The Rabid (Book 1) (28 page)

42

The
HQ
is situated inside the main parking lot of a nearby DART station. They’ve wrapped the perimeter in razor wire and have placed guard posts along each expanse; sandbags and mounted machine guns not unlike the one currently attached to the top of our Humvee. There are three long green half-tube shaped tents in the middle of it all, their flaps bustling with men in uniform trotting in and out, talking into radios, and flipping through manila folders. Two soldiers wearing exterior body armor, khaki fatigues, and low riding boonie hats across black Oakley’s, grant us access through a cattle gate. They give a cursory glance through the windows before waving us on, their modified rifles sitting tight against their chest.

“Delta boys,”
Tores mumbles.

“Pain in my ass is what they are.”
Stiles responds.

Cad
dy cornered to the
HQ,
is the smoldering ruins of the Dallas World Aquarium. Visible to the north on the others side of a mostly intact freeway is the bombed out structure of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Two city landmarks reduced to their foundations in a single night. I remember viewing the skyline from the balcony of our motel, I remember the towers glimmering in the sunlight, rising like giants, and now they are gone. The landscape now rests as flat and gloomy as a North Dakota winter.

We pull up behind a row of jeeps and other military transports.

“Honey, we’re home.” Stiles chimes, kicking open his door with a grunt.

“
Ya’ll go on first.” The gunner instructs us.

Bethany nudges Momma. “Hey, we’re here.”

We file out onto the blacktop, stretching our legs and popping our backs, and squinting against the sunlight. The air smells of gasoline and rubber. If I didn’t know better, from the sights and sounds, I’d think we were inside some military base on some distant Asian peninsula hashing out a conflict over radar blips and oil prices.

But, we’re not.

This is America, stripped down to the bones.

“
Tores, take our guests to the mess hall.”

“Yes sir. Folks, if you will, follow me.”

I usher Momma and Bethany ahead of me, looking back over my shoulder as we move towards the small tent village. They’re pulling the man in the cuffs from the backseat of the second Humvee. They jerk him by his collar and twist him around violently; planting him face forward across the hood, while Stiles speaks something into his shoulder mounted radio. I finger the cross necklace in my pocket, the curiosity rustling around inside my belly like hunger pains, only to satisfy these I’d have to risk my safety and the safety of my family. I can’t justify that. It’s an itch that’s going to have to remain unscratched, no matter how crazy it threatens to drive me.

The answers will find you.

“Come on, Tim,” Bethany notices my point of focus and pulls me along. “Not our business. Let’s just eat and get out of here, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

The mess hall is three picnic tables with fold out chairs and a cafeteria style serving area. On the other side of the mess line stands a Hispanic man in a white chef’s coat with a military insignia made up of spears and swords stitched across his left pec. Above that is his name badge, and a brass button that I assume signifies some sort of excellence in service on his part.

“Hey
, Ruiz, take care of these folks.” Tores shouts before patting me on the shoulder and making a hasty retreat.

“Aye
aye,” Ruiz drones with a mock salute, not even bothering to look up from the tins of food sitting before him. “So what’ll you have?” He twirls a spatula through a sea of pale meat and sauce. There’s a tin of stale looking biscuits, one of green beans (more juice than beans), another of soggy fried okra, and a salad made up of nothing more than iceberg lettuce and pitiful shreds of carrot.

“I guess a little of everything.” Despite the sad
presentation, the prospect of a four-course meal whets my pallet.

Bethany and Momma order the same thing. We shuffle down the line. Ruiz moves the plates along in a neat little line, throwing rough estimates of meat, veggies, and carbs alongside one another with the same worn spatula. He unceremoniously hands off our food and goes about his business, leaving us to find our way.

“We just sit anywhere?” Bethany asks me as we step away from the line.

“Guess so.” I turn back to Ruiz. “Hey, can we get some water too please?”

Ruiz sighs and drops the spatula back into the meat. He goes to a table behind him and fills three paper cups with a half empty pitcher and sets them on top of the glass. I retrieve them for us, pinching them together with my thumb, middle, and index fingers.

The room is mostly empty aside from a soldier sipping coffee in one of the far corners
, while scribbling something on a legal pad. A large radio rests on the table beside his hand.

We scoot our chairs out and plop down. Bethany and
I dig in immediately, attacking our plates with animalistic ferocity. Momma stabs aimlessly at her food, nibbling and releasing various morsels.

“Come on
, Momma, eat.” I prod, scarfing down a mixture of mystery meat and green beans.

“Oh, now you care what happens to me, how quaint.
” The circles under her eyes make her look like she'd just woken up from a long night of partying. She's down twenty pounds easy since starting on the pills.

“
Can we not do this?”

“
Do what, I'm not doing anything, just being honest. One of us has to, right?”

“
So you think I don't care about you? After dragging you across the state, after coddling you all this time, you're really going to say that?”

“
Sure didn't seem like you were doing much dragging or coddling when you and your sister decided to leave me in a collapsing motel room.” She drops her fork on the table and turns her head towards me, propping her temple across her closed fists. She's vacant, the emotion in her voice is nowhere to be found on her face; the pills are working overtime.

“
First of all, that was my call, Bethany had nothing to do with it. Second, you were going to get us all killed over a pair of shoes you couldn't find because you were too high on that trash.”

“
Trash you started me on.”

“
Oh, so now I'm responsible for your level of self-control? The parent child roles really have shifted.” I throw my fork down too, my appetite suddenly absent. The flaps covering the entrance ripple in the breeze, collapsing inward and allowing the sunlight to bend against the blacktop, setting off a diamond like shimmer. “I got you those pills to get you over the hump, to get you back on your feet. What I didn't get them for, was so that you could check out.”

She shakes her head and turns from me, brushing her hair back behind her ears to keep it from resting in her food.
“I haven't checked out, I'm still here.”

“
Yeah, well it hasn't seemed that way for the past month.”

She shrugs.
“What do you want me to say?”

“
I don't want you to say anything. We just want you back.”

“
Yeah...well...”

“
I remember when I was little; I thought that you were the prettiest lady I'd ever seen.”

“
Thought is the key word there I suppose.”

“
I see you, Momma, but I don't recognize what I'm looking at half the time. You're never there anymore. All you do is take the pills and sleep, while we, your kids, fight to keep us alive.”

“
I see what you two have done, picking up my slack, and it means a lot. You guys are getting older now, and with the way things are, there's no guarantee I'm going to be around as long as most parents would like to be. The more independent you can be, the better.”

“
Momma, I'm not asking you to take care of me. I don't think Bethany is either. We all realize the rules have changed and that leaning on you isn't fair. We all know how quickly things can change.  But we should all do what's in our power to do. It's not fair to make us watch you kill yourself.”

Bethany sniffs away a batch of tears. Momma reaches over and rubs the back of her neck as her eyes begin to fog over as well. The soldier in the corner chatters into his radio.
A muffled voice and a hiss of static echoes through the tent as he goes back to his legal pad and tepid coffee, uninterested in our little soap opera.

I retrieve my fork and am collecting a pillar of green beans when Momma loops two fingers inside my hand. I lose it. Everything that's been building inside of me over the past months shatters the dam. I grip those two fingers as if they are my final lifeline, the only thing keeping me from going over the edge of the cliff. I drop against her shoulder, shaking with uncontrollable sobs that form deep within my belly. The soldier in the corner is probably looking now, his legal pad and his pen an afterthought. Ruiz is probably looking too, still stirring the meat, watching us with a bemused smile, having found his daily dose of entertainment in the form of my meltdown. I don't care. Let them look. Being a southern boy that performs interpretive dance has given me a thick skin over the years.

Momma removes my hat and kisses my head. She wraps both hands around my neck and cradles me against her cheek. “I'm so sorry, my baby, I'm so sorry. I just got lost a little bit, but I'll be better, I promise.” She sits back and holds my face in her hands. I sniffle and shutter. Right now, I'm her little boy. I've skinned my knees, bumped my head, and am finding solace in the eyes of my mother. The black circles have suddenly vanished. She is beautiful once more. We are back in Georgia. Back on the living room couch. The room smells of Tulips and her favorite perfume. The sun is setting and everything is going to be okay. “Losing your father was one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. Lee, in many ways, put me back whole. So losing him...” She buckles. We cry together for a minute or two and then she continues. “I lost myself. That's all I can say. You two deserved better from me. I'm so sorry for putting you through that, and I hope that you can forgive me.”

I nod, still unable to speak.

Bethany hugs her from behind, wrapping her arms around her waist and clasping her hands across her stomach. She rests her chin across her right shoulder, the tears leaking slowly from her clenched eyes.

I pull myself together and open my eyes. They burn and it feels like my nose is stuck in a vice, but a weight has lifted. This is the start of a new chapter.
“I love you.”

“
I love you too, sweetie.” She arches her neck back and kisses Bethany on the cheek. “And I love you too, angel. You kids are my world.” Minutes pass. We just sit. Holding each other. Stretching the moment as far as it'll go. “Alright, well, let's eat before it gets any colder.”

Soon our plates are clean and our cups are dry. It's hands down one of the best meals I've ever had.

43

The two soldiers standing outside the mess tent as we exit are eye catchers, no doubt about it. They're stone faced killers, with their mugs painted up in shades of green, black, and brown. They are all sinew and instinct, they cradle their sub machine guns against their chest like mothers nursing a baby, second nature. Their index fingers are in twitching distance of the trigger, a pop of the shoulders, a few ounces of pressure, and its game over for the unlucky customer facing down their sights.

But, it's Stiles who really steals the show.

He's standing between them boring into me with the same expression he'd taken in the Humvee when forcing me to choose between walking or minding my own business.

It's not the expression that's got my attention.

It's the empty holster and the pistol resting at his thigh.

“
What's this?” I step forward, placing myself at the head of the line for a bullet.

Momma grabs for my collar.
“Get back, Tim.”

I brush her away, holding Stiles attention.
“Are you planning on using that?”

“
That all depends on you, kid.”

“
Yeah, well I get a little uncooperative when people pull guns around my family.”

Stiles grins
at me and crosses his arms, the pistol peeking out from under his left elbow. “You're something, you know that? The boys are crack shots and they've got 31 rounds to prove it with, including one in the pipe. I've got 8 myself. You can't run, you can't fight us off, all you've got right now are your words. A little diplomacy would serve you well.”

When he's right he's right.
“What am I being diplomatic about?”

“
We're here to escort you to the General.”

“
What, is he going to knight me or something? Thank me for all of my service?”

“
You get one question. You've used it. Now let's go.”

“
Surely my Momma and sister don't need to come; just let them stay here in the mess.”

“
Nope, he ordered all of you to be there.” He uncrosses his arms and raises the gun to waist height, aiming the barrel straight at my belly.

“
Whoa, hang on now, no need for that.” I raise my hands and take an adrenaline-fueled step backwards.

Bethany lunges up beside me.
“You shoot him and I swear I'll kill you.”

“
Walk, now.” He arcs the barrel to the left like a director rousing a choir.

I push Bethany back and ease her away from me along with Momma as we begin walking down the row of tents. Soldiers mill around us, shoving past without so much as an
excuse me
or an offer of rescue. They either don't notice or don't care about the kidnapping taking place right in front them. Some sit on the ground cleaning weapons or playing cards, it's a beautiful day for it, warm, but with a cool breeze there to make sure it doesn't get overwhelming. They're a loud sort, they laugh and yell, drowning out the bass drum pound of my heart. I glance inside the middle tent as we pass by; it's all bunks and footlockers.

“
It'll be the last one up here.”

There are a series of noises coming from the last tent.
A series of hollow thuds. Squeaks and moans. Followed by more thuds and a hushed voice.

“
You wait out here while I see if the General is ready for you. Watch them,” Stiles commands the two soldiers. The thuds and the voices stop once he enters through the flaps.

Our guardians stand over us as silent and as menacing as golems on a castle wall at the stroke of midnight.

“You guys get paid a lot for this?”

Nothing.

“Suppose money doesn't really mean much now. Maybe some colored laces for your boots, lime green, that's your color isn't it? Yeah, you look like a lime green sort of guy.”

Nothing.

“Timmy, stop it. Act like an adult.” Momma flashes, grabbing the back of my arm. It jars me, aside from being a tad bit embarrassing. I drop my head sheepishly and don't speak again until Stiles re-emerges from the tent.

“
Alright let’s go, single file, ladies first.” At least his gun is back in the holster.

I duck in on the heels of Bethany. Stiles and the two soldiers file in after me, taking up positions along the back wall.

At first, the room is all shadows and outlines. A few seconds pass before everything begins to take form in a series of layers upon layers, as the sunlight begins to drip from my eyes. It's an open space with a table lining the back wall. On it are several blunt instruments and a few sharp objects stained with varying levels of blood.  There's also a handheld radio with crimson fingerprints adorning the face and a call button. In the center of the room, is the man in handcuffs, the
VIP.
He's been stripped down to his underwear and tied to an old wooden chair. Dozens of tiny cuts have been drawn across his body, many of them still leaking fresh fluid. His head sags forward as if it has become a weight too tremendous for him to bear. He attempts to lift it several times to see who now stands witness to his plight, but never manages more than a few inches before dropping it in defeat, those few inches are more than enough for me to see that most of his face has been
caved
in with bare fists and rubber wrapped steel clubs. He convulses and coughs. Maybe he tries to talk, or maybe it's a scream. Either way, his lips are pulp and the pain involved renders it an impossible task.

The last thing to take shape is the General. He appears out of a dark corner, wringing a small dish towel through his hands. Once it's completely saturated with blood
, he throws it to the pavement and spits atop it. There's a thin cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips. His face is sweaty and pickled. His hair is greasy and thin, brown and grey. His pants are the same shade of green as every other thing in this camp, only they're more wrinkled and weather beaten. He wears no patches or insignias; he wears no dress top at all, opting instead for a thin wife beater peppered with dots of crimson. When I picture Generals, I picture Patton. This guy is not Patton. He's more Tales From the Crypt.

“
This the kid?”

“
That's him.” Stiles parrots from behind me.

“
I'm the kid,” I repeat with nervous laughter.

“
I've heard interesting tales about you.” The General says with an airy tone while blasting white smoke from his nostrils.

“
Well, I've heard nothing about you, though by looking around, I'm sure your tales are far more interesting than mine.”

The general chuckles,
squinting his eyes back at Stiles. “You're right, the kids a jokester.”

I hold my hands out like,
whatcha gonna do, right?

“
Well, I don't like jokesters, do you know why?”

My first thought is to make another joke, but I refrain.
“I give up.”

The general walks along the length of the table, teasing the violent instruments as ash drips steadily from his cigarette.
“Jokesters are usually compensating for something.” He looks at me sideways, picking up one of the surgical razors and turning it in his fingers, checking me for a reaction, hoping I'll put myself in the shoes of the man in the chair and begin pissing myself. The blood pumps a little faster in my veins. My palms grow wet. I will my breathing to slow itself. His strategy is effective, but I'm not gonna let him know about it.

“
Well, there's no compensation going on here.”

He sets the red tipped razor back on the table and lets it wobble to a rest.
“I'm not convinced.”

“
Well...how can I convince you?”

“
Sir, I can assure you that whatever you think my son...”

He draws a finger to his lips, cutting Momma off with a terse
shhh. “Is she the junkie?”

“
Careful now.” I say, my voice firm, a small fire rising inside of me.

“
Yeah, she's the one.” Stiles responds as if he didn't hear me.

“
Ma'am, your perspective on things is questionable, to say the least. Besides, your son is capable of speaking for himself, is he not?”

Momma shrinks back, her hand still on my shoulder.

“Back to what I was saying. Jokesters, they're often compensating. It's a way of casting the focus off of themselves and placing it on the brevity of their words. You often see this phenomenon in pubs and clubs; at least you did before we all started eating each other. Men would cajole and connive the opposite sex with grandiose tales, half-truths, and outright lies, all in an effort to cast the focus away from just how vapid in nature they were. Now, I'm in no way suggesting you're vapid, quite the opposite in fact. I think you've got substance to burn. However, I do believe that you've got something to hide.”

“
What could I possibly have to hide?”

“
That's the great mystery now isn't it?” More smoke through the nostrils and sweat on the forehead.

“
It's a mystery to me at least.”

“
Stiles tells me you spoke with our guest here. What did he tell you? What did he give you?” The General leans down next to the man in the chair, wrenching his head back by the hair and putting his pulped face on full display. The man winces in pain, fresh blood seeping from his nose and mouth.

I can hear Bethany gasp behind me.
“He spoke to me, asking for help. All I did was tell him to go away. He didn't tell me or give me anything.”

“
I don't believe you.”

“
Well, with all due respect, there really isn't a whole lot I can do about that.”

“
You can tell the truth.” He releases the man's head, letting it fall back onto his chest. The General stands, sniffs his fingers, and wipes them clean on his shirt.

“
I am telling the truth. You've beaten this guy almost to death and what has he given you? Nothing, obviously, or you wouldn't have me in here. That's because there's nothing to give. The guy was in my face for all of two seconds.”

The General nods as if he sees my logic.
“Your point is well made. This man is no soldier. Surely he'd break under such duress if he felt he held pertinent information that he could utilize to stop all of his suffering.”

“
That's what I was telling this guy.” I jam my thumb back towards Stiles.

“
However, consider Stalingrad.”

“
Stalingrad?”

“
The Battle of Stalingrad, World War 1, do you know it?”

“
Not personally.”

“
But you're aware of it, the Nazis against the Russians, yes?”

“
I think I saw it in a movie once.”

He laughs.
“You and every other American teenager. You probably simulated it in a video game too.”

“
I've never been too fond of video games.”

The General wraps a hand over his lips.
“Well now, perhaps you're not the average American teenager. Perhaps I spoke too hastily.”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Do tell then, what is it you are fond of?”

“
Dance.”

The tent bursts into laughter around me.
All except for Bethany, Momma, and the man with the broken face.

The General wipes his eyes, throwing his cigarette to the ground and stamping it enthusiastically.
“Oh, kid, you are a trip. What kind of dance are you fond of? With that hat sitting atop your head, if you say anything other than
country-western
, it's just going to slay me.”

My skin is thick, but I'm still not immune to being openly ridiculed. I swallow my wounded pride and respond.
“Interpretive...mostly.”

More laughter.
Harder this time. Meaner in spirit.

“
You all just shut up, he's great at what he does.” Bethany shouts in my defense.

“
Sis, don't worry about it, let the big men have their fun.”

The General scrubs his eyes clear again.
“Yes, fun, just good natured fun. No one get excited here. I'm afraid we've veered off course, let's get back to Stalingrad.”

“
Yeah, let's,” I grit my teeth, heat radiating in my cheeks.

“
Ooh wee, Stiles, he is a prickly one.”

“
Yes sir, that was my impression as well,” Stiles responds drolly.

“
I like it,” the General scratches his chin. “At Stalingrad, the Russians were facing down their old foe, the German army. Now, you have to remember, this was the same German army that the Russians faced down during the first days of World War 1 at Tannenberg. The same Germans that wiped out the entirety of Samsonov's Second Army in one swoop. These boys knew what they were getting themselves into. They knew that they were going to most likely die face down in the mud, bleeding out their bellies, courtesy of a bullet from a Kraut Luger. Yet, at Stalingrad, they didn't hesitate. Those Red Army boys ran straight in, their war cry's piercing the heavens, and somehow, God heard them and in His good graces, saw to it that the Soviets won that vital round of battle. Still, the Red's lost almost half a million men in that battle alone. Half a million, these boys were getting cut down around each other, left and right, yet they continued the charge. Why do you think that is?”