We Are Them

by L. K. Samuels

  “Shoot! All of this shit over roads? You’re jacking me.”

  “Does seem silly,” Sarah said with a timid sneer. “It just started with little innocent things. Nothing too important. Then it descended into a stupid slippery slope debacle.”

  “Sister, stupid is not the word,” Cliff chided in a harsh tone. “You don’t go around controlling things like that. How can you get anything done if you can’t go where you want to go? That is what they did to my people once. Nobody could go anywhere without permission. We called it slavery, but I suppose in Hemet they call it something else.”

  “But we had to control where people go.” Big Al walked over.

  “Don’t you know nothing?” Cliff looked up at Big Al. “Roads are just pathways. They remain open and free because nobody knows where it might lead them. Nobody. The future leaves no footprints. We all must choose our own highways at our own pace, and at our own time. That’s why there are so many directions for mankind. I can make that decision. Only God and I know where life will take me.”

  I could plainly see that Cliff had a knack for rousing sermons. He had a promising career as a minister with the gift of gab.

  “You don’t need a road,” Big Al jeered. “You can’t even walk or drive. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Big Al is not one of us,” Sarah spoke up. “He’s with the other side.”

  “You mean the dark side?” Cliff quickly whipped out a combat knife strapped to his chest. “You better keep him away from me.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “I will cut him, so help me.”

  “His hands are tied,” I said.

  “Then why is he with you?” Cliff asked, still holding a death grip on his knife.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “He used to be my boss. I could not just leave him behind. Maybe there is a medical antidote for this madness in Riverside.”

  “My, my,” Cliff said. “You people are very forgiving. I can understand that. I think it is stupid. But it’s somewhat understandable, at least to bleeding-heart preachers.” Easing up, Cliff returned his blade to its sheath.

  “God works in strange ways,” Tommy said.

  “You got that right, brother,” Cliff said as he gingerly repositioned his injured body. “You know what I think? I think some motherfucker put weird shit into Hemet’s drinking water. What else explains it? An entire goddamn war fought over where people can travel. You might as well as try controlling what people eat.”

  Lenny raised his candy bar. “Nobody ever bans sugar. That would be even worst crime.”

  I ignored Lenny and glanced at Cliff. “You must come with us,” I said with a determined tone. I had taken an intense liking to Cliff and his no-nonsense outlook. “We won’t leave you behind.”

  Cliff became silent and turned his head away.

  “He’ll slow us down,” Rant complained. “You can’t be serious?”

  “He is one of us,” I pointed out. “For all we know, we might now be in the minority. We have no idea what is happening. This might be some type of invasion and we need every man to fight back. Who knows, maybe our little action here will be the turning point in defeating THEM.”

  Sarah moved closer to me. “I’m willing to help in any way possible,” she said.

  “Sure,” Lenny spoke up. “All for one and none for all. I think that’s way it goes. No?”

  I wanted to correct Lenny’s statement, but it seemed pointless. He would merely deny the mix-up. But we knew what he meant.

  * * * * *

  Late that evening, I found myself sitting alone with Tommy. I had meant to talk to him about our chances, which I considered poor. Rant was right. One of the most dangerous areas during warfare is near the ever-changing battlefront line. I had seen many magazine articles about it. Over 60 million people died in World War II and two-thirds of them were civilians. I knew that as non-combatants, we were not equipped, informed, or trained to survive in such a hostile environment. We had to cross through the middle of a slaughterhouse, and hope that nobody mistook us for a hanging side of beef.

  “Could you look after Sarah?” I asked Tommy as we perched ourselves on an uneven boulder. Tommy was paying more attention to his knapsack than me. After a long search, he pulled out an old can of sardines.

  “Sure.”

  “I mean if something happens to me.”

  Tommy stopped fiddling with his sardines. “If something happens to you?”

  “Earth to Tommy!” I paused to see if I had gotten his undivided attention. “We might not survive tomorrow’s ordeals. Ever consider that?”

  “Well, then I guess I won’t have to look after Sarah.”

  Tommy was either just too logical or too slow-witted. “I mean if I should not make it. If I die. Okay?”

  “Wow. Yeah, that could happen,” Tommy said with a thoughtful frown. He turned and stuffed the sardine can back into his pack. “You’re right. We might all end up in a landfill. Real bummer.”

  I could see that I had squashed his appetite. “I don’t want to scare anyone. But going down there tonight will be like going through a meat grinder.”

  “I never eat meat,” Tommy smiled.

  “Yeah, I know.” I decided not to press forward with my train of thought. I guess it is better to think about the future after it happens. Most people do. Why should I be any different? But Tommy soon surprised me.

  “I’ll look after her,” Tommy said. “I wish I had someone special. You know, someone to lay a bouquet of flowers over my grave.”

  Now I began to feel bad. I hated to see him depressed, especially when he was usually good-natured and optimistic.

  “I’ll look after Sarah if anything happens to you.” Tommy nodded with a heavy sigh.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “You know this is entirely my fault.”

  “No!” Tommy put his hand on my shoulder. “Wrong track. Don’t go there. Nobody could have stopped this. I mean we had no advanced warning of the bigger picture. These strange rocks could have exploded over the entire country. And we might be just a small island in an ocean of death.”

  I rolled my eyes. Now I felt even better or maybe worse.

  “I mean it could be anything. We’re living in the darkness of ignorance. Maybe it was a biological weapon or something that had been accidentally released from a military level 4 laboratory. Or we’re just destroying ourselves. We’ve done that before,” Tommy said with a sheepish shrug.

  I stood and shook my head. “You just making this sound worse. It does not matter what caused this war. What we need right now is to discover a way to escape its grasping control.”

  “But this might be our destiny,” Tommy suggested and started to look for his can of sardines again. “This might be what is supposed to happen. Like man, there have been between 4,000 to 14,000 wars since the dawn of mankind. Maybe war is embedded in our DNA. It’s in our nature because the contagions in meteorites have put it there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, nobody knows. But think about it.” Tommy faced me with a serious look. “Like maybe that’s what has caused all wars since the beginning of civilization. The microbial gases, dust, and viruses that meteorites carry to earth. Maybe it is some type of alien organism. You know. A syndrome that forces people to kill each other in an orgy of hate.”

  “You mean some type of apocalypse syndrome?”

  “Wow, you hit it right on the head. You really get it.”

  I leaned back and rubbed my aching head. It was a macabre and frightening thought. “Well, that would explain why large groups of people periodically go crazy and start to murder everybody. Maybe the politically adept take advantage of this mass psychosis. Maybe they use social upheavals to control and conquer people.” I started to rub my forehead again. I was not feeling well enough to dig deeper over what was happening to us, but that did not stop Tommy.

  “The microbes from meteorites might magnify our inherent craziness. And then it results in a
sort of psychotic rage. Like when we lose touch with reality. Right? I mean they say that since 3,500 B.C., only 300 years were times of peace.”

  “Okay, maybe.” I started to feel dizzy.

  “Psychosis can lead to paranoid delusions. Boy, that’s heavy stuff.” Tommy stopped in deep thought, stroked his shorthaired goatee, and carefully prepared his next words. I could see that a host of flashbulbs had gone off all at once. “Okay, it boils down to this. Paranoia causes intense feelings of distrust, and this creates us versus them mindset. You are either with us or against us. Friend or foe, black or white. I guess you could say it is in all of us. We are them. They are us.” Tommy shuddered at the thought.

  I stretched my hands out to stop his psycho-babbling gabfest. “I can’t believe our biggest moments of history are due to exploding rocks from space. There is more to history than warfare. Why, that would mean that we went to war at every drop of a meteorite.”

  “What?” Tommy asked. “Not enough falling meteorites to account for all of our wars?”

  I smiled. “No. It’s just, I think economic, social, and political turmoil precede many armed conflicts.”

  “But the turmoil might have resulted from these rocks in the first place.”

  I sat back down and reconsidered Tommy’s assertion. “I suppose. Well, then Hitler and Stalin must have almost been struck by one of them.”

  “Too bad they missed,” Tommy laughed.

  I stood. Enough was enough. Peering to my left, I saw Sarah sitting with Cliff in the moonlight. I was worried about Cliff’s wounds. I glanced at Tommy. “If only you had some antibiotics in your knapsack. You know, for Cliff’s feet.”

  “The cut was deep,” Tommy said, appearing worried. “I washed it out as much as I could. Tetanus is always a bad boy. We’ll have to watch to see if his muscles stiffen. That means lockjaw might develop. Yet, I wouldn’t know what to do. I should have finished my pre-med classes. I could have been a doctor.”

  “You only took a few courses.”

  “Okay, a caregiver?”

  “No, you would make a fine doctor,” I said, trying to make him feel better.

  “For sure,” Tommy’s face brightened. “There are so many people trying to tear people apart. It’s dreadful, man. Death stalks us like a bounty hunter. We need more dedicated people to treat injuries. Make them whole again.”

  “So they can go out and kill again?” It was a poor attempt at humor, but really, it was no time for joking. Tommy’s quest to help the suffering was noble. I must be turning into a bitter, pathetic middle-aged man.

  “I was too young,” Tommy confessed. “I could have gone into the medical field. I just went off half-cocked. No real direction,” Tommy confessed with a regretful sigh.

  I stood there quietly and gazed up at the dark skyline and hazy moonlight overhead. Why did crises make people reflect so much about their pitiful and shallow lives? I began to wonder if I myself had chosen the right path. Maybe I should have done more with my life, something that would have given meaning or importance to my life. I had simply followed the flow of least resistance and drifted into a dead-end job that might be responsible for the death of thousands. I should have taken a better-traveled road.

  Chapter 23

  Darkness had swallowed the land. It was so black that I could barely see where to put my next footstep. The moon had surrendered itself to the dense clouds of smoke and fog, leaving us in the dark.

  At least nobody could see us. I took the lead and we continued to trek up the side of a small mountain, trudging along an abandoned dirt road more useful as a deer path. From down below, I could hear intense fighting and gunfire. Not only that, but I swore I could hear the steady trampling of marching boots. Not good.

  In a flash, I found myself engulfed in an artillery barrage. I was near its outer edge, but its ghostly flashes of light continued to creep closer to me. I turned and directed our group to disperse, but was too late. The shelling was spreading terror to neighboring areas. Everyone scattered to hiding places around large boulders and clumps of sagebrush. I dropped to the ground while hot pieces of shrapnel flew from overhead. Within seconds, circles of small brush fires burst into flames across the hilly slope. Sarah rushed over to me and tightly clung to my arm. Tommy gathered the others around him like a mother hen. There was almost nowhere to hide or escape.

  I could barely breathe. The smoke burned our throats and reddened our eyes. The blazing fireballs began to sear our skin. It was as if we had set foot into the fire pits of Hades. I leaped up and told everyone to follow me down the hill, and away from the wildfires and shelling. Luckily, the shelling started to overshoot us, targeting some other nearby area.

  I thought we had finally maneuvered away from the combat zone. I was wrong. A steady stream of machine gun fire racked our position. The worst part was trying to dodge the red tracers that streaked overhead. We all had to jump back to the ground and found ourselves crawling on our bellies. The crawling seemed to be a safe movement until we realized that we were not alone. The region was infamous for its rattlesnakes, patches of spiky cactus, and roving herds of tarantulas, and I dreaded any such encounters.

  As I dragged my body through a small, shallow ravine, I took particular notice of the artillery bombardment pounding the land that skirted our planned escape route. I had a feeling that someone knew we were out here, trying to escape, but had temporarily lost our exact location.

  Tommy moved next to me and suggested we sneak through an area that had been recently destroyed by heavy artillery.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “It’s unlikely they will waste more ammunition on an already devastated landscape,” Tommy insisted.

  He was convinced that it might provide us a narrow path of uncontested land. I was not so sure. I assumed the artillery shelling had concentrated all its firepower on important military objectives. However, as Tommy pointed out, the men and equipment would either have retreated or been destroyed. Seemed plausible.

  I took Tommy’s suggestion. Indeed, we found no throngs of troops or war equipment, only deserted land pockmarked with burnt vegetation and crater-strewn fields. We were all alone.

  As we peered down the mountain slope into a large, wide valley, we started to notice something out of place. At first, we could not put our finger on it. Something was missing. In a flash, we noticed the complete absence of city lights. From our higher vantage point, we should be witnessing a bright blanket of twinkling urban lights stretching from as far as the eye could see. Riverside and its nearby cities were a vast inland empire. Instead, it revealed only a black canvas, reminiscent of the night sky in the remote Mojave Desert. Did the civil authorities impose a blackout policy to avoid nighttime bombing raid? Was that even a possibility?

  We had to figure out that mystery later. We needed to move faster. Our nighttime cover was almost ready to expire. We lifted ourselves off the ground and prepared to rush down the mountain slope, towards the city’s outskirts.

  But before we could run down the hill, we had to consider Cliff’s travel arrangements. We had given Big Al another chance to redeem himself by helping to carry Cliff. He refused to comply and continued to behave erratically, huffing with an air of indignation. He immediately whined that he was not a beast of burden. Then he pronounced our whole plan reckless, ridiculous, and doomed to failure.

  Lenny had volunteered to be one of the two carriers for Cliff. Without the assistance of Big Al, the chore would return to Tommy, who was running low on energy and strength. Lenny did not take Big Al’s checklist of excuses well. Every time my old boss looked away or became distracted, Lenny would secretly kick him in the pants. Next, he badgered Big Al with odd Russian proverbs: “To teach a fool is same as treat a dead man. Reap the same chickens you hatched.” I was not sure of the exact meaning. I guess Lenny’s adages did not translate well to English.

  Tommy and Lenny were again burdened with carrying Cliff, who had nearly passed out from his infected w
ounds. The climb was difficult because of the steep terrain. We tumbling down the slope through rocky outcrops and stands of manzanita. Nearer the bottom, we could hear the clash of hand-to-hand combat not far to the west.

  A little past the flatland, the region looked empty. This area was probably close to the line of demarcation, where the two armies had converged, clashed, and retreated. I only hoped that the battle borderline would remain steady until we had crossed it.

  It now became imperative that we move at a faster pace. Luckily, the moon started to play “peekaboo” with the clouds and allow us to see her fuzzy light shine on our pathway.

  Rant came up from behind and walked next to me. I could see the worry lines rippling across her forehead. She was not going to compliment me on my actions. Her skeptical eyes fixated on my pale skin and worried frown. She knew I was playing it by ear. I had no real game plan. It was all improvised with a little luck.

  “You know that our chances are slim to none,” Rant said, stating the obvious.

  I faced Rant. “You have a better alternative? I’m all ears.”

  Rant floundered helplessly to come up with some reasonable option. “There are always no-win scenarios.”

  “Well, then I guess it is simply in the hands of God.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “So, you’re saying that we have nobody on our side? Not even God?”

  “We could turn back.”

  “So, you want to return to crazyville and drink their tasteless Kool-Aid?”

  “Well…” Rant’s eyes blinked rapidly.

  I had apparently caught Rant off guard. She slowed down her pace to rethink through her argument. I had said nothing earth-shattering. We were simply on our own. We were like rats, scurrying around in the dark before death took hold of us. We had no safety net, no rescue line. God pity us.

  As we approached midway through the open flat field, we found ourselves in a grassy cow pasture pockmarked with a scattering of smoking craters, burning vehicles, and lifeless bodies. We slowed, and I took the forefront in order to ascertain the enemy’s position. It was perhaps the most dangerous duty I had ever taken, and it was solely my decision. I had chosen this path. It was my turn to actually take charge and stand tall.