Pete Conrad: Survival of the Sparrows

“Corporal Sang, I have a very important mission for you,” Captain Jennings said, not looking up from fumbling with a camera he had taken off a drone.

“I was just going to have one of these men…”

“I know. You need an assistant to help you with the trash.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Sir .”

“Yes, Sir,” Dong-joo replied.

“Hei,” Captain Jennings said to the soldiers cleaning, “you two are the new trash crew — for today, anyway.”

The two soldiers stood erect, saluted, and said, “yes, Sir!”

“See. That’s how you do it, Corporal. Show them the duties and report back to me.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Oh, and Corporal, make sure you, ah, relieve yourself. You may not have another chance for a long period.”

“Sir, may I ask… where will I be going?”

“Nowhere, Corporal. You’ll be going nowhere.”

Winston darted through the woods along the shoreline and raced past the trash pile to the bridge overpass. There was no time to follow the off-ramp to Calef’s, so he climbed up to the ledge, crawled to the edge of the overpass, and jumped onto the steep concrete. His old canvas combat boots dug into the soft earth and he used his hands to pull his body up the twenty-foot tall embankment to the highway. At the top, his foot caught the top of the wooden post and he fell hard on his ass as he leapt over the metal guardrail. He hoisted himself up and searched the horizon for signs of the enemy, not even sure what he was going to do. What exactly did he expect to find in that hospital in Stockbridge, assuming that it had been looted by the PLA? And what exactly would he do with any such medical supplies he did find? Lights out was ten long hours away.

And suddenly he realized that maybe the answer had literally been staring him in face all this time. Instead of heading south on the highway, he headed north, back toward Johnsonville and Calef’s. This was a dangerous place to be, out in the open in broad daylight and within sniping distance of his own home. He jogged vigilantly down the long off-ramp that led directly to Calef’s front door. Without stopping, he continued past Calef’s and onto Johnsonville’s main thoroughfare — Liberty Street — a mixture of residential and commercial buildings with flanking cross-streets. As he passed by the old Trip’s Pizza , he heard voices shouting from inside. He slowed his pace, intending to stop, when two PLA soldiers emerged from the darkened store, their uniforms disheveled and untucked. Winston sped up, across Liberty Street and down the first road he came to — C Street — when bullets whizzed by, shattering windows and barely missing him. Two houses in, he was out of their sight. He headed straight down the obviously deserted road, past boarded-up houses with doors ripped from their hinges, past homes burned out by lobbed grenades, and past dozens of hollow, decomposed corpses.

He looked over his shoulder and found that he hadn’t been pursued. Winston slowed his steps, mostly because his tired body squawked at him, but he also needed to change direction. He was on C Street and needed to be on L Street. At least he was on the correct side of Liberty Street. He walked the remaining nine blocks through the neighborhood’s back and side yards, aghast at the all-encompassing death and destruction.

Nothing was spared in Johnsonville as he trampled through the wasteland, and he wondered if the entirety of America looked like his home. On K Street, he hid behind a house and waited — watching and listening for footsteps or a Russian Tigr on the prowl for survivors. Five minutes evaporated and he advanced slowly into his objective’s back yard. The rear sliding glass door was shattered. He stepped over the crunching glass and into the house where he found himself in the living room.

“Eh hem,” he announced loud enough for anybody in the house to hear, “oh Lucy, I’m home. I’m a friendly. It’s Winston Sparrow if anybody here.”

Silence.

A moment later, Winston was rummaging through drawers, bookcases, and closets already turned inside out by the PLA and wandering American survivors. He opened all of the kitchen’s closets to find them barren, and searched through the bathroom’s linen closet, the cabinet under the sink, and medicine chest — all for naught.

“Come on, Med, don’t let me down,” he said aloud, speaking to the man whose head currently adorned his wrought-iron fence. Winston paused in the hallway, hands on his hips, overcome by a sense of overwhelming futility. The door to the garage was wide open, the sun’s rays trickling in through the half-open garage door. He stepped into the garage, which was a disaster even before the PLA invasion. He rummaged through boxes stacked high and filled with reminders of a life lived until finally he spied what he had hoped to find — a box labeled School stuff on the top shelf of a shaky metal rack of shelves. He waded through the stacks of items that really should have been thrown away years ago and climbed on top of a sturdy deep freezer. He snagged the box, placed it on the freezer and sifted through the folders, loose paper, and books, and found what he had been searching for, though he didn’t actually know what it would be named — Field Guide to Emergency Medicine — he kissed the book. “Thanks Med.” Winston was grateful that Med had kept the medical school textbooks, which were now nothing more than souvenirs. He kept searching, hoping to find medical supplies he could use to patch May up with, but was disappointed when he came up empty. He would have to make due with what few medical supplies they had brought into the apartment.

Winston made his way back to the overpass’s safe underbelly — it felt safer than being inside Med’s abandoned house. He cut through the neighborhood’s postage-stamp yards, anxious not to repeat his previous run-in with PLA soldiers, and was alarmed to find that Johnsonville was now teeming with PLA soldiers patrolling the streets and byways of their little town. He presumed that they were the very same soldiers he watched day in and day out coming and going from his property. On H and B Streets, he waited for Russian Tigrs to roll by before continuing, and he finally made it safely to the underpass where he leafed through the medical book and found the chapter titled “ Shrapnel and Projectile First Aid.” As he read about tourniquets and their danger, and how to perform field surgery to remove bullets, a queer sound invaded Johnsonville. He scooted down to the ground to investigate, and all he had to do was look up; Winston was rendered speechless by what he saw hovering high above his house. He watched the twelve drones quickly ascend to defensive positions, forming a perimeter around all of Johnsonville. When a drone soared high and hovered directly above his head, Winston scrambled back under the overpass. He decided that it would be safer to wait until dark to make his way back to the barn. Getting caught now would surely be May’s death sentence. The hours he had to wait wouldn’t be wasted — he’d become an expert in field surgery.

Major Chaek returned to the encampment several hours later, his entire right leg encased in a plaster cast, to find that Captain Jennings had assigned Dong-joo to guard the barn’s door. He wore an armed Tabari backpack, and he attempted to appeal to the hobbling superior officer, but the Major wouldn’t hear it — not now that the soccer game had been lost — not now as they prepared to engage the United States in home turf nuclear warfare. He found Captain Jennings and his two assistants standing in the driveway, the master controller in Jennings’ hands.