Scott Nicholson - The Echo

Jorge didn’t care about old or new laws. He was desperate to find Rosa and Marina, and every second wasted might lower the chances of finding them. “Have you seen three women and a baby?”

The second soldier, a thin, Asian-looking man with his khaki cap turned around backwards, said in an accented voice, “I wish we’d have seen three women. I haven’t been laid since June.”

“You’re a liar, Huynh,” Sarge said. “Unless you don’t count your hand.”

“What do you want with us?” Franklin said. “We’re not any threat to you.”

“That remains to be seen,” Sarge said, stepping up to Franklin and exhaling cigar smoke into his face. “Somebody was shooting out in the woods yesterday, and it wasn’t military-grade weapons. In fact, it sounded a lot like those little peashooters you two are carrying. Pop pop pop .”

Franklin blinked away the smoke but didn’t draw back from the sergeant’s aggressive stance. “So I shot a few Zapheads. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Well, maybe I’ll put you in for the Bronze Star. But I’m more concerned about a couple of my boys that went missing.”

The sergeant moved until he was in Jorge’s face. The officer smelled of old sweat, booze, and gunpowder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No, sir.” This was no harder than ignoring the stares and taunts of the rednecks down at the feed store. Jorge had long ago learned how to hide his true feelings.

The sergeant relaxed a little at the “sir,” obviously feeling that Jorge was beneath serious consideration. But he mistook compliance for weakness, as did many of the gringos Jorge had endured—and survived—in the last few years.

“Really, Sergeant,” Franklin said. “Don’t you think we have bigger problems than whether some of your boys turned tail and ran?”

Sarge moved with such sudden ferocity that even his own men gasped and drew back. He slapped Franklin on the side of the head, driving the old man to his knees. “You didn’t respect the old laws, but you’re sure as hell going to respect the new ones!”

Jorge rushed forward to help Franklin but the sergeant put an elbow in his chest and shoved him away. The Asian soldier jammed the muzzle of his gun into Jorge’s back.

Franklin spat blood. “Let freedom ring.”

Sarge tossed away his cigar and pulled his sidearm from its holster. Jorge feared he was going to shoot Franklin, but the man twirled it by the trigger guard, gripped it by the barrel, and whipped the butt onto the crown of Franklin’s head with a loud crack .

Franklin dropped like a rock. Sarge motioned to the two soldiers. “Grab him and bring him back to the bunker.”

“Damn it, Sarge,” the Asian said. “Why couldn’t you have beaten the hell of him after we got him back to the bunker?”

“You want to be next?” Sarge’s cruel sneer was enough to spur the soldiers into action.

Apparently the new law is whatever this man says it is.

Sarge waved his pistol at Jorge, motioning him along the trail. “I got a feeling you’re not as hardheaded as Wheeler. So I suggest you get moving.”

“But my wife and daughter—”

“They’re Zaphead bait by now.”

“I can tell you where McCrone is.”

Sarge got interested in a hurry. “McCrone? How did you know his name?”

“He begged us to help him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I know better than to take on the U.S. Army.”

“Damn straight. At least somebody here remembers the Alamo.”

The army of Santa Anna had actually besieged the Alamo to suppress a revolution by unwelcome illegal immigrants from the United States, but Jorge didn’t think Sarge would appreciate the history lesson. “He said he was running away.”

“Where he is?”

Jorge looked the man in the eyes, which were smoky gray and flecked with ice blue. “I killed him.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes, studying Jorge. Then he slapped his own thigh and gurgled out a laugh. “Goddamn it, Mex, I almost believe you.”

“The other one is dead, too, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Damn.” Sarge wiped his mouth with his sleeve, annoyed and impatient. “Zapheads must have got him.”

The soldiers helped Franklin to his feet. A large red knot appeared on his skull, a trickle of blood trailing down to his ear. He was barely conscious and clearly suffering a concussion, but the soldiers propped him up and hauled him down the trail.

Sarge pushed Jorge after them. “Get moving.”

“Why don’t you let me go? I’m no use to you.”

“You’re guilty of crimes against the state. We’ve already had one breakdown, but things are different now. This time around, we’re doing it the right way.”

Jorge wondered why the sergeant didn’t kill them both on the spot. But he also believed if he resisted, he would be killed, and then he would have no hope at all of finding Rosa and Marina again.

Even a slim hope was better than none.

So he marched.

The bedroom allowed enough daylight that Campbell could see the blank faces of those gathered around him.

He was exhausted and defeated, lacking the energy to even despair. The horrors of Wilma’s death in the night were still fresh in his mind, her screams resonating off the inside of his skull.

And that can be you, too. All you have to do is stand and walk .

Campbell sat on the bed, the professor beside him. On a small bedside table were two plates of food for them, laid out much like the place settings on the obscene dining-room table. Fortunately, the food was not human flesh, but instead canned peas, raw dough piled in a sticky white lump, and a wilted carrot.

At least this bedroom was mercifully free of both the dead and the maimed. In the bedroom next door, Donnie emitted an occasional grunt of pain.

“We get a window,” the professor said. “And we get food. And we get to live. All in all, it could be a lot worse.”

Donnie’s muffled scream punctuated the statement.

Campbell ignored the fifteen or so Zapheads sitting cross-legged on the floor before them, their palms clasped. They stared up at a framed painting on the wall above the headboard. In it, Jesus held his own hands clasped in prayer, a globe of radiance around his long hair and beard. Jesus looked up to the heavens in much the same way the Zapheads gazed up at the painting—with intense adoration and solemnity.

“How did you end up here?” Campbell asked the professor.

“Just like you did, I imagine. We met Wilma on the road and she said she had food. Arnoff wanted to push on to Milepost 291, but Pamela bitched and then Donnie found out there were Zah—”

The professor caught himself and glanced at the assembly, but the Zapheads were intent on their sacred mimicry. “Donnie wanted to shoot some. For sport. He said he hadn’t had any target practice in days. I was ambivalent, and I thought Wilma was a little too eager, but I went along when Arnoff relented.”

Campbell used his fork to spear a couple of peas and shovel them into his mouth. One of the Zapheads nearest him, a granny with wispy white hair, imitated his motion and chewed air, although she must have lost her dentures long before. Campbell was no longer hungry but he forced himself to eat, knowing he’d need his strength.

At some point you’re going to run or you’re going to kill yourself.

“I got suckered by my own curiosity,” Campbell said. “When I saw the way she lived, I thought, ‘If this is what we’ve come to, then it’s stupid to even try. The human race is beat.’”

“That mangy dog of hers. Peanut.”

“It’s locked in the camper, but there’s enough food in there for weeks.”