by Nick Mamatas
“I’m right outside the Qool Mart. Can I speak with Kelly please?”
“Aw, that’s wicked. You’re back with your dad—” I knew he’d jump to that conclusion, and then be happy enough to obey a child. “Sure, let me find Kelly. So, how’s it goin’ over there? Get any Cuebars?”
“Plenty for everyone,” I said. “Listen, could you do my dad one more favor?”
“Sure, anything.”
“Go get the gnome and bring it inside.”
“Uh, why?”
“State secret. Need-to-know basis. You don’t need to do it if you don’t want to. I bet Kelly’ll do it. But find her first, and if you do want to do your duty, be sure to keep it a secret, even from Kelly.”
“No sweat, li’l dude,” he said, then he shouted for Kelly.
“Hi,” said Kelly softly.
“Hi.”
“So it’s—”
“—true,” I finished.
“Are you going to—”
“—finish your sentences every time, as proof? No. And red with white lace trim. And you came up with the idea from that old Superman movie. And yes, I do think it’s a little dirty to make a kid think of an adult woman in her underwear.”
“So, what should I do?”
“There’s going to be a helicopter attack on the Qool Mart. I’m not sure what to do,” I told her. “But if you want to leave Weinbergia, you’re going to have a chance. I know a lot of the soldiers are redeploying themselves along Route 25A because Dad left, but there are still a few hanging around.”
“Yeah . . .” she said, tentative.
“Well, there’s going to be a distraction. You can probably run over to Tommy Case’s house without anybody noticing.”
And then, in the tinny distance I heard over the phone some distant yelping and thumps. A soldier had spotted Curtis, the guy from Vermont, making a move for the bomb, and shouted “Hey, he’s grabbing the gnome!” and a half-dozen buck privates ran across the border and onto the lawn to tackle and beat him down.
“Thanks!” Kelly said, and she ran out the back door of Weinbergia, the cell phone of state still in hand. She didn’t run to Mister Case’s, though she was thinking that she would, so she could watch some TV and stretch out on a carpet and have a drink of water and talk to someone without another thirty people breathing down her neck and interrupting and chewing loudly and guffawing at just the wrong moments. But as Kelly crossed the lawn and turned the corner, and saw the yellow and blue glow of the Cases’ TV through the bellied-out mesh of their back screen door, she choked on some bitterness in her throat, and ran toward Route 25A.
She wasn’t stopped, and didn’t even meet any military traffic, except for trucks and occasionally a small brace of soldiers hoppin’ to it on foot away from the Qool Mart. Down Valley Street to the port of Port Jameson, and the ferry to Connecticut. Out to Riverhead or even the Hamptons. One guy, a sniper painted dark and covered in a netting strewn with leaves, lowered himself off the high branches of a tree, and waddled, almost bow-legged, across Kelly’s path, crossed Route 25A, and disappeared into someone else’s tree-heavy lawn.
Kelly ignored the sign reading closed and rapped at the door. Adrienne looked at her, eyes wide and face pale except for the big egg yolk bump on her temple. My friend, Adrienne thought, whose side is she on now? Kelly was just happy to see that Adrienne had decided that a knot was better than a steaming crater with its own parking lot, and she pointed at the handles of the door, pantomiming her request to be let in.
“Hey, it’s not soundproof or anything,” Jake called out. Dad nodded to Kelly as grandiosely as a man with two hot dogs in each hand could, and Barry took it as a signal to remove the broom and let her in.
“You guys, there’s gonna be—”
“—a raid!” Whiting called from the back of the store. He and Umer were huddled by the toys section, filling plastic rockets with a mix of liquid soap and lighter fluid. Kelly hadn’t even smelled a thing till she saw the bottles. “A helicopter, probably. Doubt it’ll be a Blackhawk or anything of recent vintage, if it’s even American.”
“I thought the US was attacking?”
“No,” Adrienne said. “They’re just letting it happen to us.”
“I find your lack of faith . . . disturbing,” Jake said to Adrienne.
“We should really just evacuate,” Richard said. “Cuebar is very serious about this.”
“We’re being attacked by Cuebar?”
“No, by my own erstwhile business partners,” said Musad. Like my father, he was looking grandiose.
“Got it!” Dad said, happy but with clenched teeth. He had another piece of paper between his lips. He handed off the remaining hot dogs to Barry, and unrolled the paper to read it. Another treaty. Peace, in perpetuity, between all of Islam (why not?) and Weinbergia and all affiliates, co-thinkers, and well-wishers.
“This one, I’ll sign,” said King Daniel.
“That treaty ain’t worth the paper it’s written on,” said Whiting as he gathered up the last red plastic rocket. “Or the hot dog it came out of.” Umer, his own arms full of the thin hand pumps that served to pressurize the water kids would fill the rockets with in more peaceful times, nudged him forward.
“You guys seemed to be working together okay,” Dad pointed out.
“It’s all our necks.”
“Ours as well,” said Musad. “Thus, the treaty.” Whiting snorted and stomped up to the counter to grab a handful of matchbooks and Umer reached up to snag a small vial of Krazy Glue, then the pair walked through the Employees Only door to head to the roof and set up their anti-aircraft battery.
“Can that actually work?” Kelly asked.
Barry shrugged and said, through a mouthful of hot dog, “Well, apparently Omar’s grandpa shot down an Apache with a rifle or something, once upon a time.”
“Umer,” said Musad.
“Whatever,” said Barry.
Then came the heavy beating of a rotor twisting through the air.
Hey, Kelly thought to me. I guess this was a dumb idea all along. I was tempted to call her again, but I know she wanted a monologue, and that she wished I was able to foretell the future and not just read minds, but I can’t. If I could, I wouldn’t be in my own personal mess now, telling you all this, would I?
It’s pretty different than what you heard about on the news, huh?
Anyway, Kelly thought I don’t want to cry. I know that if I look at Adrienne, I’ll start to cry. We were just friends, you know. Not even all that close. We were bored at work, and just wanted to be, I dunno, famous or something. Important. Part of history, whatever you call it. Like you are, Herb.
I feel so bad. I can’t even look at her; she probably hates me for that too now. Kelly started crying. Barry moved, arms wide, to hug her, but she jerked away. Everyone stared. Jake shrugged. She ran to the Employees Only door and then up the stairs to the roof, where Umer, Whiting, and the two other employees (both named Mohammed, their name tags reading Mel and Johnny), who had climbed up the service ladder on the side of the pillbox building to man the spotlight, were setting up. Kelly couldn’t see the helicopter, but it was getting close. She was giddy with fear, like that burst of cold sweat when the dentist stops smiling and goes, “hmm.” Would the store fall to flaming pieces beneath her, leaving her standing in air for a moment that would feel eternal, until it ended in a yank into the fire? That was all she could think of. Standing around a bunch of convenience store workers whose great idea was to launch toys full of homemade napalm at a leased attack copter didn’t frighten Kelly at all. It didn’t even occur to her.
My mother, all she could think of was me. Me, and making sure that everyone else in the world was also thinking of me. Was I in the grip of some foreign power, like the Palauvians, or was a new country born around me in a windowless brown van with mud over the license plates . . . a van-shaped country with no age-of-consent laws?
“Herbie, my darling, my love, my life,” my mot
her told talk show host August Hickey over a cracking telephone line. You probably remember it: Hickey woebegone and staring into his mug while a map of the world pulsed behind him. A still of my mother, in black and white, with her fingers tucked awkwardly under her chin; a shopping mall glamour shop stripped of color for purposes of dramatic import, in the corner. little prince lost scrolling horizontally across the bottom of your TV screen.
The copter was a white and red light in the sky.
“There it is, boys,” Whiting said, the captain in him asserting himself. “Let’s stagger the launches. Umer, you’ll launch that green number in your hands there as a tracer, then Mel can hit it with a second battery. Johnny, you man the spotlight, try to dazzle ’em. Qool Mart will probably come in low and strafe first, try to scare us, so we have a shot. And if your volleys all fail, I’ll use my rocket.” He paused, purposefully, dramatically. “For the killing blow.”
Mel said, “Oh-kay.” Johnny was already busy cleaning moths out of the bowl of the spotlight. Umer just started pumping his rocket.
“I know you can hear me,” my mother said to the world, hoping I’d overhear.
Oh, I could.
“I’m sure he can hear me, August.”
August nodded, “I am too. We’re all praying that your son is somewhere out there, where he can hear you.”
“Herb, please, be very careful. And whoever out there has my son, my son, Herb, please, let him go, bring him back home to his mother. I love him so much. Herb has been through just so much recently. He doesn’t have a father figure in his life, no male role models. He doesn’t know how to survive on his own.”
I did wish that I had snagged some jerky or something before leaving the Qool Mart; I just didn’t think of it. But with my luck I probably would have been caught somehow, and then I’d have to bring it back and apologize to the store manager or maybe even to Randall Hoyt, who was planning on killing my father.
My father was on the verge of a religious experience of his own. Not just head injuries, but stress and nitrates cause religious experiences. Also, believing your own press releases. Dad had all that going on, and the sound of winged death (“winged death”—he actually thinks like that sometimes) right outside, so he flipped.
“Musad,” he declared, arms thrown wide. “Barry, Jake! Embrace! We are changing the world forever, finally and peacefully.”
“Oh, let me get this,” Richard said, cam back in his hands, to his knees and then back up, trying to get a good angle. Musad put out his arms gladly, Jake laughed and offered one arm to remain heterosexual, and Barry sighed and patted all available backs, careful now to turn his face and avoid the camera.
“Adrienne, come on, join the crew,” said my father. “They’re afraid of us. The Army, the government, big business. We’re a threat to them,” Dad said. Once again, it was good to be king. “What do you call ’em, Musad, the Great Satan?”
“Nooo,” said Musad. “Imperialists, I guess. Not every Muslim believes whatever some mullah in Iran says.”
“This is ridiculous,” Adrienne said. “I’m leaving.”
Jake snorted. “You can’t leave. They’ll kill you.”
Barry said, “Or lock you up in Gitmo and throw away the key.”
“No,” my father said. “She can go. We’re all our own country now. She’s safe. You can’t imagine America continuing after this. I mean, everyone knows the jig is up. Things will never be the same!” He turned to the camera—it’s one of those things people do when they have religious experiences, try to spread the word with the power of eye contact—and said, “Don’t you think? Haven’t things changed for you out there?” He glanced up, at Richard. “And you?”
“Well, I think we should leave.”
“So why don’t you go, Richard?” asked Jake.
“C’mon!” said Adrienne.
“I guess I just want to see how this all ends,” Richard said. “It’s almost like being a journalist or something.”
“It’s going to end with us all dying!” said Adrienne. “Mark my words—”
“—Oh relax,” my father interrupted. “Nothing is going to happen.”
Then three bodies flitted into view and hit the parking lot, hard.
My mother sobbed, half for me, half as a way to fill the air while thinking of what else to say to all of you out there in televisionland. Finally she said, “I don’t know what else to say, August. I just feel that there is a lot of love out there in the world, and that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I just hope that everyone prays for everything to turn out okay. I just want everything to be back to normal.”
Deep in August Hickey’s lizard mind, the old high school reporter who wished that someone would give him the nickname “Scoop” or at least take him seriously, stirred. Dare he ask a follow-up question, instead of just letting this inane woman go on about prayers and love and her snot-nosed brat son, who was probably already in a goddamn ditch somewhere like all these kids always end up being? (Hey!) The hell with it, why not?
“By ‘back to normal,’” August asked, his tongue and lips no longer even used to the idea of responding to a statement with a question, “do you mean back on Long Island, with your husband? No more countries, no more nuclear crises, no more martial law or garden gnomes or any of that, just back where you were in September?”
Whiting stood triumphant. His shoulders ached, he may have pulled something, he thought, but it was an honest injury. And those Muslim bastards didn’t even land on their heads, so it’s not like he killed anybody.
“You killed them!” Kelly shouted. Dead, dead, dead burned into her brain to the beat of the approaching copter. It was almost soothing in a way; she was hollering only to be heard.
“Ah, they’re fine,” Whiting shouted back, dismissively waving a rocket. “Fine as those little bastards need to be. Now, let’s get that spotlight ready; we’ll signal for a pickup, leave the terrorists downstairs, and then my boys’ll take care of them.”
“We can’t do that!”
“You wanna die with the rest of ’em? Go ahead—”
“—but the plan, the rockets.”
Whiting tossed Kelly the rocket he’d been holding. “Plastic toys filled with lighter fluid and soap? Good luck, dear.” He stomped past her to the spotlight on the other end of the roof, just as the wind of the copter hit the roof hard. The pilot turned on the copter’s own floodlight and washed the roof blind.
“Hello!” said a voice, amplified and crackling. “Are either of you Qool Mart employees?” Then the greeting and question were repeated robotically in Arabic. Then in Farsi. In Urdu.
“Yes!” called out Whiting.
“No!” shouted Kelly.
“They’re going to save us,” Whiting hissed.
“They’re gonna blow up the building, why would they save us?”
“Attention Qool Mart employees. Your employment has been as of this moment terminated by order of the Qool Mart board of directors. This means that your employee insurance has been cancelled. This decision may be appealed by submitting an appeal request within sixty days to the Global Arbitration and Mediation Association.”
Again the statements were repeated with the weird microchip tinge of a computerized translation, and when the third translation was finished, the copter spun so that its side was parallel with the front of the store, the door slid open, and a man holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and wearing a traditional Qool Mart blazer—except no name tag and no little hat—poked out from the interior and took aim.
Kelly planted her feet, wound up, and threw the toy rocket into the wind. It clunked off the edge of the RPG launcher, split open, and spun liquid fire in an arc over the man’s head and into the copter. The copter lurched and the computerized voice started again, but squealed hysterically like an old record being played at the wrong speed. The guy fell back and into the bright orange sheet of flame on the far wall of the helicopter, not thinking anything at all bu
t “Whoa!” as he dropped the RPG launcher, which hit the parking lot, bounced hard once, twice, and then didn’t go off. The copter, spewing white and black smoke, roared and tore upwards over the rooftops of Port Jameson.
Whiting stared at her, aghast. Kelly said, “Softball. Three-year varsity.” Then she cracked her knuckles.
Things seemed to happen very quickly from inside the Qool Mart. Umer and the Mohammeds tumbled into view and lay on the ground, not altogether still. Wind from the helicopter’s rotors picked up trash and sand and junk from the parking lot and painted the windows in brown and the flashy reds of newspaper coupon pages. The announcements were made.
“That’s not a very good translation,” Musad commented.
“Oh, the humanity,” Richard said, bending down again and tilting his little camera to take a shot of the underbelly of the helicopter.
“Is there a basement?” asked Jake. “Another entrance somewhere?”
Barry and Adrienne looked toward my Dad, both of them like kids desperately sure that the big man in their life could solve any problem.
“History’s on our side,” he said.
“Does that mean you have a plan?” Barry asked.
Adrienne answered first. “No, it means that he doesn’t care whether or not we die anymore!”
Dad only smiled. Then the copter flared, and the RPG launcher fell, and bounced. Everyone gasped, and even Dad twitched a bit. It bounced again. Barry felt his consciousness sliding down into the core of his spine. Then the launcher settled, and hadn’t fired. Umer got on his knees and gave a thumbs-up. Then, from the back of the store, there was a yelp, and half a dozen sharp thuds, and a few more yelps.
Richard swung his camera, and the others all ran for the Employees Only door, from which the sound had come.
Musad held up a hand. They weren’t employees. He opened the door and in the tiny vestibule where the door to the restroom was shut and the one to the roof was flung open lay Captain Whiting on his back, his face dipped in deep red blood and his nose smashed up against his face. Kelly walked down the steps and explained, “Tae Kwon Do. Six years.”
