The Road Ahead

by Adrian Bonenberger

  “It’s no bother, ma’am. I had a lovely time at your home, but I really must be getting off now. Could you tell me what time it is, please?”

  “It’s been so long,” she continued, ignoring my request, “since someone has just actually listened to him. Someone besides me or the doctors.” She smiled very genuinely at me, and I realized that if I did not leave soon, I too would be moved to tears, so I finished with my shoes and rose to my feet and embraced the woman and told her that I’d be round to say hello, and walked out into the driveway, got in my car, and drove home.

  DIFFERENT KINDS

  OF INFINITY

  by David F. Eisler

  The front door of my house leads to a grey concrete sidewalk, which leads to a small driveway split into a half circle by a large tree, then an asphalt road and the infinite possibilities of the rest of the world. I don’t leave it very often anymore.

  My cat, a European shorthair whose name is Ivan, often sits inside by the door, wanting to go outside. He has never been outside.

  Sometimes he will scratch at the door. Sometimes he will meow, forlorn, as if he is aware of all he is missing on the other side. But I don’t think he really knows that much. He’s a cat. I like to tell him that, in contrast to his namesake in Tolstoy’s famous story, his life has been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most pleasant. I don’t think he gets the joke.

  I don’t go outside much. The farthest I normally venture is the mailbox at the end of the driveway to check the mail for new books and the occasional letter. Sometimes a letter has my name on it, and I know it’s for me. Most of the mail is addressed to “Current Resident.” I suppose that would be me as well.

  The few minutes it takes for me to hobble to the mailbox with my cane are the worst of the day for the cat. He always thinks I’m leaving him forever, even though I always come back. The moment he catches me stepping into my sandals he comes running over, weaving in and out of my legs to deter me from going outside. I’ve tried to talk to him about this.

  Me: I’m just going outside to check the mail.

  Cat: ?

  Me: I do this every day. You know I do. I always come back.

  Cat: ?

  Me: No, you can’t come with me. You’re a cat.

  Cat: . . .

  When I do come back, he meows and looks happy.

  I spend most of my time at home in my study looking at my books. I have many books. For every book on my shelf that I’ve read, there are at least three that I haven’t. For years there was no reason or logic to how I’d arranged them, with some in multiple rows stacked several deep, the most recent purchases lying horizontally in piles obscuring the rows behind them, making their titles easier to identify quickly without needing to tilt my head, which hurts.

  Sometimes while I’m reading one book I will scan the shelves for the next one. Sometimes the cat scans with me, though I only recently started letting him into the office. Before, he would sit at the edge of the doorway and look at me with his sad cat eyes. He likes to be around me, so I finally decided to let him in. Mostly he rests on the windowsill and looks harmlessly into the yard. His book suggestions are rarely useful.

  When he was still forbidden from entering the study, he would test my resolve by slowly creeping across the line dividing the living room’s wooden floor from the soft carpet of the study. He would place a single paw over the line and look up at me to see if I noticed, just like a small child forbidden by his parents to cross the shoreline on a beach. The parents tell the child not to go in the ocean because it is dangerous and the child could get hurt, a single step often the difference between safety and losing control to the ocean’s unpredictable waves. But the child slowly tiptoes through the wet sand at the edge of the tide—is the tide even part of the ocean?—and waits to see if his parents will react. If my parents are silent, the child thinks, then it must be all right to put my toes in the water. And before the parents know it the child’s feet are submerged. Then his legs and his arms and his whole body are splashing around while the parents wonder how their strict rules have become so easily violated. Salami tactics, it’s called. I read that in one of my books.

  I don’t have as many nightmares now as I did before I got the cat. They used to be frequent. Now they are occasional. It’s always the same one. I’m back over there, walking around outside on patrol before it happens, staring at a small patch of grass in the dirt the same way I did the first time. In the dream my legs are gone. When I wake up, I check to make sure they are still there. The cat always seems to know when I’m having a nightmare. He jumps on the bed and nestles next to my legs. Maybe he’s protecting them.

  Recently I decided that the amount of disorder on the shelves was no longer acceptable. The cat agreed. I cleared a large space in the center of the office, pushing the desk against the opposite wall. The cat watched, trying to figure out what I was doing. He doesn’t understand the concept of reorganizing. He’s a cat.

  I began by moving stack after stack of books from their previous locations and placing them on the floor, forming several leaning towers. A few fell over in spectacular fashion—causing the cat to scurry away—before I discovered the inverse relationship between height and stability. I wiped each book clean of dust with a damp washcloth before placing it onto one of the many temporary piles, ensuring that the covers were no longer sticking together.

  Hardcovers and old textbooks, regardless of subject, served as the foundation of each new stack, then paperback novels formed the thick spires. When the shelves were empty, I found myself standing near the center of Book City, a metropolis of knowledge, culture, and history. For a moment I imagined myself as a giant, stampeding through the leather-bound urban sprawl and knocking down skyscrapers built by the heroes of classic literature. I was in control of its destiny, the power to give and the power to destroy. I felt a guilty pleasure at the thought. But the image passed, and it was time to get back to work. The cat just stared at me.

  Literary fiction would occupy the upper shelves. Beneath them philosophy mixed with the natural sciences, a vestige of my former studies in math and physics.

  I looked over at the cat. He wouldn’t understand any of these books. I found one about Erwin Schrödinger, who was clearly not a fan of cats. The cat hissed, perhaps sensing the subject of my thoughts. He’s tough, that cat. No putting him in a box.

  The first bookshelf was finished. I turned back to the city, which by now had fallen on harder times. Gone were the skyscrapers, the city center, and much of the residential areas. This is looking good, I thought. Finally, some order to the chaos.

  I was just about to start stacking the second bookshelf when I heard the cat crying and scratching at the front door.

  When the house is quiet and calm and the cat knows where I am, he likes to explore. He finds hiding places with good overwatch, like cardboard boxes or large paper bags that I leave around for him after the delivery guy drops off the groceries for the week. He can also spend hours on the enclosed back patio stalking squirrels and birds through the screen or chasing other imaginary creatures that he sees outside but can’t reach. When he is finished he carefully crawls through the cat door and announces himself in a high-pitched meow so that I know he is back inside. I answer with my own sounds to let him know I heard him. This makes him happy, and he usually bounces around for a few minutes afterward, attacking various objects around the house and picking fights with furniture.

  But lately, for some puzzling reason that I couldn’t figure out, the patio didn’t seem to be enough. He was spending more time near the front door, even when I wasn’t about to go outside. I couldn’t understand what he wanted out there. Inside he has everything he could need. Food. Shelter. Amusement. Safety. He doesn’t have to worry about the horrible things on the other side of the door.

  If the door were a mirror instead of a door the cat could sit and stare at his own reflection and see the world around him. Then I could place another mirror behind him and
he could stare into infinity as the light waves bounce back and forth in endless reflection. He would see the other versions of himself in every mirror and wonder if they were looking back at him, from some other time or some other place. He might even wonder if any of them have ever been outside. I would tell him that an infinite number of them have, just as an equally infinite number of them have not. I like this kind of infinity, the safe kind where the only danger is getting lost in thought within the mirrors. It’s the same kind of infinity as in my books. It’s much better than the other kind of infinity, the one with too much uncertainty, where a single step can change everything.

  The cat continued to prowl in front of the door, pausing intermittently to stare at me. For a moment I was taken back to my recurring dream, except this time he was with me as we walked. The sun was hot and the air was full of dust, but he didn’t care. I looked down at him to make sure he was okay, but he just meowed and kept moving forward. We reached the patch of grass I had looked at a hundred times before that day—and countless more in my dreams since—and my hands started shaking from the tension. I braced and closed my eyes, feeling my muscles contract, waiting. But nothing happened. A voice said we should keep going, and the cat meowed at me again and nuzzled against my leg.

  He was still brushing against me when I realized I was back inside the house, unsure of how much time had passed. Maybe it was the innocence in his eyes, but I began to consider letting him go outside. Just the thought of opening the door nearly brought me to my already weak knees, the fear that he might run away and leave me forever. What if something happens to him? How can I protect him?

  He meowed at me again.

  Maybe he was right. It’s not fair to lock him in here with me, to keep him from discovering all that can happen when the door is open, the good and the bad. I took my chance, but that doesn’t mean it will be the same for him. With so much uncertainty, who can predict where the waves collapse?

  I walked up to the door and looked at him.

  Me: Are you sure you want to do this?

  Cat: ?

  Me: You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to.

  Cat: ?

  Me: Okay.

  I reached for the handle. A beam of light bounced off the wall and reflected onto the floor, making a pattern I had never seen before.

  The cat was skeptical. He didn’t move, but stared at the empty space where the door had been. He looked up at me. Maybe he thought this was just a cruel joke.

  Me: Go outside. It’s okay. The world is yours to discover and explore!

  Cat: !

  He inched forward slowly until he was perched at the edge where the boundaries of his previous world had ended. His tail curved upward and swayed slightly from left to right. His ears pointed upright and slightly forward.

  Without warning he darted out onto the sidewalk. For a moment I thought he was running away, but he stopped and turned around to look back at me with his still curious eyes. Then he lay down on the cool concrete of the walkway to the door, yawned, closed his eyes, and began to sleep.

  SALT

  by Colin D. Halloran

  I want to go back. Need to. Back to the flames, the twisted metal and smell of blood. The sand. The constant hint of burning rubber from the burn pits. A smell distinct, but not even noticed by passersby here in the States. As they walk around me on city sidewalks, they have no idea where I am, back in the desert, back with the concertina wire, the hug of my vest, the comforting weight of an M-4 in my hands. Until one bumps into me and I’m brought home, empty-handed, into this world where chaos goes unacknowledged, where so few of us can see it. I can’t stay.

  So I watch the needle creep.

  I push until the rising red pin is all I can see—guardrails, white lines, streetlights all blurring together on the edges of my vision. Or maybe they’re tears. No, that’s wishful thinking—I never cry. I want to. I just can’t seem to make it happen.

  I am here. Alone. Almost flying, pushing the transmission to its peak before each gear change. I like driving standard; it reinforces the illusion that I’m in control, the illusion that must have kept me alive back in the desert. But it was only ever that. No matter how much preparation, how many routes and reroutes and backup routes I knew, I wasn’t controlling shit. It was out of my hands as soon as we left the wire. That’s when Allah took over.

  The thin red line of the needle crosses 100. I close my eyes. Cut the wheel. Relinquish all semblance of control.

  One day, it was maybe May or April—early in the spring offensive—we knew we were likely to get hit. Not because of intel, really, just because we could feel it, the way you can feel when someone’s watching you no matter how hard you try to sink into the shadows of a dive bar’s corners. Maybe it was God’s eyes watching us. But the desert lent no shadows. And we had a fucking job to do.

  The thing about being a mission leader, about being the guy who drives the very first Humvee, leading all your guys like ants into hellfire, is that you need to pretend, need to convince yourself that you have control, that the amount of preparation you put in is going to keep those guys alive. That if anyone’s going to die, it’s you. Because it’s your tires that are going to hit the pressure plates first, your hood that will be the first to enter the kill zone. And that’s okay. You didn’t come all the way over here expecting to make it back.

  But that day we did. I did. In spite of the intel, in spite of that feeling of eyes making the hair on the backs of our necks stand up in the desert heat that should have disallowed goose bumps, we made it back to the wire that day. It wasn’t until later that I learned I shouldn’t have.

  The next morning’s intel brief took place before the sun came up, red lens flashlights darting back and forth against the rocky ground between our tents and the TOC. My after action report had been dull the night before, nothing of real note had taken place. Some shady characters lingering roadside, but this was Afghanistan. Everyone was a little shady. If they weren’t actively trying to kill you, you just kept on your way. But this time, I was wrong.

  The S2 filled us in. They had intercepted some communications. There was a device. The enemy tried to blow it, stop the convoy, disable the first truck—my truck—and trap us in a crossfire. But the detonation failed. It may have been the wiring, a bad signal, or they’d buried the device too deep and the signal couldn’t reach it. Either way, I was supposed to die.

  They weren’t targeting me, not really. The Taliban, or whoever they worked for, didn’t give two shits about some kid from Upstate. Hell, they probably didn’t even know what “Upstate” is. They were targeting the idea of me, or what they thought was the idea of me, of the uniform. In war you can’t take death threats personally.

  So I took the news I should have died and started planning the next mission. There was no time to think about it. No reason. They would get another shot at me, and that’s what I needed to focus on. I planned, I executed, I repeated. Even in a place where roads were few and far between, I knew every way to get from A to B. Up hills, across deserts, along the dried-up riverbeds, through villages that couldn’t possibly exist on maps. But I saw them. Navigated them. Knew them and all possible ingress and egress routes.

  There was the cave I cleared along what we called “Death Valley.” The smoke-stained ceiling and embers told us it had only just been vacated. The 7.62mm shells strewn around the entrance told us who we’d missed.

  The next week brought a high stakes mission. So high stakes they needed me to stay behind to run QRF. Nobody knew that part of the province better, and if shit hit the fan, we had to get there fast. I was anxious, pacing the tower when the first explosion sounded. I scanned east and could see the black smoke rising. The exchange of fire rattled through the radio as I mounted up, ready to tear off base and toward the ambush. But it was over almost as suddenly as it began. My QRF stayed put, the mission went forward.

  There was the MRAP I watched roll down a hill in my side mirror. Camped
on the hilltop, watching headlights stream into a compound owned by a known hostile, we waited for the attack to come with sunrise. I don’t know how some guys slept. We got permission to blow the downed vehicle before the attack could come. The surveillance drone footage showed men with AKs streaming out of the hill like pissed off hornets from a broken nest less than a minute after the demo team blew it and we left.

  A helicopter I was on for a night insertion dodged an RPG, skipped off a mountainside, and somehow stayed airborne. I thought about middle school math class, where I’d first learned about probability and odds. When guessing on a coin flip, the impulse is to bet against what’s already come up in highest frequency, but it’s still fifty-fifty.

  In the end, I made it out. Took that return trip I hadn’t banked on. They took their shots, they tried to bring me down, and I was willing, but something got in the way.

  Was it just dumb luck? Poor aim? Laziness on the part of the enemy? Or was someone watching out for me. Some higher entity, imperceptible, like the pitches only dogs can hear. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I made it home. I didn’t expect to, I maybe didn’t even want to, but here I am. The worst place yet—I’d do anything to get back.

  I always heard that blood tasted metallic—something about the iron. I’d seen plenty back there, smelled it, and the burned flesh that so often accompanied it. But all I can taste is salt.

  There are voices, shadows, lights flashing blue and red and white. Patriotism? No, it’s the middle of winter, not the Fourth of July.

  Suddenly I’m five. It makes sense. The lights, bouncing off the angles of my bedroom, the salt of my tears, the figures lifting me from bed, placing me in a car, taking me away from the place my father drew his final breath.