It's still going to be a while before the next chapter of this ongoing series is ready to be posted for viewing. In the meantime, I'd like to take this opportunity to show you another project I was working on and is now available to buy. It's a story much different from this one, American Rhapsody. But I am very proud of it all the same. If you feel like supporting my efforts, buy a copy for yourself or someone you think might enjoy it. It's called THE ASSASSIN IN ARMANI. It's only available in the Kindle store, but that doesn't mean you have to have a Kindle to read it. Amazon makes Kindle Apps for just about everything now, including your web browser. So if you don't have a Kindle, download a Kindle app for your favorite device (or devices) and enjoy my short novel as well as the many, many others in the Kindle store.
Thank you for your readership and awesome support.
-J. A. Adkins (the author)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005J4YK8U
(US site)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005J4YK8U
(for my UK friends)
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B005J4YK8U
(for those in Germany)
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART FOURTEEN
Gabriel Audaz reveled in the deep and satisfying peace filling his heart. He felt Isabella’s forehead pressed against his own. The cool, salty air whipping off the waves softly crashing onto shore billowed and tousled their hair. He smiled, listening to the sweetness of her voice as she prayed. There was no sense of fear in that moment. There was no pain or overwhelming chaos. There was just two friends on a beach, embraced in the love that only friends can have for each other, and comforted by the presence of God surrounding them, protecting them from any harm that could deter them from saying goodbye.
Gabriel lifted his eyes from the sand at his feet to see Isabella smiling at him. “Feel better,” she asked.
Gabriel smiled. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, wake up.”
Gabriel looked at her with a start, her words confusing. “Huh?”
A loud, sudden crash of tin pans and equipment spilling across the floor made Gabriel jump, startling him awake in an instant. An attendant, even younger looking than himself, crouched nervously nearby to pick up the mess he had made. Gabriel watched him for a moment, his mind catching up to the present and his surroundings. He quickly realized he was in a field hospital somewhere. Other soldiers, with injuries of varying degrees of seriousness in varying stages of treatment and healing, laid in beds to his left and right.
“Corporal Audaz,” said a nurse walking closer to the firm, narrow bed he had been placed in. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“I guess it’s good to be awake,” Gabriel said groggily. “How long was I-”
“Three days,” she answered before Gabriel could finish asking. “And considering your heroics and how hard you pushed yourself, I’m surprised it wasn’t a week or more.”
Gabriel blinked, trying to put all of his thoughts back together. All at once, the events in the valley began to come forward out of the sleepy fog in his mind. He looked up at the nurse as he tried to sit up. His chest felt like it was weighed down with lead. Gabriel winced as he tried to breath deeper, every muscle and nerve in his chest stinging like mad.
“Easy, Corporal,” the nurse said, trying to help him. “Your broken ribs are not going to heal that fast. Not after the way you pushed yourself.”
“The sergeant,” Gabriel started to ask. “The sergeant I helped. I...I can’t remember his name.” Suddenly, Gabriel realized he had never learned what it was.
“Ives,” said a voice from behind the nurse. She shifted out of the way enough to reveal the private Gabriel had rescued in the village. His name was Austin Harley. He had insisted on being placed next to the crazy soldier that had saved his life. Private Harley smiled warmly at Gabriel. “His name is Sergeant Ives, sir.”
Gabriel stared thankfully at his peer for a long moment, returning the smile the bandaged soldier had plastered to his lightly stubbled cheeks. Gabriel looked up at the nurse expectantly a moment later. “Is he all right? Is he alive?”
“I believe so,” the nurse answered uncertainly. “I know he was in rough shape. The doctors managed to get him stable, but, I believe they had to airlift him to one of the main hospitals.”
Gabriel nodded slowly, comfortable with that little bit of news.
“You two rest. You’ve had quite the ordeals. I’ll be back to check on you soon,” the nurse said with a pleasant smile, patting both men lightly on the arm.
Gabriel watched her walk past their cots for only a moment, letting his attention wander around the awkward scene he found himself within. The walls were plain, the dirt and grime of the dry climate washed away. There was the smell of bleach and dust hanging in the air. It was pleasant and welcomed by Gabriel’s nostrils. He thought he would forever have the iron-rich scent of blood burned on the inside of his nose.
Gabriel’s thoughts drifted back to the quiet sergeant he had carried over the rocky, unforgiving terrain. The dry, packed dirt still thawing from long, harsh winter freezes could have been the thickest, boggiest mud in the world. Gabriel would not have changed his mind. Help could not get to them so Gabriel knew he had to get the wounded man to safety. The sergeant had saved Gabriel’s life. Gunmen stalking through the sparse brush, steep valleys, and devastating pain rolling inside his own body were no deterrents. Gabriel did what had to be done. He had to do what he could.
His thoughts shifted to the man he caught staring at him expectantly. Gabriel wondered if he was suddenly being hero worshipped. He hoped this wasn’t the case. Gabriel glanced up and down the length of the prone soldier smiling,with patient thankfulness, across the narrow gap between their thin beds. Gabriel’s brief mental recounting of the wounded sergeant had reminded him of the wounded private laying in the bed to his left. “You all right,” Gabriel asked him. He quietly marveled at how suddenly grown-up he sounded in his own ears. He wondered if anyone else listening had noticed.
Private Harley nodded his head. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Gabriel smiled encouragingly. “Good.” He noticed something protruding from under the soldier’s side. It was thin and metallic-looking. The sunlight bouncing off the white, sandstone walls from the square windows behind them made the smudged trim of the object gleam ever-so-slightly.
Gabriel gestured toward it with a nod of his head. “What’s that?”
Private Harley looked down at his side. “Oh! It’s my tablet,” he said, tugging the skinny, portable computer out from under himself. “I keep it in my bag so it’s a little roughed up.”
He touched the power button at the bottom corner of the streaked, scored black plastic frame. The rectangular touch screen flickered to life. “But, it still works.”
“Cool,” Gabriel said.
“Do you want to use it?”
Gabriel looked up at Private Harley. “You don’t mind?”
Austin Harley smiled. “Not at all. Go ahead!”
“Thanks,” Gabriel said, taking the computer roughly the size of his two hands put together as Private Harley offered it across the shallow gap separating them.
“No, sir,” Harley said. “Thank you.”
Gabriel took his eyes away from the borrowed device in his hands to look left at his new friend. “For what?”
“For saving my life, sir.”
Gabriel only watched him for a moment. Finally, he shook his head, saying quietly, “You don’t have to thank me. And you don’t have to call me ‘sir’.”
Private Harley grinned. It was a small gesture of how humbled he felt right at that moment. “Nevertheless, you still have it.”
Gabriel smiled and nodded his head.
Private Harley leaned back on his pillows. “Oh,” he suddenly remembered. “There’s probably not too much time left on the battery...five or ten minutes maybe. And, the network is awful here so the connection might be really slow.”
Gabriel nodded his head again. “Okay,” he said, already exploring the functions on the device.
It only took him a moment to find and open Private Harley’s web browser. But the soldier had been right about the near abysmal speed of the connection. Gabriel’s eyes kept peering wearily up the screen to the upper-most tool bar. There, the small battery icon was a solid red. He didn’t let it upset him. Gabriel took a slow, pained deep breath, aware of the need to be grateful for the means given.
It took a few minutes more to finally get logged all the way into his personal email box. There were a few random messages that didn’t demand immediate attention. Instead, Gabriel’s eyes widened with excitement when he saw an i.d. with a very familiar last name. It took Gabriel just another second to recognize the user tag as the name of Isabella’s mother. Gabriel thought it strange, but on the whole not completely unusual. Isabella’s mother had always seemed to like him and never hesitated to welcome him into their home.
The subject of the email gave no hit to whether the message awaiting him was good or bad. It simply said Hello Gabriel. Gabriel tapped the screen, opening the email already several days old. It had been sent the night of the brigade’s drop into the valley.
Gabriel stared at the end of the message for a long time. He was startled when the tablet hummed noticeably for a long second before the bright screen went suddenly dark. He could still see the email in his eyes though. It was all he could see as he stared down at the lifeless device. His heart felt like a lead weight plunging down through his chest. He started to feel sick. He closed his eyes, trying to calm himself down.
Gabriel was surprised again. He found himself back on the beach. He was standing at the water’s edge instead of sitting in the sand. Gabriel turned with a start, looking up and down the deserted shore. Their friends were all gone. The glow of the small campfire was strangely absent from the nearby dunes. He spotted the place on the beach where he and Isabella had sat. The marks of their presence were still there. He saw the random shapes he had carved into the loose surface. His side of the sandy scene was messy compared to hers.
Gabriel crouched lower where Isabella had been sitting. A warm breeze brushed against his face and arms as he traced the outline of the shapes she had drawn into the damp grains of soil. It was a heart, only slightly smudged out when she had scooted closer to him to pray. Gabriel looked at the etching carefully, noticing letters in and around the heart: G & I FRIENDS FOREVER.
Gabriel smiled. He lifted his head to look at the sun hovering close above the ocean’s horizon. “Thank you, Izzy,” he said softly. “Thank you for being my friend.”
It seemed to take a long time for the sounds echoing through the still darkness to become clear and make the slightest sense. But finally, Lucia Audaz recognized the monotone beeps of what could only be a hospital heart monitor. It meant she was still alive. Somehow she had survived what she had been certain was the closing hour of her life. She had been ready. There were no lingering doubts, no feeling like she had failed to complete some objective in her life. Lucia Audaz had made a life for herself she had been proud of, raising a family and serving the country she loved as the best citizen she could possibly be.
She took a deep breath of the chilly air being pushed through a narrow, plastic tube and into her nostril. As she opened her eyes, the rest of her body began to wake up with her. She could feel the small hose helping her breath laying on her cheek as it draped down onto the bed and away out of sight. She could feel the dry cloth of the thin gown clothing her pressed against her skin under the stiff sheets and blanket pulled up to just below her chest. Lucia took another breath, feeling a tautness on her scalp and across her torso that was unusual.
His mother’s shifting drew Carlos out of the bleary collage of thoughts circling in his mind. He turned away from the window. The view was simple and unimpressive. There were the concrete walls of the hospital’s opposing wing. A few windows dotted the otherwise featureless, off-white surfaces. A few floors below them, a small courtyard could be seen between the thin branches of young trees, their dry foliage rustling in the wind bowing the weak limbs. Each brittle leaf was almost perfectly silhouetted in the amber-yellow glow of a tall lamp hidden from the window.
“Mamma,” Carlos said quietly, approaching her bedside.
“What happened,” Lucia asked groggily. Her voice was dry and cracked.
Carlos helped her sip a small gulp of water from a little cup left beside her bed. “You’re alive. They saved you. The doctors saved you.”
Lucia Audaz stared at her son. For a moment that stretched longer and longer, she couldn’t understand what he had just said. Finally, she realized the confusion was not on her part. It was on his. “No,” she said, her voice still cracking. “Why?”
Carlos sat up straight. He was on the edge of her bed. He wanted to be close to his mother, now more than ever before. The doctors had told him the worst was over for now. They had won a severe and critical battle. They warned the war was far from settled, however. Carlos wanted to start things right when she woke up, to make up for the years he was absent from her world, where he was nothing but a name and old pictures in photo albums growing dusty. He wanted things to be right between them, for all the tension to finally be gone.
A dark and twisted sense of regret suddenly sank in his heart as he watched the look on his mother’s face. There was something unmistakable in her eyes. She could be so easy to read. Instead of the relief he had hoped she would awaken with, Carlos could only see a frustrated disappointment in the rich, brown eyes of Lucia Audaz.
“What...what do you mean, ‘why’?”
Lucia cleared her throat. “Why did they save me?”
Carlos stood up in shock. “Because they’re doctors, momma. That’s what they do.”
“Not this. Not like this. Carlos, please. I know what I’m saying.”
“Good! Because I don’t.”
Lucia sighed, turning her head away from Carlos to stare ahead past the foot of the bed. “Carlos, son, I knew. I have known, for a long time, what this was. I have known for a long time what it meant. And, I have known for a long time that there was nothing the doctors could do...”
Carlos was looking at her when she finally peered at once more. “...Or, would do,” she continued. “There are rules now, laws and procedures that force doctors’ hands. Patients have to jump through hoops and I didn’t have the resources to do that. And, I’m not a trained dog about to do tricks for a treat...even if that means my life.”
Carlos’ gaze shifted. His mother, even after being unconscious for three days, noticed immediately. “What did you do,” Lucia asked, her eyes narrowing to a cold, piercing intensity.
Carlos looked at her uncertainly. He hated when when she did that, when her gaze seemed to be probing into his mind and soul. “What? I...I got them to save your life.”
“How?”
“Momma, you’re alive-”
“How, mijo,” she asked, her rasping voice easily overtaking his. “I wasn’t on pain pills and muscle relaxants instead of an actual treatment because I thought it would be better for my health. I’m over 50 years old. That alone makes me a low priority for procedures, medicines, even hospital stays. Add in the fact I sit close to the bottom of the income scale, now I’m even less desirable in this time of medicinal rationing.”
Carlos turned away from her. He bit the inside of his lip. It was nervousness and frustration. He was already uneasy about the decisions he had made, the new alliances he had seemed to set in stone. There was no denying it had begun to feel, almost immediately, like Carlos had sold his soul to the devil. Now, the situation seemed even worse. Now, his mother seemed to sense exactly what transpired. He stared down into the lamp-lit courtyard below the window. The sunlight in the sky had almost completely faded into the growing night.
“So the question is how? How did you manage to get this done for me? You are an incredibly talented artist and storyteller...but you haven’t done anything to make any serious money.” Lucia Audaz took a deep breath, the slightly chilled air channeled through the tube making her head spin a little.
She waited just another moment before continuing. “You haven’t made enough money for this.” Lucia looked at the back of her son. He had never been good at hiding things from her. “So how did you do it? Who are you doing tricks for, son?”
Carlos turned sharply, starting for the door. He stopped with several steps left to go. He stood hesitating, uncertain of what he should do. He pivoted around again, taking a few steps further into the room. It became a kind of pacing. Lucia watched him quietly. He stopped at the foot of her bed to address her.
“You know, instead of laying there and being judgmental and...and unappreciative, you might try seeing it from my perspective, Mom. You were dying. The woman I love most in the world was dying. Excuse me for trying to delay that for a little longer. Excuse me for finally trying to do something right in your eyes for a change!”
Lucia took another long, slow breath. She shook her head, “Oh, mijo...”
Carlos tensed. The cold, dark anger he had managed to store away inside of him exploded through his body. There were so many things he wanted to say, to shout and scream across the small room. How dare she, he thought bitterly. How dare she make me feel this way. She stared at him patiently, waiting for his internal tantrum to become external or fade away.
He took a deep breath, his back straightening with new confidence in the range of his mother’s scrutiny. “I’m a man, Mom. A man who did what he had to do, what he felt needed to be done. But you don’t have to like it. You can just lay there and accept it.”
Carlos didn’t say anything more after that. He didn’t stay in the room, either. Lucia turned her gaze toward the window. She didn’t watch her son leave. Neither looked back at each other before the heavy door clicked loudly closed. The metallic sound echoed around the quiet room, muting for a moment the electronic been of the bedside monitor. For the two of them, it wasn’t just the sound of a hospital room door closing tightly. For this mother and son, it was the door of their old world, the world they had always known and understood, closing for good.
Lucia knew, as Carlos did, there was no going back. One had made a decision for two, so they were trapped together. Lucia leaned back against the cool pillows behind her head. She closed her eyes, thinking of her husband and son in a time long ago, in a place that existed only in her memories.
Carlos stepped out of the hospital, thinking of the moment he wanted to get away from, and then, the world he was going to help remake.
Gabriel Audaz reveled in the deep and satisfying peace filling his heart. He felt Isabella’s forehead pressed against his own. The cool, salty air whipping off the waves softly crashing onto shore billowed and tousled their hair. He smiled, listening to the sweetness of her voice as she prayed. There was no sense of fear in that moment. There was no pain or overwhelming chaos. There was just two friends on a beach, embraced in the love that only friends can have for each other, and comforted by the presence of God surrounding them, protecting them from any harm that could deter them from saying goodbye.
Gabriel lifted his eyes from the sand at his feet to see Isabella smiling at him. “Feel better,” she asked.
Gabriel smiled. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, wake up.”
Gabriel looked at her with a start, her words confusing. “Huh?”
A loud, sudden crash of tin pans and equipment spilling across the floor made Gabriel jump, startling him awake in an instant. An attendant, even younger looking than himself, crouched nervously nearby to pick up the mess he had made. Gabriel watched him for a moment, his mind catching up to the present and his surroundings. He quickly realized he was in a field hospital somewhere. Other soldiers, with injuries of varying degrees of seriousness in varying stages of treatment and healing, laid in beds to his left and right.
“Corporal Audaz,” said a nurse walking closer to the firm, narrow bed he had been placed in. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“I guess it’s good to be awake,” Gabriel said groggily. “How long was I-”
“Three days,” she answered before Gabriel could finish asking. “And considering your heroics and how hard you pushed yourself, I’m surprised it wasn’t a week or more.”
Gabriel blinked, trying to put all of his thoughts back together. All at once, the events in the valley began to come forward out of the sleepy fog in his mind. He looked up at the nurse as he tried to sit up. His chest felt like it was weighed down with lead. Gabriel winced as he tried to breath deeper, every muscle and nerve in his chest stinging like mad.
“Easy, Corporal,” the nurse said, trying to help him. “Your broken ribs are not going to heal that fast. Not after the way you pushed yourself.”
“The sergeant,” Gabriel started to ask. “The sergeant I helped. I...I can’t remember his name.” Suddenly, Gabriel realized he had never learned what it was.
“Ives,” said a voice from behind the nurse. She shifted out of the way enough to reveal the private Gabriel had rescued in the village. His name was Austin Harley. He had insisted on being placed next to the crazy soldier that had saved his life. Private Harley smiled warmly at Gabriel. “His name is Sergeant Ives, sir.”
Gabriel stared thankfully at his peer for a long moment, returning the smile the bandaged soldier had plastered to his lightly stubbled cheeks. Gabriel looked up at the nurse expectantly a moment later. “Is he all right? Is he alive?”
“I believe so,” the nurse answered uncertainly. “I know he was in rough shape. The doctors managed to get him stable, but, I believe they had to airlift him to one of the main hospitals.”
Gabriel nodded slowly, comfortable with that little bit of news.
“You two rest. You’ve had quite the ordeals. I’ll be back to check on you soon,” the nurse said with a pleasant smile, patting both men lightly on the arm.
Gabriel watched her walk past their cots for only a moment, letting his attention wander around the awkward scene he found himself within. The walls were plain, the dirt and grime of the dry climate washed away. There was the smell of bleach and dust hanging in the air. It was pleasant and welcomed by Gabriel’s nostrils. He thought he would forever have the iron-rich scent of blood burned on the inside of his nose.
Gabriel’s thoughts drifted back to the quiet sergeant he had carried over the rocky, unforgiving terrain. The dry, packed dirt still thawing from long, harsh winter freezes could have been the thickest, boggiest mud in the world. Gabriel would not have changed his mind. Help could not get to them so Gabriel knew he had to get the wounded man to safety. The sergeant had saved Gabriel’s life. Gunmen stalking through the sparse brush, steep valleys, and devastating pain rolling inside his own body were no deterrents. Gabriel did what had to be done. He had to do what he could.
His thoughts shifted to the man he caught staring at him expectantly. Gabriel wondered if he was suddenly being hero worshipped. He hoped this wasn’t the case. Gabriel glanced up and down the length of the prone soldier smiling,with patient thankfulness, across the narrow gap between their thin beds. Gabriel’s brief mental recounting of the wounded sergeant had reminded him of the wounded private laying in the bed to his left. “You all right,” Gabriel asked him. He quietly marveled at how suddenly grown-up he sounded in his own ears. He wondered if anyone else listening had noticed.
Private Harley nodded his head. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Gabriel smiled encouragingly. “Good.” He noticed something protruding from under the soldier’s side. It was thin and metallic-looking. The sunlight bouncing off the white, sandstone walls from the square windows behind them made the smudged trim of the object gleam ever-so-slightly.
Gabriel gestured toward it with a nod of his head. “What’s that?”
Private Harley looked down at his side. “Oh! It’s my tablet,” he said, tugging the skinny, portable computer out from under himself. “I keep it in my bag so it’s a little roughed up.”
He touched the power button at the bottom corner of the streaked, scored black plastic frame. The rectangular touch screen flickered to life. “But, it still works.”
“Cool,” Gabriel said.
“Do you want to use it?”
Gabriel looked up at Private Harley. “You don’t mind?”
Austin Harley smiled. “Not at all. Go ahead!”
“Thanks,” Gabriel said, taking the computer roughly the size of his two hands put together as Private Harley offered it across the shallow gap separating them.
“No, sir,” Harley said. “Thank you.”
Gabriel took his eyes away from the borrowed device in his hands to look left at his new friend. “For what?”
“For saving my life, sir.”
Gabriel only watched him for a moment. Finally, he shook his head, saying quietly, “You don’t have to thank me. And you don’t have to call me ‘sir’.”
Private Harley grinned. It was a small gesture of how humbled he felt right at that moment. “Nevertheless, you still have it.”
Gabriel smiled and nodded his head.
Private Harley leaned back on his pillows. “Oh,” he suddenly remembered. “There’s probably not too much time left on the battery...five or ten minutes maybe. And, the network is awful here so the connection might be really slow.”
Gabriel nodded his head again. “Okay,” he said, already exploring the functions on the device.
It only took him a moment to find and open Private Harley’s web browser. But the soldier had been right about the near abysmal speed of the connection. Gabriel’s eyes kept peering wearily up the screen to the upper-most tool bar. There, the small battery icon was a solid red. He didn’t let it upset him. Gabriel took a slow, pained deep breath, aware of the need to be grateful for the means given.
It took a few minutes more to finally get logged all the way into his personal email box. There were a few random messages that didn’t demand immediate attention. Instead, Gabriel’s eyes widened with excitement when he saw an i.d. with a very familiar last name. It took Gabriel just another second to recognize the user tag as the name of Isabella’s mother. Gabriel thought it strange, but on the whole not completely unusual. Isabella’s mother had always seemed to like him and never hesitated to welcome him into their home.
The subject of the email gave no hit to whether the message awaiting him was good or bad. It simply said Hello Gabriel. Gabriel tapped the screen, opening the email already several days old. It had been sent the night of the brigade’s drop into the valley.
Dear Gabriel, I hope you are doing well and surviving. I know how strong and determined you are. I wish I could have you here instead of there. I, and everyone else here, could really use your strength and heart right now. I don’t have it in me to make this very long. I’m sorry. I wish I was writing you with better news. Please forgive me. Early this afternoon, there was an accident on the highway. It’s been raining really bad here the last two days. A car lost control and slammed head on into another. It slammed into Izzy’s car. As far as we can tell, she went peacefully. I’m sorry Gabriel. Izzy is dead. Please be safe and come home.
Gabriel stared at the end of the message for a long time. He was startled when the tablet hummed noticeably for a long second before the bright screen went suddenly dark. He could still see the email in his eyes though. It was all he could see as he stared down at the lifeless device. His heart felt like a lead weight plunging down through his chest. He started to feel sick. He closed his eyes, trying to calm himself down.
Gabriel was surprised again. He found himself back on the beach. He was standing at the water’s edge instead of sitting in the sand. Gabriel turned with a start, looking up and down the deserted shore. Their friends were all gone. The glow of the small campfire was strangely absent from the nearby dunes. He spotted the place on the beach where he and Isabella had sat. The marks of their presence were still there. He saw the random shapes he had carved into the loose surface. His side of the sandy scene was messy compared to hers.
Gabriel crouched lower where Isabella had been sitting. A warm breeze brushed against his face and arms as he traced the outline of the shapes she had drawn into the damp grains of soil. It was a heart, only slightly smudged out when she had scooted closer to him to pray. Gabriel looked at the etching carefully, noticing letters in and around the heart: G & I FRIENDS FOREVER.
Gabriel smiled. He lifted his head to look at the sun hovering close above the ocean’s horizon. “Thank you, Izzy,” he said softly. “Thank you for being my friend.”
* * * *
It seemed to take a long time for the sounds echoing through the still darkness to become clear and make the slightest sense. But finally, Lucia Audaz recognized the monotone beeps of what could only be a hospital heart monitor. It meant she was still alive. Somehow she had survived what she had been certain was the closing hour of her life. She had been ready. There were no lingering doubts, no feeling like she had failed to complete some objective in her life. Lucia Audaz had made a life for herself she had been proud of, raising a family and serving the country she loved as the best citizen she could possibly be.
She took a deep breath of the chilly air being pushed through a narrow, plastic tube and into her nostril. As she opened her eyes, the rest of her body began to wake up with her. She could feel the small hose helping her breath laying on her cheek as it draped down onto the bed and away out of sight. She could feel the dry cloth of the thin gown clothing her pressed against her skin under the stiff sheets and blanket pulled up to just below her chest. Lucia took another breath, feeling a tautness on her scalp and across her torso that was unusual.
His mother’s shifting drew Carlos out of the bleary collage of thoughts circling in his mind. He turned away from the window. The view was simple and unimpressive. There were the concrete walls of the hospital’s opposing wing. A few windows dotted the otherwise featureless, off-white surfaces. A few floors below them, a small courtyard could be seen between the thin branches of young trees, their dry foliage rustling in the wind bowing the weak limbs. Each brittle leaf was almost perfectly silhouetted in the amber-yellow glow of a tall lamp hidden from the window.
“Mamma,” Carlos said quietly, approaching her bedside.
“What happened,” Lucia asked groggily. Her voice was dry and cracked.
Carlos helped her sip a small gulp of water from a little cup left beside her bed. “You’re alive. They saved you. The doctors saved you.”
Lucia Audaz stared at her son. For a moment that stretched longer and longer, she couldn’t understand what he had just said. Finally, she realized the confusion was not on her part. It was on his. “No,” she said, her voice still cracking. “Why?”
Carlos sat up straight. He was on the edge of her bed. He wanted to be close to his mother, now more than ever before. The doctors had told him the worst was over for now. They had won a severe and critical battle. They warned the war was far from settled, however. Carlos wanted to start things right when she woke up, to make up for the years he was absent from her world, where he was nothing but a name and old pictures in photo albums growing dusty. He wanted things to be right between them, for all the tension to finally be gone.
A dark and twisted sense of regret suddenly sank in his heart as he watched the look on his mother’s face. There was something unmistakable in her eyes. She could be so easy to read. Instead of the relief he had hoped she would awaken with, Carlos could only see a frustrated disappointment in the rich, brown eyes of Lucia Audaz.
“What...what do you mean, ‘why’?”
Lucia cleared her throat. “Why did they save me?”
Carlos stood up in shock. “Because they’re doctors, momma. That’s what they do.”
“Not this. Not like this. Carlos, please. I know what I’m saying.”
“Good! Because I don’t.”
Lucia sighed, turning her head away from Carlos to stare ahead past the foot of the bed. “Carlos, son, I knew. I have known, for a long time, what this was. I have known for a long time what it meant. And, I have known for a long time that there was nothing the doctors could do...”
Carlos was looking at her when she finally peered at once more. “...Or, would do,” she continued. “There are rules now, laws and procedures that force doctors’ hands. Patients have to jump through hoops and I didn’t have the resources to do that. And, I’m not a trained dog about to do tricks for a treat...even if that means my life.”
Carlos’ gaze shifted. His mother, even after being unconscious for three days, noticed immediately. “What did you do,” Lucia asked, her eyes narrowing to a cold, piercing intensity.
Carlos looked at her uncertainly. He hated when when she did that, when her gaze seemed to be probing into his mind and soul. “What? I...I got them to save your life.”
“How?”
“Momma, you’re alive-”
“How, mijo,” she asked, her rasping voice easily overtaking his. “I wasn’t on pain pills and muscle relaxants instead of an actual treatment because I thought it would be better for my health. I’m over 50 years old. That alone makes me a low priority for procedures, medicines, even hospital stays. Add in the fact I sit close to the bottom of the income scale, now I’m even less desirable in this time of medicinal rationing.”
Carlos turned away from her. He bit the inside of his lip. It was nervousness and frustration. He was already uneasy about the decisions he had made, the new alliances he had seemed to set in stone. There was no denying it had begun to feel, almost immediately, like Carlos had sold his soul to the devil. Now, the situation seemed even worse. Now, his mother seemed to sense exactly what transpired. He stared down into the lamp-lit courtyard below the window. The sunlight in the sky had almost completely faded into the growing night.
“So the question is how? How did you manage to get this done for me? You are an incredibly talented artist and storyteller...but you haven’t done anything to make any serious money.” Lucia Audaz took a deep breath, the slightly chilled air channeled through the tube making her head spin a little.
She waited just another moment before continuing. “You haven’t made enough money for this.” Lucia looked at the back of her son. He had never been good at hiding things from her. “So how did you do it? Who are you doing tricks for, son?”
Carlos turned sharply, starting for the door. He stopped with several steps left to go. He stood hesitating, uncertain of what he should do. He pivoted around again, taking a few steps further into the room. It became a kind of pacing. Lucia watched him quietly. He stopped at the foot of her bed to address her.
“You know, instead of laying there and being judgmental and...and unappreciative, you might try seeing it from my perspective, Mom. You were dying. The woman I love most in the world was dying. Excuse me for trying to delay that for a little longer. Excuse me for finally trying to do something right in your eyes for a change!”
Lucia took another long, slow breath. She shook her head, “Oh, mijo...”
Carlos tensed. The cold, dark anger he had managed to store away inside of him exploded through his body. There were so many things he wanted to say, to shout and scream across the small room. How dare she, he thought bitterly. How dare she make me feel this way. She stared at him patiently, waiting for his internal tantrum to become external or fade away.
He took a deep breath, his back straightening with new confidence in the range of his mother’s scrutiny. “I’m a man, Mom. A man who did what he had to do, what he felt needed to be done. But you don’t have to like it. You can just lay there and accept it.”
Carlos didn’t say anything more after that. He didn’t stay in the room, either. Lucia turned her gaze toward the window. She didn’t watch her son leave. Neither looked back at each other before the heavy door clicked loudly closed. The metallic sound echoed around the quiet room, muting for a moment the electronic been of the bedside monitor. For the two of them, it wasn’t just the sound of a hospital room door closing tightly. For this mother and son, it was the door of their old world, the world they had always known and understood, closing for good.
Lucia knew, as Carlos did, there was no going back. One had made a decision for two, so they were trapped together. Lucia leaned back against the cool pillows behind her head. She closed her eyes, thinking of her husband and son in a time long ago, in a place that existed only in her memories.
Carlos stepped out of the hospital, thinking of the moment he wanted to get away from, and then, the world he was going to help remake.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART THIRTEEN
There were so many lights. They flickered and flashed past her eyes in dazzling displays. The world seemed to be in a racing spin. Lucia Audaz tried to blink away the dizziness, but that only made things worse. The skin on her face felt electrified. The sweat on her brow was so cold. She wanted to wipe it away. Her hands felt like rocks at the end of her arms. She couldn’t tell if they were even her arms at all. Are my arms still there? Are any of my limbs still attached? Nothing was right. The world wasn’t as it should have been. It was rejecting her. Lucia Audaz’s head swam, making her stomach turn somewhere in her disconnected body. A man leaned into her field of vision. At least she wasn’t on the kitchen floor anymore. The smell of coffee burned in her nose.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice was a muffled echo. It sounded like her husband’s. But he was dead. Lucia Audaz peered up with wide eyes at the figure hovering over her. Is this what this is, she thought. I’m dying? That’s why it all feels so strange. And that’s why I can see my beloved.
“Mrs. Audaz, can you hear me,” the paramedic asked again. Her dilated eyes were swimming in a barely conscious state. “She’s right on the edge,” he said over his shoulder to the driver of the ambulance.
The siren wailed beyond the brightly lit interior of the ambulance. Lucia could clearly see the sterile environment of the mobile doctor’s office. She could easily discern the young, sandy-blonde haired man trying to keep her alive. Silly boy, she thought. You shouldn’t waste your time. That’s when the pain returned. It pressed on her whole body at once, like all the gravity of the world had forgotten about her and then found her again, over compensating for its mistake. Her nerves fired, sending numbing shocks through her muscles.
The young man above her slipped back into shadow. It wasn’t the paramedic anymore. Her husband had returned, watching down over her, his life-long love. They would be united at last. The world was rejecting her, it was changing and didn’t want her in it. Lucia Audaz’s lips curled as if to smile. She had been waiting to smile at her husband. At last, she was ready to be with him. The dazzling lights in her eyes faded slowly to black. The last thing she remembered thinking was a hope her son would forgive her.
The wind that blew against his skin felt so odd in the early morning air. Carlos Columbus Audaz stood under the flickering, mustard-yellow glow of a buzzing street lamp. The cool, bitter breeze whipped at the small, wrinkled piece of paper clutched in his fingers. He looked down at it strangely, perplexed as to why he was still holding onto it.
The sleek, unblemished sedan he had quickly come to know so well Carlos caught himself thinking of it as his own, was sitting along the curb in front of his home when he emerged from Alex’s backyard. The sun had sunk below the roof lines of the neighborhood. It was way past the regular time for the driver to be in the area.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was told to return immediately,” the driver said as Carlos had approached from across the street. “We have to go right now, sir.”
Carlos looked at him strangely. The driver seemed to read the question in Carlos’ eyes. “It’s your mother, sir. She’s in the-”
Carlos wasn’t listening. He had bolted into the house, his voice echoing through each room and down the short hallways. No one answered back. His uncle, his sister, his mother and aunt were all missing from the aging abode that never seemed totally quiet or empty. That evening, it didn’t even feel quite like the home he had grown up in. There was a cold and ghostly feeling penetrating the richly painted walls lined with hundreds of framed family photographs.
Carlos saw the note taped to his bedroom door. It was scribbled by his uncle. His mother had collapsed on the kitchen floor earlier that day. Carlos clutched the vanilla-colored scrap of paper tightly in his hand as he turned and hurried back outside to the waiting car, the driver already seated behind the wheel. Carlos couldn’t remember if he had closed the front door, let alone locked it.
The ride to the hospital had been a nervous blur. Staring out over the cracked and empty sidewalk of the abandoned neighborhood in the early morning light, Carlos still couldn’t really remember it. He had just walked from there, yet, still could hardly recall the way. The cold air rolled past him again, sending chills up his arms. It rattled and shuffled bits of trash hugging the curb and the walls of nearby buildings. Carlos blinked, trying to remember why, exactly, he had wandered into that specific part of the city.
There was no confusion about where he was. The glow of the street lamps bounced off the wall of the studio to his right. Halfway down the abandoned street and halfway parked on the sidewalk was the burned and hollowed shell of a small car. Storefront windows were smashed in. The exposed interiors were deathly quiet. The charred marks of searing flames long extinguished stained the walls around window frames on the buildings stretching stoutly upward. There was a strong, bitter scent in the air. It was a rich, burning smell that lingered in Carlos’ nostrils. Blood, he wondered. He walked a little ways more onto the deserted battle field, stopping a dozen steps from the tortured skeleton of the burned vehicle.
For a moment, Carlos’ mind drifted back to the broken swing in Alex’s backyard. The image inspiring fragmented emotions lasted hardly a second before his mind leapt forward to the hospital. Carlos quickly recalled bursting through a pair of heavy double doors that were loud enough when they moved to alert the whole hospital.
“What happened? How is she? Where is she,” he had asked in rapid succession as soon as he spotted his family.
His uncle and sister took turns trying to explain what had happened, how they had found Carlos’ mother collapsed on the kitchen floor. Carlos kept glancing at his aunt. She sat silently in one of the thinly upholstered chairs of the waiting area. Her brown eyes were staring blankly at the floor, her thoughts a long way from the soda-stained carpet and aging magazines.
Carlos had felt himself being subtly backed toward one of the over-used chairs of the waiting area. He lifted his eyes past his family at the sound of heavy double doors opening nearby. A doctor with thinning, sandy blonde hair and dry, sagging green eyes approached the family. The look on his face, the way he tried to avoid making any direct eye contact with them, revealed the seriousness he had yet to convey as he walked closer.
Lucia Audaz was stable but in serious condition. Her outlook, however, was grave. It was news that sent Carlos’ sister to her knees on the rough carpet. She wasn’t sobbing or crying as she sat helpless on the floor. Instead, her body shook with the emotional shock of the doctor’s prognosis. Carlos was listening to the doctor but he was also staring at his sister. He wanted to sink to his own knees beside her, to share in the tidal wave of grief overflowing in her heart. He wanted to share the burden of that pain, of the growing sense of loss. It would have been the most brotherly thing he could think of to do.
But, in that moment, at the cusp of the world that had seemed so familiar suddenly coming apart and radically changing into something new, unexpected, and unrecognizable, Carlos felt no pain or grief. As he had stood in that small waiting area with his family and the doctor barely speaking above a tired mumble, Carlos couldn’t find it in himself to surrender the emotions he was feeling to be the comfort and rock he knew was probably most needed by those around him. Where there should have been grief, there was empty anger. A bitter, putrid anger that consumed him so easily. It was fueled by the mounting stresses that seemed to be bombarding him without mercy, like the universe was punishing him and only him. Carlos’ unstoppable, boiling anger was also being fed by an undeniable guilt.
What do I have to feel guilty over, he asked himself, standing on the edge of the cracked, grease, and city-stained sidewalk. Carlos lifted his eyes from the cool, underused asphalt to the scene around him. He thought of everything that had been happening in his life, the decisions made, words said, desires and passions given in to. They seemed to have all culminated to put him right there in that spot, as if he had been destined to be there all along. The violence-scarred, terrorized, abandoned neighborhood was a symbol of Carlos’ tortured soul and he knew it.
Everything, he thought, answering his own question. I have everything to feel guilty over.
Carlos stepped off the curb, officially entering the place of unsettling chaos he had tried so desperately to run from. He considered how silly that notion was and how close to it he had always been. The chilled wind picked up again, stirring the smells flooding the quiet street. It shook the broken fragments of glass still clinging to the splintered windowsills. It lifted the scent of singed iron from the stains of dried blood marking the path and course of the sweeping, savage violence. Carlos tried not to look at them. He tried not to follow the browning streaks, unwashed by rain or city worker, into the dark, open cavities of storefronts and homes. The darkness swollen within each wounded edifice of former prosperity and worthwhile endeavors was as thick and cold as the darkness within himself.
Carlos realized that was what he was trying not to see. It had nothing to do with the blood on the ground, as disgusting as it was. He stopped near the burned, hollowed vehicle left to rot on the curb. Even as he stared at the partially melted and twisted steel skeleton, as he tried to keep his thoughts focused, he couldn’t stop the feeling of his skin crawling. The sun was beginning to rise, its sharp bands of orange and yellow light reaching above the cityscape. Yet, none of it seemed to be piercing the shadows hovering in the street. What light there was seemed gray and muted. The darkness stalking within the silent buildings appeared undeterred by the waxing light of day. He felt eyes on him, watching the subtle movement of his arms and shoulders, the loose hairs on his head bustling softly in the wind.
Carlos turned swiftly and suddenly on his heels. The feeling had quickly become too much. He didn’t like it. It was scaring him which was making him angry, reigniting the rage that had been cooling since he left the hospital. He wanted to turn and face down the sense of evil permeating from the cavernous buildings and narrow, sinewy alleyways. He wanted to see the eyes, the faces of malice peering omnisciently out at him.
Carlos had turned to face the slender, well-groomed form of Mr. Simon.
“Hello C.C.,” Mr. Simon said quietly with a strange politeness. “What are you doing out here this early in the morning?”
Carlos watched the thinly framed man with the smooth, flawless face. His cheeks were slightly pale from the long winter and days of travel. He kept his hands in the pockets of his long, expensive coat. The material was of the finest quality, just like the obvious, precise, and skilled tailoring evident from even a dozen steps away. Mr. Simon was either very wealthy or very, very well connected. No average citizen would be able to hold onto something so extravagant without finding themselves being labled a hoarder.
“I needed some air,” Carlos finally responded. It wasn’t a lie.
“So you went for a walk at the crack of dawn?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Simon stared at Carlos. The expression on his face took on a calculated smugness as he added, “All the way from the hospital, I gather?”
Carlos stiffened. He couldn’t hide the surprise riddled in his wide eyes. “Yes. My mother-”
“Your mother. Yes, I know,” Mr. Simon interrupted. He took a step off the curb, walking slowly, casually into the empty street. Spent bullet shells were visible on top of the solid, slightly faded lines long ago painted down the center of the blacktop. “And yet, you felt compelled to leave and...walk all the way down here.”
Carlos watched Mr. Simon walk in a slow arch from the sidewalk into the street. He furrowed his brow, conquering the surprise and intimidation he had been feeling since first catching sight of the bureaucrat standing at the edge of the shadows. “I wouldn’t say compelled is an accurate description. I needed some time to think and went for a walk. I didn’t really feel compelled to end up anywhere.”
“Nonetheless, here you are.”
“Why does it bother you so much that I’m on this street?”
Mr. Simon looked up at Carlos. He grinned pleasantly. His voice was polite, even slightly upbeat. He never seemed directly hostile or aggressive. Compared to Carlos, he was a master at hiding his emotions. It made Carlos wonder if he had any at all. “It doesn’t bother me at all, C.C.. I’m simply curious.”
“Why?”
Mr. Simon pursed his soft lips slightly. There was the subtlest sheen on the tender, lightly red flesh. “Obviously, this is not the sort of area a person like you would venture voluntarily. Not unless you knew someone here, which you don’t. Not unless you had business here, which you don’t.” Mr. Simon started walking again as he was speaking. It was just a few steps to the burned-out chunk of blackened steel that had been a car only days before. “You’ve never been very wealthy, though, your income now is far better than most around you,” Mr. Simon continued.
Carlos watched the strange man silently. He was unsettled by what Mr. Simon said, but didn’t know what to say himself in response.
“That wall that separates the studio from this street may just be thick concrete to most, but for you it’s something more. It’s like the space between two planets, two entirely different worlds. You always knew this world was here. And, you probably even believed you understood it, at a basic, maybe scientific and clinical level. But then...something happened and you were faced with the realization that you have absolutely no idea what happens here, beyond the wall-beyond the space between your world and this one.”
Carlos watch him incredulously. “What’s your point, Mr. Simon?”
Mr. Simon looked up from the flakes of carbon he had been chipping at with his fingernail on a piece of the car’s skeleton. “My point?” He chuckled once, then answered, “Welcome to the Moon, C.C..”
Carlos stood uncomfortably on the sidewalk. He realized he was leaning back in just the slightest way. He didn’t move yet. Instead, he simply stared at Mr. Simon as the mysterious, government avatar continued to speak.
“You’ve been wanting to see this place since the day I arrived. You and young Mr. Vale heard the scene unfolding from right...” Mr. Simon turned and pointed toward the wall on the opposite side of the street. “...over there.”
He turned back to face Carlos once more. “So, C.C., what do you see? Is this place what you thought it would be?”
Carlos swallowed. “I...I didn’t know what it would be. I didn’t really know what I was expecting.” Reason, he told himself. But now you see yourself. Now, you see the chaos within and not just without. “I think I wanted to know why more than anything else.”
“Why, what,” Mr. Simon asked.
“Why a place like this, that seemed to be functioning well and normal enough could break down so suddenly and violently like this. Why a place so close...” Carlos took a breath, surprised by the thought about to be given voice. He could have used this second stretching into many to change the wording. He decided to go with it, letting the new reality of his changed world sink in. “...So close to me could come apart and collapse like this.”
Carlos blinked and Mr. Simon seemed to suddenly be in his face. The man was standing less than an arm’s length away, barely a step onto the sidewalk. His elbows stayed bent as he gripped both of Carlos’ shoulders. “It’s simple, C.C.,” Mr. Simon said with a beaming smile.
“It happened because these people were abandoned, forgotten about, and lied to. The beloved free market didn’t deem them worthy and so it left them behind to their own devices. That’s why we exist, C.C.. That’s what makes our jobs so important!”
Carlos took a quiet breath. “It is?”
“Yes! It’s so beautiful, C.C.. We will tear down the lies and replace them with the sights and sounds that will illuminate everyone! It will feel so good it will become truth! Our truth will save everyone and that will save the world! But we can’t do it alone. We need visionaries like you C.C. We need you to stand with us. We can save neighborhoods like this one from this kind of despair.” Mr. Simon made sure he had Carlos’ gaze before he added, “With us, you can save your mother.”
Carlos gasped audibly.
Mr. Simon’s face saddened. Carlos couldn’t tell if the pity in his beedy eyes was genuine. “The doctors...they told you there was nothing they could do, right?”
Carlos looked away from Mr. Simon for a moment. “More or less,” he said, the pain from the long night behind him coming through, unstoppably, in his voice. “Some of your friends were there, too.” Carlos returned his gaze toward Mr. Simon. “I guess to help remind the people doing their jobs what that actually meant.”
Mr. Simon shook his head. “Now that was unfair, C.C.. While they are certainly not my friends, like me they also have jobs to do. It is nothing personal. Times are tough and resources are getting tight. Sometimes that means rationing.”
Carlos’ skin suddenly began to crawl. A chill ran up and down his spine. Mr. Simon’s hand was on his shoulder. He spoke softly, tenderly like a man who understood the pain of another, but has never actually endured the strife he extended his sympathies toward. “Sometimes that means making the tough choice.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “What choice?”
Mr. Simon didn’t hesitate to answer. “To sacrifice, even the ones we love, for the greater good. Our salvation depends on it. Neighborhoods and streets like this one depend on our ability to do the hard things...the hardest of hard.”
Carlos didn’t respond. He merely looked away.
“But,” Mr. Simon said, “there are those too important to simply let go and allow to wither away in pain and suffering.”
Carlos took a deep breath. The ground under his feet felt unsteady. The air had a strangeness to it he couldn’t identify. “Why,” he asked.
“Because I believe your mother is a powerful source of influence and strength for you. We need you to be strong, C.C.. So, I believe your mother should receive all the care she possibly can.”
Carlos looked up at Mr. Simon again. “And in exchange?”
Mr. Simon’s face had not changed. He still had a hand on one of Carlos’ shoulders. “Join us. Dedicate your skills, strength, and talent to benefiting the greater good. It’s all any of us can do. But, if you do this, if you agree to continue working for us, your mother will be taken care of. I promise you that.”
Carlos stared at Mr. Simon for a long moment. He turned his head, sensing the brightening sunlight piercing the cold, gray mist permeating the long street. If he wasn’t so consumed by Mr. Simon’s proposition and the answer he felt rising out of his throat, Carlos might have paused a moment more to actually wonder why the warmth of the sun felt so faded and far away. Instead, he faced Mr. Simon and took a deep breath.
There were so many lights. They flickered and flashed past her eyes in dazzling displays. The world seemed to be in a racing spin. Lucia Audaz tried to blink away the dizziness, but that only made things worse. The skin on her face felt electrified. The sweat on her brow was so cold. She wanted to wipe it away. Her hands felt like rocks at the end of her arms. She couldn’t tell if they were even her arms at all. Are my arms still there? Are any of my limbs still attached? Nothing was right. The world wasn’t as it should have been. It was rejecting her. Lucia Audaz’s head swam, making her stomach turn somewhere in her disconnected body. A man leaned into her field of vision. At least she wasn’t on the kitchen floor anymore. The smell of coffee burned in her nose.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice was a muffled echo. It sounded like her husband’s. But he was dead. Lucia Audaz peered up with wide eyes at the figure hovering over her. Is this what this is, she thought. I’m dying? That’s why it all feels so strange. And that’s why I can see my beloved.
“Mrs. Audaz, can you hear me,” the paramedic asked again. Her dilated eyes were swimming in a barely conscious state. “She’s right on the edge,” he said over his shoulder to the driver of the ambulance.
The siren wailed beyond the brightly lit interior of the ambulance. Lucia could clearly see the sterile environment of the mobile doctor’s office. She could easily discern the young, sandy-blonde haired man trying to keep her alive. Silly boy, she thought. You shouldn’t waste your time. That’s when the pain returned. It pressed on her whole body at once, like all the gravity of the world had forgotten about her and then found her again, over compensating for its mistake. Her nerves fired, sending numbing shocks through her muscles.
The young man above her slipped back into shadow. It wasn’t the paramedic anymore. Her husband had returned, watching down over her, his life-long love. They would be united at last. The world was rejecting her, it was changing and didn’t want her in it. Lucia Audaz’s lips curled as if to smile. She had been waiting to smile at her husband. At last, she was ready to be with him. The dazzling lights in her eyes faded slowly to black. The last thing she remembered thinking was a hope her son would forgive her.
* * * *
The wind that blew against his skin felt so odd in the early morning air. Carlos Columbus Audaz stood under the flickering, mustard-yellow glow of a buzzing street lamp. The cool, bitter breeze whipped at the small, wrinkled piece of paper clutched in his fingers. He looked down at it strangely, perplexed as to why he was still holding onto it.
The sleek, unblemished sedan he had quickly come to know so well Carlos caught himself thinking of it as his own, was sitting along the curb in front of his home when he emerged from Alex’s backyard. The sun had sunk below the roof lines of the neighborhood. It was way past the regular time for the driver to be in the area.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was told to return immediately,” the driver said as Carlos had approached from across the street. “We have to go right now, sir.”
Carlos looked at him strangely. The driver seemed to read the question in Carlos’ eyes. “It’s your mother, sir. She’s in the-”
Carlos wasn’t listening. He had bolted into the house, his voice echoing through each room and down the short hallways. No one answered back. His uncle, his sister, his mother and aunt were all missing from the aging abode that never seemed totally quiet or empty. That evening, it didn’t even feel quite like the home he had grown up in. There was a cold and ghostly feeling penetrating the richly painted walls lined with hundreds of framed family photographs.
Carlos saw the note taped to his bedroom door. It was scribbled by his uncle. His mother had collapsed on the kitchen floor earlier that day. Carlos clutched the vanilla-colored scrap of paper tightly in his hand as he turned and hurried back outside to the waiting car, the driver already seated behind the wheel. Carlos couldn’t remember if he had closed the front door, let alone locked it.
The ride to the hospital had been a nervous blur. Staring out over the cracked and empty sidewalk of the abandoned neighborhood in the early morning light, Carlos still couldn’t really remember it. He had just walked from there, yet, still could hardly recall the way. The cold air rolled past him again, sending chills up his arms. It rattled and shuffled bits of trash hugging the curb and the walls of nearby buildings. Carlos blinked, trying to remember why, exactly, he had wandered into that specific part of the city.
There was no confusion about where he was. The glow of the street lamps bounced off the wall of the studio to his right. Halfway down the abandoned street and halfway parked on the sidewalk was the burned and hollowed shell of a small car. Storefront windows were smashed in. The exposed interiors were deathly quiet. The charred marks of searing flames long extinguished stained the walls around window frames on the buildings stretching stoutly upward. There was a strong, bitter scent in the air. It was a rich, burning smell that lingered in Carlos’ nostrils. Blood, he wondered. He walked a little ways more onto the deserted battle field, stopping a dozen steps from the tortured skeleton of the burned vehicle.
For a moment, Carlos’ mind drifted back to the broken swing in Alex’s backyard. The image inspiring fragmented emotions lasted hardly a second before his mind leapt forward to the hospital. Carlos quickly recalled bursting through a pair of heavy double doors that were loud enough when they moved to alert the whole hospital.
“What happened? How is she? Where is she,” he had asked in rapid succession as soon as he spotted his family.
His uncle and sister took turns trying to explain what had happened, how they had found Carlos’ mother collapsed on the kitchen floor. Carlos kept glancing at his aunt. She sat silently in one of the thinly upholstered chairs of the waiting area. Her brown eyes were staring blankly at the floor, her thoughts a long way from the soda-stained carpet and aging magazines.
Carlos had felt himself being subtly backed toward one of the over-used chairs of the waiting area. He lifted his eyes past his family at the sound of heavy double doors opening nearby. A doctor with thinning, sandy blonde hair and dry, sagging green eyes approached the family. The look on his face, the way he tried to avoid making any direct eye contact with them, revealed the seriousness he had yet to convey as he walked closer.
Lucia Audaz was stable but in serious condition. Her outlook, however, was grave. It was news that sent Carlos’ sister to her knees on the rough carpet. She wasn’t sobbing or crying as she sat helpless on the floor. Instead, her body shook with the emotional shock of the doctor’s prognosis. Carlos was listening to the doctor but he was also staring at his sister. He wanted to sink to his own knees beside her, to share in the tidal wave of grief overflowing in her heart. He wanted to share the burden of that pain, of the growing sense of loss. It would have been the most brotherly thing he could think of to do.
But, in that moment, at the cusp of the world that had seemed so familiar suddenly coming apart and radically changing into something new, unexpected, and unrecognizable, Carlos felt no pain or grief. As he had stood in that small waiting area with his family and the doctor barely speaking above a tired mumble, Carlos couldn’t find it in himself to surrender the emotions he was feeling to be the comfort and rock he knew was probably most needed by those around him. Where there should have been grief, there was empty anger. A bitter, putrid anger that consumed him so easily. It was fueled by the mounting stresses that seemed to be bombarding him without mercy, like the universe was punishing him and only him. Carlos’ unstoppable, boiling anger was also being fed by an undeniable guilt.
What do I have to feel guilty over, he asked himself, standing on the edge of the cracked, grease, and city-stained sidewalk. Carlos lifted his eyes from the cool, underused asphalt to the scene around him. He thought of everything that had been happening in his life, the decisions made, words said, desires and passions given in to. They seemed to have all culminated to put him right there in that spot, as if he had been destined to be there all along. The violence-scarred, terrorized, abandoned neighborhood was a symbol of Carlos’ tortured soul and he knew it.
Everything, he thought, answering his own question. I have everything to feel guilty over.
Carlos stepped off the curb, officially entering the place of unsettling chaos he had tried so desperately to run from. He considered how silly that notion was and how close to it he had always been. The chilled wind picked up again, stirring the smells flooding the quiet street. It shook the broken fragments of glass still clinging to the splintered windowsills. It lifted the scent of singed iron from the stains of dried blood marking the path and course of the sweeping, savage violence. Carlos tried not to look at them. He tried not to follow the browning streaks, unwashed by rain or city worker, into the dark, open cavities of storefronts and homes. The darkness swollen within each wounded edifice of former prosperity and worthwhile endeavors was as thick and cold as the darkness within himself.
Carlos realized that was what he was trying not to see. It had nothing to do with the blood on the ground, as disgusting as it was. He stopped near the burned, hollowed vehicle left to rot on the curb. Even as he stared at the partially melted and twisted steel skeleton, as he tried to keep his thoughts focused, he couldn’t stop the feeling of his skin crawling. The sun was beginning to rise, its sharp bands of orange and yellow light reaching above the cityscape. Yet, none of it seemed to be piercing the shadows hovering in the street. What light there was seemed gray and muted. The darkness stalking within the silent buildings appeared undeterred by the waxing light of day. He felt eyes on him, watching the subtle movement of his arms and shoulders, the loose hairs on his head bustling softly in the wind.
Carlos turned swiftly and suddenly on his heels. The feeling had quickly become too much. He didn’t like it. It was scaring him which was making him angry, reigniting the rage that had been cooling since he left the hospital. He wanted to turn and face down the sense of evil permeating from the cavernous buildings and narrow, sinewy alleyways. He wanted to see the eyes, the faces of malice peering omnisciently out at him.
Carlos had turned to face the slender, well-groomed form of Mr. Simon.
“Hello C.C.,” Mr. Simon said quietly with a strange politeness. “What are you doing out here this early in the morning?”
Carlos watched the thinly framed man with the smooth, flawless face. His cheeks were slightly pale from the long winter and days of travel. He kept his hands in the pockets of his long, expensive coat. The material was of the finest quality, just like the obvious, precise, and skilled tailoring evident from even a dozen steps away. Mr. Simon was either very wealthy or very, very well connected. No average citizen would be able to hold onto something so extravagant without finding themselves being labled a hoarder.
“I needed some air,” Carlos finally responded. It wasn’t a lie.
“So you went for a walk at the crack of dawn?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Simon stared at Carlos. The expression on his face took on a calculated smugness as he added, “All the way from the hospital, I gather?”
Carlos stiffened. He couldn’t hide the surprise riddled in his wide eyes. “Yes. My mother-”
“Your mother. Yes, I know,” Mr. Simon interrupted. He took a step off the curb, walking slowly, casually into the empty street. Spent bullet shells were visible on top of the solid, slightly faded lines long ago painted down the center of the blacktop. “And yet, you felt compelled to leave and...walk all the way down here.”
Carlos watched Mr. Simon walk in a slow arch from the sidewalk into the street. He furrowed his brow, conquering the surprise and intimidation he had been feeling since first catching sight of the bureaucrat standing at the edge of the shadows. “I wouldn’t say compelled is an accurate description. I needed some time to think and went for a walk. I didn’t really feel compelled to end up anywhere.”
“Nonetheless, here you are.”
“Why does it bother you so much that I’m on this street?”
Mr. Simon looked up at Carlos. He grinned pleasantly. His voice was polite, even slightly upbeat. He never seemed directly hostile or aggressive. Compared to Carlos, he was a master at hiding his emotions. It made Carlos wonder if he had any at all. “It doesn’t bother me at all, C.C.. I’m simply curious.”
“Why?”
Mr. Simon pursed his soft lips slightly. There was the subtlest sheen on the tender, lightly red flesh. “Obviously, this is not the sort of area a person like you would venture voluntarily. Not unless you knew someone here, which you don’t. Not unless you had business here, which you don’t.” Mr. Simon started walking again as he was speaking. It was just a few steps to the burned-out chunk of blackened steel that had been a car only days before. “You’ve never been very wealthy, though, your income now is far better than most around you,” Mr. Simon continued.
Carlos watched the strange man silently. He was unsettled by what Mr. Simon said, but didn’t know what to say himself in response.
“That wall that separates the studio from this street may just be thick concrete to most, but for you it’s something more. It’s like the space between two planets, two entirely different worlds. You always knew this world was here. And, you probably even believed you understood it, at a basic, maybe scientific and clinical level. But then...something happened and you were faced with the realization that you have absolutely no idea what happens here, beyond the wall-beyond the space between your world and this one.”
Carlos watch him incredulously. “What’s your point, Mr. Simon?”
Mr. Simon looked up from the flakes of carbon he had been chipping at with his fingernail on a piece of the car’s skeleton. “My point?” He chuckled once, then answered, “Welcome to the Moon, C.C..”
Carlos stood uncomfortably on the sidewalk. He realized he was leaning back in just the slightest way. He didn’t move yet. Instead, he simply stared at Mr. Simon as the mysterious, government avatar continued to speak.
“You’ve been wanting to see this place since the day I arrived. You and young Mr. Vale heard the scene unfolding from right...” Mr. Simon turned and pointed toward the wall on the opposite side of the street. “...over there.”
He turned back to face Carlos once more. “So, C.C., what do you see? Is this place what you thought it would be?”
Carlos swallowed. “I...I didn’t know what it would be. I didn’t really know what I was expecting.” Reason, he told himself. But now you see yourself. Now, you see the chaos within and not just without. “I think I wanted to know why more than anything else.”
“Why, what,” Mr. Simon asked.
“Why a place like this, that seemed to be functioning well and normal enough could break down so suddenly and violently like this. Why a place so close...” Carlos took a breath, surprised by the thought about to be given voice. He could have used this second stretching into many to change the wording. He decided to go with it, letting the new reality of his changed world sink in. “...So close to me could come apart and collapse like this.”
Carlos blinked and Mr. Simon seemed to suddenly be in his face. The man was standing less than an arm’s length away, barely a step onto the sidewalk. His elbows stayed bent as he gripped both of Carlos’ shoulders. “It’s simple, C.C.,” Mr. Simon said with a beaming smile.
“It happened because these people were abandoned, forgotten about, and lied to. The beloved free market didn’t deem them worthy and so it left them behind to their own devices. That’s why we exist, C.C.. That’s what makes our jobs so important!”
Carlos took a quiet breath. “It is?”
“Yes! It’s so beautiful, C.C.. We will tear down the lies and replace them with the sights and sounds that will illuminate everyone! It will feel so good it will become truth! Our truth will save everyone and that will save the world! But we can’t do it alone. We need visionaries like you C.C. We need you to stand with us. We can save neighborhoods like this one from this kind of despair.” Mr. Simon made sure he had Carlos’ gaze before he added, “With us, you can save your mother.”
Carlos gasped audibly.
Mr. Simon’s face saddened. Carlos couldn’t tell if the pity in his beedy eyes was genuine. “The doctors...they told you there was nothing they could do, right?”
Carlos looked away from Mr. Simon for a moment. “More or less,” he said, the pain from the long night behind him coming through, unstoppably, in his voice. “Some of your friends were there, too.” Carlos returned his gaze toward Mr. Simon. “I guess to help remind the people doing their jobs what that actually meant.”
Mr. Simon shook his head. “Now that was unfair, C.C.. While they are certainly not my friends, like me they also have jobs to do. It is nothing personal. Times are tough and resources are getting tight. Sometimes that means rationing.”
Carlos’ skin suddenly began to crawl. A chill ran up and down his spine. Mr. Simon’s hand was on his shoulder. He spoke softly, tenderly like a man who understood the pain of another, but has never actually endured the strife he extended his sympathies toward. “Sometimes that means making the tough choice.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “What choice?”
Mr. Simon didn’t hesitate to answer. “To sacrifice, even the ones we love, for the greater good. Our salvation depends on it. Neighborhoods and streets like this one depend on our ability to do the hard things...the hardest of hard.”
Carlos didn’t respond. He merely looked away.
“But,” Mr. Simon said, “there are those too important to simply let go and allow to wither away in pain and suffering.”
Carlos took a deep breath. The ground under his feet felt unsteady. The air had a strangeness to it he couldn’t identify. “Why,” he asked.
“Because I believe your mother is a powerful source of influence and strength for you. We need you to be strong, C.C.. So, I believe your mother should receive all the care she possibly can.”
Carlos looked up at Mr. Simon again. “And in exchange?”
Mr. Simon’s face had not changed. He still had a hand on one of Carlos’ shoulders. “Join us. Dedicate your skills, strength, and talent to benefiting the greater good. It’s all any of us can do. But, if you do this, if you agree to continue working for us, your mother will be taken care of. I promise you that.”
Carlos stared at Mr. Simon for a long moment. He turned his head, sensing the brightening sunlight piercing the cold, gray mist permeating the long street. If he wasn’t so consumed by Mr. Simon’s proposition and the answer he felt rising out of his throat, Carlos might have paused a moment more to actually wonder why the warmth of the sun felt so faded and far away. Instead, he faced Mr. Simon and took a deep breath.
Monday, July 18, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART TWELVE
Gabriel wheezed as his body slid to a stop against a half-broken wall. He couldn’t tell what the building was or had once been. There was so much smoke. It obscured everything and choked the air. It had been hard enough for Gabriel to breathe that day. With the sultry, gray smoke everywhere, his lungs felt like lead weights and his chest burned like a forest fire.
Gabriel blinked slowly, his eyelids feeling heavy. It was suddenly difficult to resist the urge to keep them closed. A tired and weary part of him was ready to call it in, to lay down and sleep, even if it meant forever. Maybe it would be easier that way. He didn’t know. Gabriel knew if he sat in that position much longer he would surely find out. But he was so tired.
“Gabriel!”
His eyes shot open with a frightened start. The voice that had shouted his name belonged to Isabella. There was no mistaking it. His heart skipped a beat. He had raised the rifle in his hands on pure instinct. For a fraction of a second, Gabriel swore he beheld a vision of his best friend before him. But he blinked again, seeing only the drifting, churning, gray smoke.
And then, he saw a shadow on the curling, ashy mist. Someone was running toward him. He could hear their feet in the sand and gravel. Gabriel’s heart raced. Was it friend or foe? He couldn’t tell. They were almost on him. A dozen paces and a wall of smoke were all that separated the two figures. Suddenly, gun shots sprayed through the brume. A few bullets struck the dusty bricks near Gabriel’s head. The rest pierced and punched through the collapsing man’s body. The smoke cleared around the enemy as he slumped against the remains of the blown-out wall opposite Gabriel.
The trembling, young soldier realized then he wasn’t standing outside of a building, but, instead, within. A weak, bitter cold breeze drifted into the valley moving the cloud of hovering smoke. Gabriel could see the wooden floor under his feet, the tossed and tattered remains of furniture here and there nearby. A flight of stairs led upward to a second floor that was completely.
Gabriel’s eyes lingered on the stairs, on a small family cowering less than halfway up the steps. It was three, fearfully quivering people: a father, whose thick arms were wrapped around the shoulders of his wife and very young son, keeping them close to him. Gabriel watched the father lift his head, his eyes looking worriedly toward the uneasy American. Gabriel wasn’t certain what to do. There was a noise nearby, just beyond the brick wall he was still braced against. Gabriel’s eyes focused on the father in the narrow stairwell. He wasn’t looking at Gabriel.
The gravel and debris crunched loudly under a heavy foot step immediately outside a gap in the sooty brickwork. The din of the motion was nearly muted by the disheartening sound of an automatic rifle being cocked. Gabriel saw the barrel a second later. It was one of the American rifles and it was pointed straight toward the helpless family. Gabriel blinked, his mind in chaos. Is that friend or foe, he asked himself hurriedly. His heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. He looked at the scratched, black rifle, then at the family. Foe, Gabriel decided.
With that, his body sprung into action like a race horse launched from the starting gate; or an attack dog let loose off its leash. The Audaz boys have strong grips, especially Gabriel Audaz, thanks to his military training. His strong hand grabbed the warm rifle, his clammy fingers wrapping around the center of the barrel as he pushed the smooth assault weapon swiftly upward. In the same motion, Gabriel pivoted his foot and shoved his weight in a furious blur against the assailant in the alley. The man shouted something arabic in surprised confusion before the wind was knocked out of him. He stumbled then crashed, with a painful crack, backwards onto the ground. A single shot leapt into the air out of the sleek barrel, squeezed by the finger of the militant man on the ground. Then the gun was on the ground, his wrist under Gabriel’s boot and the bones in his face snapping loudly under the unstoppable force of Gabriel’s fist.
A quick search of the enemy revealed little useful intelligence, other than he had raided the body of another American soldier very recently. Gabriel discovered a silenced pistol tucked into the folds of the unconscious man’s tunic. It was an officer’s weapon. The battalion c/o, thought Gabriel. He grabbed the rifle out of the man’s limp fingers. It matched the gun slung around Gabriel’s shoulder exactly. Gabriel pulled the nearly full clip free from the gun, adding it to his own supplies before tossing the empty rifle into the smoke. He stood up, turning back toward the blasted house. The father on the steps inside nodded thankfully to him. Gabriel smiled, nodding back.
He moved with quick, anxious haste toward the mouth of the alley. Pale sunlight dappled across the torn central avenue of the small village. Bodies were strewn amongst the debris, soldiers and civilians indiscriminately mixed together in the savage scene stretching away before him. There were voices up the street, words spoken proudly, but not in English. A group of al-Qaeda stood over a wounded American. He was sitting upright on his knees but slumped slightly forward. They were laughing at and taunting him. They waved their weapons around in front of him, tapping his cheeks with the barrels of their rifles. Gabriel wanted to save his peer right there, but he had no clear or viable shot. He could have used his rifle, but he wasn’t ready to alert every radical fighter in the village of his presence. Gabriel would use the silenced pistol for as long as possible, but he first needed a better line of sight.
He doubled back up the alley, rounding a corner into another. He crept hurriedly under broken windows of dark, eerily quiet buildings. The echo of the taunting men bounced between the war-riddled structures. Gabriel scaled a ladder propped against a mostly intact house. He climbed to the roof as quickly as possible, worried the rickety rungs would not support him. Wafts of smoke rolled past in the cold wind. Gabriel kept low as he moved with haste toward the front of the building. The roof under his feet creaked softly with each step. He didn’t have time to worry about it then. He had to save his fellow soldier.
Gabriel reached the edge of the roof, peering carefully down toward the street. The smoke was thinner in this part of the village, barely cloaking the scene below. His eyes glanced past the group to the blasted windows and walls across the roadway. Gabriel thought he could see his objective: the radio and its operator sitting against a wall in a partially gutted market.
The wind howled and then faded. Gabriel felt the first shot rattle through the chamber of the silenced pistol. He shifted his aim quickly then fired, the second bullet launching through the hazy air right behind the first. The third was only a heartbeat later. The fourth took an extra second, the gunman closer to the building Gabriel was standing on. Three of the four men were collapsing as Gabriel squeezed the trigger again, the slender bullet rocketing downward as the enemy soldier was trying to react.
The shot had just hit its target when the sound of rotting hinges cried out over the rooftop. Gabriel turned around, spotting a bearded man with an old Russian rifle standing in a small hatchway. He shouted something in Arabic as he raised his weapon. The silenced pistol was still raised at the end of Gabriel’s arms, the man halfway across the rooftop in the sight. Fingers on opposing guns began to move in tandem.
Gabriel inhaled sharply, but not because of a stray shot that took him by surprise. The wooden planks under his feet groaned and cracked. He felt the burn of new, bleeding cuts and scrapes on his arms and face as he sank past jagged ends of freshly broken boards. The interior of the building rushed by, remaining a dizzy blur for a few moments, even after he had landed. The cloud of serrated, shattered roof surrounding him sank like a lead mist when Gabriel’s body hit the floor. It was a painful, graceless landing against cold, dirty concrete.
Gabriel barely had time to push the debris off his back and shoulders, or collect his wits as he sat up straighter against a hard, plaster wall. The Arabic man from the roof shouted again, closer this time. A shadow raced across a milky band of sunlight above Gabriel’s head. Gabriel’s right hand was empty. The butt of the silenced pistol lay amongst the debris, centimeters from his fingertips. He sensed it and grabbed it as the man from the hatch appeared from around a corner across the room.
Gabriel fired once, the furiously shouting man with spit in his beard, letting loose a storm of noisy gunfire. Gabriel ducked, pushing himself off and away from the wall. Bullets peppered the crumbling plaster, tracing an uneven line up the ceiling until the enemy sank lifelessly backwards. Gabriel breathed quickly, his chest and side burning madly. There was no rest for the weary soldier laying on the floor. Somewhere out of sight, a door was kicked open. More shouts rang through the dim interior of the building. Gabriel knew that was his cue to move. He did not hesitate. He was up with a pained gasp and hurrying unsteadily over the littered floor. He was steps away from the front door when his ears retched under the bloodthirsty hail of gunfire that suddenly tore into the walls and floor around him.
Gabriel leaned forward, his weight bombarding the locked door in front of him. He crashed through to stumble down the sandy steps instantly beyond the threshold. Despite the pain that shot outward from his ribs, Gabriel never lost his balance. He pivoted slightly to release another shot from the silenced pistol. The spring in the empty chamber clicked. Damn, thought Gabriel quickly, tossing the spent weapon into the dirt. There was no sense in holding onto what he didn’t need to carry.
It was a dozen paces from the base of the steps to the beaten soldier swaying on his knees in the wide street. Gabriel slid to a stop, this time unable to stay on his feet. Bullets zinged over his head and bit at the ground as he fell and then quickly sat upright. In the same motion, he swung his own rifle off his shoulder, cocking it quickly. With hands almost perfectly steady, his nerves tingling with surging adrenaline, Gabriel raised the sleek, American assault rifle and returned fire. He wasn’t aiming to kill, just to send the enemy hiding long enough to get out of the street. Gabriel was surprised when one of the combatants fell backwards with a gurgled cry.
“Can you move,” Gabriel shouted, looking sidelong at the bruised soldier.
“I...I think so. I don’t know!”
Gabriel squeezed the trigger again, the rifle kicking back as he painted the entryway of the building with another round of steady violence. “We’re going to have to find out,” Gabriel shouted, shouldering his weapon again, the barrel still smoking.
He hoisted the soldier up off his knees. Gabriel gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out from the near-blinding pain that clawed out of his chest as he helped the soldier stand up. He felt wet blood on the man’s uniform. There was a small tear in the side, near his back. It was a stab wound, but Gabriel couldn’t tell how deep it went. He leaned his woozy peer against him, wincing from the added weight on his tender torso. A matter of seconds had gone by since Gabriel had ceased fire. It may have been several seconds too many.
The clattering rattle of the older Russian assault weapons filled the air. Bullets struck the dirt at the their heels or zipped past at breathtakingly close range. Gabriel moved, undeterred, with as much speed as he could muster, ever forward. A shadow appeared in the corner of his vision. The soldier limping along with him saw it too.
“Grenade!”
Gabriel saw it bounce against the remaining section of the storefront. “Go! Jump,” he yelled at the soldier before flinging him through the blown out window. Gabriel dove to the side in the racing second before the palm-sized bomb detonated. A cloud of hot dust and shrapnel exploded outward against the scarred building. Gabriel held his breath, trying to feel any new points of pain in and around the length of his body. He had dove through a narrow gap in the brick wall blackened by a previous explosion.
He stood up, the echo of probing gun fire still resonating from outside. The brief ringing in his ears was quickly subsiding. He braced his hand against the wall on his right. The faded plaster drew his eyes and then his weariness. The radio, operator, and wounded soldier were just on the other side. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder toward the fractured brickwork. No going that way, he thought with a painful sigh.
Hazy sunlight poured suddenly inward around a silhouetted figure charging toward Gabriel. Gabriel had been a few steps away from a door unexpectedly kicked in. He braced himself against the impact of the sweat-smelling man, painfully catching his momentum. Gabriel pivoted their tangled mass, then shifted hard to the left. The combined and radical velocity was no match for the weakened wall they went crashing through. The wounded soldier in the store jumped backward with a start at the sight and sound of the exploding bricks and plaster. He recognized Gabriel as the dust began to settle. The musty attacker was already unconscious. Gabriel let go of his wiry, greasy hair before standing up.
“We’ve got to call in air support,” Gabriel said over the battle noise from outside.
“We won’t make it,” the soldier said fearfully.
Gabriel shook his head. “We have to try. Do you know where we are?”
“Vaguely.”
Gabriel moved painfully past the blown-out window of the store, keeping his body low enough to avoid getting shot. He crouched beside the other American in the room. He stared out at Gabriel without meeting his gaze. There was no life in his eyes. Gabriel exhaled loudly, graciously closing the dead soldier’s eyes. A few bullets found their way inside the broken store, ending the moment of respectful silence.
The drifting smoke had thickened for a time while the two living Americans were talking. Gabriel had noticed before he had approached the body of the operator. He peered over his shoulder at the gaping storefront, praying the bitter fog held long enough for him to call for help. A chance shot continued to strike against the walls and floor. A passing glance at the other soldier told Gabriel he wasn’t alone in that feeling.
“We won’t make it here,” Gabriel said. “They’ll find us and kill us.”
There were no first responders to call for, no police or emergency workers to request an immediate arrival. With the spray of bullets quickly and desperately intensifying, the idea of law enforcement suddenly seemed laughable. Gabriel focused on the lights and sounds of the active radio he held against him. He wished it was as easy as dialing a phone number, a special hotline to ask for warplanes to blast the enemy into the twilight. In a way, there may have been the ability to do that: a specific frequency nearby pilots were tuned into for just this kind of situation. However, Gabriel didn’t know what it was. All he could do was to scan the band, broadcasting his voice over a handful of frequencies at a time.
“What’s your name,” Gabriel asked the wheezing young man slumped low against a nearby wall.
The soldier took a pained breath before he answered. He was holding the shallow knife wound, his fingers wet and bloodstained. The man who had been beating him hadn’t stabbed him to kill, not immediately. They had just wanted to hurt the American. “Harley, sir,” he answered, his voice strained as he held his bleeding side. “Austin Harley...Private, sir.”
Gabriel nodded. “I’m Gabe-”
There was a noise in the static on the radio. A voice squawked with an American dialect. Gabriel quickly confirmed who he was, explaining the situation and the request for air support. The pilot replied with his call sign once more.
“Warthogs,” Private Harley mumbled, staring at the radio.
Gabriel glanced up at him curiously as he dug for a map in his pockets. With the torn, creased paper unfolded a moment later in his fingers, the anxious corporal did his best to pinpoint their location and the positions that needed to be hit. “Be aware,” Gabriel added after the pilot confirmed the information, “fire will be danger-close. I repeat, danger-close. Unavoidable! Friendlies are dug in and surrounded.”
There was a pause that made Gabriel’s heart skip a beat and start to sink simultaneously. Finally, the pilot’s voice returned over the near-deafening hailstorm of bullets bombarding the building. “We copy danger-close. En-route now. ETA...two minutes.”
“Roger. We’re moving to a nearby corner of the village to get clear. Good-”
Gabriel’s words were silenced by the sound of something heavy ricochetting off the outside facade of the building. Whatever it was sounded bigger than a grenade and had landed close in the upturned soil. Gabriel’s eyes looked to Private Harley and then the wall under the wrecked windows. Both men held the same fearful expression. Both men had the same instinct telling them what the noise belonged to. “Move,” Gabriel said, pushing himself off the floor where he had been sitting. Private Harley was a slow step behind. Gabriel noticed, reaching behind himself to pull the wounded, woozy soldier forward.
Something went pop. That was all Gabriel remembered hearing before finding himself on the floor in the narrow hallway of the small market. The hole he had made with the enemy soldier had expanded in the lost seconds of the immediate past. Gabriel’s chest and side throbbed like never before as he slowly picked himself up. His neck and arms stung with fresh cuts. The bricks of the storefront behind him were reduced to blackened gravel. The body of the radio operator was nowhere to be seen.
Gabriel tried to see through the hot mist of dust and sand burning his eyes. He saw movement at his feet, then movement outside. Austin Harley was trying to stand up. The echo of the explosion was still ringing in both of their ears. Gabriel reached down, wincing as he pulled the shell-shocked private out of the debris. He was already leading the bleeding soldier toward the kicked-open door when Gabriel glimpsed the shadows of a handful of figures stretch across the ruined storefront.
The ground outside tilted left, then right unnaturally in Gabriel’s eyes. He knew it was all in his head. He wondered if he had a concussion. It didn’t matter. The planes were coming. They had to get out of the fire line. Both soldiers weaved dizzily up the narrow path between buildings. Gunfire rattled behind them and from the buildings beyond the main avenue. The fog of muffled silence was fading from their blasted ears.
They were a dozen steps away from a small building at the end of the narrow lane. A wide shadow swept across the ground as something blocked the sunlight sinking slowly into the western sky for a split second. Gabriel squinted into the smoky air. He instantly saw the gleam on the long wings. His ears could barely make out the long snarl of its jet engines. The planes had arrived.
Bullets bit at the sand around their feet, then didn’t. All at once, the endless barrage ceased. Evermore through the thinning, audible haze congesting his hammered eardrums, Gabriel could discern the world around them again. He turned his head at the panicked shouts echoing down the street. But his attention was lost on a sight that gave him goosebumps. Thick plumes of smoldering building fragments, dust, and dirt reached into the air above the rooftops on the far end of the village. The roaring bellow of powerful, twin jet engines lifted his gaze a little higher to behold the A10-Thunderbolt banking lower toward the outcropping of buildings.
Gabriel watched the scene in awe. The ravaging, unstoppable 30mm gatling gun under its heavy, blunt-tipped nose tore across the rooftop armories and improvised turret nests. Sunlight danced across the small explosive that dropped from its left wing. The merciless bubble of earth-breaking noise and fire that followed shook the ground and sprayed the air with fresh flames, smoke, and debris. But Gabriel ignored all of that, watching the Warthog bring the hellish rain that sent the enemy running.
“Wow,” Private Harley said as the strafing airplane veered away to their left, over the crippled wall of the village.
Gabriel blinked in surprise as another Thunderbolt soared swiftly from right to left over the war-infested terrain beyond the buildings and wall. Scattered gunfire from the ground tried to scratch at the armored surfaces of the mighty plane. The brilliant flare from the mouth of its unstoppable cannon was a harbinger of the hell unleashed upon those on the ground.
The unpaved street under their feet rattled again. The heat from a closer explosion swam over the soldiers’ backs. Gabriel glanced behind them to see a third Thunderbolt sweeping low over the village, cutting a diagonal path across the infested village and coming much closer than the first two planes. Gabriel urged himself and the soldier leaning against him forward once more. Airplane shadows crisscrossed the ground as the full squadron arrived over the village. White and black smoke thickened the air again. The heat from more fires stretched up the alleys and streets from the newly bombarded buildings.
New shots rang from behind them, guns hungry for kills sending fresh bullets scuttling through the begrimed air. The two Americans were at the doorway of the lone building tucked against the village wall. Gabriel pushed Private Harley up the short, rickety stairs and into the partially open door hanging loosely on its creaking hinges. Gabriel pivoted quickly around as soon at the private’s weight was off his side. His rifle was already off his shoulder, his finger approaching the trigger. Gabriel found the gunman charing up the street through the smoke. He was a few dozen yards away. And then, he wasn’t. There was only the sound of a body crashing through wood and crippled mortar, though even that was muted by the boar-like call of the passing Thunderbolt.
Gabriel watched the stout fighter with its long, fixed wings move smoothly through the thick trails of smoke and dust. He stood motionless, staring at the tracers that leapt from the end of the cylindrical cannon at the forward point of the plane. Gabriel could not shake his focus from the modern warbird laying waste to those that had so ruthlessly shed so much blood. The planes brought a sense of relief and hope. They encouraged a feeling that his day was done, that the time to rest was at hand. Gabriel’s body had just begun to agree with that thought when something in the corner of his vision tore his attention away from the sky.
He saw the woman in the doorway first, her body shaking, making her quiver as she called out into the firestorm. Through the chaos of blazing weapons and blaring engines, Gabriel could make out the absolute terror emanating in her cries. Suddenly, Gabriel recognized the doorway she was standing in and the ruined building to which it was attached. He suddenly realized it wasn’t the orbiting planes she was frightened of, it wasn’t cries of alarm for her own life the mother Gabriel had seen cowering on a dilapidated staircase was tearfully and frantically extolling out into the world.
Gabriel stepped off the stoop in a daze, aware that something terrible was on the verge of occurring. The woman gripped the doorframe tightly, easing herself inch by petrified inch out of the barely-standing structure. She was trying to get to something. Gabriel’s instincts guessed at what it was. He remembered the father and young son. Then the curling streams of vapor flooding the main avenue cleared just enough to confirm what Gabriel already knew would be there.
The young boy that had been hiding with his family stumbled over the small craters and through the sea of burned and broken debris. Gabriel took a breathless step forward. Where’s the father, Gabriel asked himself. A desperate cascade of rapid rifle blasts from somewhere out of view picked at the steps and stones around the screaming woman. The loathsome gunmen were just shooting at anything they could now, anxious for some kind of victory to claim. It didn’t seem like they had noticed the three-year-old in the smoke yet. Gabriel’s ears perked. Those with the rusty, rattling rifles were no longer the real danger.
A Thunderbolt was making one last attack run. Its engines snarled as the pilot lined his metal bird of war up over the village, guiding it along the main avenue. Gabriel looked back and forth between the boy and the plane soaring just above the rooftops. The smoke choking the street was too thick for the pilot to see him. The dangerous gatling gun was already alive again.
Gabriel didn’t hesitate another heartbeat. He didn’t think or hold back because of the pain and weariness rolling through his body. With only a quick glance over his shoulder, Gabriel tossed his rifle to Private Harley through the gaping doorway before launching into a full sprint. It was a race against an airplane. As he came out of the side street, the noise of the Warthog was almost deafening. He glimpsed bad guys trying to run from the bullets that seemed to seek them out. Their anxious retreat was leading them directly toward the same spot Gabriel was sprinting for.
From the bullet-riddled stoop, the panic-stricken mother watched with despair. An American soldier was rushing out of an alley and into the smoke. Three of the belligerent attackers that had terrorized her village were hurrying up the pulverized avenue. Behind them, an American plane was firing unstoppably into the waves of smoke. All were heading right for her son who stood amidst the chaos pointing with youthful naivety toward the sights in the sky. Tears streamed from her eyes as she pushed herself away from the doorframe, a simple act that took all of her strength. She barely managed a step before she was stopped. A warm, heavy hand gripped her arm. Her husband, bleeding and weak, held his trembling wife tightly. He pulled her back across the the threshold of their home and out of the hellish storm that was unfolding in front of them. The A10 flew past overhead, its engines shaking the walls and floor still intact. A stinging wall of smoke and dirt exploded outward from under the swiftly attacking plane.
The battle-shaken couple sat up off the littered floor of their home, knocked down by the force of the jet’s flight path. All they could see was an ocean of thick, gray and black smoke past their doorway. The sound of mighty, air-smashing engines muted every other noise of the world, from the racing beats of their heavy hearts to the sounds of their despairing sobs. For the mother who had already seen and lost so much, all hope seemed completely taken from her.
The father blinked and gripped his wife tighter. A shadow moved in the smog. Through burning tears the mother watched with held breath a vision she would come to call a miracle. Amidst the fire and death, the smoke and bullets, the American soldier appeared with swift, heavy steps up to their stoop. Gabriel Audaz, out of breath and energy, held the little boy tightly in his arms. Little tears dampened his dusty uniform.
Gabriel jumped out of the firestorm that seemed to be on his heels and through the crippled doorway of the crumbling house. His chest screamed in pain. He wheezed a breath of relief when his body finally came to rest. He had hit the floor, sliding partway across the shallow layer of soot and debris. Gabriel kept the boy he was protecting out of the mess that tore into the cloth around his own skin.
The mother and father appeared above him, smiles as bright and warm as the sun filling his dizzy vision. He smiled back at them, letting the couple take their son back into their own embrace. They spoke words of thanks Gabriel didn’t really understand or hear. His day was done at last. There was nothing else he could manage, including lifting his body off the wrecked floor. Gabriel let his eyelids sink slowly closed, the song of fading airplane engines and tearful joy lulling him to a state of welcomed peace.
Gabriel wheezed as his body slid to a stop against a half-broken wall. He couldn’t tell what the building was or had once been. There was so much smoke. It obscured everything and choked the air. It had been hard enough for Gabriel to breathe that day. With the sultry, gray smoke everywhere, his lungs felt like lead weights and his chest burned like a forest fire.
Gabriel blinked slowly, his eyelids feeling heavy. It was suddenly difficult to resist the urge to keep them closed. A tired and weary part of him was ready to call it in, to lay down and sleep, even if it meant forever. Maybe it would be easier that way. He didn’t know. Gabriel knew if he sat in that position much longer he would surely find out. But he was so tired.
“Gabriel!”
His eyes shot open with a frightened start. The voice that had shouted his name belonged to Isabella. There was no mistaking it. His heart skipped a beat. He had raised the rifle in his hands on pure instinct. For a fraction of a second, Gabriel swore he beheld a vision of his best friend before him. But he blinked again, seeing only the drifting, churning, gray smoke.
And then, he saw a shadow on the curling, ashy mist. Someone was running toward him. He could hear their feet in the sand and gravel. Gabriel’s heart raced. Was it friend or foe? He couldn’t tell. They were almost on him. A dozen paces and a wall of smoke were all that separated the two figures. Suddenly, gun shots sprayed through the brume. A few bullets struck the dusty bricks near Gabriel’s head. The rest pierced and punched through the collapsing man’s body. The smoke cleared around the enemy as he slumped against the remains of the blown-out wall opposite Gabriel.
The trembling, young soldier realized then he wasn’t standing outside of a building, but, instead, within. A weak, bitter cold breeze drifted into the valley moving the cloud of hovering smoke. Gabriel could see the wooden floor under his feet, the tossed and tattered remains of furniture here and there nearby. A flight of stairs led upward to a second floor that was completely.
Gabriel’s eyes lingered on the stairs, on a small family cowering less than halfway up the steps. It was three, fearfully quivering people: a father, whose thick arms were wrapped around the shoulders of his wife and very young son, keeping them close to him. Gabriel watched the father lift his head, his eyes looking worriedly toward the uneasy American. Gabriel wasn’t certain what to do. There was a noise nearby, just beyond the brick wall he was still braced against. Gabriel’s eyes focused on the father in the narrow stairwell. He wasn’t looking at Gabriel.
The gravel and debris crunched loudly under a heavy foot step immediately outside a gap in the sooty brickwork. The din of the motion was nearly muted by the disheartening sound of an automatic rifle being cocked. Gabriel saw the barrel a second later. It was one of the American rifles and it was pointed straight toward the helpless family. Gabriel blinked, his mind in chaos. Is that friend or foe, he asked himself hurriedly. His heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. He looked at the scratched, black rifle, then at the family. Foe, Gabriel decided.
With that, his body sprung into action like a race horse launched from the starting gate; or an attack dog let loose off its leash. The Audaz boys have strong grips, especially Gabriel Audaz, thanks to his military training. His strong hand grabbed the warm rifle, his clammy fingers wrapping around the center of the barrel as he pushed the smooth assault weapon swiftly upward. In the same motion, Gabriel pivoted his foot and shoved his weight in a furious blur against the assailant in the alley. The man shouted something arabic in surprised confusion before the wind was knocked out of him. He stumbled then crashed, with a painful crack, backwards onto the ground. A single shot leapt into the air out of the sleek barrel, squeezed by the finger of the militant man on the ground. Then the gun was on the ground, his wrist under Gabriel’s boot and the bones in his face snapping loudly under the unstoppable force of Gabriel’s fist.
A quick search of the enemy revealed little useful intelligence, other than he had raided the body of another American soldier very recently. Gabriel discovered a silenced pistol tucked into the folds of the unconscious man’s tunic. It was an officer’s weapon. The battalion c/o, thought Gabriel. He grabbed the rifle out of the man’s limp fingers. It matched the gun slung around Gabriel’s shoulder exactly. Gabriel pulled the nearly full clip free from the gun, adding it to his own supplies before tossing the empty rifle into the smoke. He stood up, turning back toward the blasted house. The father on the steps inside nodded thankfully to him. Gabriel smiled, nodding back.
He moved with quick, anxious haste toward the mouth of the alley. Pale sunlight dappled across the torn central avenue of the small village. Bodies were strewn amongst the debris, soldiers and civilians indiscriminately mixed together in the savage scene stretching away before him. There were voices up the street, words spoken proudly, but not in English. A group of al-Qaeda stood over a wounded American. He was sitting upright on his knees but slumped slightly forward. They were laughing at and taunting him. They waved their weapons around in front of him, tapping his cheeks with the barrels of their rifles. Gabriel wanted to save his peer right there, but he had no clear or viable shot. He could have used his rifle, but he wasn’t ready to alert every radical fighter in the village of his presence. Gabriel would use the silenced pistol for as long as possible, but he first needed a better line of sight.
He doubled back up the alley, rounding a corner into another. He crept hurriedly under broken windows of dark, eerily quiet buildings. The echo of the taunting men bounced between the war-riddled structures. Gabriel scaled a ladder propped against a mostly intact house. He climbed to the roof as quickly as possible, worried the rickety rungs would not support him. Wafts of smoke rolled past in the cold wind. Gabriel kept low as he moved with haste toward the front of the building. The roof under his feet creaked softly with each step. He didn’t have time to worry about it then. He had to save his fellow soldier.
Gabriel reached the edge of the roof, peering carefully down toward the street. The smoke was thinner in this part of the village, barely cloaking the scene below. His eyes glanced past the group to the blasted windows and walls across the roadway. Gabriel thought he could see his objective: the radio and its operator sitting against a wall in a partially gutted market.
The wind howled and then faded. Gabriel felt the first shot rattle through the chamber of the silenced pistol. He shifted his aim quickly then fired, the second bullet launching through the hazy air right behind the first. The third was only a heartbeat later. The fourth took an extra second, the gunman closer to the building Gabriel was standing on. Three of the four men were collapsing as Gabriel squeezed the trigger again, the slender bullet rocketing downward as the enemy soldier was trying to react.
The shot had just hit its target when the sound of rotting hinges cried out over the rooftop. Gabriel turned around, spotting a bearded man with an old Russian rifle standing in a small hatchway. He shouted something in Arabic as he raised his weapon. The silenced pistol was still raised at the end of Gabriel’s arms, the man halfway across the rooftop in the sight. Fingers on opposing guns began to move in tandem.
Gabriel inhaled sharply, but not because of a stray shot that took him by surprise. The wooden planks under his feet groaned and cracked. He felt the burn of new, bleeding cuts and scrapes on his arms and face as he sank past jagged ends of freshly broken boards. The interior of the building rushed by, remaining a dizzy blur for a few moments, even after he had landed. The cloud of serrated, shattered roof surrounding him sank like a lead mist when Gabriel’s body hit the floor. It was a painful, graceless landing against cold, dirty concrete.
Gabriel barely had time to push the debris off his back and shoulders, or collect his wits as he sat up straighter against a hard, plaster wall. The Arabic man from the roof shouted again, closer this time. A shadow raced across a milky band of sunlight above Gabriel’s head. Gabriel’s right hand was empty. The butt of the silenced pistol lay amongst the debris, centimeters from his fingertips. He sensed it and grabbed it as the man from the hatch appeared from around a corner across the room.
Gabriel fired once, the furiously shouting man with spit in his beard, letting loose a storm of noisy gunfire. Gabriel ducked, pushing himself off and away from the wall. Bullets peppered the crumbling plaster, tracing an uneven line up the ceiling until the enemy sank lifelessly backwards. Gabriel breathed quickly, his chest and side burning madly. There was no rest for the weary soldier laying on the floor. Somewhere out of sight, a door was kicked open. More shouts rang through the dim interior of the building. Gabriel knew that was his cue to move. He did not hesitate. He was up with a pained gasp and hurrying unsteadily over the littered floor. He was steps away from the front door when his ears retched under the bloodthirsty hail of gunfire that suddenly tore into the walls and floor around him.
Gabriel leaned forward, his weight bombarding the locked door in front of him. He crashed through to stumble down the sandy steps instantly beyond the threshold. Despite the pain that shot outward from his ribs, Gabriel never lost his balance. He pivoted slightly to release another shot from the silenced pistol. The spring in the empty chamber clicked. Damn, thought Gabriel quickly, tossing the spent weapon into the dirt. There was no sense in holding onto what he didn’t need to carry.
It was a dozen paces from the base of the steps to the beaten soldier swaying on his knees in the wide street. Gabriel slid to a stop, this time unable to stay on his feet. Bullets zinged over his head and bit at the ground as he fell and then quickly sat upright. In the same motion, he swung his own rifle off his shoulder, cocking it quickly. With hands almost perfectly steady, his nerves tingling with surging adrenaline, Gabriel raised the sleek, American assault rifle and returned fire. He wasn’t aiming to kill, just to send the enemy hiding long enough to get out of the street. Gabriel was surprised when one of the combatants fell backwards with a gurgled cry.
“Can you move,” Gabriel shouted, looking sidelong at the bruised soldier.
“I...I think so. I don’t know!”
Gabriel squeezed the trigger again, the rifle kicking back as he painted the entryway of the building with another round of steady violence. “We’re going to have to find out,” Gabriel shouted, shouldering his weapon again, the barrel still smoking.
He hoisted the soldier up off his knees. Gabriel gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out from the near-blinding pain that clawed out of his chest as he helped the soldier stand up. He felt wet blood on the man’s uniform. There was a small tear in the side, near his back. It was a stab wound, but Gabriel couldn’t tell how deep it went. He leaned his woozy peer against him, wincing from the added weight on his tender torso. A matter of seconds had gone by since Gabriel had ceased fire. It may have been several seconds too many.
The clattering rattle of the older Russian assault weapons filled the air. Bullets struck the dirt at the their heels or zipped past at breathtakingly close range. Gabriel moved, undeterred, with as much speed as he could muster, ever forward. A shadow appeared in the corner of his vision. The soldier limping along with him saw it too.
“Grenade!”
Gabriel saw it bounce against the remaining section of the storefront. “Go! Jump,” he yelled at the soldier before flinging him through the blown out window. Gabriel dove to the side in the racing second before the palm-sized bomb detonated. A cloud of hot dust and shrapnel exploded outward against the scarred building. Gabriel held his breath, trying to feel any new points of pain in and around the length of his body. He had dove through a narrow gap in the brick wall blackened by a previous explosion.
He stood up, the echo of probing gun fire still resonating from outside. The brief ringing in his ears was quickly subsiding. He braced his hand against the wall on his right. The faded plaster drew his eyes and then his weariness. The radio, operator, and wounded soldier were just on the other side. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder toward the fractured brickwork. No going that way, he thought with a painful sigh.
Hazy sunlight poured suddenly inward around a silhouetted figure charging toward Gabriel. Gabriel had been a few steps away from a door unexpectedly kicked in. He braced himself against the impact of the sweat-smelling man, painfully catching his momentum. Gabriel pivoted their tangled mass, then shifted hard to the left. The combined and radical velocity was no match for the weakened wall they went crashing through. The wounded soldier in the store jumped backward with a start at the sight and sound of the exploding bricks and plaster. He recognized Gabriel as the dust began to settle. The musty attacker was already unconscious. Gabriel let go of his wiry, greasy hair before standing up.
“We’ve got to call in air support,” Gabriel said over the battle noise from outside.
“We won’t make it,” the soldier said fearfully.
Gabriel shook his head. “We have to try. Do you know where we are?”
“Vaguely.”
Gabriel moved painfully past the blown-out window of the store, keeping his body low enough to avoid getting shot. He crouched beside the other American in the room. He stared out at Gabriel without meeting his gaze. There was no life in his eyes. Gabriel exhaled loudly, graciously closing the dead soldier’s eyes. A few bullets found their way inside the broken store, ending the moment of respectful silence.
The drifting smoke had thickened for a time while the two living Americans were talking. Gabriel had noticed before he had approached the body of the operator. He peered over his shoulder at the gaping storefront, praying the bitter fog held long enough for him to call for help. A chance shot continued to strike against the walls and floor. A passing glance at the other soldier told Gabriel he wasn’t alone in that feeling.
“We won’t make it here,” Gabriel said. “They’ll find us and kill us.”
There were no first responders to call for, no police or emergency workers to request an immediate arrival. With the spray of bullets quickly and desperately intensifying, the idea of law enforcement suddenly seemed laughable. Gabriel focused on the lights and sounds of the active radio he held against him. He wished it was as easy as dialing a phone number, a special hotline to ask for warplanes to blast the enemy into the twilight. In a way, there may have been the ability to do that: a specific frequency nearby pilots were tuned into for just this kind of situation. However, Gabriel didn’t know what it was. All he could do was to scan the band, broadcasting his voice over a handful of frequencies at a time.
“What’s your name,” Gabriel asked the wheezing young man slumped low against a nearby wall.
The soldier took a pained breath before he answered. He was holding the shallow knife wound, his fingers wet and bloodstained. The man who had been beating him hadn’t stabbed him to kill, not immediately. They had just wanted to hurt the American. “Harley, sir,” he answered, his voice strained as he held his bleeding side. “Austin Harley...Private, sir.”
Gabriel nodded. “I’m Gabe-”
There was a noise in the static on the radio. A voice squawked with an American dialect. Gabriel quickly confirmed who he was, explaining the situation and the request for air support. The pilot replied with his call sign once more.
“Warthogs,” Private Harley mumbled, staring at the radio.
Gabriel glanced up at him curiously as he dug for a map in his pockets. With the torn, creased paper unfolded a moment later in his fingers, the anxious corporal did his best to pinpoint their location and the positions that needed to be hit. “Be aware,” Gabriel added after the pilot confirmed the information, “fire will be danger-close. I repeat, danger-close. Unavoidable! Friendlies are dug in and surrounded.”
There was a pause that made Gabriel’s heart skip a beat and start to sink simultaneously. Finally, the pilot’s voice returned over the near-deafening hailstorm of bullets bombarding the building. “We copy danger-close. En-route now. ETA...two minutes.”
“Roger. We’re moving to a nearby corner of the village to get clear. Good-”
Gabriel’s words were silenced by the sound of something heavy ricochetting off the outside facade of the building. Whatever it was sounded bigger than a grenade and had landed close in the upturned soil. Gabriel’s eyes looked to Private Harley and then the wall under the wrecked windows. Both men held the same fearful expression. Both men had the same instinct telling them what the noise belonged to. “Move,” Gabriel said, pushing himself off the floor where he had been sitting. Private Harley was a slow step behind. Gabriel noticed, reaching behind himself to pull the wounded, woozy soldier forward.
Something went pop. That was all Gabriel remembered hearing before finding himself on the floor in the narrow hallway of the small market. The hole he had made with the enemy soldier had expanded in the lost seconds of the immediate past. Gabriel’s chest and side throbbed like never before as he slowly picked himself up. His neck and arms stung with fresh cuts. The bricks of the storefront behind him were reduced to blackened gravel. The body of the radio operator was nowhere to be seen.
Gabriel tried to see through the hot mist of dust and sand burning his eyes. He saw movement at his feet, then movement outside. Austin Harley was trying to stand up. The echo of the explosion was still ringing in both of their ears. Gabriel reached down, wincing as he pulled the shell-shocked private out of the debris. He was already leading the bleeding soldier toward the kicked-open door when Gabriel glimpsed the shadows of a handful of figures stretch across the ruined storefront.
The ground outside tilted left, then right unnaturally in Gabriel’s eyes. He knew it was all in his head. He wondered if he had a concussion. It didn’t matter. The planes were coming. They had to get out of the fire line. Both soldiers weaved dizzily up the narrow path between buildings. Gunfire rattled behind them and from the buildings beyond the main avenue. The fog of muffled silence was fading from their blasted ears.
They were a dozen steps away from a small building at the end of the narrow lane. A wide shadow swept across the ground as something blocked the sunlight sinking slowly into the western sky for a split second. Gabriel squinted into the smoky air. He instantly saw the gleam on the long wings. His ears could barely make out the long snarl of its jet engines. The planes had arrived.
Bullets bit at the sand around their feet, then didn’t. All at once, the endless barrage ceased. Evermore through the thinning, audible haze congesting his hammered eardrums, Gabriel could discern the world around them again. He turned his head at the panicked shouts echoing down the street. But his attention was lost on a sight that gave him goosebumps. Thick plumes of smoldering building fragments, dust, and dirt reached into the air above the rooftops on the far end of the village. The roaring bellow of powerful, twin jet engines lifted his gaze a little higher to behold the A10-Thunderbolt banking lower toward the outcropping of buildings.
Gabriel watched the scene in awe. The ravaging, unstoppable 30mm gatling gun under its heavy, blunt-tipped nose tore across the rooftop armories and improvised turret nests. Sunlight danced across the small explosive that dropped from its left wing. The merciless bubble of earth-breaking noise and fire that followed shook the ground and sprayed the air with fresh flames, smoke, and debris. But Gabriel ignored all of that, watching the Warthog bring the hellish rain that sent the enemy running.
“Wow,” Private Harley said as the strafing airplane veered away to their left, over the crippled wall of the village.
Gabriel blinked in surprise as another Thunderbolt soared swiftly from right to left over the war-infested terrain beyond the buildings and wall. Scattered gunfire from the ground tried to scratch at the armored surfaces of the mighty plane. The brilliant flare from the mouth of its unstoppable cannon was a harbinger of the hell unleashed upon those on the ground.
The unpaved street under their feet rattled again. The heat from a closer explosion swam over the soldiers’ backs. Gabriel glanced behind them to see a third Thunderbolt sweeping low over the village, cutting a diagonal path across the infested village and coming much closer than the first two planes. Gabriel urged himself and the soldier leaning against him forward once more. Airplane shadows crisscrossed the ground as the full squadron arrived over the village. White and black smoke thickened the air again. The heat from more fires stretched up the alleys and streets from the newly bombarded buildings.
New shots rang from behind them, guns hungry for kills sending fresh bullets scuttling through the begrimed air. The two Americans were at the doorway of the lone building tucked against the village wall. Gabriel pushed Private Harley up the short, rickety stairs and into the partially open door hanging loosely on its creaking hinges. Gabriel pivoted quickly around as soon at the private’s weight was off his side. His rifle was already off his shoulder, his finger approaching the trigger. Gabriel found the gunman charing up the street through the smoke. He was a few dozen yards away. And then, he wasn’t. There was only the sound of a body crashing through wood and crippled mortar, though even that was muted by the boar-like call of the passing Thunderbolt.
Gabriel watched the stout fighter with its long, fixed wings move smoothly through the thick trails of smoke and dust. He stood motionless, staring at the tracers that leapt from the end of the cylindrical cannon at the forward point of the plane. Gabriel could not shake his focus from the modern warbird laying waste to those that had so ruthlessly shed so much blood. The planes brought a sense of relief and hope. They encouraged a feeling that his day was done, that the time to rest was at hand. Gabriel’s body had just begun to agree with that thought when something in the corner of his vision tore his attention away from the sky.
He saw the woman in the doorway first, her body shaking, making her quiver as she called out into the firestorm. Through the chaos of blazing weapons and blaring engines, Gabriel could make out the absolute terror emanating in her cries. Suddenly, Gabriel recognized the doorway she was standing in and the ruined building to which it was attached. He suddenly realized it wasn’t the orbiting planes she was frightened of, it wasn’t cries of alarm for her own life the mother Gabriel had seen cowering on a dilapidated staircase was tearfully and frantically extolling out into the world.
Gabriel stepped off the stoop in a daze, aware that something terrible was on the verge of occurring. The woman gripped the doorframe tightly, easing herself inch by petrified inch out of the barely-standing structure. She was trying to get to something. Gabriel’s instincts guessed at what it was. He remembered the father and young son. Then the curling streams of vapor flooding the main avenue cleared just enough to confirm what Gabriel already knew would be there.
The young boy that had been hiding with his family stumbled over the small craters and through the sea of burned and broken debris. Gabriel took a breathless step forward. Where’s the father, Gabriel asked himself. A desperate cascade of rapid rifle blasts from somewhere out of view picked at the steps and stones around the screaming woman. The loathsome gunmen were just shooting at anything they could now, anxious for some kind of victory to claim. It didn’t seem like they had noticed the three-year-old in the smoke yet. Gabriel’s ears perked. Those with the rusty, rattling rifles were no longer the real danger.
A Thunderbolt was making one last attack run. Its engines snarled as the pilot lined his metal bird of war up over the village, guiding it along the main avenue. Gabriel looked back and forth between the boy and the plane soaring just above the rooftops. The smoke choking the street was too thick for the pilot to see him. The dangerous gatling gun was already alive again.
Gabriel didn’t hesitate another heartbeat. He didn’t think or hold back because of the pain and weariness rolling through his body. With only a quick glance over his shoulder, Gabriel tossed his rifle to Private Harley through the gaping doorway before launching into a full sprint. It was a race against an airplane. As he came out of the side street, the noise of the Warthog was almost deafening. He glimpsed bad guys trying to run from the bullets that seemed to seek them out. Their anxious retreat was leading them directly toward the same spot Gabriel was sprinting for.
From the bullet-riddled stoop, the panic-stricken mother watched with despair. An American soldier was rushing out of an alley and into the smoke. Three of the belligerent attackers that had terrorized her village were hurrying up the pulverized avenue. Behind them, an American plane was firing unstoppably into the waves of smoke. All were heading right for her son who stood amidst the chaos pointing with youthful naivety toward the sights in the sky. Tears streamed from her eyes as she pushed herself away from the doorframe, a simple act that took all of her strength. She barely managed a step before she was stopped. A warm, heavy hand gripped her arm. Her husband, bleeding and weak, held his trembling wife tightly. He pulled her back across the the threshold of their home and out of the hellish storm that was unfolding in front of them. The A10 flew past overhead, its engines shaking the walls and floor still intact. A stinging wall of smoke and dirt exploded outward from under the swiftly attacking plane.
The battle-shaken couple sat up off the littered floor of their home, knocked down by the force of the jet’s flight path. All they could see was an ocean of thick, gray and black smoke past their doorway. The sound of mighty, air-smashing engines muted every other noise of the world, from the racing beats of their heavy hearts to the sounds of their despairing sobs. For the mother who had already seen and lost so much, all hope seemed completely taken from her.
The father blinked and gripped his wife tighter. A shadow moved in the smog. Through burning tears the mother watched with held breath a vision she would come to call a miracle. Amidst the fire and death, the smoke and bullets, the American soldier appeared with swift, heavy steps up to their stoop. Gabriel Audaz, out of breath and energy, held the little boy tightly in his arms. Little tears dampened his dusty uniform.
Gabriel jumped out of the firestorm that seemed to be on his heels and through the crippled doorway of the crumbling house. His chest screamed in pain. He wheezed a breath of relief when his body finally came to rest. He had hit the floor, sliding partway across the shallow layer of soot and debris. Gabriel kept the boy he was protecting out of the mess that tore into the cloth around his own skin.
The mother and father appeared above him, smiles as bright and warm as the sun filling his dizzy vision. He smiled back at them, letting the couple take their son back into their own embrace. They spoke words of thanks Gabriel didn’t really understand or hear. His day was done at last. There was nothing else he could manage, including lifting his body off the wrecked floor. Gabriel let his eyelids sink slowly closed, the song of fading airplane engines and tearful joy lulling him to a state of welcomed peace.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART ELEVEN
The sun was already low in the sky by the time the luxury sedan came to a gentle stop at the foot of an empty, familiar driveway. Carlos Columbus Audaz gave a half-enthused thanks to the driver before opening the rear passenger door. The mild February air of the Southern California evening washed over his face and arms below his rolled-up sleeves. Pink-orange sunlight stretched over the roof of his house as the sun slowly sank away behind it. The warm band of light reached past him, over the car and quiet street to the house facing his. Carlos turned around and found himself staring at that home.
His eyes were locked onto its brown, stucco facade made almost fuchsia in the waning daylight striking it head-on. Carlos felt something dark inside of him crawling out of deep and hidden recesses. It was bitter and hot, yet his skin seemed to suddenly feel cold. There was a tingling in his nerves and muscles, it was electric like only anger could be. He felt his blood boiling with a strange, irrepressible rage.
“Sir?”
Carlos blinked, dropping his gaze away from the house across the street to look at the driver in the front seat of the car. Carlos was still holding the door open. He was just standing on the curb, lost in a growing storm.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” the driver said, gesturing subtly with a nod of his head toward the door in Carlos’ white-knuckled grip. “It’s nearly dark and all the gas stations outside of the Central District will be closing. Rations and riots, you know?”
Carlos stared at the driver absently, hearing the man’s words but not really listening. “Umm...yeah. Right. Sorry,” Carlos said, closing the door with a firm push. He didn’t watch the sedan pull away. He didn’t even move from the spot on the edge of the curb he’d been standing. His attention snapped immediately back to the building across the street. It was the home of Alex Vale.
Like at his own house, the driveway was empty. Carlos eyed the Vale’s garage as he walked closer, trying to remember how many cars the family had. As far as he could recall, only one. Like most families, the Vales could not afford the multi-vehicle tax levied against the California populace a year or so earlier. Many sold their extra cars, making parents and eager teenagers vie for the valuable time behind a single steering wheel.
Carlos opened the glass front door when there was no response to his ringing of the doorbell. Where is Alex, Carlos asked into the ether as he knocked forcefully on the heavy, cherry-red inner door. He rapped his fist against the thick wood once and then twice more. There was no answer, no sound of muffled movement on the other side of the locked barrier.
Carlos stepped back, glancing up at the second story. Alex has to be here, he thought to himself. There’s no place else for him to go. Carlos bit the inside of his lip as he thought for a long moment. He watched the sunlight dropping slowly off the walls and darkened windows. The curtains were drawn together, obscuring the interior beyond the stained glass. Carlos shuffled his feet off the stoop, moving with a frustrated huff around the side of the house.
He felt a burning scrape on his knee as he scaled the rock wall isolating the Vale’s backyard. He ignored it, not caring about the small tear in his designer pants. At least, not right then. Carlos stumbled through the thick grass of the backyard, trying to stay upright after springing off the wall. Instantly he spotted familiar landmarks from a time that suddenly seemed so far away, a childhood that was more like a dream than an actual period of his life. Carlos’ eyes lifted upward to a window on the second story of the house. Our lives, he corrected himself.
The two men, once boys and friends, had a system for getting in and out of the house in a more non-traditional way. It was discovered accidentally. They were filming a scene for one of countless games and adventures shared during those years. As Carlos gripped the warped, cracked wood of a thick swing seat suspended from a long limb of an ancient tree, he couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He felt like a geek, at least thinking back on his life life from two decades before. There was a rolled-up rope ladder just out of reach on top of the chest-thick branch. Carlos tried to remember what their imaginations had transformed the backyard, tree, and house into as he shook the stored ladder loose.
Was it a temple in Sri Lanka? A booby-trapped tomb in an ancient Amazon shrine? A space station? Carlos actually chuckled, quickly climbing the dried out rope. The coarse fibers seemed to be quietly breathing as his weight moved upward. The small setting surrounded by the unfriendly rock wall had served as the location for many far away, adventurous locales the two boys could never travel to at the time. Carlos took a deep breath once he was atop the thick limb that stretched out toward the weather-stained roof. His mood nearly began to change. He might have found the ability to actually calm himself down. He wiped the thin layer of sweat beading on his brow off with his shirt sleeve. His eyes fixed in on the open window of Alex’s room. The childhood memories making his heart feel lighter were suddenly crushed, snuffed out of existence by that dark feeling crawling out of his soul.
The grin on Carlos’ face was gone by the time his feet touched the cracked shingles layering the rooftop. His knee was bleeding underneath his torn pants, stained, along with his shirt, by the mud and moss spread over the old tree. He was tired and, now, sweaty, adding to his misery and anger. Carlos didn’t look back as one of the old knots holding up the ladder snapped free, too weak from years of wind, weather, and sun to stay intact any longer. The stress of the times had won out.
Alex was home, but he wasn’t in his room. Not at the moment Carlos climbed over the windowsill. It took Carlos a moment to recognize the music circling the cyan-painted walls. It was a soundtrack to a movie Alex had seen a hundred times, maybe more. The instrumental score had always been striking to Carlos and emotionally powerful to Alex, though he never described how or why. Carlos was so focused on the music and taking in the details of the bedroom that had become foreign to him, he nearly missed the sound of water running from a nearby bathroom.
The faucet shut off, leaving only the sound of the music resonating from small speakers placed inconspicuously around the small bedroom. Carlos’ eyes shifted suddenly from a framed, faded and frayed American flag mounted to the wall above Alex’s bed to the doorway. Alex had stopped in mid-stride, surprised by the presence of the man he used to call his best friend.
“You should have knocked,” Alex said, walking across his doorway into his room.
“I did,” said Carlos, tensely.
Alex rubbed his wet hair with the soft, white towel in his hand. “Oh, sorry.”
“You never came back to the office.”
“How long did it take you to notice?”
“You embarrassed me at lunch.”
Alex furrowed his brow. “Really? How horribly tragic for you.”
“Why are you acting like this,” Carlos asked loudly. He could feel the anger boiling inside of himself again. It was coming from pain, an awful sensation of feeling something so solid and stable in his life suddenly changing and tearing apart.
“Carlos, listen to yourself! Do you hear your words at all?” Alex tossed the damp towel onto the footboard of his neatly made bed. “I was told today that everything I’ve done is wrong. The work I have struggled to perfect and make as accurate as possible is worthless because the people in charge-your new friends-want us to tell lies. Lies, Carlos! The Glorious Cause is a sham! It’s become their cause and it’s a trick!”
“Stop it, Alex.”
“Stop what, Carlos?”
“Stop talking like that. Stop talking like one script change is the end of the whole freaking world.” Carlos sighed, turning away from Alex to lean against his friend’s old desk. The thin wood creaked softly under the pressure of his weight. “And why shouldn’t they make changes, you know? It’s their money. They’re in charge. We work for them.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s the thing, Carlos. We don’t. That studio is subsidized. The taxpayers own it. We own it.”
It was Carlos’ turn to shake his head. “That’s funny. Go ahead and tell them that.” Carlos looked up at Alex. “Look, I don’t like this either. But this is my job. And like it or not I’m going to do it. I’ve wanted to make movies my whole life. I’m getting to do that now and I’m not going to stop.”
“At what cost though, Carlos? Look at what you’re giving up.”
Carlos blinked, surprised by Alex’s statement. “What? Poverty? Living from project to project like we used to? No thanks. I’d rather not go back to that. I’ll stick with being fed and provided. I’ll hold onto making the money I earn.”
It took Alex a moment to say anything. His whole body felt numb from Carlos’ words and conflicted logic. His heart sank, frozen in shock. Suddenly, Alex could no longer recognize the man in front of him. Gone was the face of his best friend, the glow of a creative spirit pure and free. That person had been conquered, replaced by a sacked soul wrapped in chains. The figure before him, invading his space, was a hollow shell to be filled by the whim and will of the those more powerful than himself.
Finally, Alex found his voice again, though only to say, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll come back. Say you’ll help me finish this movie. Say you’ll help me make the best of it. Let’s do this. Then...then we’ll change the world.”
Alex’s eyes dropped, saddened. “If we haven’t completely changed before then.”
“We won’t. Come back and you’ll see we won’t.”
“I can’t,” Alex said, still looking down at the carpet. His voice was soft and unsteady. It was hard to feel the floor under his feet. The whole world felt like it was turning upside down.
“What?”
Alex closed his eyes. “I can’t,” he said again, louder this time. “I can’t follow you this time.”
Carlos slammed his fist against the top of the desk. Everything on the smooth, dusty surface jumped and rattled. He couldn’t explain why he did it, only that he had. He saw his fist more after the fact, as if it had been an instinctive impulse. He saw his knuckles change from white to red and back again as the impact traveled through his hand and up his arm, as his muscles tensed tighter. It caught Alex’s attention as well. Carlos looked over, their gazes locking instantly. Both were a mess of anger and sadness.
“Why, Alex? You’re being selfish!”
Alex narrowed his eyes. He exhaled slowly, letting his shoulders sag as he dropped his defensive posture. “I guess so,” he said, almost at a mumble, taking his eyes away from Carlos’ gaze.
“You aren’t thinking about what you’re doing. You aren’t thinking about me...or the story. You aren’t thinking about you...” Carlos glanced around the room, his eyes rolling to take in everything from the floor to the ceiling. “...your family,” he continued.
Alex looked up at Carlos sharply. “My family?” Alex shook his head. “You truly are lost, aren’t you? I’m an only child. Both my parents grew up in foster homes. They built their life together from scratch all by themselves. And, they died in a car crash a month before we came back.”
Carlos stood stunned, suddenly remembering. He felt the air rush out of his lungs, Alex’s words striking him like a steel bar.
“You stayed in Toronto to finish things up when I left. Your family, the neighbors, old friends and some of their families all came to the funeral. It was a tremendous feeling of support. Only...you weren’t there.”
Carlos finally looked away from Alex. “I’m sorry,” he said glumly.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. And no apology is going to make me change my mind. You have already made up yours,” Alex said sternly. He turned away from Carlos, walking the few steps separating the corner of his bed and his open closet.
There was a duffle bag on the floor, it’s zip-top still open, revealing the clothes folded and tightly tucked within the thick, mesh fabric of the heavy luggage. Alex bent over to reach for the soft straps. Carlos grabbed his left wrist, holding it firmly but non-threateningly. “Alex, no. Stop.”
Alex turned, his arm still held by Carlos. Alex looked, first down at his trapped wrist, then up at the face of his oldest friend. There was desperation there, mixed in the storm of defiant anger. “No, Carlos. I have to go.”
“Alex, stop,” Carlos said, tightening his grip on Alex.
Alex could feel the pressure building at the bottom of his arm. “Carlos, let go. I’m leaving and-”
“Alex, stop!” Carlos stared undeterred at Alex, his fingers strangling Alex’s wrist. The skin was starting to tingle and burn under Carlos’ steely and sweaty grip.
“Carlos, let go.”
“No, Alex.”
“Carlos, let go!”
“No!”
Alex pulled at his arm, trying to free himself. “Carlos, this isn’t funny! Let go, now!” He yanked at his arm again. “That hurts! Let go!”
“No!”
“Carlos,” Alex protested, pushing his friend’s shoulder in another attempt to get his arm loose from the threatening hold.
The forceful nudge against his shoulder was the final snap. Already on the edge of the darkness that had been swelling inside of himself, Carlos became completely lost within it. He felt his body, every muscle and nerve to every artery and vein, become consumed in a flash-boil of dark and selfish rage. It was an instinct of hate that Carlos finally surrendered to which propelled his unoccupied hand, now balled into a mallet-like fist, through the dim light of the bedroom.
Alex didn’t see it coming. In all the world and space he never suspected his best friend would become violent with him. Alex’s vision flashed white then swam in a blurred and jarring dizziness. A rush of maddening pain exploded outward through his body from the surprise impact on the side of his face. Alex blinked, trying to steady his balance and spinning vision. He was looking down at his bed, past his outstretched arm still locked in Carlos’ grip. A drop of blood from the swollen corner of his mouth landed lightly near his elbow.
Alex watched the tiny, crimson rivulet staining the pale skin of his arm. It had only been a few seconds since Carlos had punched him. Alex didn’t look up at the man holding him hostage. He took a deep breath, pulling in and focusing the feeling of the pain surging up and down his body. He used it as strength, understanding now that everything that once was sacred was now destroyed.
With a surge of raw energy, Alex shoved instead of pulled. He used Carlos’ weight and stance against him, launching the two of them unsteadily backwards until they crashed ferociously into Alex’s desk. Carlos shouted in pain, landing another punch into Alex, this time in his side. Alex groaned but fought back, pulling back and then shoving them both against the wall. The plaster cracked, caving slightly inward in a shallow, Carlos-shaped crater. The two friends had rapidly dissolved into adversaries. They struggled and fought with bitter passion around the room, destroying the things that filled it as they went. It was the undoing of the familiar, the tearing down of a world once shared.
The battle reached its climax. Bruised and bleeding, but each holding firm, Carlos and Alex spun around in a tight circle on the littered floor desperately searching for the single advantage each of them needed. The two opposing forces met again in a combustible impact that drove them sideways through the room. Glass and wood exploded under their unstoppable momentum as the two young men burst through Alex’s bedroom window. The two tattered bodies rolled painfully and uncontrollably onto the coarse, abrasive shingles. They finally separated as they each tumbled down the slop of the roof, each trying to find something to grip in a blind panic of motion.
Carlos barely found the tree limb. Alex managed a brief hold on the rusted gutter. It didn’t last. The weathered and weakened metal almost instantly gave way under his weight, sending him falling to the dried grass below. Carlos wasn’t far behind. He had barely heard Alex land with a winded grunt against the ground before the bobbing tree branch snapped near his fingers. The old wood had no strength at its end, the bark shearing loudly free from the rest of the stout tree. It sent Carlos to the grass two dozen feet below in a shower of dry splinters.
For a long time the two young men just laid there in the cool, dry lawn under the tree. Their chests heaved with each quick, pained and shallow breath they took. Leaves rained down from the disturbed solitude of the thick, spidery branches. Carlos blinked, brushing one of the crisp, yellowed leaves aside when it hit his face. Mastering his strength, Carlos rolled over and upright onto his knees. His vision spun for a moment as he scanned the yard around him. Alex was still laying on the ground a few feet away. The nightmarish anger had not gone. Carlos could still feel it under his skin, pushing him through the grass on his hands and knees.
Alex could hear Carlos moving. He sensed him coming closer. Still, he only laid there, feeling the evening wind blow over his hot, bruised face. He felt it cooling the thin stream of blood slowly sliding down from his mouth. He was done fighting. Even when Carlos came into view, the angry grimace on his face washing away any of the old light and idealism his friend once eschewed, Alex didn’t move. His eyes considered the other man’s presence before returning to stare at the darkening sky. A few stars had begun to appear out of the deepening violet.
Carlos noticed the lack of response from Alex. He glared hatefully, climbing on top of Alex’s torso. With one hand he gripped Alex’s already torn shirt, pulling him upward. His other hand was already in a fist, his swollen knuckles white and ready to strike.
“Go ahead,” Alex said, his voice a tired, coarse whisper. “If you think you have to, go ahead. Do it.”
Carlos stayed frozen, staring at Alex through eyes that did not feel like his own.
“What are you doing, Carlos,” Alex asked. He managed a chuckle, suddenly aware of the gravity of their situation. He suddenly understood his place. Alex was awake in a world half-asleep. He realized then, for the first time, he wasn’t just seeing the stars appear through the haze in the sky. “What are you so afraid of that you have to destroy me?”
Carlos reared his fist back, ready to bash his tingling hand into the younger man’s face. But he stopped. His nostrils flared. His lungs burned with the rapid breaths he couldn’t stop taking. Yet, even with all the anger and hate churning away inside him, Carlos could not move his arm any more. He wanted to, a part of himself even felt he had to. Carlos turned his head slightly, his eyes peering back to look at his fist hovering in the air.
Alex watched wordlessly in the seconds that passed until Carlos finally dropped his tensed arm, his swollen fingers opening. He loosened and then let go of the hold on Alex’s shirt, dropping his back into the dry, sandy-green turf. Carlos stood up, looming over his old friend. “I’m not afraid. I’m not the one running away.”
Carlos swallowed his anger and stepped over Alex without another look back. His thoughts and feelings where in a whirlwind he couldn’t figure out how to escape. His only clear notion was to get out of that yard and away from Alex. He had managed only a few steps when the voice he had always known to belong to his best friend called out to him for the last time.
“Are you sure, Carlos? Aren’t we both running away from something?”
Carlos didn’t answer. He rounded the corner of the house hurriedly, making his way back toward the rock wall. Alex didn’t watch him leave. He kept his eyes on the sky, watching as more stars appeared out of the city haze. He wasn’t that startled when the ropes holding up the old swing to the tree finally gave way. The small, wooden bench split in two when it hit the ground and settled into the grass and dust.
The sun was already low in the sky by the time the luxury sedan came to a gentle stop at the foot of an empty, familiar driveway. Carlos Columbus Audaz gave a half-enthused thanks to the driver before opening the rear passenger door. The mild February air of the Southern California evening washed over his face and arms below his rolled-up sleeves. Pink-orange sunlight stretched over the roof of his house as the sun slowly sank away behind it. The warm band of light reached past him, over the car and quiet street to the house facing his. Carlos turned around and found himself staring at that home.
His eyes were locked onto its brown, stucco facade made almost fuchsia in the waning daylight striking it head-on. Carlos felt something dark inside of him crawling out of deep and hidden recesses. It was bitter and hot, yet his skin seemed to suddenly feel cold. There was a tingling in his nerves and muscles, it was electric like only anger could be. He felt his blood boiling with a strange, irrepressible rage.
“Sir?”
Carlos blinked, dropping his gaze away from the house across the street to look at the driver in the front seat of the car. Carlos was still holding the door open. He was just standing on the curb, lost in a growing storm.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” the driver said, gesturing subtly with a nod of his head toward the door in Carlos’ white-knuckled grip. “It’s nearly dark and all the gas stations outside of the Central District will be closing. Rations and riots, you know?”
Carlos stared at the driver absently, hearing the man’s words but not really listening. “Umm...yeah. Right. Sorry,” Carlos said, closing the door with a firm push. He didn’t watch the sedan pull away. He didn’t even move from the spot on the edge of the curb he’d been standing. His attention snapped immediately back to the building across the street. It was the home of Alex Vale.
Like at his own house, the driveway was empty. Carlos eyed the Vale’s garage as he walked closer, trying to remember how many cars the family had. As far as he could recall, only one. Like most families, the Vales could not afford the multi-vehicle tax levied against the California populace a year or so earlier. Many sold their extra cars, making parents and eager teenagers vie for the valuable time behind a single steering wheel.
Carlos opened the glass front door when there was no response to his ringing of the doorbell. Where is Alex, Carlos asked into the ether as he knocked forcefully on the heavy, cherry-red inner door. He rapped his fist against the thick wood once and then twice more. There was no answer, no sound of muffled movement on the other side of the locked barrier.
Carlos stepped back, glancing up at the second story. Alex has to be here, he thought to himself. There’s no place else for him to go. Carlos bit the inside of his lip as he thought for a long moment. He watched the sunlight dropping slowly off the walls and darkened windows. The curtains were drawn together, obscuring the interior beyond the stained glass. Carlos shuffled his feet off the stoop, moving with a frustrated huff around the side of the house.
He felt a burning scrape on his knee as he scaled the rock wall isolating the Vale’s backyard. He ignored it, not caring about the small tear in his designer pants. At least, not right then. Carlos stumbled through the thick grass of the backyard, trying to stay upright after springing off the wall. Instantly he spotted familiar landmarks from a time that suddenly seemed so far away, a childhood that was more like a dream than an actual period of his life. Carlos’ eyes lifted upward to a window on the second story of the house. Our lives, he corrected himself.
The two men, once boys and friends, had a system for getting in and out of the house in a more non-traditional way. It was discovered accidentally. They were filming a scene for one of countless games and adventures shared during those years. As Carlos gripped the warped, cracked wood of a thick swing seat suspended from a long limb of an ancient tree, he couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He felt like a geek, at least thinking back on his life life from two decades before. There was a rolled-up rope ladder just out of reach on top of the chest-thick branch. Carlos tried to remember what their imaginations had transformed the backyard, tree, and house into as he shook the stored ladder loose.
Was it a temple in Sri Lanka? A booby-trapped tomb in an ancient Amazon shrine? A space station? Carlos actually chuckled, quickly climbing the dried out rope. The coarse fibers seemed to be quietly breathing as his weight moved upward. The small setting surrounded by the unfriendly rock wall had served as the location for many far away, adventurous locales the two boys could never travel to at the time. Carlos took a deep breath once he was atop the thick limb that stretched out toward the weather-stained roof. His mood nearly began to change. He might have found the ability to actually calm himself down. He wiped the thin layer of sweat beading on his brow off with his shirt sleeve. His eyes fixed in on the open window of Alex’s room. The childhood memories making his heart feel lighter were suddenly crushed, snuffed out of existence by that dark feeling crawling out of his soul.
The grin on Carlos’ face was gone by the time his feet touched the cracked shingles layering the rooftop. His knee was bleeding underneath his torn pants, stained, along with his shirt, by the mud and moss spread over the old tree. He was tired and, now, sweaty, adding to his misery and anger. Carlos didn’t look back as one of the old knots holding up the ladder snapped free, too weak from years of wind, weather, and sun to stay intact any longer. The stress of the times had won out.
Alex was home, but he wasn’t in his room. Not at the moment Carlos climbed over the windowsill. It took Carlos a moment to recognize the music circling the cyan-painted walls. It was a soundtrack to a movie Alex had seen a hundred times, maybe more. The instrumental score had always been striking to Carlos and emotionally powerful to Alex, though he never described how or why. Carlos was so focused on the music and taking in the details of the bedroom that had become foreign to him, he nearly missed the sound of water running from a nearby bathroom.
The faucet shut off, leaving only the sound of the music resonating from small speakers placed inconspicuously around the small bedroom. Carlos’ eyes shifted suddenly from a framed, faded and frayed American flag mounted to the wall above Alex’s bed to the doorway. Alex had stopped in mid-stride, surprised by the presence of the man he used to call his best friend.
“You should have knocked,” Alex said, walking across his doorway into his room.
“I did,” said Carlos, tensely.
Alex rubbed his wet hair with the soft, white towel in his hand. “Oh, sorry.”
“You never came back to the office.”
“How long did it take you to notice?”
“You embarrassed me at lunch.”
Alex furrowed his brow. “Really? How horribly tragic for you.”
“Why are you acting like this,” Carlos asked loudly. He could feel the anger boiling inside of himself again. It was coming from pain, an awful sensation of feeling something so solid and stable in his life suddenly changing and tearing apart.
“Carlos, listen to yourself! Do you hear your words at all?” Alex tossed the damp towel onto the footboard of his neatly made bed. “I was told today that everything I’ve done is wrong. The work I have struggled to perfect and make as accurate as possible is worthless because the people in charge-your new friends-want us to tell lies. Lies, Carlos! The Glorious Cause is a sham! It’s become their cause and it’s a trick!”
“Stop it, Alex.”
“Stop what, Carlos?”
“Stop talking like that. Stop talking like one script change is the end of the whole freaking world.” Carlos sighed, turning away from Alex to lean against his friend’s old desk. The thin wood creaked softly under the pressure of his weight. “And why shouldn’t they make changes, you know? It’s their money. They’re in charge. We work for them.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s the thing, Carlos. We don’t. That studio is subsidized. The taxpayers own it. We own it.”
It was Carlos’ turn to shake his head. “That’s funny. Go ahead and tell them that.” Carlos looked up at Alex. “Look, I don’t like this either. But this is my job. And like it or not I’m going to do it. I’ve wanted to make movies my whole life. I’m getting to do that now and I’m not going to stop.”
“At what cost though, Carlos? Look at what you’re giving up.”
Carlos blinked, surprised by Alex’s statement. “What? Poverty? Living from project to project like we used to? No thanks. I’d rather not go back to that. I’ll stick with being fed and provided. I’ll hold onto making the money I earn.”
It took Alex a moment to say anything. His whole body felt numb from Carlos’ words and conflicted logic. His heart sank, frozen in shock. Suddenly, Alex could no longer recognize the man in front of him. Gone was the face of his best friend, the glow of a creative spirit pure and free. That person had been conquered, replaced by a sacked soul wrapped in chains. The figure before him, invading his space, was a hollow shell to be filled by the whim and will of the those more powerful than himself.
Finally, Alex found his voice again, though only to say, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll come back. Say you’ll help me finish this movie. Say you’ll help me make the best of it. Let’s do this. Then...then we’ll change the world.”
Alex’s eyes dropped, saddened. “If we haven’t completely changed before then.”
“We won’t. Come back and you’ll see we won’t.”
“I can’t,” Alex said, still looking down at the carpet. His voice was soft and unsteady. It was hard to feel the floor under his feet. The whole world felt like it was turning upside down.
“What?”
Alex closed his eyes. “I can’t,” he said again, louder this time. “I can’t follow you this time.”
Carlos slammed his fist against the top of the desk. Everything on the smooth, dusty surface jumped and rattled. He couldn’t explain why he did it, only that he had. He saw his fist more after the fact, as if it had been an instinctive impulse. He saw his knuckles change from white to red and back again as the impact traveled through his hand and up his arm, as his muscles tensed tighter. It caught Alex’s attention as well. Carlos looked over, their gazes locking instantly. Both were a mess of anger and sadness.
“Why, Alex? You’re being selfish!”
Alex narrowed his eyes. He exhaled slowly, letting his shoulders sag as he dropped his defensive posture. “I guess so,” he said, almost at a mumble, taking his eyes away from Carlos’ gaze.
“You aren’t thinking about what you’re doing. You aren’t thinking about me...or the story. You aren’t thinking about you...” Carlos glanced around the room, his eyes rolling to take in everything from the floor to the ceiling. “...your family,” he continued.
Alex looked up at Carlos sharply. “My family?” Alex shook his head. “You truly are lost, aren’t you? I’m an only child. Both my parents grew up in foster homes. They built their life together from scratch all by themselves. And, they died in a car crash a month before we came back.”
Carlos stood stunned, suddenly remembering. He felt the air rush out of his lungs, Alex’s words striking him like a steel bar.
“You stayed in Toronto to finish things up when I left. Your family, the neighbors, old friends and some of their families all came to the funeral. It was a tremendous feeling of support. Only...you weren’t there.”
Carlos finally looked away from Alex. “I’m sorry,” he said glumly.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. And no apology is going to make me change my mind. You have already made up yours,” Alex said sternly. He turned away from Carlos, walking the few steps separating the corner of his bed and his open closet.
There was a duffle bag on the floor, it’s zip-top still open, revealing the clothes folded and tightly tucked within the thick, mesh fabric of the heavy luggage. Alex bent over to reach for the soft straps. Carlos grabbed his left wrist, holding it firmly but non-threateningly. “Alex, no. Stop.”
Alex turned, his arm still held by Carlos. Alex looked, first down at his trapped wrist, then up at the face of his oldest friend. There was desperation there, mixed in the storm of defiant anger. “No, Carlos. I have to go.”
“Alex, stop,” Carlos said, tightening his grip on Alex.
Alex could feel the pressure building at the bottom of his arm. “Carlos, let go. I’m leaving and-”
“Alex, stop!” Carlos stared undeterred at Alex, his fingers strangling Alex’s wrist. The skin was starting to tingle and burn under Carlos’ steely and sweaty grip.
“Carlos, let go.”
“No, Alex.”
“Carlos, let go!”
“No!”
Alex pulled at his arm, trying to free himself. “Carlos, this isn’t funny! Let go, now!” He yanked at his arm again. “That hurts! Let go!”
“No!”
“Carlos,” Alex protested, pushing his friend’s shoulder in another attempt to get his arm loose from the threatening hold.
The forceful nudge against his shoulder was the final snap. Already on the edge of the darkness that had been swelling inside of himself, Carlos became completely lost within it. He felt his body, every muscle and nerve to every artery and vein, become consumed in a flash-boil of dark and selfish rage. It was an instinct of hate that Carlos finally surrendered to which propelled his unoccupied hand, now balled into a mallet-like fist, through the dim light of the bedroom.
Alex didn’t see it coming. In all the world and space he never suspected his best friend would become violent with him. Alex’s vision flashed white then swam in a blurred and jarring dizziness. A rush of maddening pain exploded outward through his body from the surprise impact on the side of his face. Alex blinked, trying to steady his balance and spinning vision. He was looking down at his bed, past his outstretched arm still locked in Carlos’ grip. A drop of blood from the swollen corner of his mouth landed lightly near his elbow.
Alex watched the tiny, crimson rivulet staining the pale skin of his arm. It had only been a few seconds since Carlos had punched him. Alex didn’t look up at the man holding him hostage. He took a deep breath, pulling in and focusing the feeling of the pain surging up and down his body. He used it as strength, understanding now that everything that once was sacred was now destroyed.
With a surge of raw energy, Alex shoved instead of pulled. He used Carlos’ weight and stance against him, launching the two of them unsteadily backwards until they crashed ferociously into Alex’s desk. Carlos shouted in pain, landing another punch into Alex, this time in his side. Alex groaned but fought back, pulling back and then shoving them both against the wall. The plaster cracked, caving slightly inward in a shallow, Carlos-shaped crater. The two friends had rapidly dissolved into adversaries. They struggled and fought with bitter passion around the room, destroying the things that filled it as they went. It was the undoing of the familiar, the tearing down of a world once shared.
The battle reached its climax. Bruised and bleeding, but each holding firm, Carlos and Alex spun around in a tight circle on the littered floor desperately searching for the single advantage each of them needed. The two opposing forces met again in a combustible impact that drove them sideways through the room. Glass and wood exploded under their unstoppable momentum as the two young men burst through Alex’s bedroom window. The two tattered bodies rolled painfully and uncontrollably onto the coarse, abrasive shingles. They finally separated as they each tumbled down the slop of the roof, each trying to find something to grip in a blind panic of motion.
Carlos barely found the tree limb. Alex managed a brief hold on the rusted gutter. It didn’t last. The weathered and weakened metal almost instantly gave way under his weight, sending him falling to the dried grass below. Carlos wasn’t far behind. He had barely heard Alex land with a winded grunt against the ground before the bobbing tree branch snapped near his fingers. The old wood had no strength at its end, the bark shearing loudly free from the rest of the stout tree. It sent Carlos to the grass two dozen feet below in a shower of dry splinters.
For a long time the two young men just laid there in the cool, dry lawn under the tree. Their chests heaved with each quick, pained and shallow breath they took. Leaves rained down from the disturbed solitude of the thick, spidery branches. Carlos blinked, brushing one of the crisp, yellowed leaves aside when it hit his face. Mastering his strength, Carlos rolled over and upright onto his knees. His vision spun for a moment as he scanned the yard around him. Alex was still laying on the ground a few feet away. The nightmarish anger had not gone. Carlos could still feel it under his skin, pushing him through the grass on his hands and knees.
Alex could hear Carlos moving. He sensed him coming closer. Still, he only laid there, feeling the evening wind blow over his hot, bruised face. He felt it cooling the thin stream of blood slowly sliding down from his mouth. He was done fighting. Even when Carlos came into view, the angry grimace on his face washing away any of the old light and idealism his friend once eschewed, Alex didn’t move. His eyes considered the other man’s presence before returning to stare at the darkening sky. A few stars had begun to appear out of the deepening violet.
Carlos noticed the lack of response from Alex. He glared hatefully, climbing on top of Alex’s torso. With one hand he gripped Alex’s already torn shirt, pulling him upward. His other hand was already in a fist, his swollen knuckles white and ready to strike.
“Go ahead,” Alex said, his voice a tired, coarse whisper. “If you think you have to, go ahead. Do it.”
Carlos stayed frozen, staring at Alex through eyes that did not feel like his own.
“What are you doing, Carlos,” Alex asked. He managed a chuckle, suddenly aware of the gravity of their situation. He suddenly understood his place. Alex was awake in a world half-asleep. He realized then, for the first time, he wasn’t just seeing the stars appear through the haze in the sky. “What are you so afraid of that you have to destroy me?”
Carlos reared his fist back, ready to bash his tingling hand into the younger man’s face. But he stopped. His nostrils flared. His lungs burned with the rapid breaths he couldn’t stop taking. Yet, even with all the anger and hate churning away inside him, Carlos could not move his arm any more. He wanted to, a part of himself even felt he had to. Carlos turned his head slightly, his eyes peering back to look at his fist hovering in the air.
Alex watched wordlessly in the seconds that passed until Carlos finally dropped his tensed arm, his swollen fingers opening. He loosened and then let go of the hold on Alex’s shirt, dropping his back into the dry, sandy-green turf. Carlos stood up, looming over his old friend. “I’m not afraid. I’m not the one running away.”
Carlos swallowed his anger and stepped over Alex without another look back. His thoughts and feelings where in a whirlwind he couldn’t figure out how to escape. His only clear notion was to get out of that yard and away from Alex. He had managed only a few steps when the voice he had always known to belong to his best friend called out to him for the last time.
“Are you sure, Carlos? Aren’t we both running away from something?”
Carlos didn’t answer. He rounded the corner of the house hurriedly, making his way back toward the rock wall. Alex didn’t watch him leave. He kept his eyes on the sky, watching as more stars appeared out of the city haze. He wasn’t that startled when the ropes holding up the old swing to the tree finally gave way. The small, wooden bench split in two when it hit the ground and settled into the grass and dust.
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