The War After Armageddon

The day before had been ugly, with the company losing six men, including the captain. A bunch more had been sent to the rear, badly injured. The platoon’s mood toward the locals had been ugly enough after that village girl did her thing with the grenades, but the crazy-ass bust-up with the demonstrators and snipers by the mass grave had pushed everybody to the edge. Maybe beyond it. His Marines regarded all the rags as the enemy now, and Garcia had to fight the feeling himself. Especially when he thought of Cropsey jumping on that grenade. He still couldn’t fit all the pieces of that together, and to keep himself under control he came down all the harder on any why-don’t-we-just-whack-’em-and-leave bullshit.

He prayed that the day would be quiet. They needed time to get themselves back together.

As always, he prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe, a last connection to his mother. But the Virgin was giving him a bad time. The tattoo on his forearm itched like crazy. By noon, when the water drop came around and the rags all popped out of the woodwork, with Army Rangers forcing them to line up and behave, Garcia had scratched the first bloody stripe above his wrist, across the Virgin’s feet. He started to worry that he’d picked up scabies or some shit like that while mixing it up with the rags.

The thought of it creeped him out.

Then Lieutenant Niedrig came by again, doing his checks but really just killing time. Garcia didn’t think much of the lieutenant, who didn’t seem crisp enough to be a Marine. He wasn’t sure that Niedrig would be able to control what remained of the company if things got bad again. Garcia figured he was on his own.

“There’s a GO in town,” Lieutenant Niedrig told him. “I heard it’s the corps commander. God only knows what he’s doing here. You need to get your Marines looking sharp, Sergeant Garcia.”

Yeah, with what? With all their rucks missing in the back of some truck that took off when the shooting started up on the hill. Probably gone forever. And every man left in the platoon filthy and bloody and stinking like a Guatemalan’s asshole.

“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.”

“We don’t want the general to think Marines can’t keep themselves looking as sharp as those Army Rangers out there.”

“No, sir. Sir, you were saying something about nuke use this morning. Any more details?”

“The Jihadis hit the MOBIC attack pretty hard. So I’m told. I did see a couple of them headed through town the wrong way. No question about the nukes, though. I can’t believe you slept through it. They weren’t just firecrackers. The buildings were shaking.”

“I guess I was pretty tired, sir.”

“Well, don’t worry. I don’t think the Jihadis will nuke Nazareth, their own people.”

“I wasn’t worried, sir.”

The lieutenant went off to bother somebody else. When he was gone, one of the Marines mimicked him, but Garcia told him to knock it off.

“Hey, you think there’s any chance of us getting out of this shit-hole anytime soon, Sergeant Garcia?”

“You hear the lieutenant say anything about that? You heard everything I heard. Now, keep your eyes out that window like I told you. Scan for snipers. Anybody suspicious.”

“They all look suspicious.”

“You clean that rifle this morning?”

“Yes, Sergeant Garcia.”

“Well, clean it again when Pacheco gets back.”

Garcia moved on to the adjoining building, passing through a hot, still slice of the day and fending off two kids, lazy as dying flies, begging for candy like they really didn’t give a shit.

The next building’s construction was better, the walls thicker, and it was nice and cool up on the second deck.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” he told the members of the fire team. “It sucks out there. This is the lap of luxury.”

“Heard anything about chow, Sergeant Garcia?”

“Probably later. After the Army gets the rags squared away.”

“I bet they’re eating right now. The Army takes care of its own.”

“Yeah? Look out that window. Like you’re supposed to. And tell me how many of those grunts you see chowing down. They’re sucking it up. And you can suck it up. And I’ll be sure to let you know when the burrito special of the day’s posted. You clean that weapon this morning?”

The building had a good diagonal view across the plaza, better than the one next door. Before moving on to inspect Gallotti’s squad, Garcia sidled up to a window that hadn’t been claimed and looked out over the crowd. The rags looked pathetic. Dirty and whipped. He could get angry enough to kill them, but he’d found, to his surprise, that he couldn’t keep up a steady hatred toward them. They were born losers. And you could waste only so much wattage on losers.

As he watched the crowd, a break in the long, curving line showed him that the pallets of water dropped off that morning were gone. The Army grunts on distro were pulling the last bottles from nowhere.

Garcia wondered if the scene was going to get ugly when the rags figured out that there wasn’t no more where that came from.