages. Looking up at Atash, she could finally see the hurried panic that she was waiting for.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she said loudly to him, with a confidence that, only for a moment, Atash couldn’t help but believe.

  “Quiet, now. We’re almost through this, my dear.” Atash breathed deep and pushed out the hatred he had for the woman. He compartmentalized his growing fears into a deep mental recess and could think methodically once again. He was about to speak when, in a brief flash, stunning natural light filled the room from the opposite end of the garage. Another metal plated door was on the other end of the garage that opened to the outside. They could now hear the very close thumping blades of a helicopter. “Get down!” Atash yelled, bringing Malik down with him. “Find cover!” he yelled out but realized he was only yelling at Malik as all of his other brothers were off in the warehouse taking his bullets for him.

  As Atash and Malik fell to the ground, Elise stood and squinted, walking toward the now open end of the dank garage as warm air wafted in on them. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled out expecting a swarm of soldiers to flood the room, but only saw the silhouette of a single man in Army fatigues.

  “Atash!” the man said.

  “Carter!” Atash yelled, rising to his feet. “I was afraid that you had abandoned us. Have you heard from the Sirr?”

  Carter weaved in between pallets as he walked in from the sunlight. “No, no, but we’ve got to get out of here right now. We only have about three minutes before they realize this garage opens to the outside. You haven’t heard from him?”

  “Yes, yes I have. We need to move the warhead out of here.”

  “I know. I’ve got a chopper outside all ready to go with it but what do we do? Your detonation code didn’t work.”

  “My brothers, nothing as beautiful as what the brotherhood has done is ever accomplished so easily. We have another way of detonating this weapon, and we must move it to the aircraft.”

  “Well, let’s get out of here!” Carter said as he kicked at the hostages.

  “No, no leave them, only gather that defiant woman there.” Malik pointed to Elise who had now fallen to the ground.

  She looked up at Malik with fever and sadness in her sunken eyes.

  Malik spoke, “I don’t doubt that you would murder us in your sleep, Elise. Isn’t the confidence that you feel, that singular intent of purpose, a beautiful feeling?”

  She stared at him grimly and got to her feet. “Let’s go,” she said, stammering ahead of them out into the light, with Carter holding her elbow from behind.

  “You get that end,” Atash said to Malik, pointing to the end of the wooden crate that held the warhead. “I’ll push, and you guide it.” He unlocked the brakes on the wheels beneath the warhead that held it in place and pushed it like a shopping cart. “We are very close to the end now, Malik. I must admit, that I actually have doubted you up until this very moment. I was never certain where you allegiance lied.”

  “It doesn’t lie in this earthly realm,” Malik said as he guided the warhead through a maze of rusted machinery parts and plastic crates full of frayed wiring. The weapon glided over the greasy concrete of the garage and rattled as the wheels rolled over loose screws and twisted metal fragments. The garage had gone silent except for the muffled yells of their remaining men firing off rounds in the distance.

  “It was meant to just be me, you, and our witness, Malik,” Atash said as he guided the long crate. “I can see now, that this is how it is supposed to be. I’ve come to believe that it is only you and me that will be praised after this life.”

  “And the Sirr?”

  “The Sirr will have his place, somewhere, but it will not be with us,” he said with finality. “You and I, Malik, we are the brotherhood now,” Atash said with his head bowed, pushing the heavy bomb.

  As Carter pulled Elise into the sunlight, her eyes tensed in pain for a brief moment as they adjusted to the brightness. It had been over a week since she had seen the sky. The air was clean and dry, with a stirring wind coming from the cargo helicopter that Carter had managed to land next to the building. Its blades hummed in perfect symmetry as Carter cast her onto the pavement beneath them. She looked up into the blue sky behind the whirring blades and breathed deep as she let the box cutter drop from her armpit to the gravel underneath her. She waited with an even breath.

  “I have the back ramp of the chopper open. You can just wheel it right up!” Carter yelled at Atash and Malik as they brought the bomb out from the garage with steady footsteps.

  Malik watched Atash’s eyes as he looked out at the Nebraska wilderness that sprawled from them like the edges of a vast sea of purple and brown brush. Malik felt a pang of love for his mentor that he had never had before, but mixed within his love was the dreaded feeling of pity that he had ignored the entire time he knew him. It was a theoretical pity that Malik had secretly held for Atash, based on the scenario that everything Atash believed might be wrong. Malik felt that pity rise within him and turn cold with sadness as they approached the chopper.

  Atash looked up and caught Malik in his stare. “You’re finally feeling that triumph, aren’t you Malik?”

  For once, Atash could not guess his thoughts, which made Malik only smile faintly at him. “Yes, my brother. This is our hour.”

  Carter knelt next to Elise, with his rifle drawn at the garage from where they escaped, waiting. He waited for a stream of soldiers to flow from the opening, throwing bullets, and anger at them.

  At his boots, Elise continue
d looking up at the sky, drawing her attention to all noises around her. She saw Malik and Atash’s boots stomp on the loose gravel as they wheeled the warhead past her and to the back of the chopper. Beneath the thumping blades she faintly heard the hollow bounce as the wheels of the crate were pushed up the metal ramp and into the aircraft.

  “Brother Carter, please bring our witness to her feet,” Atash said as he came from the back end of the chopper, brandishing his rifle. “We need to leave immediately.”

  “Get up!” Carter yelled, kicking Elise in the shoulder. She simply continued to lie on the gravel, staring upward into the sky. “If you don’t get up in one second, I’m going to shoot!” Carter yelled, kicking her again.

  Elise continued, frozen in a comatose gaze.

  As Carter leaned over to grab her by the arm, Atash walked swiftly up to him, put the muzzle of his rifle to the man’s temple and fired. Carter would have protested but his head exploded in a blur of sprayed blood and skull fragments, leaving a dark chasm of frayed hair behind. He fell forward over Elise and rested motionless on top of her.

  Quietly, and without much noise, Elise pushed the man off of her and looked up at Atash as he loomed over.

  “Get in the helicopter,” he said without his pleasant tone. Elise saw his hollow eyes flicker with a spark of desperation. A brooding cloud of exhaustion hung above his head as he realized the end of his uncertain journey. She propped herself up on one elbow and was about to speak, when Malik interjected.

  “Why did you kill him?” Malik asked gently, looking over his shoulder at the garage.

  “He couldn’t be trusted any more. No one but you and I can be trusted.”

  “If it’s the way you think it needs to be.” Malik looked down at the back of Carter’s hair. He had a small tattoo of a woman’s name on his neck. It simply said ‘Stacy.’ He wondered about the transformation that the man had gone through: a love for some woman in a small town that had turned into an infatuation with an unknown figurehead dictating terror across the world. “Who was it on the phone, Atash?” Malik finally asked.

  “Malik, let’s get in the helicopter.”

  “Who was it?”

  Atash kicked Elise in the side. “Get on the plane, Malik,” he responded calmly.

  “Who is the Sirr?”

  Atash once again lifted his rifle at Malik. “Ask that question one more time, brother.”

  “How did you know I killed my son?”

  “You bring this up now?” Atash yelled at him.

  “Mayberry told you, didn’t he? It was him. That’s how you knew so much about me. I was just another folder full of information from that bastard.”

  “Malik, I didn’t know who he was…” Atash’s face shrunk in anguish.

  Malik was about to speak but instead looked down at Elise. Her face was covered with dry blood and her long hair matted down along her face. She reminded him of his first grade teacher when she gave him a slanted smile. If this one person can be so patient with me, why can’t I be patient with myself? He glanced back at Atash and heard a shot ring out from the garage.

  Looking over, the scene sprawled out in delayed time. Dozens of soldiers streamed out from the building, cautiously taking cover on the ground, and behind crumbling cement walls. Malik was in between the two sudden forces of apathy and passion that fought within him. He was about to respond to Atash when he realized that the man had been shot.

  Atash had fallen over, holding his hip, and panting heavy. “Malik, go… get in the helicopter, and fly up into the sky. Let the flames of redemption guide you to the glory of nothingness. Rid the world of its only hope of freeing itself from the scourge. Drop that weapon right back down on top of us.”

  “Atash…” Malik said as he ducked and sprayed a shower of bullets at the impending soldiers. He saw the cracks again growing under Atash’s eyes, around his mouth, and underneath his chin; cracks of a vain hope returning its hollow reward. Malik wanted to sit down with Atash for hours and pour more of his heart open to him but simply stood frozen as Elise rose to her feet.

  She didn’t turn to Malik; she didn’t worry about him from behind her, because she had learned who he was long ago. She had learned that she only needed to act and Malik would follow. She only needed to hold the box cutter in her clenched fist and thrust it out and down into Atash’s neck. Just a mere flick of her small wrist would tear through his jugular vein, releasing the life from his corrupted thoughts, and wayward mind.

  As more bullets bounced around Malik, he watched the power drain from Atash’s face, as a stream of blood wept from his ruptured neck.

  Utter shock sprang into Atash’s eyes as he gasped for air, looking up at Malik. “Get…” Atash’s voice gurgled from beneath foaming blood, “Get to your task…”

  “Atash,” Malik said, bending over him. “You were right all along. Everything is an illusion. Even what we choose to believe.”

  Atash’s eyes struggled to focus as he looked up at Malik. “I didn’t care,” were his final words as the blood ceased pouring from his neck.

  Elise turned to Malik, with the box cutter in her fist, covered with Atash’s blood. “Malik,” she said, looking at him with radiant eyes that shone through over a month of torture, starvation, and impending death. “Forgive yourself.”

  As the chopper blades thumped above him, he couldn’t understand the patience and love that filled the person in front of him. “I will, once I complete my task.”

  “No… Malik.” She held her box cutter up to him. “You can’t…”

  “Don’t worry, this is a new task,” he said gently as he lowered her arm. “Please trust me now. I know I can’t undo anything I’ve done, but I can try to make it better.”

  Stepping over Atash, he fired his rifle in the direction of the soldiers for a few seconds, and opened the cockpit door to the helicopter.

  “You won’t have to witness anything, any more,” he said, hoisting himself up into the cockpit. He looked down at her. “You were right about me. Your agent and the baby are alive.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “About a thousand miles south. Might need to refuel on my way down.”

  He slammed the door and looked out the window once more at her. He then pushed up on the throttle, lifting the chopper into the air, and away from Elise for the last time.

  Chapter Thirty: Las Cruces, New Mexico

  Like jagged teeth sprouting from the desert, a series of mountain peaks stood erect in the distance like sentinels of a once sane country. Their splintering cliffs projected forth with slanted shadows that drew down the mountains from the midday sun. Above their rocky precipice the sky cut a clean blue line just below a cluster of benign clouds. To Dave, it was the northern boundary of his home that was still intact; still unscathed from the smoldering rot of the undead that now devoured the world. Undead, he scoffed, as if the word were now obsolete. No, there is something new about them now, he thought. He still felt their fingers, knees, and foreheads moving over him, probing him, testing him, and then accepting him. They have a different agenda now.

  The middle of his knees ached as he moved through the desert toward the mountains. He felt burning within them as each knee took his weight with his footsteps. He imagined the grinding joints wearing away as he moved farther over the creamy brown sand of the desert floor. He didn’t know for what he marched; what is even beyond those mountains? He imagined his small home in Dallas broken in from all windows as the entire city made a mad dash to flee the state. Even though it’s hundreds of miles away from Juárez, he knew of the quick panic that gets a hold of people in these days. Hell, I would’ve fled all the way up to Canada if I weren’t here right now.

  After shedding his pack and camouflage jacket long ago, he now dropped his utility belt from off his waist, with the handgun in its holster. He never wanted to fire a gun again for the rest of his life. He only now clutched to his canteen with enough water for one more gulp. Only the thin white cotton of his
undershirt shielded his skin from the sun. He tried focusing on the scraggly bushes in front of him as he walked, but he kept shuddering from the breath at his back, and the wriggling fingers along his spine that he had to endure through an entire day. Stark said it might work, but he didn’t say how long it would take to wriggle through crowds of millions of them.

  No other person, beside that doctor, will ever know what it was like, he thought: blindly following the random single file lines of the infected as they streamed between alleyways and sunken neighborhoods. At least they moved fast, he thought. If they still moved at their penguin waddle pace, I still would’ve been stuck in that city until I died of exhaustion. He periodically blinked as he looked at his palms, marveling that they were still in front of his face, and his heart beating. How am I alive when so many have died? So many millions just shuffled off into a residue of raw organic material from which the new beast could emerge. A beast with millions of drones with tens of millions of legs to carry itself forth through the dusty deserts of Texas into the fleeing masses of a now useless technological generation. Which city would the beast’s tentacles hold on to next? Probably the city he could now see glittering on the horizon.

  Sighing with resignation, he collapsed onto his knees, and looked over his shoulder to the south where he long ago had ceased to hear the desperate gunfire and bombings that swarmed the Mexican border. He thought of Michaels’ long black hair and the saddened smile that she gave him before he stepped away from that power plant. She was only a glimpse of a certain life that could’ve been. She was right all along: everything changed on us, and we didn’t realize it before it was too late. Maybe if we had all thought the way Michaels had thought, we could’ve prevented all of this. You can’t hold on to what never worked in the first place.

  Dave breathed warm air into his nostrils and sat cross-legged on the ground. The silence around him filled his mind with a pleasing comfort that he hadn’t had for several months. He realized that he hadn’t been in such pristine silence for a very long time. He only finally got used to the absence of Douglas’ voice screaming constantly into his ear. Wondering about the remaining members of their “elite” special operations team, he shuddered with a profound sadness. It was the same sadness that crept up on him every morning before he went to work when he lived in New York City; a sadness that had compelled him to escape his loneliness and join the special infectious ops. After traveling halfway around the world and squeezing his way through millions of the infected, the sadness had managed to keep quietly in stow to creep out now in the silent desert.