The War After Armageddon

His visitor perked up. “You’ll think about it then? Good. Grand. I’d love to see the Marine Corps and the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ embrace each other in loving friendship.”

Morris almost asked, “And after the embrace, we get fucked, right? In front, or from behind?”

Instead, he told the brigadier, “You’ll have my answer in twelve hours. Now I’ve got work to do.”

But he accomplished little after his visitor disappeared back into the night. As soon as the dev il with the black cross evaporated, Morris could say with certainty that he wouldn’t do as asked, wouldn’t betray the Army or Flintlock Harris. The MOBIC creeps wouldn’t honor the bargain, anyway. They’d howl with laughter at his stupidity, the gullibility of a dumb-ass Jarhead.

And yet… What did it all mean? Would he go down in the books as the man who destroyed the Marine Corps? Was that how Major General Morton Morris, USMC, would be remembered?

Yes, if the MOBIC crowd wrote the history books. And, increasingly, it looked as if they would.

Monk Morris longed for the days of his youth, when men found their dev ils in wretched foreign holes, or in their sick imaginations, or in Internet lairs. Now the dev ils wore uniforms and claimed they served his country. They ran for office and won elections by landslide votes. They appeared in the night with cynical offers that left a man with no good alternatives. Monk Morris had no patience with religion of any kind, but he couldn’t help thinking of Gethsemane.

Was this what they were fighting for? This goddamned squalor? One moment, Morris saw Flintlock Harris as a brilliant commander, shining with ethical rigor. A moment later, he saw Harris as a fool who would doom them all.

Morris wondered, yet again, who on his own staff reported secretly to MOBIC’s Christian Security Service. Who had already betrayed the Corps? The CSS had agents everywhere. Would one of their stooges take his place if he didn’t cooperate?

The situation made him clench his fists. He understood how to fight a battle, a war. But he no longer understood how to fight the men who were taking over his country.

God’s plan? This? All this? He didn’t understand how any man with eyes in his head could believe in any kind of god. After the things he’d seen in the Nigeria fighting, the horrors in Delta State, he’d abandoned his last, perfunctory religious habits. Men had to take responsibility for their own failings, their own viciousness, their own deeds. That was humanity’s one slim hope. Blaming the world’s horrors on a punitive deity or on a scheming Satan who wanted to spoil the porridge was the coward’s way out. Years back, Morris had read something to the effect that, even if there was no God, men should behave as if He existed. A lifetime of coping with what men wrought had convinced Morris that the aphorist, whoever he’d been, had got it exactly backward: If there was a God, men should act as if He didn’t exist and couldn’t be blamed for the messes they made themselves. Real men took responsibility. Wasn’t that at the heart of being a Marine? To shoulder responsibilities of a dreadful order when all the others fled, trailing excuses and pointing fingers toward the sky?

What was his responsibility now?

He dozed off and slept fitfully for a few hours. His aide looked in but refused to let anyone wake the general.

In the brightness of the morning, Harris reached him with a request. That he send one company of Marines into Nazareth. To help with a local crisis created by a poisoned water supply. But, above all, to demonstrate Marine-Army solidarity, in case the MOBIC command tried to force HOLCOM to order the massacre of the Arab civilians in the city.

“You sure one company’s all you need, sir?” Morris asked. Without hesitation.

“One company. With strong stomachs.”

“On the way,” Morris said.

And that was that. He didn’t bother trying to contact the MOBIC brigadier with a formal answer. With a little guidance from Jesus, they’d figure it out.

And now he stood proudly by the roadside, sucking down dust and saluting his Marines as they drove past.

Above the roar, he heard a vehicle commander shout, “Semper Fi, sir,” in his direction.

“Semper Fi,” Morris responded. But his voice was lost in the noise of the war machines.

NAZARETH

Sergeant Ricky Garcia had pulled some crappy duties in his time, but he couldn’t remember any as bad as this. First, he’d overheard the battalion XO telling Captain Cunningham that Bravo Company was being sent on a mission that would give it time to recover from the hard-luck fighting of the past few days. No company in the 5th Marines had suffered heavier losses, the XO said. He’d try to funnel them some replacements while they were in Nazareth. To bring the company back up to combat strength.