Violent Peace: The War With China: Aftermath of Armageddon

by David Poyer

  “Tell me you will come home safe, Héctor.” Her voice was pleading. Fuck, she was shaking out a tissue, which meant she was going to cry.

  “I got to go, Ma. Love you!”

  “Vaya con Dios, Héctor, mi amado hijo. Call me again soon.”

  * * *

  THAT night he meets Carlina again. This time, out behind the trailers. There’s a baseball diamond hardly any of the patients use, though the amputees sometimes come out here to practice walking the bases on their new legs. Which look nearly real, Hector has to admit.

  His own injuries are less evident. If only they could replace his brain with some computer box strapped around his neck, like the ones that control the artificial legs …

  She’s waiting for him in the dugout. Somebody’s equipped this as a snake pit, with a narrow bunk mattress, cheap bead curtains, a box fan, and a battered red-and-green Yeti cooler. It’s apparently obscure enough, or maybe notorious enough, that the roving patrols don’t come here. Hector wonders how she knows about it. Other than her hootch or the dunes there isn’t any other place to get together on site. He wonders why. Is not getting laid supposed to help them recover? Certainly being with Carlina has dragged him a little bit out of his head. If only to make him get boners during session.

  They strip down and within seconds fell on each other like starving jungle cats. He keeps trying to roll on top but she won’t let him. “You wanna do this, we do it my way,” she states. There’s no arguing with this, so he rolls off and positions himself on his back on the stained, mold-stinky mattress.

  The smell reminds him suddenly of the one time he got it off during the war, other than the hand job from Orietta at boot camp, and popping his nut into a MWR napkin. Like most everybody else in the platoon, which sometimes left the ground outside their foxholes littered with gray-green tissues.

  The Indo senior enlisted had taken him to a massage and spa place in Bongkaran, where he paired off with a pouty and actually pretty hot little whore who said she was into Hispanic guys. She’d giggled when he asked if she was a ladyboy, and pulled down her pants to show him she wasn’t. He’d been careful to wear a banana burka, though. Which he isn’t doing now, but Carlina’s never said anything about protection.

  Then he forgets everything as she leans over him and tucks it in. To that warm welcoming place where he can forget all the things he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to remember. The reproachful dead faces he doesn’t want to see but can’t look away from. The numb horror he doesn’t want to carry inside his head, like a fucking bullet the fucking surgeons can’t get to, so they just leave it there. To fester and work itself closer to his heart, gradually, to kill him, sometime, no one can tell when.

  Her thrusting hips take him out of himself but he falls back. Coming close. She increases the pace, up and down, sliding, smiling down at him as his face tightens, as his whole body strains upward.

  He fires, grabbing her shoulders, the grunting agonized cry bursting out of him in the dugout beneath the earth. Buried, like so many good fucking Marines.

  He just hopes that whatever’s going to be at the end of this purgatory, he gets there soon.

  * * *

  THEY lie exhausted on the flaccid mattress, looking up together once more at the stars twinkling above the outfield fence. Bright and clear tonight, as if they’re at sea. Past that glow the marigold night lights of the camp. He’s stroking her hair. She’s talking about cutting it short, but he doesn’t want her to. He doesn’t like short hair on girls. And so far, at least, she hasn’t. Maybe just for him? He doesn’t think so, but can’t help wondering.

  She murmurs, “You feelin’ better now?”

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “No more walking out into the surf, and not coming back?”

  “Told you, I wasn’t thinking about that,” he lies.

  “Like fuck you weren’t. I looked at your record, Ramos. You were some fucked up. Are some fucked up.”

  “My breathing’s a lot better.”

  “I’m not talking about your lungs. You were down for compromised immune system, eye damage, complex PTSD, alcohol addiction, moral trauma, and dissociation. As soon as they removed the restraints, you tried to choke one of the doctors on the hospital ship. Your shrink recommended a suicide watch. He wants you red-flagged on a watch list when they release you.” She rolls over and frowns. “You do know all this, right?”

  He takes a deep breath. Shrugs. “All I know is, I can’t stop thinking about stuff. And I don’t care about what happens now, or getting home, or anything. DGAF, you know?”

  She cradles his face in both hands and sighs. “You went through some dread shit, Hec. Nobody can say you haven’t, a three-island Marine. And you still came back. In one piece. More or less.”

  He takes another breath, and to his astonishment tears start to burn again. What the fuck, over? Every time he makes it with this bitch, he cries. What kind of pussy is he turning into? But now, instead of toughing it out or laughing it off he mutters, surprising himself, “I don’t feel like I should have. Come back, I mean.”

  She chuckles bitterly. “When your buds didn’t. Yeah. I hear that all the time. Hector, it’s just that, you won the lottery. You got lucky! Sure, go ahead and miss them. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Or that you have to do about it. Just try to remember them, and get on with life as best you can.”

  Pretty much what the fat civilian in the too-long tie said too. But somehow, coming from her, here, now, it seems to mean more. Maybe because he’s starting to wonder if maybe he loves her.

  It’s a scary thought. Not quite as puckery as riding an ACV in to the beach while the Slants are shelling the shit out of you, but still, scary in its own way.

  And maybe she knows this just from him not saying much, because she says, still looking away, “You know, pretty soon now you’re going to get mustered out.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. They don’t want to keep you guys here any longer than they have to. They’ll unload you on the VA, give you a pat on the back, and that’ll be it.”

  He sighs, not wanting to think about it. Wanting to hold on to this instead. This night. Their night. Whatever it means.

  But she won’t stop talking. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Me? I was thinking about … staying around here. In San Diego. Until your tour’s up.”

  “Until my tour is up.” Her tone is flat, neutral. “What’s that mean? I hope, not what I think.”

  “I mean … I like you. I thought you liked me.”

  She rolls off him and sits up. Reaches for her bra, huffing, looking away. “That’s beside the point. You’re getting out. Going home. Wherever that is.

  “But me, I’m staying in. I’m a regular, Hec. A fucking lifer, unnerstand? I’m gonna make master chief and retire on twenty. Maybe do enlisted-to-medical. At least get my degree.” Her shadow seems to be farther away somehow, even though she’s still sitting on the same mattress with him. “I like you, sure. But this is nothing special, for either of us. I’m not going home with you, or making this forever after. Just to get that clear.”

  He lies waiting, he’s not sure for what; maybe giving her a chance to change her mind. “So this is just a hookup?” He can’t keep the hurt tone out of his voice.

  “You needed it. And, yeah, I liked it. But you ain’t the only patient I liked this year.”

  “Oh, I get it. You fucked me as … part of my therapy.”

  She barks a laugh, buttoning her blouse, then stands to work her trou up over her hips. “Sure! Just part of the treatment. CT scan, blood work, psych counseling, and get it off with Carlina. That’s pretty fucking insulting, you know that? Or it would be, if it didn’t work better than the meds.”

  He sits up and grabs her wrist. “I didn’t mean that. Don’t go away mad. It … I got to say, it does kind of … work. It kind of got me … interested again.”

  “It got you horny again.” The tension se
ems to ease off; they’re both laughing now. Though his sounds forced, even to him.

  “You really think I’ll get out of here pretty soon?” he asks.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this. Don’t tell anybody. But they’ll discharge you next week. You know, not enough beds, not enough staff. They can only keep the troops so badly wounded they can’t go back to their families. Facial wounds. Nutcases. Quads. You’re Olympic material compared to some of these guys. As you well know.”

  “As I well know,” he repeats. He’d wandered into one of those wards last week. And never wanted to see stuff like that again. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Oh, I’m right, all right.” She straightens from zipping her boots. “You’ll have a great life, Hec. Go home. Find some local cutie. Squirt out a few brown-eyed puppies. Forget the war. Forget me. Pretend everything’s cool. And someday you’ll realize, it really is. Believe me.”

  A scuffing, followed by a faint clatter of tiny glass spheres. He lies half naked, spent, the wind cold on his exposed groin, arm over his eyes. When she doesn’t say anything more he mutters, “You still there? Carlina?”

  When he opens his eyes, the dugout’s empty. She’s gone, but the stars still glitter through the swaying beads of the curtain, reflected and refracted from bead to sparkling bead, so they seem to be twinkling all the more brightly.

  III

  SPENT ASSETS

  11

  Chadron, Nebraska

  IT took Dan a while to find the sheriff. He rolled down the streets on the bike, pulling over now and then to ask directions from pedestrians. This town seemed crowded after the long emptinesses he’d traversed. The sidewalks bustling, jaywalkers keeping him on edge, the way a place ought to be, the way towns all across America once had been. Several of the folks he stopped to ask just shrugged, saying they weren’t from here, they were evacuees from Denver, and had no idea where the sheriff’s office might be.

  It had taken two days to get here from Montana. He’d doglegged south around the no-go areas, following Hardin’s directions and the fallout map the militiawoman had printed out for him. Then angled east again, and crossed Yellowstone.

  The park had been closed, but he’d nursed the bike around Jersey barriers and motored around the wide placid blue lake on a narrow two-laner. His engine echoed from the mountainsides. It was probably scenic, but somehow he couldn’t see it as anything but distance to be conquered. A single ranger vehicle turning out from the lodge had trailed him for a time, but he’d sped up and it finally gave up the chase. If it had even been a chase … He’d slept in the open that night, snatching a few hours with the bike pulled into a copse of fir along a creek. Its channel held only a trickle, but he washed his face in it and drank some, then gnawed at his processed food, though it was tasteless. He didn’t care whether the water was potable or not, contaminated or not. It just didn’t seem to matter.

  He couldn’t stop reproaching himself. What might he have done, could he have done, should he have done, to keep Nan safe? How had he let her take a job so far from home, on the far side of the country? Jack Byrne, an advisor on Yangerhans’s staff and an old friend, had warned him to get her out of Seattle. “She’s sitting right on the bull’s-eye,” Byrne had said.

  But he hadn’t done a thing. Just assumed she’d be safe. Or, no. To be exact: hadn’t thought much about it. Just told himself she was adult, she wouldn’t obey. Would feel it her duty to stay, and keep trying to produce the drug that would save lives and bear her name. Or at least her initial.

  But he should have tried. Even if he didn’t think she’d leave, he should have tried. Sentiment aside, it was, at the very least, his biological duty.

  Yeah. He should have worried more about her. Back when worrying could have done some good.

  He lay staring into the dark. He could blame his ex-wife. He could blame the war. He could blame Nan.

  But the only one he really had any right to be angry at was himself.

  * * *

  THE next morning he’d hit the road again at dawn and powered on through the day. The highway ran along mountainsides, then through valleys. Past lakes, then through much deeper ravines barriered by lead-colored mountains. Some serious peaks rose above and beyond them to the north. He guessed he was in the Rockies. At Wapiti he found an open gas station, and was asked for a ration card for the first time. He didn’t have one, of course, and the guy made an issue of it, threatened to report him, but at last accepted the .38 in trade for a fill-up.

  There, for the first time, he got a hit when he asked about the truck. Yeah, the station owner said, he’d seen it. A refrigerator truck, with five motorcyclists riding escort. They’d pointed rifles and demanded gas and food. Dan had agreed, that was beyond acceptable behavior. Had one of them killed his daughter? He drank a cup of boiled-down coffee, used the dirty toilet-paper-less head, and got back on the road again.

  East of Wapiti the countryside seemed little by little to return to something resembling normality. More cars dotted the road, though still far fewer than in peacetime, or at least in what peacetime had been like before the war. He was stopped twice more, but each time was let go once he presented his M&M pass. He was getting the feeling that the federal government’s writ, never popular out here, had been supplanted by the sheriffs and the Mobilized Militias since the Exchange.

  The hours passed in a blur. Valleys and plains were painted a deep verdant green with new crops, though no one was working in those fields and he saw little agricultural machinery. He motored through more endless valleys, the engine cocooning him in a soothing omlike hum that emptied his brain.

  When he wasn’t thinking he wasn’t remembering. Was no longer dreading what he was going to find at the end of this ride. Instead, it was as if he were riding from life into a deathlike realm he’d never expected to visit. A gray underworld through whose mists he wandered like a wraith.

  He’d always thought, hoped, expected, his daughter would outlive him. That he’d never have to confront this worst doom that could befall a parent.

  But apparently now he would.

  A mountain pass, winding roads, great trees towering to either side. Waterfalls. An honest to God state road crew, repairing a washout. They waved and cheered as he roared past, and he lifted a hand in acknowledgment, a little puzzled by their enthusiasm, before the numbness returned.

  The land flattened. It became planed-smooth grasslands that stretched to the horizon like a calm, occasionally wind-ruffled green sea. Hour after hour of flatness, the asphalt blurring beneath him as he pushed the bike to eighty, to ninety, to near a hundred. Then eased off, realizing he was courting something he didn’t want to name. Another gas station, in Gillette, let him fuel without a ration card, only asking an exorbitant sum per gallon. He handed the bills over reluctantly. He was running out of cash, and even the mention of a credit card earned him a look that suggested he was crazy.

  At long last, late in the afternoon, a sign welcomed him to Chadron. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now. Wide fields stretched away on either side. Farms and the occasional metal-roofed, pristinely kept barn perched on low hills. The rest of the land reached away almost to infinity, sealike, disorienting. Then the open view across the land gradually gave way to the usual beach wrack of small-town outskirts. A church, a brick-pillared cemetery, a nursing home; then trailer parks, convenience stores, car lots, a Wal-Mart, and the bland faux-glitzy normality of a shopping mall. A Taco John’s was even doing business, with a blinking OPEN sign, cars parked out front, locals chatting by the door. So here they had electrical power … He was terrifically hungry, but pressed on, dreading what lay ahead but also strangely eager to get it over with, confirmed, accepting the blow and the blame even though he had no idea what it would be like on the other side.

  Telling himself a lot of other people, dads, moms, families, had known this moment, in this war. He wasn’t alone.

  But that didn’t seem to help.

  Eventually he found t
he sheriff’s office, pointed the last couple of blocks by a friendly older woman in a painter’s apron, who was retouching a faded sign in front of the public library. He coasted into a diagonal parking slot in front of the three-story building that held not just a sheriff’s department, but the district judge and the county offices. It all looked so normal and everyday that his heart lifted just a tiny bit. Before he remembered why he was here.

  The sheriff was named Kit Larsen. A deputy stood by as he was ushered into her office. She acted reserved until he told her why he was here, half in uniform, hatless and windblown and stubbled and probably smelling of gasoline and dirt.

  “Ah. You’re her father,” she said in a flat midwestern accent, pointing to a chair. “Sit down, sir. Please.”

  He slid it over and sank into it, the old springs protesting audibly. “Maybe. Maybe. That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  “We never discovered any ID on her, and we don’t have the connectivity back yet to do fingerprints.” She started to open a file cabinet, then seemed to change her mind. “The face … I mean, she wasn’t in good shape. Whoever left her out there beat her up pretty bad.”

  Dan swallowed. He forced himself to ask, “Do you have any suspects? I heard it was a motorcycle gang—”

  “Not a gang. Just a stranger on a Harley. Or at least the bartender down at EJ’s said he’d seen her with him. Some time before she was found at the creek.

  “See, there are a lot of new people in town these days. ‘Vackers,’ we call them. People look past them, most of the time. Since we know they might not be here for long.” She frowned. “See, we’re between two big fallout plumes here. We’re all just hoping the contamination doesn’t move south or east. There are supposed to be monitoring teams out, but we’re not getting their reports. A lot of folks think it’s worse than what they’re telling us.” She sighed. “And that this cease-fire might not hold.”