The Unit

by Terry DeHart

  The ones that got shot during the fight at Wickersham’s place were the first to go. I guess I could blame Wickersham and the girl’s old man for that. I’ll kill them like dogs if I get another chance, but it’s my fault, too, that my men are gone. I really miss some of them, Biggus and the Kelly twins, and Stumpie. It’s war, and people die, but I miss having a bunch of guys under my command, a little army to scare the shit out of the people who were happy to lock us up in juvie.

  I’m getting pretty bummed out, but then I come around to my natural state of being. I’m the boss and bosses get people to do things. But first they have to get their own head screwed on straight. They have to believe in things with more strength than other people believe.

  And so I believe that this is only a little setback. I believe I can get more guys to follow me, because my message is simple: We take what we want, because that’s the only way we’re going to get it. The rich assholes of the world make rules and laws to keep themselves rich, but we have as much right to cheat and steal and declare war as anybody else does. I’ve declared war on them, and on all their kiss-asses and zombies, and my message is an easy thing to sell in this day and age. So I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble finding more recruits. Yeah, I believe I’ll have me a tough little army of scrappers again soon, because I believe that America’s biggest crop right now is its crop of screwed-up and pissed-off poor young dudes.

  We’ve got ourselves a nice place. It’s some rich asshole’s place. It’s probably where the owner came to fuck strange pussy. It’s the kind of place my old man would laugh about, calling it a stabbin’ cabin, but it’s fancy as hell. The biggest bedroom has slippery sheets and big towels and gold faucets in the bathroom and a shitload of bathrobes in the closets.

  We fuck it up, right away. Smears on the mirrors, mud on the rugs, leaving evidence of us everywhere. We treat the place like a rock band would. It’s just another place we can use up and leave behind us.

  We were lucky to find it in the blizzard, but I’ve always had pretty good luck with finding good shit. Whoever owned the house was some kind of survivalist, too, because there’s a good stockpile of food and water and booze and we have three fireplaces and a big propane generator in one of the sheds out back. I think there must be solar panels on the roof, too, but they don’t do us much good, seeing as how they’re buried with snow.

  The storm blows like a starving whore for five days before it lets up. I start to make plans for us, but another storm comes in and another and another, and we’re changing. For one thing, we get sick again. We’re sick from both ends, and I’m not sure if we’ll make it this time. We’re sick and stuck here together, changing back into the way we were in juvie, spending our time on nothing and everything, because time and pain is all we have. We don’t clean up after ourselves and we don’t stoke the fire or run the generator.

  But then we start to get better. We get our energy back, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. By the time the storms let up, I’m sleeping upstairs with the Beretta under my pillow and Luscious is downstairs doing sets of a hundred push-ups and Darko is avoiding us both. I’m still the boss, but I think if we’re stuck here much longer, there won’t be as many of us.

  Jerry

  The storm is the most brutal weather I’ve lived through. I alternate between thanking God for it and praying for it to stop. Brief periods of calm rush past, but the clouds are so thick that the trees cast no shadows. The sky upends itself every few hours and there’s at least five feet of snow on the ground. Drifts bury the blackberries and rise up over the cabin like frozen sea swells. I’m grateful for it, but I’m also wild to get to Sacramento to see Susan and Scotty. But we have no choice except to hunker down in the cabin and hope that spring will win out over what appears to be a nuclear winter.

  We’re in stir. Lockup. We’re safe, probably, from the goons of the world, but we need to keep our spirits up. In the purgatory of the stormbound cabin, Melanie becomes an optimist. At least she pretends to be one. She watches the storm rage.

  “It’s only the earth cleaning up after us,” she says. “The bombs put tons of junk into the atmosphere. This is only a mother, cleaning up after her children. It might take a while, but she’ll get things straightened up.”

  “You are very wise, for one so young.”

  She glowers, then she almost smiles.

  There’s a combination checkers/chess set in the cabin. Melanie sets it up and we play chess. She’s a fine strategist, and we’re evenly matched. We win one game apiece, then I lose my concentration and Melanie beats me two games in a row.

  Outside, the wind rises into something like a continuous explosion. Trees crack with sounds like high-power gunshots. Heavy timbers fall against the cabin, and I begin to fear that we’ll lose the roof.

  I stoke up a huge fire. The storm pulls the flames up the chimney like it’s drinking heat from a straw. There isn’t a lot more we can do. We get into a corny mood, because why the hell not? We sing “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” and other camp favorites. I hear the parts where Susan and Scott would normally join in, but I sing past them, holding up nothing but my end of the melody. We make hot chocolate and I lace mine with dollops of 190-proof whiskey.

  I’m feeling almost fine, but then we get sick again, and my stomach rejects the booze. The place reeks of puke and partially absorbed alcohol. We assume the familiar positions of the irradiated, alternately curling and arching, and I pray it will pass, this time the last, but the roof creaks against the wind and we have no assurances. We hold our shelter over us with nothing but the power of fear, knowing that things could probably be worse, but incapable of feeling gratitude for anything on this earth.

  The sickness and the storm pass gradually into history. I’m not sure exactly when it happens. A time comes when the pain is merely horrible, and nature is no longer clawing at our roof. We rise again from our filth, thin and nerve-jangled and weak. I manage to unbolt the door and throw it open. The great wind has blown itself out, and the sky is clear for the first time since the bombs, a curved pate of blue, the most tender blue I’ve ever seen. It’s very cold and the world slumbers beneath its blankets and cocoons of snow. Melanie walks outside and stands beside me. We breathe in the clean, cold air. It makes me cough, and the sound of my coughing falls flat against the hushed snowscape.

  We turn our faces up to gaze into the heatless sky. I can see forever, or as much of forever as we’re allowed to see, and I feel as if I’ve been freed from a cage. I give a silent prayer of thanks, then spit my remaining bile into the snow. A breeze chills my ears and sighs away through flocked trees. Branches sway and creak and then fall silent. We plow into the fresh powder snow. Sometimes it reaches our knees and sometimes it supports our weight only after we’ve fallen waist deep. We fumble and flutter until we break a trail to the creek. We dig to its frozen surface, and I fall to my knees and put my ear close to it, and I’m overjoyed to hear the trickle of water moving freely beneath the ice.

  Melanie stands beside me. She’s smiling. I’m smiling, too. It’s mid-spring now, and the plants aren’t blossoming. Maybe they won’t blossom this year, and maybe we’ll have another huge thing to worry about, but we’re not worrying about it now. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, but the high haze remains. Only a small fist of sun shines down on us.

  We return to the cabin. I light a fire and then we set about cleaning up after ourselves. Melanie pitches in and we have the place squared away in no time at all.

  We’re getting very low on food. We have a well-stocked bar, but we’re down to our last dusty cans of Dinty Moore—the ones that we set aside because they’re dented. I think it’s about time for me to try my hand at shopping for protein at Mother Nature’s stores. I could catch some trout or shoot another deer, if any of the local game is still alive and uncontaminated. At the very worst, I could hack some meat from animals that certainly froze to death in the storms.

  But then the government finally puts i
n an appearance. A C-130 flies over. It flies low over the smoke from our fire, its four big turboprops clawing the air. We run outside. Melanie’s cheeks are flushed and mine probably are, too. I want to cry, but I don’t. We wave and jump and shout, and the next day, the sky is thumping and clattering with helicopters. They’re flying nap-of-the-earth, and they turn toward the smoke from our chimney. A National Guard Huey buzzes the house and gives us its loud-slapping rotor sounds. The Huey is big and real, and it’s the prettiest bird I’ve ever seen.

  The crew drops us a military survival walkie-talkie. We don’t have much of a conversation on the radio. The crew chief takes down our information, how many living and missing and dead, the possible locations of other survivors, then he tells us to draw a big “X” in the snow if we need supplies. We stamp one out, and the C-130 makes a run on us. The heavens open, and our lean times are over. Parachuted supplies float down on target, three big boxes, and we have to get under cover to avoid being hit. The last of the packages thump into the snow and we run out like kids and tear into them. We have MREs and bottled water and blankets and first aid kits. We have pamphlets about how to survive in extreme weather and how to decontaminate ourselves and how to make traps to catch small game and how to do all the other things we’ve already been doing to make it this far into the longest winter on record.

  There are also a few copies of some kind of newspaper. It reads like propaganda, and it’s written at about a fifth-grade level, but we finally get some news. The lead story is an address from the new president of the United States. I don’t recognize his name. His pamphlet urges us to come together in this trying time. Apparently, we’ve wiped North Korea and the tribal areas of Pakistan from the map. The Russians and Chinese and Europeans are assisting with the global mop-up of Al Qaeda. There are a half dozen fluff pieces about people who displayed the right stuff and towns that overcame the odds. There’s also a piece written in an official tone about how “it was decided that displaced peoples should remain in their places of domicile for the immediate future, unless those places of domicile are officially declared hazardous for human occupation. More information will be forthcoming.”

  Melanie and I read the official notice together. We guffaw from opposites sides of the political spectrum, but then we get back into character. We open the packages, and it just about blows my mind when I find a patching kit for bicycle tires, and a compact sewing kit and fishing line and hooks and tiny space blankets and shampoo with conditioner and potassium iodide tablets and a bottle of prenatal vitamin tablets. I laugh and I leak a few tears when I start to believe again that we’re still citizens of the richest and silliest nation that God has ever tolerated on His earth.

  Susan

  We aren’t attacked. We don’t have to defend the town from barbarians, praise God, because the government is here now, pulling off what appears to be the biggest disaster response in its history. I’m as happy as I can be about it, but Scott frowns when the helicopters fly over. The lines of scar tissue that fragment his brows and cheeks and jaw pull tight, and he turns away from me.

  “We’ll get your sister and father back now,” I say.

  “One way or the other.”

  “I know they’re alive. How could they not be?”

  Scott snuffles and then makes a big show of blowing his nose.

  “Either way, the monsters have to pay.”

  “Shouldn’t we leave that to God?”

  “I am leaving it to God. It’s what He told me to do.”

  I don’t know what to say. He walks outside to watch the helicopters land. From his turned back I hear:

  “He told me. I heard it.”

  Melanie

  We’ll be leaving soon. We’re gentle with each other while we divide the MREs. We trade for our favorite entrees. I get the veggie entrees. Dad takes the meat dishes—Pork Rib and Beef Enchilada and Pot Roast w/Vegetables and Meatloaf w/Gravy and Chicken Fajita. I get a pile of meals, too—Veggie Burger w/BBQ Sauce, Cheese Tortellini, Vegetable Manicotti, Cheese & Vegetable Omelet, and Vegetable Lasagna.

  We eat our first meals fast and cold. I don’t know how many we eat, but it’s a lot. The place is littered with foil packets and slimed with food. We have food on our faces and our hands are greasy with super-preserved sauces. We burp and smile, then we see what pigs we’ve made of ourselves and we get kind of shy.

  By evening, we’re getting back some of our almost-forgotten etiquette. I light lanterns and pump some water and clean my hands and face. Dad cleans himself, too. While he’s cleaning up, I clear the dining room table. I scrub the table as clean as I can, then I cover it with a linen tablecloth and set it with place settings I find in the hutch. White china plates with real silverware. I wonder when they were last used—a holiday meal, the celebration of a new birth, a wake. I light candles and heat our MREs in unfamiliar pots and pans. I find spices in the kitchen cupboards, and I add them to our meal, just because I can. Garlic and pepper and Tabasco and oregano and ginger powder. I add tiny amounts that I can barely taste, but it makes me feel rich to know that all those spices are in my food.

  Dad stokes a long-burning fire in the fireplace, and we sit down at the table. We’re lit by soft flames. Dad bows his head and gives thanks, his lips moving, but no sound coming out. It’s the way he prays in public. It’s not like he’s shy about his religion or anything, and it occurs to me that he’s praying quietly like he does when he doesn’t want to embarrass me.

  But I’m not embarrassed. He lifts his head and sees me looking at him. He smiles a huge smile. He hardly ever smiles like that when he’s sober, but he’s doing it now.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing,” he says. “It’s just that I think we might be on the other side of this thing.”

  “I think you might be right.”

  He nods and makes his “I’m pretending to be serious” face. I nod back at him. He hasn’t changed a bit since this whole thing began. He’s still worried about me, and he’ll still kill in my name, if it comes to that.

  I must’ve let something show on my face, because he asks me if I’m okay. I tell him everything’s fine, then I squish everything back down inside me. That’s what cowards do, right?

  But then almost nothing else matters as we dig into our last high-calorie meal of the day. I feel the proteins and carbs going to work inside me, and for the first time in weeks, I start to worry about getting fat. I tell Dad about it, and he laughs a real laugh. We eat in the flickering light, and our stomachs accept the nourishment, and it’s almost as good as all the dreams I’ve had lately of unlimited room service in a nice hotel.

  * * *

  After the first day of feasting we cut back to two meals a day. After we eat, we go outside and stare into the blue sky, but no more airplanes or helicopters fly over. After two days, Dad goes out scouting to see what’s around us. I go for a walk, too. I have nowhere else to go, so I follow Dad’s tracks, trying to be as quiet as I can.

  I like the hard work of being quiet. I walk slowly because speed makes me noisy. I try to walk on the hard parts of the world, rocks and logs like slippery balance beams. I’m a gymnast, and I’ve trained for years to be very careful about where I put my feet, and I can walk with almost no sound at all.

  Dad’s tracks go on and on, and sometimes they have deer tracks around them, but he’s still walking straight away from the cabin. I’m not a mountain girl or anything, but I think the deer tracks are fresh. And then I see a deer. It’s a doe, and she’s pawing at the ground and eating snow-dried grass. I stop walking and she looks at me, but I don’t think she can really see me. She tunes her ears at me like antennae while she lifts her tail and lets fly with her pellets, fertilizing whatever might still dare to grow in this world, then she slides into deeper woods.

  It’s a soft day. The creek gurgles under its layer of ice, and in some places the water splashes onto snow. The ice is clear and grainy like an unflavored snow cone. It looks crunchy and good, and I eat
some, and it is. Robins and jays make a racket in the trees. Squirrels and jackrabbits stand and chew on their meals of stored acorns. I space out for a while in that mild place, and I try to forget everything, but I can’t.

  I start walking faster. The creek is about a quarter mile behind me when I know I’m not alone. I get the feeling that something dangerous is nearby. I slow down. I see Dad standing at the edge of a clearing. It’s a snowy meadow with a big McMansion in the middle of it. There’s smoke coming from the chimney. Someone is outside chopping firewood. It’s only about thirty-five degrees out, but the wood-chopping guy has his shirt off. His skin is the color of unsweetened chocolate and his muscles are big. His hair has grown out since I saw him last. He has a big ’fro now, like athletes had in the seventies, but there’s no doubt that it’s Luscious.

  My breathing speeds up and my vision gets super-clear. Luscious doesn’t see us, so that means he’s vulnerable. I like seeing him vulnerable. Dad has an arrow strung in his bow. His head is down, but his eyes are locked onto his target. For a few heartbeats, I want to watch Dad shoot Luscious. For a few heartbeats I wish I had a gun, so I could do it myself.

  But no. Hell no. I get more pissed off than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m pissed at Luscious and Dad and most of all I’m pissed at my own cowardly ass.

  I move closer. I’m all done with trying to be quiet. This is the last straw. It’s the boys and Dad again, with only their violence in common, but it’s me, too, and I’m running past the edge of the woods and straight out into the clearing between them. The snow is the same pale color as the sky. The air is cold but softening, and I can feel mud beneath the snow.