Onward, Drake! - eARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  “But?” he said.

  She stepped closer to him and studied his face closely. “You saw action, right?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you feel about yourself?”

  No one had ever asked him that. People had asked about what he’d seen and what he’d done, but maybe just to be polite, no one had ever asked that. His throat tightened as he said, “The truth?”

  “What the hell else are we doing here?” she said. She looked like she wanted to hit him.

  He looked to each side and wondered if he should leave now. He didn’t owe this woman anything.

  But he did, one soldier to another.

  “Most days, most times, I’m numb. Good days, I feel good. If I let myself think about the war, though, and sometimes even when I don’t realize I have, I hate myself.”

  She bobbed her head in agreement. “Yeah, exactly. These doctors, my husband, everyone who’s never been there, they don’t get it. But that’s exactly right. That self-loathing, it’s down there, all the time, ready to come out, catching you when you’re unprepared for it.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The PTSD and the anger, they stay with you, and a lot of people understand those things, or try to, but they can’t get the rest. Not if they didn’t live it, do what you had to do . . .”

  “So you fight it, right?” she said. “The bad memories come, and you tell yourself you did what was necessary, to protect yourself, to take care of your squad, whatever. You fight it and most times you lose, but you have something to fight.” She paused. “It’s good to have something to fight.”

  He nodded his head as the memories he’d recalled during the assessment washed over him again. “Yeah. We never get to stop fighting.”

  “So that’s the thing,” she said, “the thing they don’t tell you about the treatment. Maybe because they can’t. Or they don’t want to. I don’t know.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I still have that feeling,” she said. “I still hate myself.” She looked away for a moment, and when she stared again at him her eyes were wet. “But I don’t know why! I don’t know what I did. Did I do awful things? Normal things? I can’t remember. Before the treatment, some days I felt like all I was, all I had, was that fight against what I did, that struggle to push the hatred back inside and carry on.” She stepped back. “Now, the feeling is there, but I have no clue why.” She shook her head. “Maybe it’s better this way. I don’t know. I do know that I always preferred an enemy I could see, even if it was my own memories.” She forced a smile. “At least I sleep now.”

  “You are going to keep carrying on, though, right?” he said. “You wouldn’t—“

  She raised her hand in a “stop” motion. “Nah,” she said. “I have kids. A husband. My duty. One foot in front of the other, right?”

  He nodded.

  They stood again in silence, each lost in thought.

  “Thank you,” Crane said. “Sincerely. I really appreciate you talking to me.”

  She waved her hand. “De nada.” After a few seconds, she said, “So, are you going to do it—the treatment? It does help in a lot of ways.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, even though he did. “I don’t know.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I gotta go,” she said. “I’m meeting my husband for lunch.”

  Crane nodded and left. After a few seconds, he stopped and turned. Ortega was marching down the hill, her posture erect, her stride purposeful, another soldier still fighting another war that should have been, for her, long over.

  Bobby had lunch on the table when Crane reached home. A fresh salad, maybe four ounces of lightly seared tuna, glasses of ice water. No treats this time.

  As soon as Crane sat, Bobby said, “How did it go?”

  “You haven’t already talked to that asshole Johnson?”

  “Of course I have,” Bobby said. He smiled. “You said from the beginning that I could check, so I did. I know you’re a good candidate for the therapy. I meant, though, what I asked: how did it go—for you?”

  “It was no fun.” He ate a bite of the tuna, which was, as always, perfect. If Bobby did something, he did it well. “But I’ve been through worse. Obviously.”

  “So are you going to consider it?” Bobby said. “The therapy could mean no more nights like last night.”

  Crane put down his fork, took a slow drink of water, and dried his lips. He forced himself to look right at Bobby. “I already have,” he said. “I’m not going to do it.”

  Bobby leaned back in his chair, disappointment obvious on his face. “Why not?”

  Crane stared at him. How could he explain about his talk with Ortega? How he really felt about himself? What he’d seen, much less what he’d done? He’d never found a way to make anyone who wasn’t there understand. He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  Bobby stood, anger replacing the disappointment. “That’s not enough, Joseph,” he said. “Not this time. I’ve accepted that for over fifty years, because there was nothing you could do to fix any of it, because I love you, because I realize I can never truly understand what you went through. But now you can fix it, and you won’t, so you need to tell me why you won’t.”

  I’ve painted the answer a thousand times, Crane thought. I’ve said it the ways I know best, the ways I can, over and over and over. The words would be just words, not real, not anywhere near the reality of it. He said nothing.

  Bobby shook his head. “Not enough,” he said. “Not nearly enough.” He grabbed his keys off the table by the door and left.

  Crane walked to the window and watched as Bobby climbed into his car and drove off.

  Bobby never looked back.

  Crane stared at the emptiness that Bobby and his car had occupied. The tuna churned in his stomach. He felt sick. He stood and stared for five minutes, and then five more.

  He cleared the table. Put a cover on the salad and stuck it in the refrigerator. Wrapped the pieces of tuna and put them in the cold, too. Loaded and started the dishwasher. Wiped down the table. Went through the kitchen and cleaned everything that wasn’t perfect until it was just the way it was supposed to be.

  Then he went upstairs to paint.

  After mixing the paints and assembling the brushes, he set up a mirror, stared into it, and for the first time since he’d left for basic training, he painted a person.

  Himself.

  He started with an outline and worked it again and again, his strokes so much less sure than when he painted scenes. He laid down a base.

  The world vanished, and he worked and worked and worked.

  A little before six, he sat back and stared at the man in the canvas in front of him, then at the mirror, and back to the canvas. The face in the mirror was sad, the one on the canvas sadder. The eyes, though, were better on the canvas, as hollow as he felt inside, more hollow than his real eyes could possibly be. You could tell the man on the canvas had done horrible things; anyone could see it.

  The painting wasn’t as good as he had hoped it would be, but they never were. It was as good as he could make it.

  He cleaned his brushes, tidied his workspace, washed his hands until they were free of paint, and went downstairs.

  In the kitchen, he prepared a vegetarian meal, one Bobby would love. Kale and spinach stir-fry. Pasta from spaghetti squash. He freshened the salad from lunch.

  Seven o’clock came, and dinner was ready. They never ate later than seven when they were at home.

  No Bobby.

  Crane sat at the table and stared at the cooling food. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and hoped Bobby would return. He ran through what he wanted to say to Bobby, what he wanted to show him. No, not what he wanted, but what he would do. He promised himself that if Bobby came home, he would do his best.

  Seven thirty passed. No Bobby.

  Crane closed his eyes, sat, and waited.

  Just after eight, he heard the car pull up. He opened his eyes and
watched the doorway until Bobby appeared in it.

  “We’re not done,” Bobby said. His face and voice broadcast anger.

  Crane stood, went to Bobby, and put his right index finger on his husband’s lips. “Please,” he said, “come with me.” He removed his finger and looked into Bobby’s eyes. “Please.”

  Bobby tilted his head in question but followed Crane to the stairs and up to his studio.

  Crane turned on the lights. One of the overhead spots bathed the portrait in a soft glow.

  Bobby stared back and forth between the painting and Crane, the man and the man in the canvas. “You’ve never . . .” he said. “What is this?”

  Crane led him closer. “What do you see?” he said. He motioned to the canvas. “There.”

  Bobby stared at the painting. “You,” he said. “It’s beautiful, it’s perfect, and it’s you.”

  Crane shook his head. Bobby still couldn’t see it. He had hoped the painting would be enough, but it wasn’t. He took a deep breath, stared at the painting, and forced himself to talk. “I see a man who did things he can never tell anyone, not even you. I see a different man than the one who went to Viet Nam. I see a dead man waiting for his body to die. I see a man who deserves to die for all that he did, who could have died as easily as all the men he saw perish in horrible ways.”

  He stopped talking, unable to continue.

  He blinked away tears.

  No, he had promised himself that if Bobby came home, he would do all he could. He could do more.

  “I see a man,” he said, “I hate every day for what he did.”

  He looked now at Bobby. Bobby’s eyes were wet, too.

  “At least, though, I know what he did.” His throat tightened, and now tears ran down his face. “I know every single thing he did—everything I did. When I hate him—when I hate myself—I know why, and I know that I deserve that hatred, and I don’t deserve the love you give me. I try, though, every day, to deserve that love. I fight the memories. I fight the hatred. Some days, all that’s left of me is that fight to stay alive and not surrender to that hatred.”

  He wiped his face.

  “If I do the treatment, I won’t be able to remember what I did, and though that might help me sleep, it would leave me with only the hatred—and no idea why I had it. I couldn’t bear that.”

  He took a deep breath. He’d done all he could.

  “Honestly,” he said, “that is the very best I can do. If it’s not enough—“

  Bobby put his hand over Crane’s mouth.

  “It’s enough,” Bobby said. “It’s more than enough. Thank you.” Bobby pulled him into a hug so strong that Crane felt he could lean into it and let go of everything and still remain upright. “I love you.”

  After a minute, Bobby pulled back and stared again at the painting. “It’s wonderful,” he said.

  Crane looked at it and shook his head. “I don’t want to sell it. I don’t want it on someone’s wall.”

  “Sell it?” Bobby said. “No way. That’s all mine. I’m going to frame it myself and hang it in my office here. You can hate that man as much as you need to, and I’ll love him as much as I want to, and we’ll see who wins.” He smiled. “Deal?”

  Crane nodded. He didn’t believe for a second that Bobby understood, but he’d done all he could to explain, and that had to be enough.

  He also had to admit to feeling the tiniest sense of relief. He didn’t expect it to last, but in that moment he savored it.

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  Mark L. Van Name is a writer, technologist, and spoken word performer. He has published five novels (One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack, Overthrowing Heaven, Children No More, and No Going Back), as well as an omnibus collection of his first two books (Jump Gate Twist); edited or co-edited three previous anthologies (Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, Transhuman, and The Wild Side), and written many short stories. Those stories have appeared in a wide variety of books and magazines, including Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, many original anthologies, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction.

  As a technologist, he is the co-founder and co-chairman of a fact-based marketing and learning and development firm, Principled Technologies, Inc., that is based in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. He has worked with computer technology for his entire professional career and has published over a thousand articles in the computer trade press, as well as a broad assortment of essays and reviews.

  As a spoken word artist, he has created and performed four shows—Science Magic Sex; Wake Up Horny, Wake Up Angry; Mr. Poor Choices; and Mr. Poor Choices II: I Don’t Understand.

  My afterword, “Waiting for the asteroid.”

  If you hang around Dave for any significant amount of time, you’re bound to hear him say that if he’s lucky, the asteroid will hit. He’s joking, and he’s not joking.

  I have never served in the military, and I have never been in combat, so I am not at all sure I have any right to have written this story.

  I did, though, spend three years, from age 10 to 13, in a paramilitary youth group. I went through its basic training and rose through its ranks, and along the way I did a lot of very bad things. I can rationalize them and explain why they were necessary, and perhaps they were, but I know what I did. I know everything I did.

  Though Dave and I have never discussed whatever awful things he had to do in Viet Nam—and everyone in every war has to do awful things—I am completely confident that he also knows what he did, that he, too, knows everything he did.

  From my years in that youth group, and from a longer and somewhat overlapping period of being a victim of child abuse, I suffer from PTSD.

  Dave also suffers from PTSD.

  We thus have more in common than most people can ever understand. We understand, though, and we have for decades.

  Unlike Dave, I’m not waiting for the asteroid. I understand that one day it or something else will claim us all, that, as Dave likes to point out, in the end the heat death of the universe will consume everything and nothing will matter, but for as long as I’m alive, I will fight for meaning. Dave will say he is different, but I will always maintain that he, too, is engaged in his own version of that fight for meaning.

  I also believe, though he and I have never directly discussed it, that each of us fights another battle every day, a battle that we entered via different paths but that pits us against the same enemy, a battle that most people thankfully will never need to fight.

  This story is about that battle.

  The Losing Side

  Larry Correia

  Despite the narrative to the contrary, my father was a good man. During the revolution the royalists called him the Butcher of Bangoran. General Vaerst was our spokesman, our inspiration, and their scapegoat. At the end of the war, the royalists dragged him out of the palace, stripped him naked, beat him, and then executed him with a ceremonial sword on the steps. They left his body to rot there for a week as an example.

  I don’t know who the royalists’ god is, but my father was their devil.

  In reality, he was just another husband and a father, no different than the tens of thousands of others who died during the revolution. He was a man who loved his planet, but who’d been pushed too far and took a stand against tyranny. It turned out that he was really good at it. I don’t think Dad ever thought his words would start a revolution.

  The last time I saw him was the night before my company shipped out for West Moravia. At that point we’d been fighting for two years. Dad was worn out, but the people were sick of those slaving royalist bastards and had risen up, so we were winning, and that kept him going. As we sat in his command bunker, listening to the shelling of Vakaga City above us, eating a last meal of ration bars, we talked about everything. About friends and family lost, but about how it would be worth it so that my children—his grandchildren—could grow up with freedom for the first time in our planet’s history.

  That was w
hen he got the report that the royalists had somehow borrowed enough money to hire off world mercenaries. At the time, I didn’t understand why Dad looked so stricken.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d asked. “We’re winning. We’ve got them on the ropes. Once we take the west, they’ll fold.”

  He had gotten up and begun pacing. You have to understand, my father only paced when things were really bad. “I told the council we needed to lock them in, get them on contract, but those cheap do-nothings wouldn’t listen to me. Now it’s too late. We should have hired them when we had the chance.”

  “But what difference are some mercenaries going to make?”

  “They’re Hammer’s Slammers, son. They’ll make all the difference.”

  The explosion from the 20 cm main tank gun obliterated half the apartment complex around us.

  “Back up!” I shouted at the driver, but Cainho knew his shit, and we were already heading into the subterranean parking level before the Slammers’ tank could get off another shot. The flash from the blast had momentarily fuzzed out our tank’s scanners, but we’d gotten a peek, that’s all that mattered. The spotted target’s position would be relayed to everyone else, and hopefully something they threw at it wouldn’t just bounce off that monster.

  “Shogun Six, this is Phantom One. Heavy in the open,” I called in as our Lynx sped through the empty garage. I brought up the map, and tapped out a path for Cainho to follow. “We’re moving to Isen Street.”

  “Roger, Phantom. Engaging the heavy. Proceed to Isen.”

  Not that I wouldn’t have kept going anyway. If my little scout tank waited long enough to get orders confirmed we were dead. If one of our scout tanks was doing anything other than running or hiding, it was dead. We’d learned that the hard way.

  As we bounced up the ramp and out into the street, the sensor package showed clear both ways, but half a second later I got a warning ping. Movement on the left, just a flash of iridium armor through holes punched in a concrete wall. Combat car. “Pig at nine.” Its gunners hadn’t seen us yet, or we’d be eating cyan bolts. I tagged a new path through the wreckage of what looked to have been a tractor dealership. The Lynx was the fastest armored vehicle on the battlefield, and in Cainho’s skilled hands, it was a nimble little beast. He got us behind another wall and the flaming remains of some piece of industrial equipment and we hid.