by J. D. Palmer
“Fuck you.”
Josey steps forward quickly. “We’re Americans, okay? We’re from here.”
Mickey casually spits in the dirt. “Thank you. Was that so hard?”
Josey plays peacekeeper. “Can you tell us why you attacked us? And where our friends are?”
Mickey turns his back to us, scanning the movements of his company. “Your friends are being detained. My men took you down because we thought you were with the enemy.”
All of us are taken aback by his words, we cast looks to each other in confusion. The enemy? Is he crazy?
“What do you mean by the enemy?”
Mickey’s turn to look confused. “The hell you all come from?”
I shrug. “Does it matter?”
He grins. A smile that doesn’t touch his eyes but lights a fire in the girl next to him. A predator sensing blood. My shoulders tense even as I try to maintain the pretense of calm.
He spits more tobacco in the dirt and then walks up to me. I stand taller than him by five inches at the least. Doesn’t matter. Eyes turn as he walks up. Voices whisper. I get nervous.
“I apologized to you. I’m asking nicely. But if you keep talking to me like I’m either an idiot or an asshole then we are going to have a problem.”
Not a sound to be heard but for the rain.
The girl swats him on the butt.
“You’re scaring them, Mickey, stop it!”
It doesn’t look like she wants him to stop it.
We stand face to face for a second, my eyes staring into his calm blue ones. And I suppose he is right. But I’ll be damned if I admit it.
He smiles. Almost as if he’s pleased that I didn’t back down.
“You look cold, so how about we start over, okay?”
A pause. A stillness in the rain in which he takes a moment to look into each of our eyes. And then he pulls a heavy sigh, gestures out to the wide world.
“The reason it matters, shrimp dick, is that we need intel on our border. Who is out there. What is out there. What you know, what you think you know, who you think you know.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He mocks me. “So I can defend our fucking country.”
The mood takes a nosedive when he says these words. Feet shift. Faces sharpen. I take it all in.
What?
I scan the crowd. Hardened faces. United. Purposeful. What is going on?
“From who?”
I say it softly, doing my best to not sound incredulous. To not impart just how crazy he sounds. At least in my ears I fail. There is a silence. He plays it well, glancing from his men to the girl and then back at me.
“You don’t know? Fuck me they don’t know.” He shakes his head as if he can’t comprehend such ignorance. “Come inside. Time to talk.”
He doesn’t go into any details about who, or what, we are fighting. Instead, Mickey takes us inside and interviews us one by one. He wants to hear our stories starting from when all the shit happened. He’s blunt about his reasoning. He wants to know about us, about how the rest of the world is faring, and if we have seen anything about the enemy. He also wants to know if we are spies. In no uncertain terms he makes it clear that if we lie, or he doubts us, he will “put us down.”
Okay then.
He talks to me last. He takes a long time with everyone. I don’t have time to confer with Beryl before I am marched into the room.
He leans back in a chair and casually hocks brown spit into a cup.
“Your name is Harlan?”
I nod.
“Where are you from?”
“Montana.”
“And why are you down here?”
“Visiting a friend.”
He gives a heavy sigh. “I ain’t here to fuckin’ bust your nuts, okay? I also don’t have time to sit here as another one of you gives me one word answers. Or nods. Or looks out the fuckin’ window.”
I’m guessing his interview with Beryl wasn’t fun.
“We all went through shit. Still going through shit. I have to do what I have to do to protect my unit. So tell me your fuckin’ story.”
I tell him about being held captive by Stuart in three sentences. It’s not his story to know. The rest is easy. I spare no details and he raises an eyebrow when I tell him about hanging Don.
“The others said he died. Didn’t say how. I’d’ve shot the fucker earlier.” He leans forward. “Tell me more about John and Steven. They just came wandering up to you?”
“Yeah.”
“It didn’t seem odd, them just showing up?”
I don’t understand his line of questioning.
“What are you getting at? Where are they?”
He stands up and goes to the door and brings in the rest of the group. We sit and he surveys us, hard eyes making contact with each individual before he speaks.
“I believe y’all when you say you are red-blooded Americans. So here is where we are at. One month ago a Destroyer escorting a cruise ship came into the Bay. Not ours. Chinese. And imagine my surprise when five hundred soldiers and a shit-ton of slant-eyed civvies offload into San Francisco.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
He leans forward, blue eyes clear as winter ice and much, much colder.
“They made it very clear that they were taking this city for their own. They also made it abundantly clear that we were no longer welcome.”
This is bizarre. None of us really know how to respond.
“What… What did you do?”
He dips his head in response, a small grin curling up one side of his mouth.
“We let ‘em know they were trespassing.”
He stands up, paces around the room.
“They must have been planning this for awhile. And I think they had help. That’s why I have your friends locked up.”
I scoff. “You for real? They’re Japanese.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not taking any chances. Look,” he leans on the table, “they’ve gone door to door and taken the whole goddamn city. Cleaned it out. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “We put up a fight where we can. Raid them when we can. But we are way too fucking outnumbered. I got twenty-five good ones here with me. We got a pilot, let’s us keep an eye on them as long as we can find gas.”
I raise a hand. “Wait, wait. You are saying we are being invaded?”
He nods. “Yes. Yes we are.” He paces to the window as he repacks his lip. “I was working with whatever soldiers I had to help round people up. Set up a base in which we could provide some sort of help. Food, medical aide… Shit I didn’t know what else to do. Then these guys show up. They start unloading soldiers. Then a bunch of women and children. Hundreds. And yeah, we tried to chat with them about it. They shot at us as soon as they saw us.”
“You’re wrong about Steven and John.”
He leans back. “And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” He holds up a forestalling hand. “I’m going to talk with them. Ask them a few questions, if they’re cool then they’re free to go with my apologies.”
He gets up, makes to leave, turns back. “Real quick. The one with the tattoos… He’s got ink on his back with the coordinates of a spot in San Francisco. Just so you know.”
We eat with the soldiers in the cafeteria. They have a barbecue set up and must have slaughtered a couple cows.
It’s delicious.
They are loud and boisterous and sexual. The women in the platoon wear tiny shorts and sports bras and sit on the laps of the men they have picked out for the foreseeable future. The men eat food with one greasy hand and cup the buttocks of their girl with the other.
John and Steven join us later. Both are quiet and subdued and answer any questions we have about the interrogation in monosyllables. Josey can’t help but pry. “What was up with him thinking you had some coordinates on your back? About Frisco?”
Steven glances around the group, I can tell he’s trying to keep his em
otions in check. I doubt this was a pleasant experience. I’m sure he wants nothing more than to let it go.
“When you get trained as a tattoo artist you have to get tattoos. You can tattoo yourself or you can do an exchange, practice on a friend and they practice on you. This dude from here tattooed his home GPS on my back. That’s it.”
And that was it. The way he said it meant the conversation was over. Beryl reaches out, checks herself, then reaches again to rub his shoulder. He leans into it, his eyes appreciative. Josey says he’s sorry and looks to me to help him but I’m not watching them anymore.
The room has gone silent.
The distant sound of a revving engine. The squeal of tires. The room disintegrates into ordered chaos. People grabbing guns and heading for the doors. Civilians clearing tables in the cafeteria. Mickey materializes in a doorway and starts bellowing orders.
We sit, transfixed and unknowing of what to do. Everyone is leaving their food so we stand and do the same. “What’s happening?” I ask a passing soldier but I’m ignored. We follow the flow of people outside. A man sprints to the tank and slides inside as others make a thin defensive perimeter by the buildings.
A small car swerves around the corner. It isn’t using it’s lights, I can hear it more than I can see it. It heads straight for the grass of the courtyard, small tires and low bumper scraping on the curb as it wrecks itself at the base of the camp. The car is dented and dirty. No, not dirty.
Bullet holes.
It sits still for a second, still idling, then a form bursts from the driver’s door. A thin man, his face and chest coated in blood, stumbles out and pays no attention to the twenty guns aimed at him.
“They ain’t coming. They ain’t coming.” He yells it over a shoulder as he pulls another form from the car. Mickey says something and five figures run down the road the way the car came. Another group goes and takes the prostrate form from the man and hauls it into the cafeteria.
Mickey is half-carrying the man from the car into the building. The man is blubbering and swaying and at times fighting to go back to the car. Mickey hits him across the face, not lightly. Once. Twice. The man finally gets angry enough to stop crying and focus on Mickey.
“Were you followed?” Mickey is calm and direct, his eyes ancient in a young body. “Were you followed?” The man shakes his head. “The others?” Mickey gives him a shake. “Did the others make it out?” The man shakes his head and starts crying again.
Mickey drops the man into waiting arms and stalks outside, directing orders left and right to whomever he finds nearby. He walks past me, sees the look on my face. “Still don’t believe we’re at war? Get your people together. Now.”
Mickey doesn’t stop to give any sort of explanation, already striding across the room, issuing orders and slapping backs, eyes glittering with intensity. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was enjoying himself.
I don’t need to gather my group, only John has really strayed too far away and he is sitting with his brother.
“Something’s up, get ready to leave.”
If Mickey is in his element then my voice is grim, the sound of a man being shoved once more into something he wants no part of and isn’t surprised. Maybe we’ve come to accept our roles in this world. I watch the others getting ready and am filled with pride. There is no panic, no questioning, no vacant stares at the chaos around us. Beryl almost looks happy to be up and doing something. She slips a knife into her boot and helps Theo with the bags.
We follow everyone out and load into cars and trucks, directed to whatever vehicle has room. The injured man is loaded into the back of a car by a man and a woman. He is weeping and holding the hand of the man and I see him pry the fingers apart so that he can hop into the front seat.
The brothers are pushed into a different car than us and I know it’s no accident.
Then we scream away from the college and down a series of roads, flying through the darkening evening with no headlights.
Quiet streets covered with windblown trash and leaves and only the occasional car. Empty houses that still look so neat and orderly, as if the whole neighborhood went on a vacation but will soon return.
There is a pause outside, gates rattle open and the cars drive through, speeding to a far building on an expansive compound. I catch a name. LIVERMORE LABORATORY.
The night that follows is a conflagration of activity that does nothing but leave us exhausted, burnt trees still standing after a firestorm has passed.
Mickey took a group of men and left, all heavily armed. No explanation was given. Instead we were stuck in a room with untrained physicians as they tried to keep a man shot in the abdomen alive.
It took hours. We lent help where we could. Finding cloth to pressure the wound. Building a fire in the room next door to boil water. No ventilation meant huddling around smoke for half an hour before stumbling back into the hall, hands wrapped in blankets as you try to haul a pot full of boiling water and not let the coughing spill it.
We took turns holding him down. Or talking to him. He asked for his mom and for a woman named Desiree. He cursed and cried and struggled and sometimes was a limp body for an hour at a time.
They got the bullet out of him and he looked at it and said “it’s so fucking small” before dying.
We cover his body and mill around in stupors, arms and chests covered in coagulated blood. We should be doing something. Something.
What could we do?
We finished our meal with bloody hands and slept if we could. Or we pretended to sleep. I tried to go outside, see if I could get a car ready for us to go. I was stopped at the door by the same guy I woke up to.
“Mickey said we could go.”
All the kid did was shake his head and point at the brothers. I didn’t push it. They got attacked after we showed up. Better not try to slink away in the night.
Fuck.
Mickey returns with his men and they carry three more bodies. The body language is enough to know we need to keep our mouths shut. The man is exhausted but he does a good job pretending not to be. He tells his people what they need to hear, either in small groups or man to man and then he sends everyone outside to clean up. The backhoe bucket has been filled with water and we wash the blood off together, men and women stripping off shirts and pants and scrubbing the red lacquer off into the trough until it takes on the hue of a claret.
Inside people slowly gather. Everyone is exhausted but there is a need for company. A desire to not be alone. A couple candles are lit as we settle into our home for the night. Guns are disassembled and cleaned, cans of food cracked open. Some of the soldiers sleep. My crew sits at a table with a few of the company. Theo lies down on the ground and closes his eyes. Steven has found cigarettes somewhere, he puts one in his mouth but doesn’t light it. John produces a piece of paper and pen and scribbles at something, forehead pinched with tension.
“What did y’all do before this?”
The soldier whispers across the room as he cleans his gun. The other men and women crane their heads. It would be hard not to be inquisitive, I guess. There’s not much else that matters anymore but the people you surround yourself with, who they are and what drives them.
“Lawyer.” John doesn’t look up.
“Tattoos.” A whistle of approval at Steven.
“Irrigation.”
“I never had a job.” Beryl isn’t willing to elaborate and I know the others must think her a spoiled brat. It doesn’t matter.
The man nods to each. “I was in school. Never really had a job either.”
Silence for a second as we think about the time before.
“Aren’t you happier, now?” I didn’t hear Mickey approach. He looks around. “I don’t know about you guys but I felt like I was going through the motions.” He starts checking off his fingers. “Learn a trade. Get a job. Marry someone. Have a kid or two. Retire. Die. And in between all that was nothing but watching shit on Netflix and playing on the phone.�
�
“You were married?”
Mickey ignores the question. “Not that everything was that bleak for me, you know, but Jesus, don’t you feel more like yourself now?” He looks around. “All this shit made us become what we needed to be. Everything before was just treading water.”
He paws at his beard. I’m betting he doesn’t talk like this often. The men and women of his company stare at him, listening intently. Sheila especially seems shocked. Mouth slightly open, she has eyes for no one else in the room.
“We have a choice, you know, in the way we see this. The world ending. One, it’s a tragedy. People died, a way of life died, everything has died. Or, you can see it as a good thing. Something that needed to happen so that we could live more fully. We went through the steps, did what we thought we were supposed to do, plugged into this or that job to support a society that we never really got to see or be a part of. Now we fight to live.” He clenches a fist in front of him and scans the group. “Because we want to live. And we make love and fall in love with desperation. Because we need it, not because it’s another task to check off on our long trek towards death.”
A shake of his head, eyes distant as he thinks about something else. Or someone. He looks around at everyone before cracking a grin.
“I was gonna be a history teacher after I got out of the Marines. Get some sleep, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
He saunters out of the room with Sheila and everyone filters away, pairs heading off to find rooms to sleep or find solace with each other. The brothers and Josey are gone, presumably off to bed.
Mickey’s words echo in my head. Is this a good thing? No. But… Theo and Beryl sit with me and it takes me awhile to realize that Beryl is waiting for me to retire and Theo is waiting up for Beryl’s sake.
“Go get some sleep.” Beryl gives me a weird look. “I gotta talk to Mickey.” They walk down the hall and I get the impression that Beryl is mad at me.
I ask one of the soldiers where I can find Mickey and he mumbles “seventeen” and points down the hall. I walk slowly down the hall scanning the numbers as I go. Some have names written on marker boards or small chalk boards outside their rooms. Room seventeen has an American flag bandanna pinned to it.
