by Billy Roper
He had volunteered to help these folks, because he couldn’t help his own. Maybe he should have stayed in Texas, where at least the men didn’t try to cut in line in front of their own women and kids. The Sergeant shook his head, making his helmet shift. He rubbed at his scarred jawline. At least it wasn’t so hot. No bikinis in sight, though. What a waste of a beach. There was trash blowing around everywhere, too, when you looked close enough to be critical about the details. Somebody had been littering. Nothing a few bikinis couldn’t fix, though.
Wordlessly, without having to discuss it, a Corporal he didn’t know by name with a quiet way about him led his downsized platoon of a dozen men away from the idling trucks to stand with the rear guard, who grinned and high-fived them. Barnes looked away. He still wanted to live, to find out what had happened to his family. This might be a pretty place, and maybe it was paradise to some people, but he didn’t want to die here.
There was some panic now as more of the people at the back of the crowd finally came out of the cemetery to the road and saw that there were only seven trucks left. Seven trucks, and the crowd still topped five hundred, easy. Maybe more, it was hard to judge, the way they bunched up and pushed. Five hundred or so civilians and over a hundred soldiers. Maybe they should just try to walk? The sniper fired again in the distance, as if to discourage that thought.
Just when things didn’t seem to be able to get any worse, the auxiliary volunteers came trotting up from the other direction. Well, at least he knew what the sniper was shooting at. There were a couple dozen of them left, rag-tag and worn out and hoping to hitch a ride, themselves. They’d trotted several blocks to catch up. A few of them still had on their black polo shirts and dirty khakis. The artillerymen were right behind them, pulling their field pieces on trailers behind Humvees. They looked tired, too. Some of them sat down in the road where they stood to rest, while others walked over to the rear guard and took up positions there, seeing there weren’t enough trucks for them all.
Why hadn’t they organized things better? Started the evacuations earlier? Gotten more out on flights before the airfield shut down? Commandeered some local buses? Something? It had all turned into a shit-show. If it was up to him they’d just leave the trucks and everybody walk. They’d be there in less than an hour, easy, even under fire. Most of them, anyway. But they had orders. It wasn’t up to him.
Thompson was lost in his own thoughts, a blank expression on his face. Wilcox was trying to tell a dirty joke to Jenkins, who was pretending to listen. Then things started moving again, speeding up from slow motion.
The last mess they’d had, a couple of days before in a strangely untouched tourist souvenier shop with a view of the pier, they’d been told that the Republic of Texas wasn’t going to formally declare war on the Chinese, but they would drop a dirty bomb in Mobile, right on top of them…just as soon as this operation was over. Barnes wondered if he would live to see it.
Captain Davis, who had been left in charge of the rear guard fired up into the second story window above them to get everyone’s attention. The New Afrikans were in sight. They’d stopped, hesitating, when they saw the soldiers, but were moving forward again slowly. Civilians started screaming and pushing, with soldiers trying to keep order being ignored around them. The rear guard opened fire at the advancing blacks, who shot back from the side avenue, where they’d stopped again. This time the refugees didn’t dawdle about moving.
Six of the trucks were all full now. To the front of the column the Colonel radioed in an order. He was safely out in the bay past Deer Island, waiting on them on a good-sized cutter. They began to ease forward slowly, luring the civilians to follow them past the rear guard. At a snail’s pace they moved forward, Barnes and the rest slouching along in the back of the ragged column to shoo the civvies on. Every once in a while they’d look nervously over their shoulders. The blacks weren’t too far behind.
His Lt. was busy barking at PFC Michaels a row over about where his carbine was. That was the thing about officers, one minute they could take the stress off of you by telling you what to do, the next they demonstrated all over again their complete inability to focus on what was important. Maybe he was just venting. Barnes needed someone to bark at, too, so he told Reed and Carlisle to get off the pavement and into truck six, like they should have already read his mind and been there. They hopped in, grumbling but thankful.
At nose level the truck exhaust stank. This was not how it was supposed to go down. Had it been just a couple of weeks ago they had been welcomed as saviors? The heroic liberators, come to rescue them and save the day. Three thousand hopeful pale faces had cheered and clapped as they landed. They must have thought they’d push the New Afrikans back to Mobile. Well, they’d tried. It might have happened, too, if not for the damn chinks sticking their noses in.
The ones with connections hadn’t waited to see how things turned out. The flights of C-130s out of Keesler had begun the next day, and continued until all that were left were the out of town vacationers, the local rednecks, and the service industry people. And their families. Barnes got the feeling that the security had been pulled from around the airport not so much because of encroachments as because somebody back in Dallas had judged that nobody left here was worth the aviation fuel. Those planes were needed more at Dyess.
“Reckon there’s anybody we know needing a lift, Sarge?” the man walking next to him asked. That was Jenkins, still sporting acne and eager to out-macho because of it. The conquering heroes had been real popular with the local girls when they landed. He shook his head and grinned over at Wilcox, who was probably thinking the same thing. He’d shared more than his MREs with a couple of locals, too. That had lasted right up until the wounded began coming back from the front, a few days later. Then they started getting looked at like it was their fault they couldn’t hold them back. Right after they retook Ocean Springs things had eased up, then the withdrawal began. But once you saw your gods bleed, that took some of the shine off. Then suddenly the girls had noticed again that half of his face had been melted off, and turned elsewhere. Or maybe he just felt like they looked at him more closely, now. The scabs were almost all gone, but he still looked half lobster, on his mom’s side.
They stopped at the interstate loop to let everybody catch up. Now he understood why they couldn’t just walk to the pickup point behind Harrah’s. Some of these people were already gasping and wheezing from the smoke, and they weren’t even into the bombed stretch yet. There was a big empty piece of beach that the boats could come back and pick most of them up from, right here. He scratched his stubble on the good side and cursed at the stupidity of officers and their orders.
“Scarecrow hate fire!” he growled to Jenkins, who shook his head at the mixed references. They just needed to leave, now. He’d never make officer and be able to tell them what he thought of them if they didn’t, pretty soon. One of the refugees, a hungry looking old guy by himself, was trying to ask him a question. He didn’t have any answers.
Barnes told Thompson and Jenkins to get in the back of the last truck, and clear out any able-bodied civilian men who had managed to sneak aboard. Priority was going to be for soldiers and women and children. Three of them sheepishly emerged. He and Wilcox and Thompson took their places while Jenkins went to check that the other trucks were doing the same. There were four other soldiers from his company in the back, along with about twenty females ranging in age from six to sixty, a few with babies, and a couple of little boys. The older boys walked along with their dads, proudly. Half of them were barefoot.
The Colonel’s orders had been explicit. Military lives were a priority over civilian lives. Once they were finished here and had all of the refugees back to Texas for resettlement among the tens of thousands of other displaced persons camped along the Brazos, they’d have to see about Pensacola. That had been part of the deal they’d made with the desperate defenders of Eglin. Limited resupply of the Mississippians as a gesture of goodwill. Manpower when
they got there. Plus, they’d get a Brigadier General in the bargain. But in order to get the allocations from the legislature they needed to show some kind of results here, and results were measured by casualty rates, not by rescue rates. It was a cold-blooded arithmetic. Not as hard a decision as the vote to nuke Houston, which had only passed after they had already served the same to New Orleans to stop the darkness spreading west, but a two front war was bad enough without having to play Captain Saveaho to every cluster of surrounded honkies in the Gulf, too.
His thoughts were snapped back to the present by more weapons joining into the skirmish. They’d gotten all the men out of the trucks and all the soldiers in. All except for the rear guard. The Colonel had promised he’d send the boats back in for them as soon as the civilians were clear. Judging based on past performances, Barnes couldn’t blame them if they weren’t counting on it. The brass had made promises to the folks in Pascagoula, too. They’d have another chance at picking those survivors up on their way back out, in a few weeks. That is, assuming any of them were still left by then.
More enemies were coming up from the west to join their vanguard clustered around a few bushes in front of an empty hotel swimming pool flanking a wrecked Hampton Inn. At least they’d gotten everyone out of the cemetery. That one, anyway, he thought ghoulishly. The fifty soldiers spread out in the parking lot were taking cover as best they could. Barnes didn’t see any boats coming in. The red and white Coast Guard chopper was circling again, so they could see what was going on. It started taking potshots, but stayed on course.
All aboard. The trucks started moving, with people walking alongside and behind and holding onto the sides for support. Barnes was afraid one of the old people would fall under the wheels. The crowd pressed tightly against them, step by step, by the rear tailgate. He was amazed by how touristy the mob was attired. Some of the ladies were wearing their best, with even some designer dresses on display. People were so stupid. Those in jeans were obviously more likely to make it. The other six trucks ahead could move faster, he thought, as they entered the cloud of smoke. Visibility dropped to just a few feet out the back. Only the first three or four rows of faces, all beginning to stream tears from the soot, could be seen. He was glad that he couldn’t see more.
They rolled on, the heat baking from both sides and the asphalt soft and sticky squishing under the tires. He could only imagine what it was doing to their feet. Some of them were stopping, unable to go forward into the ash, and others took their place. An old woman stood watching, a faint smile of regret on her face, as they left her there. Another figure stopped to hug her, the gesture of comfort painful to see. They disappeared from sight in the smoke as it enveloped them. More refugees took their place, crowding close around the truck now, afraid to stop, afraid to not keep moving.
How many had turned back? How many had fallen, or simply given up? Above the crackling flames and the grinding engines they could hear the battle heating up back there, the firing increased. He hoped the boats came for them in time. Wilcox passed him a canteen and he splashed water on his face, rubbing his burning eyes. Some of the men had tied their extra socks around their noses to help them breathe, without being told. He hadn’t thought of that. Now they were through the worst of the fire and coming out by the small harbor. There were boats still moored here they could have used, for Christ’s sake.
The gritty smoke dissipated, and he could see that most of the crowd had stuck with them. The ones closest were coughing still, but upright and moving. Their faces were streaked with soot and tears, and stared at him with a mixture of envy and hope. Each of them tried to make eye contact with him. They were the survivors. The ones who looked down at the ground had already given up and were dead on their feet. One by one they slowed, down, stopped, and swayed in place.
He tried to remember their expressions, their faces, to individualize each of them and grant them the dignity of some humanity. They were people. They were his people. There was a middle-aged brown haired woman with her first streaks of gray and tortoise-shell glasses, somebody’s mom. Was her kid in the truck with him, now? There was her husband, he imagined, a step behind her, with his hand on the small of her back, guiding her forward. He had lost one of his tennis shoes and limped along steadily. Pressed against them was a young man in a dirty hoodie and shorts, wearing a backpack he should have dropped blocks ago, and a cluster of elderly men who leaned on each other for support. Barnes wondered if they were all veterans of another war, where they had looked out the back of a truck at refugees staggering behind them. Did they understand his terrible choice?
Some of the parents had chosen to keep their kids with them, afraid of being separated. By this point most of the children were being carried. A young mom shifted the weight of her toddler son on her hip, her face grim and determined, his sleepy and sullen. Where was the dad at? There were at least a couple hundred of them he could see now, the smoke left behind, every one of them with a story that might never be told.
Wilcox had his head down between his knees, staring at the floor of the truck. Thanks for the help, and where was the Lieutenant at, anyways?
Just a couple more blocks, now, to the marina where they’d be picked up. There should have been more trucks. There should have been boats, already. These people should have been worth the gas to fly out. They were somebody’s families, moms and dads and grandmas and kids, too. Some of them were stopping to rest at the beach, stepping off the road into the sand and bending over to breathe. Bad idea, folks, don’t stop now, he thought. But it didn’t matter. There weren’t enough trucks and there wouldn’t be enough boats. He felt it in his bones.
Another looted casino went by. The people bunched up, tightening into a pack, surrounding the tail truck he was in like packing jelly. A few drifted off on their own, not liking the odds they’d be a winner. In the air, heavier than the smoke and unwashed bodies and fear, was the smell of despair.
He remembered short jumpy news footage of the last helicopter leaving a roof in Saigon a generation before. Thompson, the slow-talking PFC sitting across from him, grinned, shook his head as if in resignation, and swung one leg over the tailgate. He straddled the bumper and the floor of the truck bed before the Sgt. yelled for him to stop. He didn’t. In a slow, graceful leap, Thompson stage-dived into the crowd, letting them lower him to the ground before picking up a tween boy in a dirty green sweater and saggy jeans and tossing him over the side to land on top of their feet. “Room for one more!” he guffawed.
“Thompson!” he yelled. “Thompson, get your sorry ass back in this truck or I’ll…” he trailed off impotently. Wilcox, the only Corporal of his in sight, caught his eye and shrugged. What the hell could he do? Which one of them would go next, he wondered, betting on Jenkins. The boy who had landed on their feet scrambled up to his hands and knees, not looking at any of them, breathing heavily. The women closed around him defensively, absorbing him, daring Barnes with their eyes to evict the boy. He cursed and found somewhere else to stare.
Barnes felt sick to his stomach with guilt, like he’d been caught doing something really bad. Being a coward. Being less than a man. Less of a man than Thompson, who had been swallowed by the shambling crowd now and was being carried along with its tide, following them as the convoy continued slowly down the road. Once again it reminded him of a bad crowd scene in a zombie apocalypse movie.
He was alone in the truck with Wilcox and a few other men he didn’t know well enough to trust and all these poor wretched refuse who had been too stupid to get out while the gettin’ was good, just like his mom and dad. All his buried grief and anger at his parents and their stubbornness welled up within him and sought to wash over the refugees right there in front of him. What good were they, anyway? Were they worth the loss of any of the good men who had come to fight and die to cover their stupidity? Were all of them worth one Thompson? Cattle, stuff to fill graves with, tomato fertilizer, that’s all they were. Sheep. Sheep.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaa
a. They had made their bed and should have been left to lie in it. Stay and die, they’d been told for all their lives. He wanted to ask Wilcox the name of that Nazi guy who had been saying it was coming for years but nobody listened to him except the other Nazis until it was too late. They had been talking about his books just the other day at mess, but it really didn’t matter. Whoever he was, whatever his name had been, some folks had listened, and some had not. These idiots had all been spoiled rich consumer capitalist voters, and they hadn’t. So now a lot of good men were dead and dying, and maybe Thompson, and maybe the rest of them, too. Sheep.
It was too late, now, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He couldn’t go back in time and make them listen. If he could, he would show them this day, and then they would have moved out before it was too late, like they were warned to do by all the people they had sneered at and called crazy. Barnes was considering just jumping out the back himself and being done with it when feedback squelched in his unburned ear.
The P.A. system from the first truck must have the marina in sight. It began to blare that they only had enough room for the most immediate and urgent evacuees, whatever that meant. All nonessential personnel please wait for the next boats. Your patience is appreciated. It sounded like Bailey. He had no idea how his Lieutenant had ended up in the front truck, but he didn’t envy him the job. Last time he had seen him, Bailey had been bitching out Michaels for some infraction that he couldn’t imagine mattered at this point. Now he was ordering up some death through neglect. The mob heard and understood. You could see surrender in their eyes, flashes of betrayal and anger and resignation, as well. Would they rush the front and take the boats by force of numbers? He wondered if they might have to open fire on the fastest ones, to deter the rest. What if they hit Thompson if they did?
