The Seventh War

We’re in the food court in the Top O’ the Mall. Janie’s agreed to spend my Friday off with me. She’s an artist so she can make her own schedule. My construction job is catch as catch can, but I’ve been steadily employed over the past two weeks at the new condominiums that are being built over by the Potomac. The food court is surrounded by the glass windows that let us look out over the city and this is a marginally romantic if cheap date. On a clear day, you can see the dueling spires of city buildings and the occasional blimp. Today, these windows let me see the wing of the plane tilting towards us like it’s a big gliding bird. But this plane’s no bird. It’s a fighter jet and the lazy swoop of its wing is just wrong.

I’ve been around for a while, long enough to be drafted into six wars, so I no longer wait to see if I’m right about certain things.  I push Janie down while she’s mid-chomp on a half-pounder soy burger special and she gives a “Hey, watch it!” Her shout turns into a yelp as we both see the wing of the fighter jet start to slice through the glass windows on the far end of the food court. It’s a slow motion horror that you expect in the movies and not in real life. 

I grab Janie by her skinny wrist and yank her across the floor, barely inches away from that slicing, dicing wing that keeps coming at us, as all around us the shattering glass falls like hail until Janie’s face is flecked with the ketchup from her burger and blood from the tiny cuts of the glass striking her face. When I see her eyes scrunched closed, I know she’s in full panic mode and I have to practically push her across the last ten feet of floor as if I’m sweeping the sticky linoleum with her body until at last we have to stop as we reach the opposite wall and we’re lucky then because the wing stops too, inches away from us. It’s nearly brushing the top of my head and Janie’s head and it’s vibrating like it’s got more it to do. More destruction left inside it. Janie looks up at me and her pupils are all big like she’s stoned, but it’s fear that’s jacking her.

I slide out from under the wing and I get up and dust myself off. But before I can reach down to pull Janie to her feet, there’s this guy next to me. He has a seamed, scarred face and reeks of military, and he’s sniffing , and it might be the smell of blood in the room that reaches him, but it isn’t, he’s smelling the soldier in me.

He says to me, “You’re reserve aren’t you?”

I’m about to deny it, but he holds up a calloused square hand and a small camera that scans my face and makes my rebuttal impossible.  His other hand lightly brushes his right hip where a large gun is prominently displayed.

“Boy,” he says, “You’ve just been called up.”  His tone is jocular, and he’s talking to me like I’m his son, but I know he’s the kind of father who gets his jollies sending his children off to die.

I look at Janie and she’s sitting on her haunches trying to wring the dust and glass out of her pigtails. She peers up at me kind of hopeful and surprised. Surprised to learn I’m soldier and hopeful that I might be able to make a difference. On any day but today she’d be horrified to think I was part of the military industrial complex. I don’t want to take the hope away from her, but I think that today, of all days, being hopeful is the worst kind of mistake she could make. 

I nod to the man trying to send me off to war again because it seems to be calming Janie down.

“I’ll get the civilians out,” I tell him, reaching for Janie. 

He claps me on the shoulder and pushes me away from her.  “We’ve got enough soldiers on this,” he says. Janie’s hand slips away from mine.

The grandpa sergeant walks abruptly away, fully expecting that I will come along, I whisper to Janie out of the corner of my mouth, “Run,” though I can’t tell her where to run to, or promise that this will make her any safer than staying here crouched in the rubble.  Her eyes widen and I know she doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell her. I turn away from her then like I’ve turned away from her before. It’s an endlessly repeating gesture between Janie and me.

I follow the sergeant who tells me, not surprisingly, that he’s been attached to Homeland Security. We use the freight elevator, which is still functioning though it sways and jerks all the way down like it’s a plummeting yo-yo, but the doors open just before it gets yanked up again and we’re out and then outside on the sidewalk and the sunlight is crazily bright and there’s a rumbling like a giant is walking across the sky and I think to myself, this is it, this is the one that ends it all.

The ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars are already there blocking off the street and if you didn’t know any better that might make you feel like we have a chance, that this is the aftermath and the worst is over.  I see an armored truck then, and then another, and that’s when I know what a clusterfuck this is.

One of the armored trucks opens its back door. It’s like a drawbridge and it clangs when it hits the cement. The robot soldiers walk out, two by two, their heads swiveling right left, right left. They look human except for their expressionless stares, their impeccable Armani suits and the heavy flamethrower guns they’re holding. Their eyes are black but when they hone in on a target, these eyes will turn red like Christmas lights.  The robot soldiers are blunt instruments, sent out only when things are pretty hopeless. They’ll get the enemy but they’ll get us too.

Except for the queer rumbling in the sky that hasn’t stopped, I haven’t seen any sight of the enemy and there has to be one, real or imagined.  The generals know this. It’s command 101; we need to know who to be against. “Just what are they looking for?” I ask the sergeant nervously. When he doesn’t answer I tap him who’s on his shoulder. 

The sergeant looks at me, and he rubs his large hand against his rubbery face like he’s caressing it, the seams and scars moving this way and that. “They’re looking for anything suspicious; they’re here to mobilize as soon as we assess what the threat is.” He says this as if he’s reciting a catechism to himself.

What he really means is that the robot suits don’t have a defined target and their threat sensors are set real low. It means that nearly anything will set them off. It means that a lot of civilians will die before we figure out who’s attacking us. I look back at the building I’ve just come from. I wonder if Janie’s still in there or if she slipped out behind me while I was watching the suits coming out of the trucks.

The sergeant slaps a tin badge on me shaped like an eagle clutching a bunch of lightning bolts. He taps it a few times with a blunt forefinger with bitten down nails. Doing so turns on the RFID beacon embedded in it. The beacon means that the robot soldiers won’t see me and that unlike the rest of the civilian population, my jittery movements and urgent shouts won’t be interpreted as threats to authority.

“Sir,” I say, clearing my throat. “What’s the mission, sir?” I ask this as if I care, to show I’m committed to this folly. 

He tells me I’m supposed to report to a command post half a mile away where I’ll receive my orders. On my way there, I’m supposed to get civilians out of the way and to pull out anyone who looks suspicious for questioning. Then the sergeant smiles, revealing the yellow teeth and the bad dental work that spells years of blind service to authority and a crippled health care system. He claps his hand on my shoulder and whispers, almost lovingly, “Get to it son.”

Throughout the seconds of my conversation with the sergeant, the sky still rumbles. I look up and see an enormous, spreading shadow in the west. In the east, there’s a bright light. It’s as if the sun has reversed its polarity.  When I look back down the sergeant is gone and I barely see the bulky outline of his retreating back. Doubtless he’s looking for more recruits.

I want to run but I know that if I don’t “get to it” and the civilians don’t move fast enough, it means that the robot suits will start to twitch. They’ll turn their guns in the direction of anyone paralyzed by fear who’s causing the crowd to bunch up. They’ll turn their guns if someone starts causing a stir by asking what’s going on. They’ll aim at anyone raising his or her voice, begging me to find a loved one. And they certainly won’t hesitate if they hear the strident tones of someone asking me who’s in charge.  

If the threat level was lower, the robot soldiers could distinguish between the queries. Today, who knows? All I know is that if I see one of those things start to twitch, I’ll have a limited time to get out of the way. Though it won’t target me with my badge on, it also won’t avoid me if I’m between it and a “zone of suspicious activity.”  

I try to remember anything from my past lives that might inform this event but that is the nature of karmic do-overs, you rarely get to take anything useful into the next life. I stare once more at the sky, then at the people rushing past me, at the robot soldiers in their impeccable suits, their eyes sweeping left then right, looking for stutters in the flow of people moving past.  A human soldier moves behind me, barking orders to keep people moving. He slaps me on the back of my head, “Move it, fool,” he says, though not with any hostility. He thinks I’m frozen with fear. He’s seen it often enough.

 I want to tell him that this has already happened, that there’s nothing in this course of events that’s new. But I’m not 100% sure of this. Certain familiarities are filled in with certain expectations that I have, part of my most recent upbringing and generally pessimistic nature. I cast about vainly in my memories for a time when this was newer, when dealing with disaster wasn’t such a habit.

I start moving, waiting for the sky to open up and let whatever hideous things that are up there fall through. But really, right now, the most dangerous things we face are already on the ground. I pretend to herd a group of stunned tourists who’ve fled the mall. I turn them into the doorway of an office building that connects with a subway station and once inside I can’t decide whether to go back outside or to join them. I suspect the train will be a long time coming and there’s something about the possibility (remote, I tell my tourist flock) of being buried if/when the building comes down that really doesn’t sit well with me. 

Still, I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to be a soldier anymore. I want to shake this habit that has dogged me, life after returning life.  Could it just a matter of stopping? As simple as taking matters into my own hands and suddenly developing a spine?  But the only thing I remember from my past lives is going through the motions of fighting someone else’s war. 

I decide then that the only meaningful act of rebellion I can make is to go back and find Janie. I walk out of the maw of the subway station and past the tide of people streaming into the building. I walk and see that traffic has completely stopped and the robot soldiers are still marching down the street, their heads swiveling left-right, left-right. I smell the smell of burning flesh in the air and wonder if anything I could have done might have prevented the smoldering corpses I now see littering the street. 

I look towards the mall where Janie and I were eating greasy burgers just an hour before. Its tip is sheared off so that its point looks like a jagged fingernail scraping at the sky. The sky seems darkest right above the spire and the street most congested. I look around me. How hard can it be to find a ketchup- and blood-stained girl with Pippi Longstocking pigtails? I start asking the people around me if they’ve seen her. I point out various Janie features but as people rush by me I can only shout out fragmentary questions. Red-haired girl?  Pigtails?  Black converse sneakers? Bedazzled jean jacket? My voice is both embarrassed and urgent. I start shouting everything I know about her. That her mouth slips sideways when she smiles. That she has this pale glow when she’s happy. I don’t believe that what I’m saying now will help me find her, but I say it anyway to fix her in my memory.

I can see that I am making the robot soldiers nervous. Their heads swivel towards me, register my RFID tag, then swivel back. If they had expressions, it would be disappointment that their programming prevents them from shooting me. I try to control myself and instead of shouting Janie’s descriptions, I keep my voice steady. I might as well be telling the crowd to “Move on, move on. Don’t run, just walk briskly” and to be fair, I do say this. I still recognize my duty to protect these innocents. But then some chunky business guy brushes past me and elbows a woman with a small child so that she stumbles to the ground. She clasps a hand over the toddler’s mouth so he doesn’t wail. I grab the businessman  by his double-breasted lapel and press my service revolver against his forehead. I don’t think much at all about it. It’s a reflexive act of violence as imprinted in me as my need to find Janie.

“That wasn’t very nice,” I hiss.

“I didn’t mean anything,” the man says. His eyes widen as he takes in the woman he’s knocked to the ground and the small child crying. His face is fleshy and pale, like he’s made of dough. His voice trembles, but I recognize the remorse of being caught.

“That may be,” I reply. “Give me your cell phone; I seem to have misplaced mine.”

The man purses his lips and looks away from me trying to decide if this currency of his is worth the possibility of injury. He fishes out the thin-card phone out of his pocket and holds it out to me. “You’ll give it back?” Each sentence he utters makes him seem younger and younger—like he’s playing dress up with his good suit and fancy leather briefcase.

But he’s still an asshole. “Move on,” I say.  I give him a shove and I see his back stiffen and his fists clench. I think for a moment that he’ll take a stand and try to challenge me. A robot soldier walking past turns its head and the robot’s metallic gaze locks with the man’s frightened one. With enormous effort, the man moves forward at a normal but brisk pace. I imagine the robot eyes are burning holes into the back of his suit. I imagine he’s thinking about the arbitrariness of circumstances. If he’d only moved faster.  If only he hadn’t bumped into that women right as I was walking past. 

The man’s cell phone feels warm and sweaty in my palm. It’s ill-gotten gain, but I think of Janie and harden my heart. She is the only one that matters now. The only one. 

If she’s still alive.

If she hasn’t dropped her own cell phone. 

If that thing that’s fucking up the sky hasn’t managed to fuck up cell phone signals as well.

If one of the robot soldiers hasn’t locked its gaze on her.

I move inside a coffee shop and there’s a signal, but the cell phone rings to voicemail.  I hear Janie’s greeting. Her voice is small and sparrow-like and when the phone beeps and she lets me get a word in I say, “Janie, I’m coming for you.”  

I look around me. The people in the coffee shop are huddled at tables afraid to move.  I nod encouragingly at them. “That’s right. Best to stay here until you get an all clear. Remain calm.”

I push past the boy at the counter into the kitchen area and then out of the kitchen into the alley. I press keys on the cell phone and redial the Janie’s number. I’m gratified to find that the cell phone I’ve confiscated is one of the newer models and I touch the locator application on the screen and then Janie’s phone number. The phone display flashes an image of a lighthouse beacon as it searches for the gps signal associated with Janie’s cell phone. It stops and a red dot is displayed along some map coordinates that marks my position and then Janie’s.  She’s not that far from the mall. She hasn’t made if far at all. My relief wars with my fear. She could have dropped her cell phone. She could be injured. I could be picking up a signal from a small pyre of ashes.

I start walking rapidly out of the alley, the cell phone in my palm. In a calming voice I tell people to move along. I maintain the pretense that I am still a soldier, that I still believe this is where my duty lies. I have vague hopes of making it to the medical center, commandeering a helicopter and flying Janie and me out of here, beneath the lowering sky but above our foibles. I imagine there will be killing involved if there is a helicopter there. If it hasn’t been commandeered already.

I am nearly back at ground zero when I see her. She’s scrunched into a doorway. She seems ok. Frightened, but ok. But she’s not alone.  Jammed in with her in the relative safety of her doorway are four teenagers, maybe tweenagers, and somebody’s baby sister tagging along for yucks as the apocalypse gathers its intent.

I press into the doorway with her, trying to ignore the extra bodies.

“Janie,” I say, “We need to get out of here. Now.”

She nods. Her pigtails follow the motion of her head. Her face is white. Her pupils engulf her eyes and she gestures at the children beside her, who in most other cultures would be considered adults. Her hand cups the head of the toddler, who would pass for an adult in no one’s culture.

“No, Janie,” I say. “We have to get out of here. You and me. There’s no way…”

In seconds I see it, the tell-tale pinching of her nostrils, that stubborn tilt of her head.

There are a number of ways this plays out.

In one scenario, she says, “No,” and I leave her.

In another, she says, “No,” and I drag her away with me.

In still another, I drag her and she screams bloody murder, causing us to be incinerated on the spot as the robot soldiers lock us in their sites.

In most of these scenarios, Janie grows to hate me. It happens in seconds or it happens in years. And each time she says ‘No,’  it’s in a voice flensed by my betrayal.

But this time she nods at me, as if she’s taken in my measure finally. Then she shrugs and moves out of the doorway, her body a shield between me and the children.

“Let’s go,” she says.

My eyes widen and suddenly I’m the one betrayed. Then I see the small beckoning gesture she makes behind her back and her tribe follows her, six feet behind. I stop Janie and the herd stops. She shrugs again. “It’s a free country,” She says. “They can walk where they like.”

My hand brushes against my sidearm and I see the collective eye-widening of the small group.  I reach for Janie’s hand and tug her angrily to me. 

“Alright then,” I say, my lips pressing into a thin line as it all suddenly comes back to me. How it’s not the habit of saying no that’s been dogging me, life, after returning life. How each time, I’ve grown to hate her for making us less important than strangers, than an abstract concept of “doing good.”

“We’re not going to make it anyway. We might as well try to be better than this,” Janie says to me. She gestures at the chaos in the street, at the marching soldiers. The preachy tone of her voice grates.

I glare at her followers. In the nature of teenagers, they glare back.

Then I stop as I notice the smaller child. Her mouth hangs open as she watches the sky. The rumbling has stopped and the wind sighs like it’s injured. The darker parts seem to be gathering together. I reach for Janie’s hand and yank her forward. “Run,” I say. She’s propelled by my own forward movement and the children begin to run too. The robot soldiers on the street begin to turn. They train their guns on Janie and on the fleeing screaming children. When the sky opens none of it matters anymore.  The monsters have been here for a while.

####