Walter Williams - The Rift

Nick got out of his car amid the crowd of fighters. They were jumping up and down, waving their liberated weapons over their heads, howling their victory.

Nick wandered among them, stunned.

He’d won. He’d won.

“Miles,” the radio said. “Miles. What is your situation?”

Nick looked at the car. He got in the car, picked up the microphone, pressed the button on it with his thumb. Tried to still the tremor in his hand.

“Miles is dead, cracker,” he said. “So are the others. What do you have to say to that, cracker?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. “Who is that?” said a voice. A voice that wasn’t Omar’s.

Nick felt his lips draw back in a savage snarl. “Jon C. Ruford, brigadier general, U.S. Army,” he said. It was the least he could do in tribute to his father. It was all he could do to avoid mentioning Sun Tzu.

“You think I don’t know about camps ?” Nick said. “You think I don’t know how to turn people in camps into soldiers ?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Nick forced a graveyard laugh.

“We got your friends’ guns, cracker,” Nick said. “We got more guns than you do now. You come visit the camp, cracker, and we’ll make you real welcome.”

He put the mike back on its hook. Let them think we’ll stay here at the camp, he thought. Let them think we’re waiting for them.

Please.

*

Fifteen minutes after seven o'clock, we had another shock. This one was the most severe one we have yet had - the darkness returned, and the noise was remarkably loud. The first motions of the earth were similar to the preceding shocks, but before they ceased we rebounded up and down, and it was with difficulty we kept our seats. At this instant I expected a dreadful catastrophe - the uproar among the people strengthened the colouring of the picture - the screams and yells were heard at a great distance.

Extract from a letter to a gentleman in Lexington, from his friend at New Madrid, dated 16th December, 1811

Jason spent the fight huddled beneath a cotton wagon with Arlette, Manon, and a half-dozen other refugees. His nerves leaped with every shot, every cry, every moan or scream.

He was glad to leave this business to the grownups.

At the start, right after the earth shuddered to the detonation of the claymore mines, gunfire broke out all around the camp as Nick’s Samurai, with three handguns and one.22 rifle, opened fire on the six guards distributed around the back and sides of the camp. One guard was killed, another wounded, and a third fled unhurt. Two Samurai were killed when guards returned fire. Bullets sprayed the camp, whining eerily as they tumbled after striking parts of the chainlink fence.

Cudjo, by shooting two guards from cover with his deer rifle, turned the tide. Fighters eagerly slipped under the chainlink to seize the dead guards’ weapons. The remaining guards were killed as they ran for their lives across the adjoining fields.

Jason hugged Arlette during the battle, both of them on the ground, his cheek against the nape of her neck. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t tender; it was two terrified people doing their best to disappear into each other and into the ground. He could feel Arlette gasp at each cracking shot, shiver as buzzing bullets tumbled past. As the cars rolled out of the parking lot and the fighting moved farther away, he could feel her begin to breathe easier.

“It’ll be all right,” he whispered. For what it was worth.

She squeezed his hand, nodded. Pretending that he had reassured her, while tears rolled down her cheeks.

They stayed hidden until they heard cars returning, until the shooting was long ended and people started calling for everyone to come out of hiding. Jason rose into the long-shadowed day, and his heart gave a sudden leap of joy. He had lived through it. He would see another day.

“Take your belongings and go to the parking lot! Take some food with you if you can!”

Jason took his telescope, his only remaining property, from beneath the cotton wagon and joined the others as they marched toward the exit. There were bodies lying on the ground near the gate, all displaying that limp, careless, boneless sprawl that let Jason know these were real bodies and not actors in some movie. Manon took Arlette and Jason firmly by the shoulders and marched them quickly through the area, though Jason couldn’t help but look at the bodies to discover if any of them were Nick. One of the bodies, he saw, was that of Sekou, one of the boys who had given Arlette grief for kissing Jason.

Jason tore his eyes from the corpse and looked straight ahead. He didn’t want to think about Sekou, about how the boy had died fighting while Jason had huddled beneath the wagon.

When they came out of the camp, they found Nick in the parking area. He was wearing a gun belt, leaning on a shotgun, and giving orders. He looked like a highly successful field marshal in charge of some dreadful, highly personal African bush war. Jason gave a cry of elation. Arlette raced up to him and flung her arms around him.

“Baby!” he said, and lifted Arlette off her feet as he hugged her. Then he carried Arlette to Manon and threw an arm around his ex as well.

“Nick!” she said, eyes wide with horror. “You’re covered with blood!”

“It’s, uh, not mine,” Nick said. A shadow passed over the joy that glowed in his eyes. He turned to Arlette. “Careful, honey, you might get some on you.”

“I don’t care,” Arlette said.

He lowered her to the ground. Nick saw Jason, and a smile crossed his face. “Hey, Jase,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You hang onto that telescope, okay, Jase? That scope is your luck.”

Jason looked at the Astroscan in its battered red plastic case. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe so.”

There was a lot of rushing around, car engines starting. Someone started one of the big five-ton trucks. Nick looked sharply to one side, and then his smile widened.

“Cudjo!” he said.

Jason turned to see Cudjo tromping toward them on his sturdy boots, his hunting rifle over one shoulder. Cudjo looked more strange in the light of day than he had at night, with his homemade canvas pants held up by suspenders, his moth-eaten, wide-brimmed hat, and a checked shirt that seemed made up of the remnants of other checked shirts all stitched together.

Cudjo held up a fist, crooked a thumb. “Took,” he chirped. And laughed.

*

“You come visit the camp, cracker, and we’ll make you real welcome.”

For a long, long heartbeat, Omar stared at the radio set in his office. All his people at the camp were dead, he thought. The Klan, the Crusaders, all of them. He could hear refugees howling and yelling over the radio until the signal abruptly cut off.

“Omar! Omar!” Eddie Bridges called. He was one of the deputies at Clarendon, trying to keep order amid all the sick people. Not a Klansman, not involved with the A.M.E. camp at all. “What the hell was that about?” Eddie demanded. “Did he say he was an Army general ?”

Omar didn’t have an answer for him.

He was almost thankful when the earthquake began to shake the world.

*

Nick walked to Cudjo, embraced him as fervently as he’d embraced Arlette. Moments of soaring relief floated through his mind, alternating with unreasoning jagged bolts of adrenaline lightning. “You saved it, man,” he said. “You saved the damn plan. You saved fifty lives.”

Cudjo seemed a bit taken aback. “You did the hard work, you fellas,” he said. “You make the claymore, you fight the Kluxers vis-à-vis. I make the shoot from ambush, me.” He shrugged. “That not hard, no. Not for hunter.”