by D. J. Molles
I have to deal with this, he kept thinking. I have to squash it.
Like it was his fault and he didn’t want anyone else to know.
Was it? Was it his fault?
“Alright, One-Three, get me there,” Abe said, then hung on.
The Little Bird nosed down, rotors charging the air, and Abe felt the acceleration pressing him into the outboard bench. They rose as they gained speed, everything below them falling away frighteningly fast. Abe’s legs ached from clutching the bench so hard. He forced himself to focus on the task at hand and not how far below him the cityscape of Cheyenne was flying by him, all dusky and tan. Dried out like a hide.
The Little Bird pilot spoke up over the radio. “Major, we’ve got a visual on ’em.”
Abe felt his midsection tighten. “Bring me in alongside of them.”
He watched the terrain roil underneath him, the industrial buildings being replaced by houses, and the houses replaced by brown grasslands. Then I-25 floated lazily across his field of view, from right to left, until they were on the western side of it, heading south. Looking straight into the hazy blue distance, Abe could see Copperhead-Two-Five up high and maintaining their visual. On the ground, a speck of a car moving rapidly in and out of the stalled vehicles that peppered the interstate like an obstacle course.
They dropped altitude. Abe felt it in the falling sensation of his stomach and the slight change in the sound of the rotors. The zigzagging speck on I-25 began to grow into a blue SUV, the distance closing rapidly.
Try to get compliance first, Abe thought.
Then, Just remember you’re by yourself.
The gap continued to close, the pilots finessing the controls to get them alongside the erratic vehicle. Power lines were whizzing by now, so close underneath them that Abe wanted to tuck his feet up a little more. The top of every power pole seemed like it was going to gouge the belly of the aircraft and rip him out of his seat.
They came up alongside the vehicle and Abe could just see in the windows. There were two occupants. The driver and a passenger in the back right. As the helicopter pulled abreast of them, and then slightly forward, Abe watched the eyes of both occupants shift first to the bird, then straight to him, eyelids stretched wide, mouths gaping.
Abe held his rifle with one hand, held the other out, palm facing them, and he shouted, though he knew they could not hear him. “Stop! Stop!”
Both occupants just continued to stare.
Eighty miles an hour, going forward.
Eyes affixed on Abe, they didn’t see the vehicle in front of them.
The driver tried to swerve out of the way. Abe watched his hands crank the steering wheel. Smoke flew from the brakes, and the Jeep’s wheels pivoted right, but they slammed into it, taking off the front bumper in an explosion of mechanical parts and bits and pieces of fiberglass.
Abe flinched away from it, swearing loudly.
The Jeep canted, spitting blue smoke as its tires tried to stay on the ground, but the mangled front axle sent them into a counterclockwise spin, leaving black streaks of burned rubber behind them. Then the left wheels lost their grip on the ground and the vehicle pitched onto its side with a horrendous crash. The glass seemed to explode out of the vehicle, every window detonating simultaneously. On its side, the vehicle continued to skid for another fifty yards, turning as it did until it was pointing in the opposite direction. It slid into the dried grass of the median and kicked up a cloud of brown dust that enveloped it like the earth was swallowing it whole.
“Put me down!” Abe ordered.
The helicopter banked left, swung a wide circle across the interstate and back toward the plume of gray and brown smoke that was settling slowly, revealing the bulk of the blue SUV laying like a felled beast in the median. As they raced back toward the vehicle, Abe could see a side window, all the glass shattered out of it, and it sprouted two arms. Then a pair of legs. Then a head.
“Got one exiting the vehicle,” the pilot stated.
“I got him,” was Abe’s only response, though he kept thinking manically, Put me down! Put me down! Put me down!
The Little Bird lowered within five feet of the ground and Abe already had his lanyard unhooked. He slid off the outboard bench, hitting the ground heavily but coming up quickly with his rifle shouldered.
Ahead of him, maybe twenty yards or so, the man was still squirming out of the window.
“Don’t fucking move!” Abe bellowed. “Stay where you are!”
The man—a middle-age black guy—turned to look at Abe. His eyes met Abe’s and relayed the same look of fear and loathing as when they’d seen the helicopter alongside of them. The man was out of the vehicle window now, but he reached back inside, eyes still on Abe as he closed the gap.
Abe knew. He fucking knew. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Lemme see your hands!”
His finger left the magazine well. Touched the trigger.
The man pulled out of the vehicle. He held a rifle. Some sort of AK variant.
Abe put a double-tap into his chest.
The AK fell from his grip, and the man seemed to lose all stiffness in his legs. They went to water underneath him, and then he pitched forward, face-planting into the side of the vehicle, still on his knees, hands clutching his belly. He slid forward just a bit and then lay still, ass half in the air. One arm splayed off to his side. Blood poured out of his mouth and onto the dusty side of the vehicle. He was still blinking when Abe reached him, his mouth still moving like a fish out of water.
Abe didn’t speak to him, because he knew he would get no response. He stared at the man for a fraction of a second, his lips seized down to a bloodless grimace. He just kept thinking, You stupid, stupid fuck! He pivoted as the man’s eyes stopped blinking, their wetness drying over like a glaze. Abe worked his way around to the front of the vehicle, getting low to try to see in through the windshield. It was broken and caved in, and great pieces of it were missing.
The driver was slouched there, his back against the crumpled windshield.
He was moving.
“Hey!” Abe shouted, his finger already on the trigger, expecting a repeat. “Lemme see your hands!”
The driver held up both hands. Empty. He shifted, almost rolling on his back, until he could crane his neck far enough to see who was yelling at him. His eyes were a little hazy, but there was recognition there. His nose looked flattened, his face bearing a thick mustache of blood. A gash on his forehead was bleeding profusely.
Abe transitioned quickly to his pistol. He tucked it in close to his chest with one hand, then reached out with his weak hand and grabbed the man by one of his wrists and dragged him forcefully out of the broken windshield. The man howled, and Abe could feel the separation of the man’s wrist bones, the way they ground together just underneath the skin. Broken in the crash, Abe assumed.
“Shut the fuck up!” Abe yelled at him. He glanced up quickly over the top of the SUV, over the hump of the dead man’s body that lay on it, and could see the Little Bird still sitting there in the roadway, the rotors spinning, the pilot and copilot looking at him.
He crouched down over the man he’d just pulled from the wreckage.
Out of the view of the helicopter crew.
Abe grabbed the man by the face. Felt the slickness of his blood on his palms. “You tell me what the fuck is going on here!”
The man shook his head, still moaning. “I don’t…I don’t…”
Abe bared his teeth and shoved the man’s head into the ground. Then he began to pat the man down, searching for the feel of the little laminated placard. He felt it in the man’s coat and reached into the inner pocket to get it. He clutched it in two fingers and pulled it out.
A green piece of paper, laminated. A four-inch square.
DAY PASS — GREELEY GREEN ZONE, it read.
Abe waved it in the man’s face. “You don’t know? You don’t know? What the hell is that, then? What’s that?” Abe flicked the card at him. “Why are
you doing this?”
The man’s face turned abruptly from pain to anger. He leaned up off the ground and shouted at Abe. “Because my family’s gotta eat, too!”
Abe stared at him. He wanted to punch the man in the face—not sure why—but there was something about what he said that made Abe feel suddenly clamped. Like hearing a startling sound and freezing while your eyes searched for the threat.
He shoved the man in the chest halfheartedly. “What are you talking about?”
The sound of rotors beating the air, the wind from them buffeting in his ears. The smell of radiator fluid and gasoline and burned rubber. The taste of dust in his mouth, gritting between his teeth. His own dry throat. All of these things became suddenly and inexplicably apparent to him.
“My family hasn’t eaten in three days!” the man said, enraged tears coming to his eyes. “Do you have any idea how that feels? Do you?”
Abe’s jaw worked.
“Of course not! You’re fucking military! You get all the food you can eat while the rest of us fucking starve!”
That’s bullshit.
What is this guy even talking about?
“What about your ration cards?” Abe felt slightly off-balance.
The man looked at him with an odd expression. Like Abe’s question confused him. “Is that a fucking joke?”
Frustration boiled over. Tension broke. Abe screamed at the man. “Does it look like I’m fucking joking?”
“You’re one of them! You have to know!”
“Fuck this.” Abe put the pistol under the man’s chin.
Wasn’t sure if he meant to do it or not.
Thought that probably he did.
Thought about his soldier on the roof, bleeding out.
But the man cried out when the muzzle touched his skin. “Our rations cards don’t work! They don’t work! I swear to God! Don’t kill me!”
“What…?” Abe blinked dust out of his eyes. “What do you mean your ration cards don’t work? I see civilians getting food all fucking day long! I’m in charge of those supplies. I’m the one who brings them in! I know they go to civilians. You’re so full of shit!”
The man held up a hand for mercy. “Not everyone’s cards! Mine…and the others…and our families.” He stumbled over himself, trying to explain. “We spoke out against President Briggs, and we don’t eat. We spoke publicly against him, and the next thing we know, our ration cards aren’t good anymore. The soldiers check our serial numbers in the system and tell us we’ve already got our rations for the week. I thought it was a glitch at first. But then I found out the same thing happened to every one of the people who spoke out against Briggs.”
Abe was shaking his head.
The man looked terrified. Uncertain. Bewildered. “How did you not know?”
“That’s…” Abe kept pressing on the man with his bodyweight, like he wished the man would stifle and suffocate. “That’s not true. He wouldn’t do that.”
He wouldn’t do that.
He wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t let him.
“He’s using food as power,” the man said, his voice barely audible over the background noise. “He’s using it to control everyone. How did you not know? I don’t understand…”
Abe stood up from the man, his lips pressed so firmly together that they disappeared under his mustache and beard. He just kept shaking his head.
The man continued, shouting to be heard, his voice hoarse. “It’s true! I swear to God! I do. I swear on everything. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“But you’d try to kill me and my men?” Abe barked. Then kicked the man’s legs.
The man yelped. Scooted away from more blows. “Ask him! You know him, don’t you? You know the president? Ask him about it! Look up my ration card number. See what the system says!”
“I don’t fucking believe you.”
“Look up my ration cared!” The man blinked rapidly. “Do what you’re going to do with me. But please don’t punish my family. They didn’t know. They didn’t know about any of this.” He pointed with a shaking finger to another coat pocket. “Take my ration card. See for yourself. But please, don’t let them starve.”
Abe regarded him for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, his mind like a tiny little life raft in a storm surge. His index finger tapped rapidly on the frame of the pistol he still held in his hands, staring the man in the eyes but not truly looking at him.
The radio in his ears crackled.
“Major, you okay over there?” It was one of the pilots.
Abe never took his eyes off the man. He keyed his radio. “Yeah. I’m good. Gimme a second.”
He bent over the man, keeping his pistol tucked in cautiously, still treating him as a threat. The fingers of his weak hand quested through the man’s coat pocket and came up with the laminated white card, similar to the green day-pass placard. It had a name and a serial number on it. The number of dependents related to that serial number. The letters stacked, one on top of the other: A/F, J/M, J/M.
One adult female, two juvenile males.
Adult males received rations for 1,000 calories a day.
Adult females were 800.
Juvenile males were 700.
Juvenile females were 500.
“Blake Donahue,” Abe read aloud. “Three total dependents. Wife and two boys.” He put the card slowly into his own pants pocket. “What the fuck am I supposed to do right now, Mr. Donahue?”
The man looked blank. Out of ideas.
“What am I supposed to do with you?”
“Just let me go.”
“Let you go? After you killed US soldiers?” Abe gritted his teeth. “Leave your family by themselves?”
“I’ll go back for them.”
“You’ll never go in the Green Zone again. You’re an outsider now. You’re a fucking bandit.”
The man was beginning to cry. “You killed everyone. All their families are going to starve.”
Abe shook his head. “You and your friends went out to scavenge. You went a little far. Hit some bandits. Called in a distress signal. We responded and killed all the bandits, but you and all your friends were already killed. Your families will mourn. Then they will apply for new ration cards.”
The man wept openly now. “I want to see them again! I want to see my family!”
“No,” Abe said. Then he pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger.
Before he could talk himself out of it.
Just kept thinking, Not true. Not true. Not true.
Abe holstered and walked away. He walked numbly, like his feet were not touching the ground. He leaned into the wind. Dirt and scrabble stones and dried brown grasses passed underneath his feet. The residue of them clung to his boots like memories and fell away just the same. The dirt turned to dust-covered asphalt. He crossed over worn and barely visible road lines. Lines that had once been bold and plain, but now you didn’t even know you were crossing them until they were already under your feet.
He climbed onto the outboard bench. Secured himself with the lanyard.
One hand lying loose on his rifle.
He keyed the radio. “I’m good to go, One-Three. Good to go.”
FIVE
The Little Bird landed him on the bridge. The smoke cloud from the IED had mostly blown away, but the wind had kicked up and stirred a layer of fine dust that seemed to have settled over everything in the Midwest. Little dust devils spun up in the rail yard below them. Trash skittered along the bridge. The sun was high over the horizon, dispelling the shadows. It dimmed and brightened rapidly as clouds raced across the sky, sailing the wind from northwest to southeast.
Both Blackhawks were nowhere in the sky. They had already loaded up the troops and the wounded and were headed back to the Greeley Green Zone. Abe instructed the pilots of the Little Bird to check the convoy’s route back and make sure there were no other hang-ups. They acknowledged, and then lifted off, and then they were gone.
The bridge was
a mess of military vehicles, all of them being shuffled around like a tile puzzle as they tried to make way for the HEMTT with the wrecker attachment to get through and clear a path through the south side of the bridge. The soldiers from Fargo Group stood on perimeter, sweating despite the cold and bearing that certain edginess that came from being in a firefight. They huddled in small groups that spewed cigarette smoke and tobacco juice, cussing and bitching.
Abe found Lucas and Tyler at the front of Tyler’s Humvee.
Tyler shook his head when Abe approached, a sign of relief. He was a thickly built guy, with a head that seemed a bit large for the width of his shoulders—a source of amusement for all of his fellow Coordinators. At thirty-two years old, he was prematurely gray, and his short salt-and-pepper hair was matted on the sides in perfect squares that would match the inner padding of his helmet.
Tyler extended his hand. Abe took it, slapped the man’s shoulder.
“You good?” Abe asked.
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Could’ve been worse.”
Abe glanced left. Met Lucas’s gaze.
Lucas seemed to know. “What happened out there?”
Abe lowered his voice. “We need to talk.” He looked around them. There was no one within earshot. No one watching them or concerned with them. Everyone was doing their job. Abe cleared his throat. “You find anything when you were clearing your rooms?”
Lucas pursed his lips. “Yeah. Green Zone day passes.”
Tyler’s eyes ricocheted between the two of them. “Wait…what are we talking about?”
Abe scratched his beard. Wondered how to say it, but then decided to just come out with it. “The people who attacked you,” he said to Tyler, still keeping his voice down. “They were all from the Greeley Green Zone. They all had day passes.”
Tyler’s expression said that he thought this might be an ill-conceived joke. “That…uh…that doesn’t make any sense.” He shifted his weight. Seemed to grow a little agitated. “Why the fuck would they do that? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
Lucas still stared at Abe. Waiting.
The conversation with the man out on I-25 rattled around in Abe’s brain. The truth loud in his ears, struggling to get out of him. Like a punch in the gut, the air wanting to be expelled from his lungs. Or maybe it wasn’t the truth. Maybe it was just the words of a desperate man who wanted to live. Maybe he would have said anything to keep from having Abe pull the trigger on him. Statements given at the point of a gun can’t really be trusted.
