Med
It was a restless night. Neither Winston nor May slept well. They tossed and turned, their minds weighted heavily by the imminent invasion. At one point, Winston got up to pee and bumped into the wall. He nearly fell backwards onto the bed, but regained his composure and used the toilet contraption without further incident. He checked outside, peering out of every slit, shifting his position from each vantage point several times. It was quiet. Too quiet. Peaceful, even. There was no gunfire off in the distance. No mortars lighting up the midnight sky. No revelry from Johnsonville’s militia down the road. Winston wondered if they had given up and gone to take cover in their boarded up homes with their loved ones, or if they were lying in wait for the enemy’s arrival, ready to ambush an opponent they wouldn’t defeat with their paltry small arms, even if some were military grade. In a deeply unsettling way, the quiet was even more frightening than the anticipated, constant report of weapons — a sound that Winston had psychologically prepared himself to hear. But it hadn’t come. He double-checked, in his mind’s eye, the route the PLA was coursing, and wondered if they had somehow changed course and shifted their immense army to smaller roads and tributaries. Winston had lived in the Greater Atlanta area since he was eighteen and knew the roadways and byways well — there was no other roadway an army could use to skirt around Johnsonville and make it to Atlanta. He checked on his rifle. It leaned against the wall near the door, loaded with ten rounds, plus he had several hundred more rounds in a box that he placed in the space between the studs. Tired, he went back to bed, relieved that he hadn’t woken May. He lay next to her, wondering if he had done the right thing — building this false wall and upending their lives. He closed his eyes and eventually fell back to sleep.
Just before sunrise, Winston awoke to a faint noise in the main area of the barn. He somehow managed to sleep for a couple of hours and felt mildly rested — or it may have just been the adrenaline surging through his veins that gave him a high. May was still asleep. Though she did have a rough night like Winston, she had been gifted with that rare ability to fall sleep in almost any situation, even on a noisy airplane or bus, and under almost any condition, their present state notwithstanding. Winston stood and peered out several of the slits, but didn’t see or hear anything unusual. It was still, quiet, and peaceful. He unlocked the deadbolt, pulled the door open and carefully peered into the barn. Nothing. No movement. No strange sounds. Feeling confident, he closed the door behind him and stepped into the barn, and then the fifteen feet to the barn door, which remained ajar. He peered outside. Nothing. Suddenly, Amadeus meowed behind Winston, startling him.
“Damn, ol’, fool,” Winston said to himself.
Amadeus looked up to Winston and meowed loudly again. He bent over to pick the cat up, knowing that it would just bolt off as he had done for the past twelve years, but to Winston’s surprise, Amadeus let him. Winston held the cat’s face to his own, praying that the temperamental animal wouldn’t gouge at his eyes. But instead, Amadeus sniffed Winston’s mouth and relaxed, purring contently. Winston shifted Amadeus, again expecting the cat to leap out of his arms, leaving deep, bleeding scratches, but the cat remained calm as they checked his food and water bowls together. The cat had eaten a hearty portion of the dry food, and had spilled the water bowl, which wasn’t unusual. There was roughly twenty pounds of dry cat food left in the apartment. Winston would refill the food bowl later. He placed Amadeus down and took up the water bowl. Rationalizing that they had to conserve their own water supply, and seeing as it was still clear outside, he made his way down to the lake and dipped the water bowl into the cool water. Amadeus trotted behind him, but stopped ten feet from the water’s edge. The highway, from this vantage point, piqued Winston’s curiosity, but he couldn’t make out any movement on the road. He would attempt to sneak a peek at the highway overpass from the end of the driveway just to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He placed Amadeus’ bowl down and splashed his own head and neck with the lake’s cool and invigorating water. The whole scene felt surreal, as if the population of the entire country was misled into believing that they had been invaded.
Winston strolled back toward the barn, but stopped at Medusa. He gazed at the photos permanently sealed into the wood and traced the outline of the Gone with the Wind thirtieth-year commemorative flyer, thinking about the story he had told May last night. He was one of the lucky ones. Coming out of Jamaica, Winston was given the chance to live the American Dream. And now, standing in an America occupied because of oligarchic political ideologies made no sense to him. He wanted to go back in time to that moment when he fell head-over-heels in love with the Georgian country girl with the Bantu knots and the smile that drew him into her heart.
As Winston reminisced, sounds of heavy artillery and gunfire suddenly erupted. The reports were rapid, as if an entire army of soldiers had been given free reign to unleash a torrent on its enemy. He looked back up to the highway, and to his horror, he observed a column of military vehicles making slow progress north on Route 75. He bolted for the barn, jostling Amadeus’ filled water bowl from hand to hand. He scanned the area for the cat, but he must have sprung into the safety of the adjacent woods. Winston’s pace was fast and deliberate as he headed for the barn. The gunfire was growing louder with every step. Ricochets of bullets and glowing tracer rounds, those special incendiary shells loaded at every fifth or six position into magazines for accuracy, bounced and leapt off his own house and property. Just as Winston made it to the barn’s edge, a Jeep carrying four or five of the brave Johnsonville militia plowed into the front porch, destroying it. Winston, ten feet from safety, turned back and hid behind the blue-tarped stacks of cordwood. Some type of rocket or RPG hit the Jeep and killed all but one of its occupants, the blast so forceful that metal bits of Jeep and wooden chunks of house, along with a severed arm and other gore, rocketed as far as his hiding spot. He poked his head around the corner of the cordwood to check if it was clear.
Winston was frozen as he watched a lone survivor suddenly erupt from the Jeep. It was Med Willis. He was unarmed, bloodied and injured, and in full survival mode. He hopped onto what remained of May and Winston’s front porch and beat loudly on the front door, even attempting to kick it in, but he didn’t have the strength.
“Winston! May! It’s Med! Melvin Willis! Please! Let me in! You gotta help me!”
Though Winston peered around the corner, he couldn’t see Med at the front door. He only heard his futile appeals for help. Giving up, Med limped toward the back porch and door, and despite his better judgment Winston decided to help Med. He was stuck outside, too. The violence had all happened so suddenly. Winston felt like a fool, getting trapped outside of the safety that he had so painstakingly planned and built, and all for the adoration of a cat that until today hadn’t shown a lick of affection toward him. He knew the Willis family well. They were good churchgoing people — part and parcel of the Johnsonville family, though seldom seen in public. Winston often saw Med’s father, Earl, down at the eastern end of Robin Lake where a flowing tributary creek emptied into it. It was a good fishing spot, known well to those in the know from this part of Georgia. They might spend a couple of hours man-gossiping and catching up before one of them had to get back to the trivialities of life. And perhaps Winston owed something to Med’s father for the quiet times they shared together at that fishing hole. On an impulse, and unsure of just what they’d do with him if they got him inside the apartment, Winston whisper-yelled, “Med. Med Willis! Melvin!”