Claire Holroyde - The Effort

“Bring Ben back,” Zhen said into Amy’s ear.

Amy nodded and winced, but the words pushed her to stand up straight and wipe at her runny eyes and nose. To Love, Amy had only grown more beautiful as each desperate day passed.

“I will,” Amy agreed. “I saw him look at me the other day. His eyes focused, I swear it. Ben will come back, just like your friend Cheung did. And I’ll be there when he does.”

Amy’s scratchy voice was the only sound that made Ben stir and blink, like a dreamer who wanted to wake.

“But what about you , Zhen?” Amy cried. “You may have saved the goddamn world, and yet here you are.”

Zhen took Amy’s and Love’s hands in each of her own.

“Not me,” she said, and smiled bravely. “We.”

GIVEN HER STATUS and contribution to the Effort, Zhen and her friend Dewei were the last nonessential staff to be discharged. They were each given backpacks with a generous amount of supplies: packaged food, water, a field first aid kit with penicillin, antimalarial pills, water purification tablets, mosquito netting, sleeping bags, and so on. Zhen was grateful. Most discharges got nothing but a canteen of water. However, carrying anything worth killing for was a danger in itself.

Zhen saw the southern checkpoint on the Effort perimeter approaching ahead. It felt like only days since she had last seen it on the way to the Cayenne airport, not the months she barely remembered from working to exhaustion. Zhen’s heart raced and her palms sweated. Time was such a relative thing, especially when you had none. Will I die today?

Her jeep parked in front of the checkpoint gate, where fifty French soldiers clustered in a black mass with barking dogs.

“Keep the dogs away from us!” Zhen shouted.

She could see Dewei was just as terrified. They deserved some dignity. Almost immediately, the handlers pulled back on their leashes until the animals disappeared in the crowd. Zhen looked to Dewei and nodded. He stepped out of the jeep and hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, and then helped Zhen with her own. The French soldiers were humble and sad, but firm as they explained their role. Turning to Dewei, Zhen explained in Mandarin: They’re saying we can’t come back.

Grim-faced, he nodded.

“Miss Zhen!”

The shout came from the perimeter. A soldier in a green camo uniform ran along barbed wire toward her with his rifle pointed down.

“Miss Zhen, wait!”

He stopped in front of her, panting. There was an American flag stitched on his uniform. His rifle was larger than the others with a long, thin muzzle and mounted scope on top.

“Miss Zhen, we never got to meet,” he said between breaths, “but I was in the security detail at Cayenne. I was the sniper who…”

His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but his face angled slightly toward Dewei.

Zhen translated for Dewei: This is the man who saved your life. Dewei opened his mouth and took a step back. He bowed to the soldier with his heavy pack. The sniper nodded back briskly. It must be difficult to be thanked for killing another man.

“It’s been a good morning,” the sniper offered. “No one’s fired a shot and the road’s been mostly clear. Mostly.”

He said it in earnest, but with a good deal of pity. When Zhen asked what made for a bad morning, he started to say one thing then changed his mind and said another.

“How’s Amy?” he asked.

Zhen forced a smile.

“Strong.”

This was hurting her. She would lose control soon. Zhen nodded to the French soldiers manning the gate. She was as ready as she could be.

“Discharge!”

Their shouts rang out in French and English first. Interpreters along the perimeter repeated their shouts in a range of languages. The French soldiers opened the gate manually and stepped aside. Zhen didn’t move. Dewei took her trembling hand and pulled her gently one step forward. Neither of them expected to get very far or live very long.

“And don’t worry about those two,” the sniper said, nodding toward the highway. “They were discharged an hour ago. One of ’em is still in shock.”

Zhen looked down the road and saw two figures wavy with heat distortion. One large figure sat on the asphalt, while a smaller figure tried to pull the other up to a standing position.

“I thought we were the only nonessentials left?” Zhen asked.

“You probably were,” the sniper replied, “but we had the last plane from Fort Hood land today. Brought a few brain doctors and surgeons. They had a devil of a time tracking down those kinda specialists in this mess, but they’d do anything to help Dr. Schwartz and the others with the catatonia.”

He pointed to the figures.

“Stragglers from the plane. As long as discharges keep a distance, we don’t have to shoot ’em,” he said matter-of-factly, and then squinted into the scope of his rifle for a better look within its crosshairs.

Zhen shuddered a breath. She squeezed Dewei’s hand and led him past the gates, which were pushed back into place immediately.

“I’ve got your back again,” the sniper called out, but Zhen didn’t turn around.

Bullhorns blared and made them startle. An interpreter shouted warnings in poor Mandarin. They had to keep moving forward. Zhen walked as fast as she could with her heavy pack. Eventually the two wavy figures on the highway solidified into two men with duffel bags. The smaller, older man had darker skin and long hair. He looked somewhat Asian but definitely not Han Chinese. The young white man on the ground had a beard and a half-stricken, half-delirious expression that stretched into a smile when he saw her.

“The Mets suck!” he shouted.

Zhen dropped Dewei’s hand and reached up to touch the baseball cap Love had fitted on her head.

“Did the guards say anything about me?” the young man asked, his smile gone.

“That you have to keep moving,” Zhen replied. “We all have to keep moving or they’ll shoot.”

With that, the smaller man grabbed the larger one by the arm and tried again to bring him to a stand. He seemed aware of imminent danger, but his friend was like a resting ox. Dewei stepped around to help. He grabbed the young man by his leather belt, then angled his feet together and leaned back to leverage the combined weight of his body and backpack; he was always a good loadmaster. The young man on the ground tilted and finally stood up. His eyes never looked away from the checkpoint.

“If I could just talk to them again—” he muttered, looking to the perimeter of barbed wire, soldiers, and live ammunition.

He started walking toward the checkpoint. Dewei hollered and grabbed the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He planted his legs like a wedge but only dragged forward several meters. The older man screamed and boxed his friend on the ear to stun him. Zhen dropped her pack and sprinted around them.

“Don’t shoot!” she shouted back at the soldiers.

Hundreds of eyes were watching. Hundreds of mouths shouted Hold fire! at one another. Zhen still mattered, even outside the Effort’s perimeter. She stepped up to the bearded young man until her face was right below his.

“You. Must. Stop!” she shouted.

There would be no talking, she assured him, only shooting. The young man’s face suddenly sagged with realization and fatigue.

“But I’ve come so far…”

Zhen said that she and Dewei had come much farther, from the other side of the globe, but it didn’t matter. The Effort no longer needed them.

“We must leave,” she said.

The young man allowed Zhen to pull him in the other direction with his friend and Dewei right behind. They walked in silence along the highway until they could no longer see the Effort’s perimeter, only the occasional soldier standing fifty yards apart on the asphalt.