There you go my little warrior. There you go.
I am wonderfully calm. Hello, Cloud. I am not in a stall anymore. I am in the sky with the clouds. My freedom never ending. My responsibilities light. My pain grounded and alien to me.
“Got stage fright over there?”
I jump a foot—back in the stall again. “Uh, yeah, must not be drinking enough water I guess.”
The sink turns on as someone washes their hands. “What are you going to waste your money on, Vance?” I realize it’s Isaac.
“The biggest goddamn burger I can get.”
“Amen.” The door closes leaving me alone, but only physically.
I know what I am doing is right here. Why is my mind so weak? Why does it try and try to fuck with me! Make me feel guilty, make me feel scared over things that have already happened. Why am I so weak? I look at the toilet. Why can’t I flush you away.
Then I hear something even though I am alone in the stalls. It sounds like a mother trying to hush their child, and I remember the words.
There you go my little warrior. There you go.
I am high. I am calm.
XVII
I am deprived of any ease tonight. I take a specially ordered hot shower to clean up as best as possibly. Easy eyes me with envy as I leave the filthy barracks for Regiment HQ. You don’t realize how much pain you are in till you receive an ounce of comfort. Standing in the hot shower becomes torture. My muscles spasm as the caked dirt turns into mud and clogs the bottom of the drain.
The order was given as fast as I was to follow it, denying me the ability to greet Cloud beforehand. Fortunately, I was able to convince the Orderly to not take my personal sack that holds the illicit savior I worship. But even Regiment HQ—set up in a damaged hostel—is not a place of regale in this destroyed city, and my shower room is visible to the Commissars and Officers talking in the dining room over, removing the chance of getting any from my stash only a meter away.
I wrap the towel around myself and the Orderly brings back my cleaned clothes, still slightly damp as I change into them. The Commissars laugh and talk loudly in the room over as I finish getting ready, one particular howl unnerving me. Jesus, my heart skips a beat. I turn to the mirror to act like I am pruning, but really am I teaching myself how to breathe again. I can’t expose my terror, my fear, or they will find out. They will get me. One of those Commissars in the room is Herus, the man that almost fried me. Now he is taking me on a date. If he has omniscient powers, I wouldn’t be surprised, as he looks over at me just when I finish folding up my sleeves.
“Great,” he says. He pats the backs of a few other officers at the table, and summons me to leave with him.
We walk alongside a bustling avenue near Jericho’s downtown full of military traffic: supply trucks leaving the city, damaged combat vehicles being towed back in, and loaded jeeps of filthy and blooded causalities returning for cleanup.
“Add some pepper to your step Private!” says Herus as we are singled to cross an intersection by an MP.
I realize I’ve fallen behind and hurry across where we pause unexpectedly by an apartment building. It’s pocked and marked with bullet and shrapnel hits, and the fourth floor caved in from a direct ordinance strike, but despite it all, the ten story building stands defiantly into the air in comparison to the rest of its neighboring infrastructure.
“You won’t believe how hard it is to actually find a decent room in this city,” says Herus. “Most Party Representatives are bunking with servicemen out in the field, lucky to even get an actual barracks like you were.”
A sentry opens the door and we are lead into a dirty hallway. He walks down a little bit and turns to the left, retrieving a key and opening a door. “My residence, Private.” We enter inside. A small cot—the same as ours in the barracks—and a desk overfilled with papers and two laptops, the screens open and running, all squished into the corner of the room. On the opposite side of the room are a few plastic chairs of different bright colors that it’s almost comical compared to Herus’ grave demeanor. “Take a seat. We relocated all civilian property, including furniture, to warehouses as you can see.”
I sit down, and he must notice I look confused. “We can requisition their living spaces, heck, most of them haven’t even come back anyway after we liberated the city, but we cannot use their personal property, as they are citizens of another country and we must respect customary law when convenient.” He turns to his desk, by it a filing cabinet with a coffee maker on top, and fills a mug. “So they gave me some furniture for company,” he glances at the colorful lawn chairs, “they liven up the place, no?” He moves to the bed, and for the first time in my service—life—he unbuckles his exterior belt, and removes his heavy dark overcoat and places it on a hanger near the wall.
“Surprised?” He grins, his perfectly straight white teeth flashing me. He sticks his thumbs inside his overall straps and pulls on them to make a slap noise. The rest of his getup is a simple long shirt white fatigue. “As you can see, just a man underneath the coat, just another brother in the Cause. Or maybe you are still surprised over my humble room, expecting that I lived in exuberant decadence, like a five star hotel? Not the case, I am a soldier’s soldier. Living in code with the rest of you.” He rises quickly, startling me out of my seat. “At ease!” I sit down quickly. “No, goodness, you’re not in trouble, sorry. I forgot my manners,” he returns to the coffee maker, “I forgot to make you a cup as well.”
His stout arm extends a mug with steaming coffee, twitching after a few moments of waiting. “What, are you Mormon?” he laughs. I take the cup and cradle it on my thigh. “Sorry if you are,” he says as he sits back down on his cot, “are you?”
“No sir, the Private is not.”
“Please, Peter, right?”
I nod.
“You can talk normally around me, okay? The whole formality thing is rather vain. It’s purely to display my position in public matters. Anyone with a drop of IQ knows it’s all a game. So why have you been on edge, Peter?”
Does he know? Does he know he got to me before Cloud did? That this whole personal visit is infinitely more terrifying than when he trialed me publicly. God if he finds out now, after I just got in the clear…
“You working a monolog in there?” he says, ripping me out of my mind.
“No sir—I mean, no.”
He slaps his knee. “Damn do we have you men on a tight leash. I always wonder, what will it be like for you all when you return back to civilian life? We have you ready to do anything on the drop of a hat, and even faster when that Buzz goes in, that you don’t even have to think about what we ask, you just do. You become it, that is the command. You turn into a means in it of yourself, into the request, becoming your own cog as part of the machine. What will that old freedom feel like when you go home? Could you even handle it?” He takes a sip. “You were a college student before this. Where free thought is, more so encouraged one could say.”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to work for the Party intentionally before this?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, you are contradicting yourself now, Peter. You wanted to work most specifically for the UN, for the ethos of the Global Fathers, not just the American ones. Don’t be coy with me. I already know everything external about your past. What I don’t know is what’s under the hood.”
“I wanted to work with the UN to disarm the remaining weapons of Earth. Create final peace.”