Pestilence

18

Howie woke with a banging in his head and was sitting up before he even knew where he was. He always thought that people who’d been knocked out woke up slowly, like they did in the movies. He’d thought his vision would be blurry at first and then he would hear things and slowly come to. But that was not what happened.

He was lost in a sea of darkness and barely aware of himself, and then, out of nowhere, he was back. He jumped up so violently that he tweaked his neck. He was leaning against a chain-link fence, but the area he was in was much smaller than what he remembered. Around him were four other men and only three cots.

“You all right?” one of them said, a man in a tank top, whose arms were covered with tattoos.

“That’s the second time that’s happened today.” Howie groaned, twisting his neck. “Where am I?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. We still in LA, though, but we ain’t near no beach.”

Howie looked around. He was surrounded by trees, and a single guardsman sat at a table, with his feet up.

“What is this place?”

“Told you, man, we don’t know nothin’. They ain’t sayin’ shit.”

Howie rose to his feet. He was dizzy and touched his face, feeling the stickiness of dried blood. “My daughter,” he said. “I left my daughter at that place by herself.”

“Take it up with him,” he said, pointing with his chin to the guardsman. “But he ain’t in a talkin’ mood. That one there tried to talk to him, and the soldier damn near shot him. If I were you, I’d keep quiet right now. Everyone’s on edge.”

Howie shook his head. “This is America,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice. “This is fucking America. They can’t do this.”

“Hey, man, you preachin’ to the choir. I lived off the grid in Montana lotta years. Then I come here for work and ain’t here but six months, and now I’m in a cage. But shit, how’d people like you not see this comin’? All them phone records and e-mails the government was collectin’. Our passwords, bank info, what movies and books we liked. What did you think they was gonna use all that for? This is about control, man. That’s the only thing government can do. Control. Ain’t got no other purpose. It’s blind to everything else.”

Howie leaned back against the fence, putting his hands to his head. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but it didn’t help. “There’s gotta be a way out of here. I have to get back to my daughter.”

He shrugged. “Wish I could help, man. But the only door’s got a lock on it, and that muthafucker right there’s got the key. How you think we get it?”

Howie glanced at the guardsman and then back to the man with the tattoos. The chain-link fence was a military brand and the holes were much larger than standard. “Just do what I say, and follow my lead.” He shouted to the guardsman, “Hey, hey, please come here. Hey!”

The guardsman appeared annoyed. He was playing on a cell phone, which he put down, and stood up. Howie saw the outline of the rifle slung over his shoulder. The guardsman came to within a couple of feet of the fence.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I need my heart medication. I have heart disease, and if I don’t get my glycerin, I’ll have a heart attack.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Wait, don’t leave. Please. Look, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write down my address and the medications I need. Maybe you could give it to someone to get for me.” The guardsman didn’t move. “I will die in here. How do you think your superiors will feel when my family files a lawsuit against you and the army for refusing to give me my medication? And there’s money at my house. In a drawer in the kitchen. Cash. It’s yours if you get my medication.”

The guard watched him a moment and then walked closer. He took out his phone and opened his text messages. “I’ll send a text to someone that can maybe go pick it up. Where do you-”

Howie reached through the fence, tearing up his hand and wrist as it scraped through, and grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him to the fence. The man behind him, without even a hint from Howie, jumped up, took the guardsman’s fingers, and pulled his arm through up to the elbow, gluing him in place. The guardsman went for the pistol in his waistband, and Howie grabbed his wrist.

The barrel was pointed toward Howie’s stomach. He pushed with everything he had until the man with the tattoos bent down and bit into the guardsman’s hand bad enough to draw blood. The guardsman screamed, and Howie ripped the pistol away from him and stuck it into his ribs.

“Where’s the keys?” the man with the tattoos yelled.

“In my pocket. On my shirt. In the fucking shirt.”

The man reached through the fence, into the guard’s shirt, and pulled out the keys. He whistled and tossed them to another man by the door. The other man reached through the gate to the lock and inserted several keys before finding the right one. Then the lock clicked open.

“Kill him,” the man with the tattoos said.

Howie glared at him. “I’m not going to kill him.”

“Let me do it then.”

“No, he’s an American soldier.”

The man laughed. “In case you ain’t noticed, we at war now, man. Gimme the gun.”

Howie twisted the gun so that he could pull the grip in first and then angled it to pull it through.

“Give it to me.”

Howie felt the weight of the gun in his hands. He had never owned or even shot a gun before.

“No, we’re not killing him. He’s just doing his job.”

“Ain’t that the truth. And his job is lockin’ us in cages, man. Gimme the fuckin’ gun.”

“No.”

The man smiled. Before Howie could even blink, the other man struck him in the face with an elbow, making him see sparkling lights, before kicking Howie in the chest, throwing him back into the fence. The man grabbed him and proceeded to bash his fist into his face several times before flinging him to the ground and kicking him so hard in the face that Howie thought he’d shattered his cheekbones. He tasted blood that dribbled out of his mouth and onto his neck.

The man pointed the pistol at the guard, who tried to scream but was cut off by the round that entered his mouth and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed backward, and the man turned and placed the muzzle of the gun against Howie’s temple.

“Please,” Howie slurred through the blood, “Please. I have a daughter.”

The man smiled, tucking the gun away into his waistband. “She ain’t your daughter no more, man. She government property now.”

The men fled the cage, leaving Howie bleeding and in pain on the soft ground, the corpse of the guardsman next to him like a bad dream.