Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

I could see that it was a long blade, and the way he sat had shoved the tip into the soft ground beside him, the handle digging into his side. I struggled with his belt buckle for a moment, taking care not to jostle him as I pulled the long sheath free. “Got it.”

“Look at it. It’s my best one, and I’m real proud of it. Finished it a few days before those bastards hit us.”

I drew the blade free and held it out to examine by the light of the moon. It was a dagger, long and sleek. The blade was about a foot long, made of the fine Damascus steel with which Brad had become so proficient. The handle was a finely polished yellow with streaks of brown- Bois d’Arc , one of the hardest woods in North America, definitely the hardest that grew within several hundred miles. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks. It’s yours. But I need another favor from you first.”

I winced as I saw how much blood bubbled out of his mouth and chest. “Whatever you want, Brad.”

“I love that knife, Lee. I was an accountant before D-day. I ever tell you that?” I nodded, wondering if his thoughts were beginning to wander.

“All I ever did my whole life was punch keys on a computer. Try to make the right numbers show up for the right people. Not something to give a man much of a feeling of accomplishment.”

He coughed, then spasmed as the arrow tore more tissue deep within. “God, that hurts,” he gasped. “I gotta finish this. Wasn’t until you showed me how to work the forge that I ever actually made anything. Later still before I made anything I actually took pride in. You taught me that, Lee. Pride.” He nodded toward the knife I held. “That knife’s the best I’m ever going to get to make, so I want you to keep it. Think of me every now and then when you use it.”

I cleared my throat. “Sure, Brad. I’d be honored.” He peered at me strangely.

“What?”

The old man shook his head and laid it back against the tree again.

“What?” I asked again.

More blood bubbled from his lips as he gasped in pain. When the spasm passed, I could barely hear him. “It’s a lot to ask. More than anyone has a right to ask of another person, so I’ll understand if you can’t do it.” He paused. “I don’t want to die this way, bleedin’ inside, chokin’ on my own blood.”

Helpless, I cried in earnest now. “I’m sorry, Brad. I wish I could stop it. I wish I could.”

“You can.” His eyes were staring into me again. “This hurts like hell, Lee. I want to die clean. Help me. Please?”

I was shocked. I knew what he was asking, but it took his hand on mine to make me accept that I’d understood correctly. I stared down at the knife still clenched in my fist. Brad pulled my unresisting hand to his throat and placed the needle sharp point of the blade beneath his chin. Then he let go. “Please.”

I stared unbelievingly, but he turned away and closed his eyes. He began to talk. “I remember about thirty years ago, when Brenda and I went to the Grand Canyon. We drove from Houston through New Mexico, and on to Arizona. We must have stopped at every Indian reservation we came to. Brenda loved Indian jewelry.

“I remember we got caught in a sandstorm in the Painted Desert one day, and I was scared that we’d get lost and drive off the road, so we stopped right where we were and watched the sand blow across the windshield. It would change colors as it went, and Brenda joked about how it looked like Walt Disney had thrown up on our car.

“She died a few months before D-day, sort of a blessing in disguise, because she really wasn’t a strong woman. I don’t think she would have lasted long after it all fell apart.

“I miss that woman.” He sighed, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “I miss you so much, Brenda.”

Sobbing uncontrollably, I shoved upward with all my might, hoping I was swift enough that he didn’t feel anything.

Hoping he was reunited with Brenda.

I met Ken and several others on my way back to camp. Rene had finally realized that Brad was gone and had sent for me. When I turned up missing too, she told Ken. They had put two and two together and gathered another squad to come find us. I was drained by then, both emotionally and physically, and offered no resistance when they took Brad’s body from me.

“Lee? What happened, Lee?”

I turned to Ken, barely aware of what was going on at that point. “What happened?” The words rolled about in my mind for a few seconds, looking for some kind of purchase on reality. They finally registered, and I buried my face in Ken’s shirt and cried like a baby.

I eventually managed to tell them what had happened, and Ken sent spotters out to confirm my story. Word spread through the camps like wildfire.

Over three hundred dead! Just by one old man!

Ken and Jim must have immediately seen the effect of the story as they milked it for all it was worth. The people of Rejas acted like they had found a shiny new stone, a gem of determination they had forgotten even existed.

If that wasn’t enough, they reminded one another of some of the struggles through which they had all come, the fights that had made them strong.

We went against them to break our people out of the stadium. A hundred men against three thousand! Thirty to one! And they had tanks! Not as many when we got finished with them, of course.

And what happened at the fertilizer plant? Sure, we had to leave, but not until after we kicked their butts again!

Ironically, it was Billy who dragged me back into it, reminding everyone of the day that three of us went up against twenty looters in the early days after D-day, and further reminding them that he was the only living survivor of those looters.

Through it all, Rejas citizens wove their speculative thread into the tales. If so few of us could do this against so many, what would happen if we all quit our whining about how tough things were, and put our minds to beating Larry?

Larry didn’t know it yet, but the tide had turned against him. The number of night raids tripled and were no longer simple gathering missions. Status quo wasn’t enough. The townspeople had found their courage once more and, though I never mentioned it to anyone, I knew that the Damascus blade I carried at my side was not Brad’s finest work. His example had taken the hidden steel of his neighbors’ backbones, tempered it with determination, and forged a weapon against which our enemies had no defense.

Brad had given us back our hope.

A week after Brad’s death, we managed to deal the coup de grace. A combination of homemade naphtha, thermite, and a carelessly opened tank hatch had left Larry’s biggest remaining advantage a smoldering ruin. It was a fierce skirmish, and we lost five more of our own, as well as the majority of our remaining ammunition, but we managed to hold the enemy at bay while the mortar brigade lobbed dozens of incendiaries into and around the final functioning Abrams.

Two days later, we had a new problem. Larry’s men began to desert, and we had to make a quick decision: let them go, kill them as they left, or capture them and add to our slave population?

“If we kill ’em, the rest will have more reason to stay an’ fight,” Jim pointed out. “Let ‘em go and, at the rate they’re leaving, Larry’s forces’ll be down to where we can oust him in a week, at most.”