Our War Page 4

  He tucked the AR-15 against his shoulder and crossed the backyard. There, he made another mad sprint across the alley into another yard. He cleared it the way they’d trained him. Check the corners and blind spots. Entrances and exits. Stop, look, listen. He saw a kid’s rusting play set blanketed in snow. Stump of a tree cut for firewood. A gap-toothed fence.

  Across the next street, he’d start approaching the Blue line. Then he could either hightail it back or figure out a way to surrender.

  He flinched and ducked down. He’d heard a noise on the other side of the fence. He prayed it was an animal. He stayed crouched for a while and listened. His heart hammered against his ribs. His bladder started to ache again.

  He set his weapon stock against his shoulder.

  One, two, three—

  Alex reared, ready to shoot.

  The old woman jumped in fright. Then she glared. “Put that down!”

  She’d been gathering laundry from a clothesline. He lowered his gun and blew the air out his cheeks in a loud sigh.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he mumbled.

  “Pointing guns at people,” she said. “This used to be a good place to live.”

  “You betcha.” He couldn’t help but laugh.

  The old lady had obviously missed the announcement there was a war on. Still, he liked how she just declared the whole thing stupid and went on with her life.

  She glowered at something past his shoulder. “And you. What are you? You’re useless.”

  Who was she talking to? The woman was crazy—

  He jumped as cold metal poked his spine.

  “Okay, chief,” a voice behind him said.

  A second voice: “Easy there. Put the weapon down.”

  “My husband fought in Vietnam,” the old lady lectured them. “He fought to keep you safe from communism. This is how you repay him.”

  Face reddening with shame, Alex laid his gun on the ground and raised his hands. They’d nabbed him so easily. Worst soldier ever. He sucked at this. He’d checked the yard. It wasn’t fair.

  Still, the whole thing came as a relief. He wanted to give up. His war was over.

  “You people,” the old lady fumed at the men. “What are you good for?”

  “Police business, ma’am,” one of the pair said. “Go back inside.”

  “I give up,” Alex said. “Don’t shoot.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the angry, stubbled face of a cop wearing black tactical gear.

  Then a black cloth hood slammed over his head, and he saw nothing.

  SEVEN

  A man lived near the front line. A man of means, he sent his wife and two daughters to live in Canada early in the crisis. He stayed behind to work and protect his home from looters. Many of his neighbors gave up hope and left, but he’d been a dedicated prepper for years. He had a generator and lasting fuel and provisions. He had weapons and knew how to shoot them. While others starved, migrated, and suffered, he’d lived alone for eleven months in relative comfort.

  This morning, a mortar shell ripped into his home and killed him.

  Standing on the sidewalk before the smoking ruin, Aubrey scribbled in her notebook and closed it. She had everything she needed to write up this tragedy for the Indy Chronicle.

  After putting out the blaze, the fire department had looted the house. She’d watched tired firefighters with blackened faces haul out weapons and canned food. That made her curious enough to talk to the neighbors still living on the street. One went on the record with details about the owner’s life.

  She took out her phone to call her editor. By unspoken treaty, the warring sides hadn’t destroyed the cell towers. With a growing lack of parts and ongoing electricity shortages, however, service had degraded.

  The call went through.

  He answered, “Eckert.”

  “It’s Aubrey.”

  “What have you got for me?”

  “Mortar attack. One man confirmed dead.”

  “Give me two inches and I’ll roll it into the war update.”

  “I think there’s a human interest story here.”

  She heard him take a drag on one of the lousy homemade cigarettes he made from tea bags reused until drained of all flavor. He said, “I’m listening.”

  “The owner was a prepper,” Aubrey explained. “Living high on the hog. Then a random mortar round blows him up.”

  “Self-sufficient man takes every precaution but dies by errant bomb. Make that your lede, and it’s got legs.”

  “I think this story has currency.”

  Another drag. “Currency, huh?”

  “The impermanence of all things. No matter how prepared you are, when it’s your time, it’s your time.”

  Since she’d started reporting the war, she always searched for little stories that told bigger ones. Small details that revealed a larger truth.

  “The unreliability of self-sufficiency in these times,” he said. “The irony makes it work. Live for the day.” Already making it his idea. “It’s got gestalt. I’ll take five hundred words.”

  Not as big a piece as she wanted, but far better than an obituary and an inch or two in the war update. “I’m heading back to the office. I’ll file it by end of day.”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “I need you to do something for me first. Congress and the president agreed to allow UNICEF in the country. Operatives are flying into the major combat zones. I said we’d lend a hand—”

  She kicked a charred shingle into the street. “No way.”

  “—showing her around.”

  “It’s the city’s job.”

  “She needs a fixer. Somebody who knows the streets and people and isn’t government. That’s why they reached out to us.”

  “Give it to an intern. I’m not a babysitter, Eckert.”

  “No, you’re a staff reporter, and I’m offering you a goddamn story. I need you to run over to the Castle on West Washington right now.”

  “The Castle?”

  “Meet and greet at the bar. Her name’s Gabrielle Justine.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” she said. “You’re an asshole. Bye.”

  She smiled as she terminated the call. It was turning out to be a great day.

  An old luxury hotel now catering to visiting press and dignitaries, the Castle Inn & Suites had electricity, central heating, and excellent food. While Aubrey played tour guide, she could also play tourist. Take a short break from the war.

  She mounted her bike and rode down Stringtown’s forlorn streets, passing houses, a skateboard shop, and a bar doing a lively trade in rotgut. A crowd of people clutched empty bottles at a city water tanker. Neighborhood militia eyed her with suspicion until they spotted her bike’s placard reading, PRESS. Then they waved.

  The media had never been more popular, at least on this side of the line.

  She pedaled past the zoo with her face set in a grimace, trying not to think about the heartbreaking piece she’d written on the zookeepers’ never-ending struggle to keep the animals alive. The bridge over the White was empty, the war and its shortages having solved Indy’s traffic problems. In the early days of the conflict, rebel militias had raced across this bridge on the way to city hall to arrest the mayor and overthrow the government. After a gun battle with police, they’d fled along the same route while antifa threw Molotov cocktails at them.

  The Castle’s baroque architecture loomed between the Indiana Repertory Theatre and Rhythm! Discovery Center. Bellhops with red jackets and guns on their hips subjected her to an intense security ritual. After it was over, they checked her name off a list and handed her a claim ticket for her bike.

  Then Aubrey was inside the opulent lobby. Another world.

  The heat. God, the heat was wonderful.

  Grinning, she went to the restroom and scrubbed her face with cold, soapy water. She took off her hat, washed her short hair in the same sink, and blew it dry under the hand drier. Then she stuffed every roll of toilet paper she could find
into her backpack.

  This done, she inspected her reflection in the mirror over the sinks. Her chocolate brown complexion struck her as plain without her customary makeup, but she had only a little left and was hoarding it for trade. The UN field operative would have to take Aubrey as she was.

  She returned to the lobby and paused at the bar’s entrance, blinking in the gloom. A man in a tuxedo played a grand piano, background music for the patrons but soothing and even a little magical to her. Clean white tablecloths, wine poured from bottles, clinking glasses, calm chatter: She’d stepped into a time machine and went back to a mythical era when people obsessed over the trivial and took the essential for granted.

  Two men appraised her from a nearby table. One was a heavyset older man wearing a jacket over an open-collared shirt, the other a younger, roguish sort in black jacket and turtleneck. Glasses half-full of what she guessed was scotch on the rocks rested on the tablecloth. They eyed her with amusement, as if she were some homeless woman who’d walked off the street to invade their private club.

  She glared at them. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

  “Actually, we were wondering if we might help you,” the heavyset one said. “You appear to be either lost or searching for someone.”

  “The latter. A woman named Gabrielle. She just got into town.”

  “Ah. The UN bird. I believe she’s hiding under her bed at the moment. You’re with…?”

  “The Indy Chronicle.”

  “Terry Allen, war correspondent for The Guardian.”

  “Rafael Petit,” the other man said with a heavy French accent. “Freelance photojournalist on assignment for L’Opinion.”

  “Join us for a drink, Chronicle,” said Terry.

  From covering a mortar attack to drinks with The Guardian. Some days, the war delivered wonders. She took a seat.

  The server arrived to ask what she wanted. Aubrey blushed. Even before the war, she’d have to stretch her wallet to buy a drink here.

  Comprehension crossed Terry’s face. He beamed a magnanimous smile. “It’s on me, or rather, The Guardian.”

  “I’ll have a glass of your best pinot,” she told the server.

  Terry’s eyebrows lilted, but he said nothing about it. “So what’s your interest in the UN?”

  He wanted to know if she had a story. She’d seen foreign press following each other around the city in their cars, chasing a lead one of them had sniffed out.

  Aubrey had nothing juicy to give him. “I’m just her fixer.”

  “Maybe something will turn up from it for you,” Terry offered.

  “I’ve read your stories. You did some amazing work in Syria.” This was what passed for small talk among war journalists.

  He beamed with pleasure. “Ah. Well. You should read my stories on this war.”

  “It is difficult for you, reporting the war?” Rafael said.

  “I love it,” she said.

  Terry laughed. Rafael said, “But reporting a war while living it. Making a newspaper in these conditions. Surely, it is difficult.”

  “We bang out copy on manual typewriters we found in a storage room. In the evening, when there’s power, we do our typesetting and printing. We distribute by hand. Finding paper’s the hardest part. But we get it done. We sell out in a few hours. Copies get passed around from person to person until used for kindling.”

  Before the war, her beats included guns and gang violence. Every few years, the newspaper cut staff in an information market still shifting to digital. She’d watched the paper become bloated with opinion and thin on real local reporting.

  The war had given her the chance to do serious journalism.

  “What’s your formula?” Terry said.

  “We get national war and political news from the AP,” she said. “We do our own local war news and interest pieces on gardening, schooling, war recipes, life hacks, that sort of thing.”

  “Life hacks?” said Rafael. “I do not know this term.”

  “Did you know if you stand a crayon upright and light its tip, it will burn for thirty minutes as a candle?”

  “I understand.”

  “We still put out a sports section; even a civil war can’t keep us Hoosiers from our basketball. The most popular section these days is the obituaries.”

  “Ah,” Terry said. “Right.”

  Her wine arrived. She took a sip and sighed through her smile. “God, that’s good. Thanks for the drink. What’s your interest here?”

  “Taking your pulse,” the reporter answered. “The war can only have a political solution, but the politicians are waiting for positive news from the battlefield so they get a better deal.”

  Terry was touring America’s killing fields to get a sense of who was winning. Whoever was had more leverage at the Ottawa peace talks. California had nearly cleared the state of rebels, which was why the president had suspended the talks.

  Aubrey took another sip of her wine. A nice buzz hummed in her brain. “You know the saying: ‘All politics is local.’ The same goes for civil war. The big picture isn’t relevant anymore to the people here. They’re living day to day.”

  “You had a wonderful country before you drove it off a cliff. Maybe you all should have paid a little more heed to the big picture before you did it.”

  She bristled. “What do you know about the people here? Have you talked to them? Have you seen what’s going on while you take a pulse?”

  “I was in Dallas. I’ve seen horrific things you couldn’t imagine.”

  “And it’s clearly made you feel something. Starving kids weighed and measured as leverage. It’s a big photo safari for you guys, isn’t it? War porn.”

  Rafael glanced at Terry, who smiled. The men burst into laughter.

  “An American journalist saying this,” Rafael said.

  The wine had gone to her head, and Terry’s condescension had made her angry enough to do more than order an expensive glass of wine. “When this sort of thing happened, we did something about it.”

  This made them laugh even harder.

  Aubrey blushed with embarrassment. “You can’t bullshit the bullshitters, I guess.”

  They were right to laugh. They were being objective like good journalists, even if their objectivity was tinged with a mocking cynicism. She was being sentimental, which for a reporter was the greater sin.

  “I admire your passion,” said Rafael. “If it were Paris burning, well…”

  “Actually, we care very much about this war,” Terry said. “We have our own fractures and divisions. We’re studying this war to avoid one of our own.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Things were getting dodgy for us even before you Yanks triggered a global crash. Right now, the backlash is directed at refugees, immigrants, other countries. If my countrymen decide to direct it at one another, we might end up with a war of our own.” His eyes flickered to the bar’s entrance. “And now I suppose you’ll be leaving us. Your UN bird has arrived.”

  Aubrey turned and spotted the attractive young woman gazing wide-eyed around the restaurant as if she’d stepped into a combat zone.

  At first glance, she knew Gabrielle Justine wouldn’t last a month.

  EIGHT

  The world went black. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

  “I don’t want to do this out in the open,” a cop said. “In case he has backup.”

  “The garage,” the other cop said.

  They hauled Alex to his feet and dragged him along.

  Meanwhile, his life flashed before his eyes.

  Skateboarding with his friends in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, talking about the crazy president vowing to stay in office even though the Senate was about to convict. They’d never cared about politics before, but this was big. The news people called it a Constitutional crisis.

  How he’d loved the sound of that. A crack in the foundation holding up the lifeless adult world.

  A part of him wished it w
ould all get worse. A part of him longed for a revolution, though he didn’t know what it should accomplish. Anything, he hoped, as long as he didn’t end up like his dad, working his ass off so nothing ever changed.

  Cities like San Francisco passed resolutions supporting Congress, cities like Mesa the president. YouTube videos showed bloody street clashes between antifa and alt-right gangs. The media covered the massive Occupy protest at the National Mall in DC. Armed groups seized town halls and federal buildings. Nothing changed in Sterling until a militia arrived in pickup trucks waving automatic rifles and American flags embroidered with crosses.

  “I got a good look at him,” one of the cops said. “He’s just a kid.”

  “He stopped being a kid when he picked up a gun.”

  “It’s just pathetic, is all. Now they got kids shooting at us.”

  MARSH FOR PRESIDENT signs cropped up on lawns again. Neighbors turned on one another. Alex skateboarded at the park in violation of curfew, running laughing from militia in the dark. A Venus symbol tagged the garage door, bringing it all home.

  Then everything changed.

  Midnight flight in the SUV. His entire life dwindling in the rearview. His room, all his stuff, left behind. His friends, without whom he would have suffocated in boredom years ago. Janice Brewer, the girl of his dreams he’d never had the balls to ask out. All his memories, everything that made him who he was, disappeared in the night.

  He shouted at Dad: “I’m not going. You can’t make me. They’re not going to do anything. They’re just trying to scare us.”

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  They stopped to get gas. Men punched each other by the pumps. He ran away among the cars. Dad roared his name.

  A man extended his hand from a pickup. “Climb aboard the freedom express, kid. We’ll give you a ride.”

  It was only later he understood that Dad wasn’t working so hard all that time to sustain the same reliable, boring lifestyle. He was sacrificing for his family. And he was no coward. By leaving Sterling, he’d been fighting to keep them all safe.

  Alex, meanwhile, had made the biggest mistake of his life. It now appeared he’d pay the ultimate price for it.