The Last Marine : Book Two (A Dystopian War Novel)

by T. S. Ransdell

  “There’s an envelope taped under the table,” Forge continued. “In that envelope, you will find instructions. Follow them. This is not a time to show creative independence. You’re working with the big dogs now, so don’t pull any wild-ass puppy shit on me. Understand?”

  Sanchez nodded.

  “Good. Are you and your people staying at Balboa Park?” Forge asked.

  “Some. A lot of my people are local and will want to go home at night.” Sanchez sensed Forge didn’t approve of his people going home at night, but could not have explained why.

  “Yeah, well, you can reach me there, but it’d better be very important. If you absolutely need to talk to me, spray-paint the California Militia Memorial Statue bright red. Then wait for me to contact you.” Forge handed him a cocktail napkin. “Is this still your cell number?”

  Sanchez glanced down at the napkin. “Yes.” He was impressed, but he kept it to himself.

  “I see the memorial spray-painted red, I will contact you.”

  “How will you know I’m the one who painted it red?” Sanchez asked.

  “My people are watching that area of the park. If anyone spray-paints that memorial by any method other than what is described in that envelope, they will be killed.” Forge’s face remained expressionless. It creeped Sanchez out; but he would work through it.

  “Got it. Anything else I need to know?” Sanchez controlled his excitement and did his best to mimic Forge’s poker face.

  “Expect November 10 to be big. Watch the news tomorrow. You’ll understand. Stay off the drugs; stay off the booze. I know you’re not prone to that, so don’t make an exception now. That is important.”

  “Got it.” Sanchez couldn’t hold back a bit of a smile. “This is going to be one hell of a riot, ain’t it?”

  “Riot?” Forge stood up to leave. “It’s going to be one hell of a revolution.” Forge allowed himself a smirk. Then he headed down the back hall as if he were going to the men’s room. Forge slipped an envelope containing a thousand dollars under the door of the manager’s office. Then he headed out the back door, which was normally locked during business hours.

  Sanchez reached under the table and felt the envelope taped to the underside of the table. He peeled it off and looked inside.

  “Running with the big dogs,” Sanchez mumbled and smiled to himself. And I’m going to be the biggest fucking dog of them all!

  Forge headed towards Balboa Park and his next meeting. On the way, he pulled out a disposable cell phone. As per orders, he called Fidal Solak to inform him of the meeting and his impressions of Sanchez.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The crowd at Billy Bones had exploded. Three hours earlier there had been only a dozen people there. The crowd was small; this meant an open pool table and no wait time for beer. Harris found it comfortable.

  After Edwards had soundly beaten Harris and Rivett at pool, twice, Rodriguez, Morgan, and McCurry showed up. Harris chugged the rest of his beer as Morgan ordered another round. Before the next round arrived, Harris received a message from Murphy. He’d arrive soon and with a couple more Marines. It was then Harris noticed the bar suddenly seemed louder. Billy Bones had become so crowded, it didn’t even seem to resemble the quiet neighborhood bar it had appeared to be weeks before. Harris began to feel anxious.

  Rodriguez and Rivett were next to him, talking to a couple of girls. Edwards and McCurry were playing pool. Harris was surrounded by friends in a crowded bar, yet felt painfully alone.

  You don’t belong here, a dark voice chided him in his head. Harris closed his eyes tightly and rubbed the sides of his head, trying to push the thought from his mind.

  “Everything all right?” Rivett nearly yelled to be heard, but leaned in close so only Harris could understand him.

  “Yeah, fine.” Harris smiled a bit, trying to look more relaxed than he felt.

  Harris watched the crowd, hoping to distract himself from his thoughts.

  It reminds me of the bars in Shanghai. Harris reminisced about the only liberty he’d had in the city. That week Edwards, Hastings, he, and others had gotten their eagle, skull, and anchor tattoos.

  He looked down at the tattoo on his left forearm.

  The loud crack of a pool ball yanked Harris from his contemplations.

  “Goddamn!” McCurry boldly exclaimed in disappointment. Edwards had won another game of pool. Morgan counted the money that had been lost and won on the game.

  Why are you here and not Hastings? the dark voice asked Harris.

  You fucking well know why, you piece of shit! Harris answered back to himself.

  Is this the extent of your victory? the dark voice responded. Is this worth Hastings’s life? Your father’s? How many of these people risked more than student debt during the war?

  Harris looked through the crowd.

  Listen to what they say about you in the news, in the movies. You’re demonized, the dark voice continued. All these people protected by your kind. And now they hate you for it.

  Harris drained a full bottle of beer. He wanted to drive the dark thoughts away. He also wanted to go home again, but felt incapable of either. He headed towards the bar.

  “Hey, everything all right?” Edwards asked and, being a little drunk, wrapped his arm around Harris’s shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Harris lied. “I’ll go buy us another round. It’ll be all right,” Harris told Edwards and walked away.

  He negotiated a route through an apathetic crowd to a six-inch-wide space at the bar. A bartender nodded toward him as a way of asking his order.

  “Double whiskey,” Harris ordered. With speed and precision the bartender poured a double and set it in front of Harris. With even greater speed and precision, Harris returned it to the bartender, empty.

  “Six beers,” Harris yelled at the bartender.

  “I’m two short,” the bartender shouted across the bar to Harris. “I’ll get more from the other cooler. Be right back.”

  Harris looked down at the four bottles of beer. Like a territorial flag, his left hand planted on the bar next to the bottles. He turned away from the bar to look around the crowd.

  Why do so many of them try to look ugly? Harris asked himself. As if they relish being filthy.

  The popularity of nose rings was another fad Harris detested. Historically, nose rings were used to control the behavior of cattle and hogs.

  Why the hell would anyone want to mimic that? Harris wondered.

  How different they were from him, and the men he’d known. Not just by dress or body piercings, but by the way they carried themselves. Their movements, their demeanor communicated such an assumption of entitlement to carelessness, rudeness, and apathy. Everything he’d weaned himself from in order to stay alive during the war.

  “Here you go, buddy,” the bartender shouted to be heard over the noise. Harris looked down at five bottles of beer.

  “Where’s the other bottle?” Harris shouted back. “You owe me one more!”

  “I brought two more beers! Honest!” the bartender said, holding up both hands, palms out, and backed away.

  Just then Harris was slammed into by a young man giggling like a child.

  “Watch it, fucker!” The giggling man shoved one of his friends back and took a swig from a full bottle of beer.

  Harris’s eyes went from the beer bottle to the faces of the giggler’s friends. Were their haughty smiles revealing the answer to a joke Harris was the butt of? Or were they merely reveling in their rudeness?

  Who’s the piece of shit now? the dark voice uttered. You’re the one letting that son of a bitch steal your beer. You think Hastings would put up with that shit? Your dad?

  Harris felt his face grow warm as his adrenaline surged. With his left hand, Harris reached up and grabbed the giggler’s right shoulder. He spun him around so hard the giggler lost his balance once more.

  “Hey! What the fuck, dude?” the indignant giggler protested as he spilled beer on himself.

&
nbsp; “You swiped my fucking beer,” Harris accused, not really concerned about the answer.

  “Busted,” one of the giggler’s friends snickered.

  “Chill the fuck out! It’s just a fucking beer!” the giggler answered defensively.

  “Who fucked up this bitch’s face?” one of the giggler’s friends asked as he flipped his long hair back, either too drunk or too apathetic to care if he was heard by Harris.

  “Yeah,” a pudgy maggot-like fellow sneered as a way of getting in on the action. He smiled wide as a show of confidence. As if to taunt him, the giggler looked Harris in the eye and took a long swig of beer.

  Harris brought his right palm up, and with strength mustered from his legs and back, slammed it into the bottom of the giggler’s beer bottle, knocking the dude to the ground. For a moment the guy sat dazed and silent. Then, bringing his hands up to his face, the giggler realized his front teeth were gone. In fear and pain, he began to scream.

  The hair-flipper and the maggot stood dumbfounded. They’d never seen an act of violence before that was not on TV. The snickering friend turned and ran with all the strength his fear could give him, only to collide into a group of young women, knocking one of them down. She fell on top of her shattered glass and screamed. Snickers paid her no mind, but kept charging towards the exit.

  The hair-flipper looked down at his feet in disgust. The screams of his friend, the giggler, had splattered blood all over his new sandals. Flipper’s concern for his footwear was short-lived. Harris drove his left fist into his sternum, smashing the air from his body, followed by a right fist to his chin. By the time his head smacked the floor, the hair-flipper was unconscious.

  The pudgy man with the maggot-like body could think of nothing. He only stood clutching his own beer bottle to his chest. Harris grabbed him by the right wrist.

  He wants my beer, maggot man incorrectly thought. He released the beer, and let it fall to the ground, thinking that would defuse the situation. Instead, Harris hyperextended the pudgy man’s right arm and punched him in the right ear. Maggot man screamed in pain and tried to run away, but could not break Harris’s grip. His pain only intensified when Harris brought his left hand down hard on the back of maggot’s right elbow, snapping the arm backwards.

  “No! Please!” the pudgy man screamed and dropped to his knees. Harris, lost in his rage, couldn’t hear him. Grabbing the pudgy man by the hair, Harris lifted him up and began to drag him back to the bar.

  “Harris back yet?” Edwards shouted over to Rodriguez as Rivett was sizing up his next shot on the pool table.

  “He’s getting another round,” Rodriguez shouted back.

  “I know that–” Edwards started to respond.

  “CALL THE POLICE!” a woman’s voice commanded from behind the main bar. Screams erupted from the crowd. People scurried to get out of the way of something. Edwards sensed it had something to do with Harris. He ran through the crowd that had begun to run away from the bar.

  Edwards pushed past a couple of people with their phones out, trying to record what was going on. He found Harris pounding a man’s face into the bar.

  Don’t use his name, Edwards thought as he stepped in fast behind Harris, wrapping him in his arms.

  “It’s me! It’s me!” Edwards shouted, tucking his face behind Harris’s shoulders. “Step down, buddy, step down. We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”

  With some effort, Harris untangled his right hand from maggot man’s long hair.

  “Come on.” Edwards guided Harris toward the rear exit.

  Once out, Edwards slammed the back door shut. They knocked over a couple of tables and threw them against the door, hoping to slow down anyone trying to follow them.

  Amongst gasps of shock from patrons on the back patio, Edwards and Harris scaled the back wall and sprinted into a dark alley.

  “Let’s have another smoke before we head in.” Harris stood in Lulu’s parking lot with a cigarette already hanging from his mouth.

  Edwards scanned the skyline. To his relief, he saw no police drones. “I think we’re in the clear.”

  “No chances, on the new day,” Harris sarcastically paraphrased their old combat slogan for never taking security for granted.

  “Yeah well,” Edwards said with no appreciation for the quip, “if San Diego PD shows up, play it cool. We don’t need you punching anybody.”

  “As long as they don’t steal my beer.” Harris smiled, still feeling the rush of adrenaline.

  Edwards lit up his own cigarette. “What the hell’s going on?” Edwards asked while he exhaled.

  “Trust me, the bastard had it coming,” Harris said, irritated that Edwards was bringing down his good feeling.

  “No, Sean, he didn’t. You’d have killed the guy. What’s going on with you?” Edwards asked, his concern sounding more like anger.

  “Me?” Harris became indignant. “What about those assholes?”

  “It’s more than just them. I know you were UA with McCurry and beat up another FedAPS agent.”

  “Oh, fuck him too!” Harris shouted louder than Edwards liked. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.” Edwards stared Harris in the eye. “I’m not. Why’d you want to kill that guy?”

  “Because they disrespect everything we fought for, everything our friends died for,” Harris spat out. “They despise everything about us!”

  “I hear you, buddy.” Edwards spoke as sympathetically as he could. “But our killing days are done. Right or wrong, the war is over. Let that all go. We’re going home.”

  “Home?” Harris’s eyes flashed with anger. “Where the fuck is home, Edwards? Where do I go? My home is gone! My family is scattered! Where the fuck do I go? The Marine Corps? Gone. Stay around here? These shit bags hate us. You watch the news lately? Seen the movies? Who the fuck is left in this country who likes us? Who?!”

  “Man”–Edwards struggled for words to help his friend–“fuck these people. They ain’t us. They ain’t as strong as us. They ain’t been through what we’ve been through. Who cares what they think? They ain’t worth it. You want to give them that much control over how you act?”

  Harris sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t find the words he wanted to say.

  “We’ll get through this, buddy. Trust me, man.” Thinking he’d said the right thing, Edwards smiled. “They can’t hurt us.”

  “Dude, can I buy a couple of smokes off you?” asked a drunken voice behind him.

  “Don’t sweat it, man. I’ll give you a couple,” Edwards offered. A trim, but soft-looking man reached out with a drunken grin to accept his gift, only to fearfully step back when Harris turned around.

  “Thank you.” The soft man had recovered by the time he accepted Edwards’s lighter.

  “Are you dudes veterans?” asked the taller of the two, a slouching and somewhat sickly-looking man.

  “No, man, I’m a fucking face model.” Harris’s sarcasm was lost on the two guest smokers. They awkwardly looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

  “We’re Marines.” Edwards let them off the hook.

  “Wow!” the soft one exclaimed. “Hey, thank you for your service.” He stuck his hand out to Harris.

  “Thanks.” Harris begrudgingly shook his hand.

  “Chase, and this is Ezra.” The soft man pointed to his thin friend. Then he reached out to shake hands with Edwards.

  “Nice to meet you, Chase,” Harris lied.

  “Ethan, and the face model here is Sean,” Edwards responded.

  “Well, hey.” The soft man snubbed out his cigarette, throwing the unused half on the ground. “We’ve got a table inside. You want to join us? We’ll buy you a beer.”

  “Sounds good.” Edwards smiled. “We’ll catch up with you all in there after we finish our smokes.”

  “Cool,” the soft man replied and walked away, feeling benevolent.

  “Fuck, man,” Harris complained. “I don’t want to drink with those assholes.”

>   “Rivett and the others will be here soon enough.” Edwards checked his phone. “Meanwhile, we can blend in with them in case the cops are looking for a couple of renegade Jarheads. We’ll pass ourselves off as a couple of candy-ass civilians.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be the day.” Harris, having smoked his cigarette down to the filter, tossed it to the ground. “There’s something about these guys I don’t like.”

  “Hell, they were just scared ’cause they thought you were some badass face model,” Edwards joked, hoping to get Harris into a good mood.

  “Yeah, fuck you, asshole,” Harris said with mock anger as he started towards the bar.

  “They’re nice enough. Everybody’s not your enemy here. Besides, we get free beer out of it,” Edwards rationalized.

  “Free, my ass,” Harris mumbled, following Edwards into Lulu’s.

  “Hey, handsome, come here often?” Mackenzie asked Edwards with exaggerated flirtation.

  “Last minute change of plans. I’ll fill you in later,” Edwards casually replied.

  “Lucky for me.” Mackenzie winked as she headed off to deliver a drink order. “Oh, hi, Sean.”

  Harris obligingly nodded back. “Well, I don’t see…” Harris began to hope out loud.

  “There they are.” Edwards elbowed Harris and nodded towards the far corner booth. “Come on.”

  “Hey! These are the Marines I told you about.” Chase stood up from the large circular corner booth. “Ethan and Sean.”

  “You remembered.” Edwards smiled and stuck out his hand in greeting. Harris was taken aback by this show of social grace. The Edwards he knew was gruff and hated small talk.

  “I do public relations for FedAPS.” The soft man took the opportunity to brag about his coveted employment. “Remembering names is a must.”

  Great, Harris sighed to himself, FedAPS.

  “This is Sophie, my fiancée. You’ve met Ezra. This is his girlfriend, Chloe. And Kailee. Hey, if you guys think you’re tough, these three gals teach middle school.” Chase was the only one to laugh at his joke. “And this is Sophie’s brother, Cameron, and his girlfriend–”