The War After Armageddon

Garcia knew that he should’ve known better, but when he heard the magic name, he pictured a whitewashed village with donkey carts and women carrying water jugs like in the Bible pictures. Instead, Bravo Company dismounted at the edge of a grubby plot of apartment buildings, with a litter-strewn field on the other side of the road. An Army lieutenant colonel had been waiting for them. After some glad-handing, Garcia heard him tell the company commander, “Make sure you bury them with their heads facing toward Mecca. Keep the trench properly oriented. It’s the least we can do for the sorry sonsofbitches. And it might help calm the families down.”

But the rags hadn’t calmed down. They were still yelling and wailing after the Army fucksticks bailed, leaving Garcia and what remained of Bravo Company to keep a local with a broke-dick backhoe extending a ditch fast enough to keep up with the loads of bodies arriving. You didn’t have to understand rag-talk to know that the people on the other side of the cordon of fixed bayonets were cursing their asses off.

The little kids started throwing rocks at the Marines.

Garcia and the other survivors of his platoon took the first shift of unloading bodies from the Army haulers and the civilian vans that had been put to use. Corporal Banks didn’t want to touch the bodies, which were wrapped in bedsheets and blankets. Garcia gave him some personal instruction on how to get the fuck over it.

Then it was just sweat and flies and the smell of the corpses and the sting of the dust that rose from each shovel of lime thrown into the trench.

“Hey, Sergeant Garcia,” Tyrrell yelled. “Can’t we take off our helmets and body armor? While we’re doing this, like?”

“Ask your squad leader.”

Tyrrell repeated the question to Corporal Gallotti.

“Sergeant?” Gallotti asked Garcia in turn. “Take ’em off?”

“No fucking way. You know better.”

The grumbling that followed was okay. And that stopped when a rock hit Gallotti on the back of the helmet and knocked him into the trench. He climbed out dusted with lime and gasping.

“You okay, Corporal?”

“Yeah. Yeah, fine. I love this shit, Sergeant.”

“You should’ve studied harder in school,” Garcia said. “Got a real job.”

“Hear that?” Tyrrell said in a fake whisper. “Sergeant Garcia made a joke. I think he’s learning English.”

Garcia grasped the upper torso of another body. “None of you appreciate,” he said, “that the Marine Corps is teaching you valuable job skills.” A small stone bounced off his armored vest. “Hey, Staff Sergeant Thomas! Is 2nd Platoon going to get those kids under control, or what?”

But the Marines working the cordon line were taking more stones and rocks than the body handlers.

After an hour, the first sergeant ordered Garcia’s platoon to swap duties with 2nd Platoon. Garcia didn’t question the order, although his platoon had a dozen fewer Marines. You executed the mission. Period.

As they fixed bayonets and moved up to relieve 2nd Platoon, Garcia saw the first sergeant’s point. 2nd Platoon needed a break. Every single Marine coming off the line was bleeding or limping.

Was that how it was when they stoned people in the Bible? All of them yelling like nuts? Except that they all would’ve been picking on some lonesome chica who’d gotten the wrong gang tattoo.

Right thing to do, rotating platoons, Garcia told himself again. Leave one platoon up front too long, and something bad was going to go down on the block.

Garcia trooped the line. “Hold your ground. I want everybody’s weapon on safe. Let ’em yell if they want to. You’re Marines.”

“I wish I’d joined the Navy,” Private Crawford said. “Crawford! Shit! You can talk. That’s the first word I heard you say since we got off the boat, Marine.”

“First time I had anything to say, Sergeant.”

Garcia dodged a good-sized rock. Older, bigger kids were throwing them now. Garcia got that, too. Street rules. First, see how much the other side will put up with. Then, up the ante.

“I’m going to kill one of those shitbirds,” Corporal Banks said.

Just then, an old man stepped forward, breaking free of the crowd. Unshaven and bent at the shoulders, he wore a baggy Goodwill Store suit and a V-neck sweater over his shirt despite the heat. Stepping across the broken ground, he headed for Garcia. As if he sensed where the power lay. The barrage of rocks paused.

“Man, I can’t wait to hear this,” Banks said. “I guess they want us to surrender or something.”

Behind the platoon, another truck delivered more corpses.

Up close, the old man wasn’t really so ancient. Just grubby. And jumpy. Scared. Beat-looking. And angry, too. With his stained, bought-from-a-street-vendor tie, he looked like a rummy professor.

“Who is the general?” he demanded. Close enough to Garcia to show his uneven, yellow teeth. “Are you the general?”

“No, sir. I’m a sergeant. There aren’t any generals around here.”