A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

“We’ll leave,” muttered Shipman. “We’ll get the hell out. We’ll all go to California with Kelly.”

  “I hope not, sir,” said Cody. “The Republic is going to need you. All of you.”

  Shipman sighed. “Now’s not the time or the place.” He turned on the overhead light. “Right, let’s get you under that X-ray machine over there.”

  It took almost an hour for Shipman to perform the best repair job he could on Farmer Brown’s bullet wound and transfuse him with a pint of whole blood and a pint of saline. “As reluctant as I am to entertain you people in my home for any longer than necessary, he needs to rest for a couple of hours so I can monitor his condition, make sure he doesn’t go into shock, and he can recover some of his strength. After that you can move him, but I really would recommend he get to a legitimate hospital as soon as he can, if that’s possible. God knows what will be possible after tonight.”

  Cody had spent the past fifteen minutes talking with Joe Dortmunder on his cell. “It may be more possible than you think, Doctor Shipman,” he said after hanging up.

  “What the hell’s happening out there?” demanded Farmer Brown, lying on the table in his still wet cast.

  “There’s still a lot of fighting going on, and there have been a lot of casualties, including some of ours,” Cody told him soberly. “But the FATPO seem to be pulling in their horns, and they’re scuttling back to their barracks. Apparently they honestly never expected we’d come out and face them, like that bunch tonight at the mall. Brigade is waiting on orders from the Army Council as to whether we start dropping mortar rounds and rockets on the barracks and stations, or whether that would be too much of a ceasefire violation. Anyway, after we left to come here, the captain got an idea. Instead of taking those Fattie guns and vehicles off somewhere, he went back in and more or less took over Eastgate Mall himself, and one of our guys who knows electronics was able to fix that WKPR-FM radio hookup so that it could broadcast again. He called the station and said if they didn’t transmit what he was saying they’d be getting a visit from the NVA, and they got the message and put Bells on the air. He told the audience who were listening who he was, and where he was, and what happened earlier tonight to those Fatties who’d been ranting and raving on the air, and he said ‘We got a lot of guns down here and those Fatties ain’t gonna need ‘em any more, so anyone who wants to join the NVA, come on down to Eastgate Mall.’ And guess what? Already we’ve signed on a hundred new Volunteers, even if it is almost midnight. We always had to recruit in secret before, but now that people know where to find us, looks like we’ll have more than enough Volunteers to create a genuine national army.”

  “Civil war instead of mere terrorism,” moaned Shipman. “Beautiful! I suppose you have some justification for all this, something about not being able to make an omelette without breaking eggs? What’s the term you Brits came up with? I used to see it all the time on all the war monuments when I went to England. Dulcy something Latin?”

  “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” corrected Jack Flash. “How sweet and good it is to die for your country, which of course is a load of bollocks. Death is never sweet or good. And yes, with regard to those two pointless and stupid wars against our racial cousins in Germany, it was the old school lie. But sometimes, doctor, worthwhile things can come of death. I happen to believe that this is worthwhile, because I have seen what came of listening to the lies of the people who have sent Englishmen to die everywhere from the Somme to Anzio to Basra, always for the benefit of same alien race of thieves and liars. This time we are killing and dying for our own blood and a Homeland for all of us, sir. To me, that makes a difference, and I am willing.”

  “God, I love that accent,” said Kelly with a smile.

  “You should hear me emote Shakespeare, Miss Shipman. ‘How now, you black and midnight hags, what is’t you do?’”

  “Look, I suppose I might as well make us all some supper,” said Marty wanly. “I promise none of us will run away or try to call the police. God knows I don’t want this fighting to come to our house.”

  “I’ll stay with Mr. Brown,” said Shipman. “You three go on and have something to eat, and Marty, could you bring in some soup for our patient? Kelly…” he said turning to his daughter.

  “I’m all right, Dad, as all right as I’ll ever be,” she told him. “Actually this has been a therapeutic distraction for me. Besides, it can’t hurt to get in good with the new régime.”

  “You have, you know,” said Cody. “You too, Doctor Shipman. We won’t forget this. I really do hope you’ll reconsider leaving the Republic. It’s to be a home for all of us, like Jack, er, Nigel said.”

  After they left the surgery Shipman stared after them. “My God, they’re just children! Even that English kid! He ought to be out sculling on the Serpentine or in some pub drinking warm beer and talking drunken undergraduate bullshit, not coming to a foreign country to commit murder, and maybe die when he runs into someone who’s a better shot than the one who plugged you. As to the others—high school? How can you lead boys like Cody to their death?” demanded Shipman roughly. “Or that skinny little girl who thinks she’s Patty Hearst and it’s all some kind of giggly game? How can you live with yourself, knowing that you’re destroying the lives of children? White children, since I know you don’t care about black or brown ones.”

  Brown sighed. “I got nothing against black or brown children, any more than I have anything against rabbits or mice. But you can’t let rabbits or mice run loose in your fields, or they’ll destroy your crops and devour your grain while giving nothing in return, and then nobody eats. And Cody isn’t a boy. He became a man the day he stood up and took on a man’s work in life by striking a blow at the enemies who destroyed his family, no matter what you think of his choice. There’s nothing wrong with becoming a man at sixteen. That’s the way it used to be for many thousands of years before we got so damned civilized, and that’s the way it needs to be again. But if you think we just use kids like Cody and Emily for cannon fodder, well, you’re wrong. I’m not going to argue with you, but you’re wrong.” He was quiet for a time. “They call me Farmer Brown because I used to have a farm once, seven hundred acres of prime wheat and sorghum and soybean in Latah, just outside Spokane. I had a son, too.”

  “What happened?” asked Shipman.

  “The bank took my farm and Iraq took my boy. And yeah, every day I collect a little on that debt from the pigs in human form who did that to me, and I enjoy every minute of it. That pleasure’s the only one I’ve got left in life. I could get the farm back after we win the Republic, but what would be the point? No one to leave it to. But it’s not just revenge. Revenge all on its own is nothing but a black hole you can never fill up, and I’m not so dumb or full of hate that I don’t understand that. I’m a Volunteer to make sure it never happens again. Do you think for one minute that after having buried my own son, I would ever lead Cody or anyone else into danger of death by gunfire unless there was no other way to make things right with the world? I tried your way. I even ran for office before 10/22. None of the local television stations or newspapers would take my advertising, my campaign manager was beaten by hired goons, I was arrested on a phony charge of embezzling campaign funds, and I still won, so my opponent simply went scuttling to a Jewish Federal judge and had the result thrown out. We use bullets now, not ballots. Bullets work. Ballots don’t, unless you count ‘em yourself.”

  “You can’t order the future all nice and neat with a gun!” said Shipman.

  “Yeah, I know that too. But I can try. I can do what little I can, and if enough of us just do what little I can, well, maybe we can’t make sure everybody gets a winning hand a hundred and two hundred years from now, but at least we can re-shuffle the deck.”

  Shipman sighed and slumped into a chair. After a while Brown said, “By the way, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Shipman.

  Mrs. Shipman managed to whip up a passable meal of microwave be
an casserole, hot dogs, and salad, which the Volunteers wolfed down. Kelly declined to eat anything and went into the den where she turned on the TV and watched the raging news commentary and reports of violence around Seattle. After Cody had finished eating Marty tapped him on the arm. “Cody, may I speak to you privately? It’s about Kelly.”

  They went into the living room and sat down in a corner on a sofa, Cody uncomfortably lugging his Kalashnikov along. “I apologize for the shooting iron, Mrs. Shipman, but I might need it quick,” he said. To his surprise, Marty buried her face in her hands and started to weep. “Oh, jeez, look, ma’am, I’m damned sorry about this! It’s just that we had to have your husband’s help for Farmer. I hope you understand that we wouldn’t really have hurt you. You’re Kelly’s parents, and I really like Kelly a lot…”

  “I hope so,” she whispered. “Dear lord, I hope so, Cody. I hope you like her enough to do something for Kelly that in this horrible world, it seems that only you can do, or will do.”

  “Huh?” asked Cody.

  “Dear God, forgive me for what I am about to do! Cody, ever since I saw you and your friends with those guns and I knew who you were—well, don’t be embarrassed about putting that machine gun or assault rifle or whatever it is on my coffee table. I’d like to kiss it, actually.”

  “Uh…”

  Marty laughed. “No, that’s not me being kinky. Cody, normally I wouldn’t ask you something embarrassing like this, but do you more than like my daughter? Do you love her?”

  “Yes,” he told her simply.

  Marty looked at him with all the despair in the world in her eyes. “Then avenge her!” she cried in agony.

  A few minutes later he went into the den where Kelly was staring at the flickering screen in the dark. She had the sound muted. He sat down on the leather couch beside her and carefully leaned the AK against one corner of it, muzzle pointing away, and then spoke to her. “Hi,” he said.

  “I think I always knew,” said Kelly softly. “There was always something different about you. You were always so gentle and polite with me. You spoke to me like a man, not just a high school kid with half his mind in my pants and the other half still on his skateboard and his computer games. It was a subtle thing, but I noticed. I could tell that you were a lot deeper than you let on to be, and I admit, it fascinated me. I just never knew how to say anything to you about it. I kept hoping that you would decide to tell me what was going on with you. I know you love me.”

  “I damned sure never said anything about that,” he replied, not bothering to deny it.

  “No, dear, but I picked up on the signs,” she said with a little smile. “I knew you wanted me, like all the others, but you never came on to me. I think you’re the only guy I’ve ever met over the age of fifteen who never did. Why didn’t you try? You might have been surprised by the result. Heck, I might have been surprised by the result.”

  “I wasn’t just looking for an hour with you in the back of that Explorer, Kel,” he told her with a shrug. “What I want from you is something I can never have, and most likely never have from anybody else. There was no point in my starting something I couldn’t finish. Yes, I like you. I won’t say I love you because that word simply isn’t appropriate to anything to do with the world I live in. If things were different I would have made an effort to win you, somehow, but they weren’t. I am who I am and you are who you are.” He was silent for a while. “Your mom told me what happened to you today at school. Ironically, it was only this afternoon that Nightshade and me got permission from our captain to kill Newman. We were too late, and I will go to my grave regretting that. But it will be taken care of, for what it’s worth. Soon.”

  “Nightshade?” asked Kelly.

  “That’s Emily’s Volunteer name. Not Patty Hearst. That was a joke.”

  “Yes, dear, I got that. And what’s yours?” she asked.

  “Just Cody Brock. I never had a Volunteer handle.”

  “Why not?” she asked curiously. “Emily is Nightshade and Nigel is Jumping Jack Flash, and I really don’t think Farmer Brown’s first name is Farmer, and I heard you call your captain Bobby Bells. Sounds to me like you guys pass out the neat nicknames along with your secret decoder rings.”

  “I was an It Takes A Village kid,” he told her. “They took my name once, my father’s name and his father’s before him. When I ran away I decided I would never let them take my name again.”

  “Well, it’s sweet of you to want to avenge my honor, as our ancestors would have said, but it isn’t worth you getting killed over,” she said.

  “I disagree. I risk getting killed every day,” said Cody. “And never with better reason.”

  “Are you with Emily now?” asked Kelly. “I mean, what do you two do together when you’re not going to church or shooting up shopping malls? And what the hell was the story on that kidnapping deal in June?”

  Cody chuckled. “Oh, that was just a glitch in a minor operation that kind of developed a life of its own. Long story. You mean do we pass our nights in wild abandoned passion, in between manning the revolutionary barricades and throwing bombs? No. Believe me, we have other things to occupy our time. The closest we’ve ever come to getting physical is when she tried to stab me once.”

  “Huh?”

  “Part of that long story I mentioned. No, we’re not together like you mean, but in a way we are. We’re comrades and we face the same enemy, the same death if we’re caught, and every day our lives depend on one another. In that way, yeah, we’re together in a far closer way than anyone can ever be after a little backstage snogging with Craig Crabtree.”

  “Ooh, touché,” she said. “Cody, really, this thing with Newman…it’s very odd, but right now I honestly don’t care if he lives or dies. I just feel…dead inside. I can’t think about the future, I can’t think about acting, I don’t even think I’ll dream any more for a while. Everything seems to be shut off inside me right now.”

  “That’s the worst part of it,” said Cody, nodding. “It feels like a vampire attacked you and sucked your soul away.”

  “Well, that’s not a bad description, but with all due respect, dear, how the hell would you know?” Kelly inquired.

  “I know. Kelly, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody. Something I never thought I would ever discuss with another human being.” He took a deep breath. “I told you I was an It Takes A Village kid. I was eight years old. They sent my dad to prison and they took my sister away to wherever the hell they took her, and then they sold me. To Jews, down in San Francisco. Now you know why I don’t exactly have any love for the Chosen Ones. My stepfather was a Jew with a capital J who gave me these constant bombastic lectures on Jewish ethics and moral duties and yadda yadda yadda, my stepmother was a very nice Gentile broad with a great body and a room temperature IQ. Plus, I had two stepsisters. Karen was three years older than me, and Leah was seven years older, so when I was ten they would have been thirteen and seventeen, respectively.

  “That’s when it started, when I was ten. Both of them came to my room one night after everyone was in bed, and they told me they wanted to play some special games with me. I wasn’t a naïve kid, I’d had sex education even in the yeshiva school, and so I understood what games they wanted to play. They made it clear that if I didn’t go along they would claim to my stepparents and the police that I had been the one coming to their room with the games in mind. So we played, only it wasn’t normal sex. I think I can count on my fingers the times anything normal figured in these little sessions that sometimes went on until dawn. I won’t get into any more detail. Most of it makes me want to vomit, even now, years later. Okay, I know the male-on-female rape dynamic is different, and I know what happened to you was more violent and terrible, but in my case it went on for years, regularly, until Leah was in college and engaged to be married, yet still she came with Karen to my room. Until I ran away. So I just want you to know, Kelly, that yes, I have some idea of how you feel. As much
as a man can have, I suppose.”

  “Didn’t you ever even try to tell your stepfather or stepmother the truth?” asked Kelly, fascinated.

  “You still don’t know everything,” said Cody softly. “Early on, when it started happening, I decided to tell Larry, and if those two bitches lied about it and accused me then so be it, but something happened. Nights are usually foggy in San José, but one night, soon after the games began, there was a very bright moon outside. I was lying on my back on the bed while the girls—did what they were doing, when I heard the door to my room creak a little. I turned my head to the left and in the moonlight I saw my stepfather’s face protruding around the edge of the door frame, looking into the room, watching us. Thick coke-bottle glasses, nose and frizzy hair and all. It looked like those old World War Two Kilroy Was Here cartoons, but it wasn’t funny. It was ghastly, because you see, his face as he watched us around the door was down on the floor, like some hideous ball that was about to roll into my room. He must have been lying full length on the hall floor outside, and occasionally I got a glimpse of what appeared to be his shoulders, and they were bare. I don’t know if he was actually naked, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt, anyway.”

  “You’re really creeping me out, Cody,” whispered Kelly in horror.

  “It was suddenly obvious that it was Larry who had set the whole thing up,” Cody said. “He must have. The girls surely knew he was there. Their eyesight was as good as mine.”

  “Why?” asked Kelly. “What kind of perv would do that?”

  “We never spoke about it. He knew I saw him that night. He was watching us close enough, and he must have known that he’d been seen. But he never said anything, ever. What would go on in a man’s mind to make him do something like that I don’t know, but I quickly decided that as bad as things were, any attempt on my part to force it into the open would make it ten times worse. Now I’m sure it had something to do with my being a Gentile and the son of a man who had gone to prison for hatecrime and was classified as a Nazi.”