We Are Them

by L. K. Samuels

  Sarah was right. I did not think it was time to lower the lifeboats and abandon the RMS Titanic. I was sure the situation would balance itself out eventually. Enraged citizens would demand a recall election and vote the bastards out of office, and then our lives would return to some state of normalcy.

  “The offer remains. You can be my co-pilot. I know you can fly.” Nick looked up and saw an older couple enter the restaurant. He quickly followed the couple to their table.

  “It’s a nice offer,” Sarah said. “You have good friends.”

  “I know.” I had a feeling that all my decent friends would be put to the test or the chopping block. Only then would I discover how good they really were.

  I watched Nick help the older couple with their menu and felt responsible for his dying business. I should have done something long ago. But what? I racked my brain to figure out how I could have stopped this madness. Feeling a sense of shame, I pushed my guilt over to my mental back burner and turned to Sarah. As we chatted, I mentioned my trip out to the orchard and the dead animals. Sarah looked uneasy.

  “I saw it two days ago,” she said.

  “You saw what?”

  “Hundreds of dead birds.”

  “Hundreds?” Sarah always exaggerated.

  “I saw the bloody carnage. They were attacking each other as if they were mortal enemies.” Sarah paused. “Well, maybe it was only 60 or 70 of them. Hard to tell. Mostly black crows, scrub jays, and several turkey vultures.

  I slowly swiveled my head closer to Sarah. “You saw them attacking each other?”

  “Near my workplace. Feathers and body parts were flying everywhere. When I got there, they were all dead in a mushy ball of bloody feathers and broken bones.”

  “That’s what must have happened in the orchard. The animals were twisted and disfigured beyond recognition.”

  “What animals?” Sarah asked, inching closer to hear my gory details.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, trying to keep my stomach from churning and knotting up. “I mean... it was just awful. It was a big red ball of animal bodies that looked as if it came out of a meat grinder.”

  “What does it mean?” Sarah began to shiver with fear.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “My God!” Sarah put her hand over her mouth. “Maybe it’s a disease, some new pathogen. It could be affecting both us and the animals.”

  I assured her not to worry, that a federal agency was investigating that same possibility––although my faith in their capabilities had diminished.

  “There is something bigger happening here,” Sarah said. “A much bigger picture.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But the pieces of the puzzle refuse to match up.”

  “Do you know that the city wants to prosecute me?” Sarah reached for my hand. “They want me to serve jail time. It’s becoming a nightmare.”

  “Don’t worry. I will get you off. I have some pull at City Hall. They owe me bigtime. I’ve done so much for them.”

  “Oh, you mean,” Sarah’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “helping the crazies turn our lives into a living hell?”

  I begrudgingly shrugged my shoulders. “Somebody was going to do it anyway.”

  Chapter 15

  I entered my office the next morning, dragged my carcass to my desk, dropped into my chair, and closed my eyes. I sat there waiting for misery to find me, abuse me, and take away any last hope of surviving life. Instead, a parade of misery walked up right next to me. It was Tommy with eyes like stars and a grin made of sunshine. I was feeling sick.

  Tommy was usually the first to greet me at the office. I had promoted him to my assistant. I had to do that. It was the only way to keep an eye on Tommy’s extracurricular activities. However, today he was keeping an eye on me. I knew that mild look of alarm. It reeked of bad news, especially since I was without my morning caffeine.

  Tommy hovered over me and watched.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I hate to ruin your day so early in the morning,” Tommy said as he handed me a cup of coffee so sugary it tasted like a warm, flat soda. “But I think we’re being seriously watched.”

  I dropped my cup on the desk, spilling it. “Tell me you’re just goofing off.”

  Tommy shook his head.

  I stood. “How in the hell do you know?”

  “I saw several men on rooftops with huge black telephoto lenses. You know, the kind that can see if your pants fly is open two miles away. I saw them right outside our window yesterday.”

  I slowly drifted over to the window and peeked outside, trying to hide my face without being too noticeable. I saw nothing, and slowly closed the blinds.

  “I can’t believe Big Al or anyone from City Hall would spy on us. I mean, we have Brian in the loop. He is supposed to keep that from happening.” I began to panic. What if they had spotted me talking with Nick, or had taken snapshots of our secret meeting at my home? I had to think fast. I had to come up with foolproof excuses to prove my innocence.

  “Hey, man, chill out,” Tommy said. “What could they do to us?”

  “Oh…are you serious? Almost anything!”

  “This is America.”

  “Are you sure?” I huffed. There must be a way to defuse the situation; some way to fight back. “I think the SEIU labor people should know about this travesty. Get Lenny in here.” I was no longer a union member, but the city might also be spying on Lenny’s union members. That should get most union members hot under the collar.

  Tommy grabbed my desk phone and told the secretary to locate Lenny and send him running to my office. It did not take long for the message to reach him. Lenny spent most of his time in our building anyway since the bulk of city workers had transferred to my department.

  As Tommy hung up the phone, he dropped another bombshell. “There’s something else I should tell you, man. And boy, you won’t like this one either.”

  “Quick wasting time. Just tell me.”

  “Well,” Tommy took his time to build up the suspense. “This might put you the emergency room.”

  “Just spill it,” I ordered.

  “Okay, okay. I’ve discovered that some expensive audio and photo equipment is targeting us.”

  “You’re saying that we’re being spied upon?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “How do you know that for certain? You better not be pulling a prank on me. This is not funny, not one iota.”

  “See, I knew this news would put you into intensive care.”

  “How do you know we’re being monitored?” I cringed.

  “I saw them on the rooftop. You know, from the bank building across the street. From what I could see, they have professional eavesdropping and telephoto spy cameras. Real expensive crazy shit.”

  “No, No. This cannot be happening.” I buried my head in my hands, and closed my eyes.

  “You should see it, man. They could pick up the heartbeat of a mosquito or snap a photo from Los Angeles.”

  This was getting better all the time. I bet they could listen to our conspiracy nonsense right through solid walls. Maybe I should just end it all and stick my head into wood chipper. As the seriousness of this news began to sink in, Lenny entered and plopped into a chair next to my desk.

  “What you want? Came as soon as I could.”

  I did not feel like saying anything aloud, not even if someone asked me to start reading from the phone book. I realized that if someone was listening, we could not continue to talk in such subversive lingo. It was probably too late anyway, but maybe they were not recording every damn minute of the day. Even surveillance teams took bathroom breaks.

  “Well?” Lenny was becoming impatient.

  I grabbed a pen and notepad and wrote down a few words—“the room may be bugged,” and handed it to him.

  “The room is bugged!” Lenny yelled and jumped up. “You shitting the bull.”

  I dropped my head as if I were leading a funeral march. Tommy bega
n to bang his head against the wall. What was it with these Russian immigrants? You would think they had no experience with secret police and eavesdropping equipment.

  “That’s the rumor going around,” I moaned. “We’re not sure. Probably just a joke.” I tried to say as little as possible. I was not sure how Lenny would take this. Russians were suspicious of almost everything. They had lost their appetite for the truth long ago.

  “No problem. I understand much,” Lenny said. “That’s why I leave Russia. Hate people spying on me. KGB no good. Those guys real mudak! Real jerks!”

  “Wait,” Tommy said. “I thought you were a Communist?”

  Lenny rolled his eyes. “No, whatever gave you stupid impression? Nobody belongs to CP anymore. That’s so pasty.”

  “Passé,” I corrected him.

  “That what I meant,” Lenny huffed.

  “Listen,” I said. “We can talk about this later. You know, over beer and pizza. Right?” I wanted to misdirect our talk to confuse any possible listener.

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “No rush. There’s not much to talk about anyway.”

  I went back to my notebook and wrote another note. It read, “Don’t say anything more. Meeting tonight at my place at 8:00 PM.” I held it up to everyone’s face.

  Tommy nodded.

  Lenny stared at the note with a bored look.

  “Hey,” I said. “How about those Dodgers? Great game the other day!” I tried to change the subject. “Maybe this year they won’t be an embarrassment.”

  “Never watch big football,” Lenny said and stood up. “See you tonight, Spencer.”

  I leaned against the wall and wished I had a loaded gun in the drawer. I could just end it all now in a big display of smoke and hot lead. No need to shoot me in front of a firing squad. I could do it myself.

  “Must go,” Lenny said. “See you all later.”

  Just as Lenny retreated, Big Al invaded my space in a whirlwind. I could see that he was angry and distraught. He rudely ordered Tommy out of the room and slammed the door.

  I was a goner. He must have found out every little detail about me and my subversive activities. Every traitorous plot, every mutinous thought. I was cooked, sealed, and all wrapped up in a tight bundle, ready to discard in the nearest dumpster. So long Caribbean cruises with tropical beaches and warm sandy water. Goodbye to my bloated bank account. Hello, unemployment line or confined room.

  “Spencer!” Huffed Big Al, looking ill with distress. “We have serious problems.”

  I took a long, deep breath. I closed my eyes and expected the worst.

  “They caught my mother.”

  “What?” I shouted as my eyes shot wide open.

  “The damn police arrested my mother.” Big Al started to whine like a baby with a bad case of diaper rash.

  “Can they do that?”

  “Get serious,” Big Al huffed. “She flew in from Florida today. They stopped her at the checkpoint on State Street and arrested her. She could get ten years in prison. What can we do?”

  “But she is not a resident of Hemet,” I countered, trying to show some sympathy without displaying a silly grin of delight. If anyone in the world should get stung by his own stinging hive of busybodies, it was Big Al. He was the one who cracked open Pandora’s Box, and now he was suffering like the rest of us peons. Bully for the impartial law. Of course, I expected the mayor to make an exception in Big Al’s case. It was only human to protect your own people, even if it were unfair to everyone else.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Big Al cried. “The city council doesn’t care where a violator comes from. You are supposed to obey the laws of the land. Period. Don’t you know anything?” Big Al turned a deep color of beet red. “I guess I forgot to tell her the finer details of our laws. I’m at fault, not her. I should be the one sent to prison.”

  I gritted my teeth and nodded slightly. I wanted to jump up, pop a bottle of Champagne and lead a parade of screaming cheerleaders around the office. Instead, I felt compelled to ask calmly, “What are you going to do?”

  Big Al shallowed and looked at his hands. “I’m not sure. I have already talked with Mayor Quinn and he is adamant. He said there are no exceptions. No exceptions! What kind of law is that?”

  “Well, it’s a law without exceptions,” I said to make my point as clear as possible. “Laws must be equally enforced; otherwise, it would be favoritism.”

  “My mother is 81 years old and in poor health.”

  “I would hire a good attorney.”

  “I would, but my attorney left town. Said he was never coming back. Can you imagine that? What’s with some of our town’s people?”

  “Find another one. I’m sure he can find some loophole in the law.”

  “You don’t understand. We took great pains to prevent any possible loopholes. We wanted to make our laws airtight.”

  I began to feel a little pinch of pity for this wrecked soul, but he deserved every bit of misery that he could suffer. “You caused this disaster, Al. Why didn’t you foresee the danger signs ahead? You know that there are always unintended consequences to any course of action! Christ. You’re in upper management. You’re supposed to know these things.”

  “I guess I got carried away.” Big Al continued to sniffle with his head hung low. “How could I know? Jack and Joe asserted that everything would work out well. Anyway, I was just following orders.”

  That is when it hit me like a sack of bricks falling from the sky. This had gotten to the point where even the insiders were no longer getting preferential treatment. Without some safety valve—loopholes, bribery, favoritism, call it what you will—the steam cooker would explode. When the politically savvy fall, the whole system would soon follow.

  I patted Big Al on the back. This was the exact lesson learned from the Reign of Terror in France. Many of France’s leaders who were more competent turned against each other. They had forged an extremist society where laws were more important than people. They had become righteous and rigid, making laws that held the public to a higher standard than those who concocted the laws. The outcome had to result in tragedy. Robespierre had condemned many of his politically skillful friends to death. In return, Robespierre found himself facing the guillotine. Terror was the only winner.

  “They will not imprison my mother,” Big Al said. “It’s preposterous to jail an old woman.”

  “They’re just obeying the city council’s ordinances.”

  “Not on my watch!” And with that bold statement, Big Al rushed out of my office.

  I actually wished him well. I hoped he could get his mother released. Sure, I detested him, but now that he had become one of the suffering masses, he seemed more human.

  * * * * *

  Arriving home early, I decided to watch parts of a particular war film. Ever since I witnessed the meteorite over Hemet, I had barely turned on my large flat screen TV. I had lost my taste for movie entertainment, except for one remarkable film, John Wayne’s Alamo. I could watch that film until the end of time. It was a silly obsession, but it was like watching real history in the making, even better than some documentaries purporting to have the latest historical Alamo facts.

  Even Sarah, the ultimate bookworm, came over to cuddle next to me on the couch. Oddly, she had the same fascination with this classic Western film. She asked me if I had some secret desire to be like Davy Crockett. I was not sure. My parents were born in Texas and they idolized Crockett and Bowie. As a young boy, I did not find it very appealing to die in a hopeless battle for a decrepit, abandoned Spanish mission. Now I was beginning to understand the reason why some people were willing to fight as underdogs in a losing cause.

  “They should have just surrendered,” Sarah blurted out as we watched the last big battle scene of the film. “They didn’t really have a chance.”

  “They knew their chances were nil to nothing,” I said. “They were making a stand no matter what. It was win or die trying.”

  Sarah still held
to her guns and argued that the Texans could have retreated and fought another day. “It was such a waste of men.”

  I tried to put it into perspective. “They refused to run away from their bad situations. Most people scattered in fear. They would run away from their problems and hide. But these courageous men drew a fixed line in the sand. I mean, somebody has to stand up to the bullies. We cannot just walk away from them. They won’t let us. Right?”

  “All I meant was that they could have retreated and fought another day, she said.”

  “The Texans refused to do that,” I said. “Of course, I often don’t follow my own advice.”

  “You think?” Sarah taunted in a sarcastic tone. “When trouble comes knocking at your door, you’re the first one out.”

  “Faster than a startled jackrabbit,” I joked.

  “Seriously,” Sarah blinked her eyes in disbelief. She moved closer and gently put her hand on my forearm. “You talk of bravery, but what have you done to stop the bullies at City Hall?”

  I lowered my head. “I know. But we’re just talking about a movie.”

  “But it happened. It’s history.”

  “You mean your master?”

  “Well,… no. Maybe.” This was so typical of Sarah. She would try to end an argument by passing judgement on my flimsy excuses. I knew she thought I always ran away from my responsibilities; that I found it easier to barricade myself in an easy chair than to take command of my life. But this time she did not attack my crumbling fortress. Instead, she comforted me, held my hand tighter and stared at me with her beautiful black eyes.

  “Oh, I know you will do what is right.”

  My eyes flashed with surprise at her strong response. I was taken aback by her confidence in my abilities. “You’re right, we should do more to fight back this danger. Because…”

  “Because if we don’t, we will lose the world we know,” Sarah said. “It will not be a world worth living in.”

  “Exactly,” I immediately grabbed her and planted a big kiss on her red lips. I felt if I was sitting next to Mrs. Davy Crockett, hopefully, a fervent fighter just as dedicated as her husband.