“But I’ve had humility shoved right down my throat since this all started. I’ve had a master class in my own limitations. Malik and Cruz are only in this because I dragged them into it, and not for any grand purpose, just my own obsession. My own arrogance.” She glanced at Malik and had to wait a moment for a wave of emotion that threatened to choke her speech to pass. “But not you, Dekka. You volunteered; you stepped up. That’s what a leader does. It’s what you do. So, I would be honored if I could be for you what you were for Sam. I’ve learned some humility, but even so, I think I’d be a hell of a strong right arm.”
“No question,” Dekka said, her voice roughened by emotion. “But am I ready to be Sam?”
They sat in silence for a while, each contemplating their own weaknesses and strengths with a realism and focus that only comes to people who’ve really been in what the Vietnam vets dubbed “the shit.” It was a specificity and realism not possible for spectators and armchair heroes.
“We don’t say anything to the others,” Dekka said after a while. “We don’t make a thing of it. But okay, Shade Darby, I will do my best to be Sam.”
“And I am whatever you need me to be.”
Four hours later they ate fresh-baked biscuits and drank excellent coffee as the late morning sun outlined the spires of Manhattan in gold.
From the Purple Moleskine
I STARTED OUT thinking this Moleskine would help me become a fiction writer. Instead I’m becoming a diarist. I guess I shouldn’t fight fate. Anyway, diary writing was good for Virginia Woolf and Anne Frank. Not really very encouraging examples, I guess. One killed herself; the other was murdered by Nazis.
I overheard something I wasn’t meant to hear. Shade gave up playing boss and turned it over to Dekka. I almost can’t believe it. Shade is growing up, adding wisdom to intelligence. I love that girl, but the truth is I’m relieved—Dekka’s the closest thing we have to an experienced leader.
New York. Never been there. Hell of a first trip. I’m scared. I imagine everyone is. Scared. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to see any of my friends die. I am sick at heart for all this madness. I would almost rather be home in Evanston listening to my father sneer about ladyboys and chicks with dicks and all the rest.
Almost.
I’ve spent some time Googling pictures of people who might be useful, people I could pass as if necessary. My “repertoire” now includes a couple dozen folks. It feels wrong just taking people’s appearance and using it, but I tell myself it’s necessary. This is war, isn’t it?
I just crossed myself and said a prayer, something I haven’t done in a long time. War. But like no war ever. This isn’t against some foreign enemy, it’s a war of us against us, all against all, and no one worth trusting besides ourselves, and no one to follow.
Except Dekka.
Earlier I hid in the bathroom and morphed into Armo, which was just plain creepy and stalkery, but I find myself thinking about him a lot, which I know will end with me in tears. I know I’m rushing straight into pain and sadness and loneliness, and it’s not like I need to look for more pain. I know I’m becoming obsessed, and I know what obsession did to Shade. I’m not crazy; I know it will end in embarrassment and humiliation. Maybe that means I’m actually more crazy than Shade—she at least thought she had control, and I know I don’t.
I’m walking into a punch that will leave me hollowed out. And I can’t seem to stop myself.
CHAPTER 9
Down and Dirty
BOB MARKOVIC HAD risked running toward the tree line when the shooting started. He had jumped up and run, gasping for breath, staggering, clutching the bandaged hole in his chest where a fragment of ASO-7 still lodged and ignoring the throbbing pain in his hand.
The first of what was to be five .50-caliber machine-gun bullets, each with more destructive energy than a hunter’s rifle bullet, struck him just as he reached the line of pine trees.
That first .50-caliber round blew a tunnel right through his back and out of his chest, taking about a third of his heart with it.
The second round struck him in the thigh, penetrated to and shattered his femur, which stopped his momentum and made him crash headfirst into a tall, shaggy pine-tree trunk.
He was dead before he slumped to the ground.
The third entered through his right cheek, smashed a row of molars like someone attacking a porcelain sink with a sledgehammer, and in one of those odd quirks of ballistics, blew out through the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord.
The remaining two slugs turned his intestines and stomach to broken sewage pipes.
No human being could survive those wounds. Markovic’s blood drained into the mud and filled the gaps in the bark of the pine tree he lay crumpled against. His bladder and bowels emptied. His liver had no blood left to cleanse. His heart fell silent.
And yet, Bob Markovic knew who he was and where he was. He felt the cold mud beneath him. He heard the sounds of truck engines, of heavy boots, the grunts of men and women carrying bodies. He saw a night sky retreating before oncoming dawn.
Markovic looked out over the field, over dozens, maybe more than a hundred, men, women, and yes, children, lying in clumps or alone in distorted positions. The black-clad gunmen were now walking through the bodies, making sure they were dead, firing twice into each: one in the head, one in the throat.
Bang. Bang.
Walking behind the shooters was a second echelon carrying five-gallon jerricans of gasoline, which they hefted high and upended to slosh fuel on the bodies. And a big earthmover was coming up the road, ready to dig a hole and shove the human ashes into it.