by Bobby Adair
“All the way to the front,” one said.
With his balance drifting toward normal, Tommy waddled on his knees toward the cab. Once there, he turned and maneuvered himself into a sitting position.
A frightened man with thinning hair, looking every one of his forty-some years, was rolled onto the tailgate next and ordered forward. His button-down shirt sported a trail of bloody spots from where he'd been convinced to give up something he'd have preferred to keep secret. A women with a mane of thick black hair came in behind him. She donned long-sleeved fleece of sunny yellow and the grim face of a woman walking to the gallows. She wore no bloody spots on her clothes, yet her eyes were on fire with hate just the same.
More detainees were filing out of the back of the school, some were walking, others were being helped, just as Tommy had been. A handful of pickups were waiting outside. Subarus and soccer-mom SUVs sat parked nearby. 704 men were all over the place, armed and bored, looking at Spring Creek’s diminutive skyline silhouetted against the mountains.
That’s when Tommy saw columns of smoke climbing into the night and leaning south with the flow of the wind. Below, he saw the glow of fires and felt the tingle of danger that everyone living in the mountains feels when they see the beast breaking free. A wildfire could destroy everything.
Every single thing in its path.
A few blazes burned in one of the nearby neighborhoods. Another was on the other side of town, and the most dangerous of them all was up on the mountain, a house among the trees.
Not one of the armed men seemed to care, though.
When Tommy’s truck was full, a 704 man slammed the tailgate shut. “No talking.” With no interest in staying to enforce the order, he walked away, joining a pair of guards sitting on the hood of a Subaru. Cigarettes were lit, and the grumbling started.
Tommy couldn’t make out what all they were saying, but two of them were incensed about being left in the dark with all that was happening. They were being treated like regular grunts and didn’t like it. One was going on about the NonCons. He kept talking about something he called The Big Push. He wanted to be ‘out in the shit,’ saving the country with his bullets and big hairy man-balls, not babysitting Realtors and PTA moms.
A pair of uniformed militants worked their way from truck to truck carrying a dozen sheets of paper stapled at the corner. They checked counts and names, and marked each on their list before moving on to the next vehicle.
Another 704 came walking around from the front of the pickup. He stopped near where Tommy sat in the bed and leaned in, his chin just over above the edge of the fender. “We’ll be going in a minute.” He sounded like he was apologizing. “I need new shocks on the rear so you might get bounced around a bit.”
Tommy recognized him. He was the shuttle driver.
“Holler if it gets too rough,” said the driver, as he pointed at a sliding window on the back of the cab. “I’ll hear you and slow down. Don’t holler too loud, though. Some of these boys are getting carried away, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re the guy who drives the airport shuttle,” said Tommy, cursing himself for not knowing the guy’s name.
“One of ‘em.” The guy looked at Tommy, no recognition on his face, only something that looked like pity.
“You dropped me off earlier today. I had the red Ford.”
The guy looked Tommy up and down. “What happened to you?”
What happened? Tommy bit back the curses he wanted to shout. “Some guys inside. What’s going on?”
“Terrorist attack.” The guy glanced over his shoulder like he knew he was breaking a rule by talking with the prisoners. “People trying to overthrow the government. What are you doing with this bunch?”
“I came to report my wife and daughter missing.” Tommy shrugged through the middle parts of the story he still didn’t understand. “Now I’m here.”
“What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
The guy looked at Tommy like he was trying to figure out if he was being lied to.
“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, “I never asked your name.”
“Just the same,” said the guy. “You always took care of me. Some people don’t even tip. They act like hourly pays the rent. My name’s Matt.”
“Tommy.” The cuts on Tommy’s lips cracked painfully as he smiled. “Good to meet you. Do you know what they’re going to do with us?”
Matt reached in to pat Tommy’s knee. “They don’t tell us much, but my sarge said we’re transporting you to a detention center.”
“Like a jail?” asked Tommy.
“Like I said, they don’t tell us much. I expect they’ll talk to you when you get there. Sort this out.” He looked around the truck. “You folks all look like good people. Don’t take none of this the wrong way. Sarge says we need to find the terrorists.”
“Terrorists?” asked the woman beside Tommy, with a hint of an accent. She was the one with the black hair and fiery eyes. “We’re all Americans. We live here.”
“Anarchists,” answered Matt. “Spring Creek is full of ‘em. They want to destroy the country. We’ve got to fight ‘em. We all got to do our part. Come this time next week, I expect most of you will be wearing Battalion 704 patches and marching with us to set this country right. We’re at war.”
“At war with whom?” asked the woman. “Who are the anarchists?”
Matt winked and patted the fender twice. “Buck up.” He turned and hurried off.
At war?
As absurd as the idea seemed, it was the first explanation that made any sense. America was at war. What didn’t make sense was that Tommy’s country seemed to believe he was the enemy. One of many.
flamed through his nerves, and he lost control of his body.
Chapter 5
Tommy and the other detainees were ordered to sit back-to-back in a row down the center of the bed of the truck. One of the paramilitary types climbed inside and laced a rope through their zip-tied wrists. He knotted it around Tommy’s forearm, and Tommy figured that guy had done the same on the other end. There was no point in tying the rope to the truck; connected as they were, the detainees had no way to climb out.
A command was shouted.
Drivers mounted their trucks and fired their engines, revving exhaust stink through rusty pipes, torquing drive trains, and straining brakes. More climbed into little four-wheel-drive Subarus, rolling down the windows and hollering at the other cars. The 704s were excited, young men waiting for a turn on a victory whore, only most of them were in their thirties and forties and fifties. Few of them looked like they could hump a pack of heavy gear up a mountain trail. Most carried their weapons like thorny scepters of magic might, not like tools they'd used to exterminate belligerents in a Middle Eastern desert. How could these men—these government contractors—be America’s crack response to a terrorist attack on its sacred soil?
Too many things didn’t make sense.
With a squad of 704 men in the bed of a truck at the rear of the column, six pickups sped into the dark, all packed with people who, as far as Tommy could guess, were just like him—regular folks, ambushed, detained, threatened, or beaten. Some a little, some as bad as Tommy.
A cloud of debris blew out of the truck’s dirty bed, swirling around the detainees, thrown into eyes and catching in hair. The mud tires hummed loudly on the pavement. Some of the riders dared a whisper with a neighbor. More than a few cried, not just for their predicament and bruises, but for the missing loved ones they’d been trying to find when they’d fallen into the trap at the high school.
None of them believed they belonged where they now sat.
An injustice had snapped them up and spun them dizzy. Only, misdirected state violence wasn’t supposed to stomp its boot on the green lawns of square-shrub suburbia. A million viral videos had proven out that maxim. Uniformed oppression was for Them, over There.
Not Here.
Not for Us.
&n
bsp; Hardly any cars were on the streets.
Not many people were chancing the night on foot.
Emergency lights, red and blue, still flashed at the epicenter of Spring Creek’s tragedy.
Sirens—a least a few—still keened.
Once through town, the caravan turned onto a narrow, eastbound road, heading toward the mountains.
The black-haired woman linked at Tommy’s right arm said, “The Old Mine Loop.”
Tommy knew she was right. He’d made a habit of bicycling the road’s fourteen-mile gravel grades at least once a week when he was in town. Every cyclist in Spring Creek rode it from time to time. People even came up from Denver on the weekends to pedal its steep hills and gawk at the abandoned mines and alpine vistas.
Tommy craned his neck to see around the armed man riding in Matt’s passenger seat. Nothing ahead but the end of the pavement and a dirt road riding a gentle slope up into the trees.
The pickup slowed as it rattled onto the gravel. The frame banged its springs with each bump. Dust plumed into the bed. Tommy squinted to keep the grit out of his eyes. The man linked behind him coughed.
Through the noise, talk among the detainees grew bolder.
The fear was apparent.
The black-haired woman beside Tommy said, “They’re going to kill us.”
Tommy shook his head. The evening’s math didn’t add up to execution. It just didn’t.
“You don’t believe me.”
Hyperbolic noise. “Neither do you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you believed it,” said Tommy, “then why are you here? Why show up at the gym where they could arrest you? Why didn’t you already make a run for it?”
“I didn’t know until now.”
Tommy scanned the empty pasture. “Did I miss something? The GENOCIDE THIS WAY sign?”
She ignored Tommy’s flippant remark. “This road leads to those mines.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
"Holes going underground for miles," she explained. "Open pits. You could dump a million bodies up there, and nobody would ever find them."
Tinfoil-hat guesses. “You know people own those mines, right? Engineers go up there all the time sniffing around on the chance they might find a silver vein everybody else missed, or the mother lode of gold that nobody ever noticed.”
“You’re pretty optimistic for somebody who got the shit beat out of them.”
“I’m tired of rumors. Worse, I’m sick of lies.”
“What am I lying about?” snapped the woman.
“Sorry, I should have said guesses.” Tommy looked over his shoulder at the others in the bed. None of them knew what was going to happen. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Your friend Matt told you.”
“War?” Tommy laughed meanly. “I don’t know what this is—a government overreaction maybe, incompetence spiced with stupidity, but not war. War doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes the most sense,” argued the woman.
“Fine. We have a long ride ahead of us. Explain it to me.”
“Have you been living under a rock?”
“Why don’t you just tell me,” asked Tommy, “instead of trying to think of trite ways to make me feel stupid?”
“Is that why they beat you up, because you don’t know how to play nice?”
“Did that feel clever when you thought it up? You know, just now before you said it?”
“You’re a little bit of a jackass, aren’t you?”
“I have my moments.”
“I’m guessing your moments are more like hours.”
Thinking of Summer, Tommy said, “I know someone you’d get along with really well.”
“Who?”
“President of my fan club.”
The woman huffed and turned her body as far away from Tommy as the rope would allow.
“Hey,” complained the man behind her as the rope chafed his skin.
And that was the end of the conversation.
The truck bounced up the dirt road. Eventually, Matt made an unexpected turn onto an erosion-rutted track through the trees. The grade grew steep, and everyone in the back of the truck was bumped to the rear and packed tightly against the tailgate.
When the road reached a level section, Tommy urged the man tied behind him to scoot forward to give the others some room to breathe. The guy, though, seemed only half-coherent, having given up on interacting with the world, satisfied to roll with the waves. It was only with the help of others that they managed to scoot him toward the front of the pickup bed.
When things settled down again, guilt got the better of Tommy, and he turned to the woman on his right and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. My wife tells me I get snippy when I’m not handling stress well.”
The woman let Tommy’s apology hang in the dusty air long enough for the moment to grow awkward. Then she said, “I suppose this situation qualifies.”
“I’m Tommy Joss. I’d shake your hand, but… ”
“Esmeralda Kurjack.” She bumped his elbow. “My friends call me Ezz.”
“You have a little bit of an accent, but I can’t place it.”
“Are you asking me if I’m a terrorist?” Ezz smiled, but not with her eyes. “Gallows humor works best when you’re on the way to be hung.”
Tommy forced a laugh to avoid being rude again. Still, he didn’t want to accept she was right.
“My family is Bosnian.”
That surprised Tommy. He’d never met anyone from that part of the world. Not that he knew of. He looked her over.
She noticed his scrutiny.
“Sorry,” he apologized again. “I was trying to guess your age.”
She understood. “You want to know if I was there?”
“During the war with Serbia?” Tommy nodded. “That’s right.”
"War?" Ezz's face turned as blank as a mannequin, and she shook her head. "There are better words for it.” The fire in Ezz’s eyes changed to something very sad. “My mother brought me here when I was nine.”
“To America?”
Ezz nodded. “To Colorado. Fort Collins at first. Up here by the time I was in high school.”
“Did you see much of the war? Or whatever you call it.”
“My father and brothers were taken away.”
“What does that mean, ‘Taken away’?”
“The Serbs came to our village and loaded all of the men and boys into trucks. They took them to a camp.”
Tommy didn’t know what to say to follow up.
“You would call it a concentration camp if we were talking about Jews, but we’re in America, and no one believes concentration camps have ever existed except for the ones built by the Nazis.”
Ezz’s English made her sound nearly as American as Tommy, yet the idea of a foreigner passing judgment on all Americans made him feel inexplicably defensive. “I saw some things in the news.”
Ezz wasn’t impressed.
Tommy decided to let it go. “What happened to your father and brothers?”
Ezz's eyes stared through the trees, and she sounded like a girl again, not a grown woman. “Nobody knows.”
“Could they have escaped?”
“They were starved or shot, or perhaps just beaten to death. Their bodies were thrown into a mass grave with no identification. I’ll never be able to tell you how they died, yet I assure you, they were murdered by the Serbs.”
And here they were riding into the wilderness as prisoners of hostile men. “You think that’s what’s happening to us, right now?”
“You don’t believe it could happen here, do you? Americans think they are different. Educated, sophisticated, big TVs in the living room, two cars in the driveway.”
Tommy shook his head, because he didn’t want to admit she was right. He didn’t believe, and she made his disbelief seem ludicrous.
“Our hands are bound. You’ve been beaten so badly,
you’re lucky you don’t have a concussion. And for what? What did they ask of you?”
That brought back the shame Tommy felt for letting those three bastards in the little room break his will so fast.
“What?” Ezz persisted.
“Banking information,” Tommy admitted. “Cell phone and email passwords. They said they were investigating terrorist networks or something.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Because you think they’re going to kill us, right?”
“Somebody back in the gymnasium,” answered Ezz, “has already transferred your money into another account. That’s why they wanted your information. Did they force you to sign over the deed to your house?”
“Not only is that ridiculous, the house isn’t in my name.”
“You don’t know how this works.”
“Tell me, then,” replied Tommy.
“If you had a house, they’d have taken it along with every penny you have in the bank. The money is easy to transfer away. The deed to your house, if you had one, a little harder, but by the time this is all done, it won’t matter. The people handling the transfer at the courthouse will all be working for these cretins. Now that you have nothing, you’re of no use to them. Men with guns are taking us into the forest. How do you imagine this is going to end if not with our bodies in a hole?”
“Bullshit,” drawled the guy tied behind Ezz. “Notice how the gym was full of people, yet they only took some of us.” He guffawed rudely. “You people and your dipshit conspiracy theories. It’s big data. That’s all. One of these ‘NonCon’ terrorist dillweeds or whatever blows something up. An NSA algorithms kicks into high-gear run-mode and picks up a quirk in your data file, then you get hauled off to an offsite detention center to explain it all away. That’s what this is. It’s the government being careful. Due diligence. Crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s.” He laughed again. “You maroons and your spy-movie imaginations. Why do you think you’re so important that they do all this for you? It’s a quirk. A glitch.” He guffawed again. “Dumbasses!”
The guy in the cab with Matt pounded the window with his fist. “You shut up back there.”
