The Meek (Unbound Trilogy Book 1)

by J. D. Palmer

  I knock, a few seconds later the door is opened by Sheila. She is topless, a pair of men’s boxers the only thing on her body.

  “Whatya want?”

  I don’t know how to respond. “I’m looking for, uh… I’m looking for Mickey.”

  She twists her body to lean out of the doorway. “Ah honey, how long has it been since you’ve seen a pair of tits?” She gives a short laugh that borders on cruel and steps forward, her fingers tracing a line down my chin. “Mickey told me about your travels. Told me what the other guys said, too. You must have been worried that you’d never get laid again.”

  I don’t know whether to be angry or embarrassed or both. There’s a grunt and Mickey’s voice comes out of the blackness. “What’s going on?”

  Sheila pats my cheek before walking back into the room. “Someone wants to talk to you.” After that is a muffled exchange, whispers between the two of them that slowly get louder. Sheila sounds upset.

  “I slept enough,” I hear Mickey say and then, “you aren’t coming,” before they go back to whispering. Mickey appears in the doorway. To my surprise he walks out of the room almost fully clothed. He is pulling on a dark jacket and is holstering a gun.

  “You wanted to chat?”

  “I did… Where are you going?”

  He is already walking past me and down the hall.

  “Business. Wanna come?”

  I don’t. But I walk with him down the hall to, if anything, satisfy my curiosity. Before I can talk he’s doubling back towards his room. “Forgot my chew.” He’s gone for a second and reemerges with a can of Copenhagen. Sheila leans out of the door and catches him around his abdomen, snaking him back for a kiss that is both deep and vulgar.

  “Be fucking careful.” She gives me an angry look before disappearing back into the dorm room.

  We cross a courtyard outside and wind our way down a gap between two buildings until we get to a squat, thick building that has no windows. Mickey bangs on a door three times in succession, then twice more slowly. It swings open to reveal an armored soldier behind it.

  “You hanging in there, Nate?”

  The man nods and Mickey produces a cigarette that the soldier accepts with a grin. Nate swings the door open and Mickey brings out a flashlight and waves his hand for me to follow. We clomp down steel stairs in the dark, Mickey’s light bouncing around as we travel down five levels. At the bottom Mickey leads me down another hall.

  The flashlight stays on the floor, highlighting a path I assume has been walked many times. In the peripheral glow we pass closed doors that are labelled numerically. There are no names and there is no dust. As we round a corner I see the glare of a light beneath a door. Mickey jiggles the handle loudly before swinging it open.

  “Jesus, Mickey! You scared the shit out of me.”

  A short, pudgy woman with dark black hair stands at a table peering down at a large titanium box set on a table. There are wires and cords running from the box to a small device the woman carries in her hand, the dim light illuminating an oval face pocked by years of acne. Heavy bags rest beneath tired eyes and her eyebrows are raised into a permanent expression of worry.

  The room is shadowed, lit only by a single large lamp powered by a portable generator set in the corner. It’s cold, and musty, and lonely. Discarded plates of food sit on the table or on the chair. I even see plates on the floor.

  “How’s it looking?” Mickey asks from the doorway. We don’t go inside, I guess this isn’t going to be a prolonged visit.

  “I don’t know, Mickey. I don’t have the computer system I need. Give me a week—”

  “I need it sooner than that. Tomorrow.”

  She turns from the table to put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t my area of expertise. I worked in a completely different department—”

  “Jan,” Mickey speaks softly. “I need it tomorrow. And I need to know it’ll work.”

  Jan huffs and turns away from him. I think she might be fighting back tears. What is she doing down here? I see a hand wipe beneath her eyes before pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “It will be ready.”

  “Thank you.” He pauses. “Need anything?”

  She snorts. “A vacation.”

  “Thank you, Jan.” He gestures to me and we file back out the way we came. The soldier, Nate, holds the door open for us and we step back out into the night.

  “What was—”

  He holds up a hand. “Ask me when we get on the road.”

  I’m tired, exhausted really, and not in the mood to deal with enigmatic phrases.

  “Mickey, stop. Where the fuck are we going now?”

  “You in the mood for a little danger?”

  The way he says it is soft, mellow, so casual that it almost hides the seriousness and the anger behind the invitation. Not just an invitation, a dare. A question pitched by someone who, although a stranger, appears to know me well. To back down would elicit no physical reaction, but we both know what it would mean mentally. An unwillingness to test the edges. An unwillingness to risk seeing something real.

  Dammit.

  It’s hard to refuse a man like this. He appeals to my reckless side. Death has been hovering over my shoulder, courting me like a drunken lecher at a snowed in dive bar for months now. Why not tempt it further? All the anger and frustration that stemmed from constantly feeling like a victim, constantly feeling cornered, overrides my logic.

  “Sure.”

  He grins. “You don’t care what it is?”

  I shake my head. “Seems important.”

  He nods, his face grim. “We lost six today. We brought back four. I figure I’ll go get the other two, if I can.”

  He resumes walking and, sobered, I follow him.

  We take a small pick-up and cruise out into the city. The soldier on guard duty argued with Mickey, demanding he take more men with him. Mickey calmly told him to go fuck himself and that we’d be back in a couple hours. The fact that the soldier shut up and obeyed so quickly spoke to Mickey’s complete authority. He is loved by his men. Adored.

  We better not die.

  We drive with no lights on. Mickey goes slow, occasionally pulling up on the sidewalk to drive around abandoned vehicles.

  “What was that lady building?”

  He pulls the truck over and puts it in park.

  “We walk from here.”

  He hops out of the truck, reaching behind the seat to pull out a M4 rifle. He tosses his pistol to me before gently closing the door.

  “Mickey?”

  He shakes his head. “No more talking until it’s done.” He rolls his eyes at my expression. “I’ll be more chatty on the way back, okay?”

  We set off down a street, hugging the building and sticking to shadows. How the fuck did I get out here? What are we doing?

  We walk in silence for what feels like a long time. But it’s an easy silence. I had approached him with questions. Concerns about my friends, about leaving. But this is simple, and real, and I luxuriate in simply living in the moment even if I’m terrified.

  There is a clatter and I swing my gun around towards a cluster of dumpsters. A raccoon crawls to the top, small hands clutching a grey mass that might once have been bread. He freezes when he sees us, then, seemingly unimpressed, he makes his way down the far side and out into the shadows.

  The buildings are all two or three stories and not uniform, an uneven row of teeth each a different color than the last. A Mexican flag hangs inside more than one window. Windows covered with heavy bars that match the grated steel on the doors.

  Mickey holds up a hand and we stop. The road ahead of us is empty and doesn’t seem to be any different than any of the other roads we had walked down.

  But there, a window with no glass. Small divots in the brickwork. A black streak on the balustrade and the flat tires of the car parked in front of it.

  Two bodies are laid out in the center of the intersection. We wait a long time, Mickey’s eyes sc
anning the buildings for movement. He holds up a hand telling me to stay where I am as he moves off to my right down an alley way.

  I position myself next to a wall of a building where I can still see the intersection. It feels like a long time that I sit there peering at every shadow I can find; this window, that car, that shop… And then back again. But it most likely was only twenty minutes until Mickey filters into the square from the far side and slowly approaches the bodies.

  He is completely exposed, nothing to hide him from the moonlight or an enemy’s bullet. I peer into every shadow, fretting that each second that goes by will be the last before I hear a gunshot.

  I hate Mickey for putting me in this position. If he dies then there’s no reason for me to return to the others. They’ll kill us on the spot.

  Mickey checks on and around the bodies, gently lifting an arm and then rolling one of the forms onto its side.

  “We’re clear,” his low voice breaks the silence.

  I shuffle forward into the street, heart pounding, unsure of how safe we actually are. They could just be waiting.

  Mickey is squatting next to the prone forms. A young black man and a middle-aged white woman rest side by side, eyes closed and hands laced together over their chests. The woman was shot just below the eye, a tear-track of blood has dried on the side of her face. I can’t tell what killed the man.

  “What happened tonight?”

  He heaves in a deep breath. “Nothing much to tell. At least it won’t mean much to you.” He stares off into the distance. “Had teams positioned along the bridges, they were to report back to me if the Chinese crossed them.”

  He goes silent. “And?” I ask.

  He looks at me, that look that asks why I have to be such a blunt instrument. “And they were ambushed. Every one of them. This was their outpost.” He casts a glance towards one of the taller buildings on the block, a white stucco apartment complex we had passed earlier.

  “There’s simply too many of ‘em.” He says it softly, almost as if he is talking to himself. Then he gives a snort and pulls out his can of chew and packs his lip, shaky hands dropping small black bits onto the chest of the dead man at his feet.

  “When we were fighting the Taliban, we’d always be pushing forward. That was our thing, always forward, always taking the fight to the enemy.” Mickey looks up at me. “And we’d take hits but we would still drive them out. But they never left a body behind. Never left bullet casings. It was their thing, make it seem like they were ghosts. And it would work, too. Mentally, that shit starts to fuck with you.”

  He slowly stands up, eyes roaming over the horizon as he relives a war from another time. “You’d be shooting for hours, watching the dirt in front of you explode, see someone gets hit… And you would be shooting and you’d be fucking positive that you killed one. Two. Three of ‘em. Then … Nothing. They’d just disappear.”

  He bends down over the man and pulls him into a sitting position, pulling one lifeless arm up over his shoulder so he can hoist the man up.

  “And as much as we hated those fuckers, we respected them too. They were warriors, just like us, out there dying while other people were talking and… Sometimes they’d let us go get the bodies of our friends.”

  “So this is them showing respect.”

  He shakes his head. “Maybe.” He gives a small laugh.

  “What?”

  He gives a grunt as he straightens up, the man resting across his shoulders.

  “This, us… I was always on the side moving forward no matter what. Always on the side with the superior fire power. Always on the side chasing ghosts. Now I’m on the other side, running and hiding and outnumbered and fighting a losing battle.”

  He begins to walk back and I barely hear the words he mutters.

  “And we ain’t very good at it.”

  The walk back is hard. Physically, because of the bodies draped over our shoulders. And mentally, because, well… You walk a mile with a woman’s hair tickling your neck and her wedding ring glinting in the moonlight and you feel, really feel just how much of a waste this death was.

  We get back to the truck and do our best to gently place the bodies in the bed of the pickup. We climb in and slowly turn around and I can’t shake the surreal feeling that hovers over the scene.

  “In answer to your earlier question, she’s making me a bomb.”

  I don’t think, had he not brought it up, that I would have remembered to ask about the woman in the bowels of that building.

  “A bomb?”

  He nods. “Yup.”

  I don’t have any questions. Maybe, after what I just saw, I don’t care. Maybe I see the logic in having one with an enemy at the gates.

  “Why’d you ask me to come?”

  I catch him midway through packing another lip full of chew one-handed and there is a silence as he finishes. Bits of brown cling to his beard and he finishes the process by dragging thick fingers down his chin.

  “You’re leaving soon, right? I guess I wanted to show you what was going on. I guess, to be honest, I’m probably going to die soon. I wanted there to be someone who remembered me. Talked about what we did.”

  He says it matter-of-factly, as if the future is already written in stone.

  “Why not leave?”

  He had started to drive away from the curb and he stomps on the brake and looks over at me, consternation written all over his features.

  “And live my whole life, or what’s left of it, knowing that I doomed some other innocent people to deal with this?”

  Maybe John has rubbed off on me. Maybe I’m just being mulish, but I don’t let him go with this.

  “And who says that you’re dooming someone? Have you talked with them?”

  He looks at me with that singular look of someone who really wants to hit something but knows they shouldn’t. He spits, brown phlegm hitting the floor of the truck with a distinct thud.

  “Yeah. We talked.”

  The way he said it, the suppressed rage in his shoulders and in the clench of his jaw tells me not to push this any further. But now that it’s started he’s unwilling to leave this conversation unfinished.

  “The world came to an end. You ever ask why? You ever wonder who’s to blame?”

  I wondered how it came about, but honestly I hadn’t thought of the downfall as an act of war. That someone had actually done this.

  “And then they show up,” Mickey continues. “And just like that we’re being invaded.”

  “Is it an invasion? It’s one ship…”

  I trail off at the look on Mickey’s face. The clench of his jaw and the tightening of his hands on the steering wheel. But his voice, when he finally speaks again, isn’t angry. It’s sad.

  “One ship isn’t a lot if you’re invading America. And who knows if there’s more. Maybe one for up north, one for D.C., New York. One for Texas. Or maybe this is it.” A heavy sigh, eyes tired by more than sleep deprivation squinting into the darkness ahead. “But one ship is all you need if you’re invading a land of the dead. You could send one ship to every country in the world and I’d think you’d be fine.”

  We unload the bodies and place them on sheets of blue canvas next to the other three deceased soldiers.

  I expect Mickey to go back to bed and I start to trudge back towards the dorms.

  “Wanna grab a drink?”

  He goes to the flatbed truck and rummages around behind the seat, producing a bottle of whiskey. He holds it in the air and looks at me, face expectant. “I ain’t sleeping much these days and I don’t think you’re supposed to drink alone.”

  I’m torn between exhaustion and the desire to drink away the memories of this night.

  I nod.

  It’s almost daybreak, a small crease of light turning the sky bluish-gray. He climbs onto the back of the flatbed truck and tosses me the whiskey while he shrugs out of his coat. He takes off his shirt and then his pants as well, dropping them in a heap on the ground. He
doesn’t acknowledge what he is doing or offer any explanation. I can’t tell if he simply hates clothes or if he can’t bear to wear things so covered in death.

  “We need to leave soon, and the brothers—”

  He grunts. “Fuck man, how ‘bout a little foreplay before we get down to it.” He stuffs his lip and arches an eyebrow at me. I open the bottle and take a swig and hand it to him.

  We pass the bottle for a few minutes, silent but for his occasional spit.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry for this shit and for how I’ve been treating you. You were just being cautious.”

  He grins. “Sheila says that you remind her of me. Just taller. Plus she digs scars.”

  I don’t know what to say so I just smile.

  “You fucking that Beryl chick?”

  I look over at him, and I must have had a pissed off look on my face because he holds up a placating hand. “Jesus man, not asking for me. Fuck. One of the other girls been giving you the eye, just figured I’d ask.”

  I snort. “You playing matchmaker?”

  He is serious. “A good leader always knows who his men are fucking. And who they are not.” He lies down on the bed of the truck, one hand scratching his beard as he yawns. “We all might die tomorrow. Changes shit.” He rolls onto his side so he can look at me. “No one gets petty or jealous, you know? Sometimes you gotta get drunk and fuck just to get through the next day.” He wags a finger. “Only rule is to wrap your shit up.”

  I stare at him. He seems so calm, so at ease with everything. I guess I secretly figured Beryl and I had seen the worst of it. But maybe not. Maybe there’s no way to quantify the misery or horror people have seen. We’ve only visited different circles of the same hell.

  “You okay?”

  I ask him and I wait for puzzlement. Or a quick nod and then the subject would change.

  He just smiles.

  “Fuck no, man. Fuck no.” He takes a swig from the bottle, some of the whiskey dribbles into his beard and he unconsciously rubs it into the matted brown with his fingers. “But I’m doing better.”