by Don Shift
“Okay.” David whispered into the microphone. After a moment, he described the area to Sam and gave the street name. “It’s a cul-de-sac. We get out the front and run when they are a minute out. Jump in, ride off into the sunset.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes. Picking everyone up now. Things went squirrely at the warehouse, but mission accomplished. Your Army buddies are burning it now.”
“That’s a relief. You know, I can’t hear their gunfire.”
“Your ears are packed with mud and you can’t hear over the tinnitus, probably.”
The chain-link fence rattled. David popped around the corner of the vehicle and shot the man. Someone else popped over the edge of the ditch and shot back, then dragged the man down.
“They’re in the ditch!” Palmer hissed.
“I got this.” Sam pulled a frag grenade from his vest. “Can you throw this?”
“My arm sucks. I’d kill us both,” David said. It was true. He couldn’t catch or throw a ball to save his life. “Where did you get that?”
“Major Huerta. My depth perception is wasted, even if my goggles worked.” Sam pulled out a chemlight. “Can you can crack that and chuck it over the fence into the ditch?”
“Yeah. It’s light enough I can underhand it,” David whispered.
“Do it. I’ll toss the grenade at the light, so don’t throw short.”
David broke the stick and it glowed green. It sailed through the air, just missing the top of the fence, and landed in the ditch. A head poked up, wondering what was going on. Sam stood up next and heaved the grenade. Someone took a shot at him, but all Sam heard was the bullets hitting the glass of the car.
David felt Sam land on top of him, then heard the boom of the grenade followed by the whizz of the shrapnel that bounced off the concrete and cars with a sound like hail on a tin roof. A spray of mud splattered the far side of the car.
“Good throw.” It was the wrong time for compliments.
“Move!” Sam yelled back.
David ran towards the front of the yard weaving through stacks of crushed cars and wrecks redeemed by the EMP from their turn to be reduced to scrap metal sandwiches. Sam held onto the back of his partner’s vest for dear life. “Jump the gate!” David said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can Sam.”
“No, I physically can’t. I can’t get my left arm above my head.”
David tugged on the gate, making it rattle loudly.
“I got you now,” someone with a Mexican accent yelled from the yard.
David grabbed Sam, hoisted the wounded man onto his shoulders, and threw Sam over the eight-foot fence. There was a single gunshot as David let go of Sam. His partner landed hard and loud on the other side, groaning painfully. Palmer dove behind a large white object that he realized was a propane tank. His pulse raced even faster. Something about being killed in a massive explosion seemed a lot less appealing than being shot.
He peaked over the top of the tank. The sicario that had shot at them wasn’t even wearing night vision and was either wounded himself or muddy. He stood out in the open confidently, probably assuming Sam had been the only guy. David shot three times and then jumped over the fence, landing on Sam.
When David hit, Sam didn’t groan or even swear.
“Partner, let’s go.” Dread of the worse sort hit David. Adrenaline was flooding his body. It was the most powerful rush he had ever felt. “Sam, wake up buddy.”
Sam lay still.
***
Mika and Brooke herded the last of the women into the school bus and followed them in. The driver wasted no time following the directions of the night-vision wearing deputy back up the fog-shrouded road. In the back, Brooke, an army medic, and a doctor from the medical center tended to the women. None were seriously wounded. The worst injuries were a cut from tripping and falling against a piece of sharp metal and a woman whose arm had been peppered with small fragments of a bullet jacket or trailer sheet metal.
All of the women were quiet. The doctor whispered to Brooke that it seemed as if the women had been sedated. Perhaps they had been slipped drugs to keep them compliant. Only the two injured women cried out as their wounds were tended to. The red lights inside the bus bathed the hollow faces and vacant eyes in an eerie light. Their hell was over with, but the effects of post-traumatic stress would linger with them always.
No happy reunion awaited them. Like Rosie, many of their husbands, boyfriends, and families had been murdered. The most lucid one of them was chatting softly with Mika, trying to get more information so she could believe that the rescue was real indeed, and her captors were perishing as they spoke.
***
As David had his hands-on Sam’s butt, throwing the latter over the fence, Sam was worried that he might break his neck being tossed over the eight-foot fence like this. Then he felt a powerful jab in his left butt cheek, so powerful that he didn’t notice the pain to his arms and face when he hit the ground. A hot poker was burning its way from his buttocks into his chest. It felt like it took an eternity, but the pain started to go away as the fog began to lift around him.
There she was, Lindsey, as a graceful corporal working out on the elliptical machine in the Oceanside 24 Hour Fitness. Of course he didn’t know she was a Marine too, back then. Sam didn’t question why he was dreaming now. The thoughts came unbidden. There they were, at a bar in San Diego, both in uniform celebrating Lindsey’s graduation. Now both of them were running on a beach in Florida.
As they ran, he forgave Lindsey for leaving him. She understood why Sam was so angry. She felt his loneliness since his parents died, the sense of betrayal he had when she left him while he rehabbed. Lindsey understood. He felt at peace, one with the world. The love and forgiveness he felt for her was so pure. It was like a warm blanket of happiness.
Something clicked in Sam’s mind. This is what death feels like. I’ve felt this before. I’m dying. He remembered where he was, if not exactly what happened. It felt like he was being dragged, so he tried kicking his feet and swinging his arms.
The warm feeling was returning. Someone was beckoning him. It felt like a crowd of thousands were cheering around him. Is it weak of me to let go? Sam thought, trying to fight. He must have been hit badly. There would be no corpsmen and surgeons just a helicopter away. He was going to die anyway.
Sam found himself sitting with a Navy master chief, one of the guys he dragged out of the firefight in Fallujah, in The Salty Frog, a SEAL bar in Imperial Beach. The guys from that team had met Sam there for a night on the town to thank him for saving their buddies’ lives. Sam was wearing his dress blues for some reason.
“Sam, you’ve got nothing to prove, one of them said.” The chief reached out and touched Sam’s Silver Star. “It happens to the best of us.” The sound of dozens of boots jogging in time filled his mind, replacing the bar, followed by a cadence he hadn’t sung since being at the recruit depot seventeen years ago.
Momma, Momma can't you see,
What the Corps has done for me?
Put me in a barber’s chair,
Snip, snap and I had no hair.
Put a gun in my hand,
Taught me how to kill a man.
So if I die in a combat zone,
Box me up and ship me home.
Put me in a set of dress blues,
Comb my hair and shine my shoes.
Pin my medals upon my chest,
Tell my momma I did my best.
Momma, Momma don’t you cry,
‘Cuz the Marine Corps motto is do or die.
Sam let the warmth envelop him and heeded the irresistible call of the unimaginable wonder of eternity.
See the Elephant
When the Bearcat brought Sam’s body home, Mika broke into hysterics when she realized that Sam was not among the pallbearers of the flag-draped stretcher. Once she and Brooke got the women aboard the buses and safely to the hospital, there had been no news about the re
st of the raid, so they presumed it went well. Mika ran to Sam’s body the way that relatives always seem to do when suddenly confronted with the corpse of a loved one. Hearing Mika’s wails, Palmer lost composure and quietly wept.
The other wives surrounded Mika and hugged her as she fell to the ground. Mrs. Sibley and Mrs. Palmer both cried too. Sam had become another son to them. The stoic-faced men with hollow eyes and wet cheeks carried their litter to the front porch to lay the body in front of the flagpole. The men had agreed that Sam should lie in repose under the fluttering half-mast flag until he could be buried that evening.
One of the most important tasks any buddy could have was to go through the personal effects of a deceased comrade and remove anything that might be offensive, or embarrassing should his loved ones find it. That task fell to David. Sam was too straight-laced to have anything like that. He removed a small photo album and flipped through it. It was prints of Lindsey and Sam. Taped into the back of the book was a plain gold ring; David was surprised to find out that his friend had, or at least seriously contemplated, proposing to Lindsey. He had been so heartbroken when she left him. Those items would go in the coffin Mr. Sibley was building.
A manila folder held a print of Sam in his Class A sheriff’s uniform a few years ago when the department was taking everyone’s official portraits. Such a handsome young man with a boyish face. A photo like that had once sat next to a folded flag on his grandmother’s mantel; a great-uncle that had never come home from Korea. So many men through history had ended up as nothing more than a name and a photograph. Only David and his father knew Uncle Marvin existed and now even that memory would fade.
A debt of honor would always be owed to Sam. Privately, David was glad Sam took the initiative to give Huerta clearance to fire. It’s not that Palmer wouldn’t have done it, but he wouldn’t have thought of it. In his mind, it wasn’t “That could have been me,” that was the refrain. It should have been me, he thought instead. In so many ways, Sam was still a boy who had no chance to build himself a life.
History was not kind to men like Marvin and Sam who gave their youth and futures in the service of those and what they loved. Most men never reproduced, succumbing to war, disease, or disaster. Nearly all childless men would be forgotten in time with the lucky few survivors having their names remain in a book or on a headstone. Even Mika’s memory of Sam would fade as she found someone else to love her. Warriors may be forgotten, but their deeds lived on.
It was a fitful night for everyone. A beautiful make-shift ceremony was carried out at sunset with the Sheriff, Captain Tejada, Hidalgo, Stackhouse, and Luther Washington with his two Marines among the guests. A small honor guard of deputies in their uniforms, looser on their frames now, placed Sam in his grave. It was pale honors just months from a world where thousands of cops from across the world would join a convoy behind the hearse, as grateful citizens and fire trucks flying flags lined the road, to pack into the church to help usher their departed brother to heaven.
David turned in early, falling asleep only with the help of three fingers of Scotch. He woke around ten PM, not from a nightmare, but in his alcohol-induced dream state he remembered that Sam was dead. Just as he was about to drift off, he woke with a sudden jerk and the absence of his dear friend reverberating through his brain. Adrenaline gushed through his veins and his heart pounded, slowing down as his hands trembled, the memory of feeling Sam’s still body fresh.
In the morning, the relief guards Hidalgo sent departed. Breakfast was morose. The sun that burned through the fog yesterday was replaced by high clouds and dripping rain. The day had no soul and an unseen sun on the sorrowful day merely going through the motions of daylight. Mr. Sibley lit a cheerful and reassuring fire out of avocado wood. Everyone but Tyler and Marco, who were on security duty, congregated in the large living room. No one wanted to be alone today with their grief and fears on such a dark day.
No one cared about the good news coming in from Oxnard. The Army had rolled in late yesterday in force to find that a convoy of surviving cartel members fled south. A few collaborators had already been lynched and hung from streetlamps and overpasses in a reversal of what was common in the Mexican gang wars. Thousands of gallons of fuel had been captured, but at the cost of one life and a dozen injuries. All the women had been rescued, if in body if not in mind and spirit as well, but had Sam’s life been worth it?
Mika broke the silence. She asked, “Why him?” a thought all were contemplating. It was the same question that wives, family, and friends asked anytime a loved one died. Everyone felt that they or their loved ones were entitled to a full and natural life, not cut short by violence disease, or disaster than they would have wanted it to be. In times of great traumatic stress, death close by forced one to re-consider the fragility of their own lives. “Why did Sam have to die?”
For an interminable moment, no one answered. Mr. Sibley knew that the question was wrong, still the quandary behind it was right.
“Why? Because someone grew to hate the United States and felt threatened, so they launched their missile and set off the EMP,” Sibley said. “In this chaos, we did not plan for and could not sustain, some gangsters wanted to profit from our demise. Sam helped stop it and kill the people responsible for the evil that was taking root here.
“It just so happened that Sam died. If you want to break it down further, he died because he and David broke up a counterattack. A chance shot in the dark severed an artery that could only be repaired by a surgeon under the best of conditions. But if you want to know the grander ‘why’ it had to be Sam, there is no answer to that. He heeded the call and selflessly volunteered for that mission.”
“So that’s it? Bad luck?” Mika asked. Was Sam’s life worth what he accomplished in that moment? He and David selflessly risked being hit by the incoming Stryker fire to prevent Mika and those at the women’s trailers from being overrun. The unforeseen consequence was that he and David had to run the opposite way to safety while being chased by sicarios. Sam survived the gunfire he called in on himself, only to die by a one-in-a-million shot while evading. It seemed so illogical to her.
“Combat is often just luck,” Sibley continued. “I like to believe that all is not lost because Sam died. Throw out the irony, the tragic frivolousness of it all. Something glorious, something heroic came out of what he did that night. A life cut short, yes, but it’s not the dying, it’s the going in that counts. Death isn’t the sacrifice—accepting that death is a possible outcome and facing danger head-on with a free and willing heart is the sacrifice. Sometimes bad things happen and that’s all there is, unsatisfying as it is. Sam did good that night and these past few months. This was the hour for which he was born.”
David watched from across the room. Mika pondered Sibley’s words and she did not speak. She didn’t understand. Maybe in time she would when the clouds of grief lifted. David knew Sam better, as intimately as a friend could because so many times their lives had depended upon one another. Sam had always wanted to die this way. Preferably twenty or thirty years from now, David reflected. It was partial consolation that his friend was in Valhalla, that part of heaven reserved for warriors slain in battle, accompanied by heroes of old and the deputies who had gone before him.
Mika would have to be watched carefully. She was bordering on catatonic. There were plenty of firearms about, David disconsolately noted. Sam was wise to hold her at arm’s length in the beginning, not becoming too attached. Regrettably Mika had fallen head-over-heels in love with Sam in a time when survival from day to day was questionable. The world she had carefully rebuilt since August and in the past few weeks with Sam had vanished in a night, leaving her devoid of hope on a barren, windswept emotional plain.
For David, the post-EMP world was a stark place that felt even emptier without his best friend now. So much value individually and collectively was lost even though the best sacrifice made the offering all that more noble. Sam was only a memory now, one that David would
continue to talk to and keep alive until they were reunited once again. He stood and began to walk back to his room, but before he did so, he looked at Mika’s eyes. They were empty and focused on something that no one else in the room could see. I guess we’ve all seen the elephant now.
***
Dedicated to the memory of:
Sergeant Ron Helus, 4S3
Ventura County Sheriff
End of watch Nov. 8, 2018
About the Author
Don Shift is a veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and avid fan of post-apocalyptic literature and film. His study of history, disasters, and emergency planning all converge in Hard Favored Rage. This is his first novel. You can reach him and subscribe to the newsletter about sequels at [email protected].