But Med couldn’t hear Winston’s voice over the racket of the artillery fire, which now engulfed Johnsonville. Med stomped onto the back porch and tried the door. Winston had locked it behind him when he retrieved his forgotten rifle last night. Med tore the screen door from its hinges and tossed it to the ground, pounding hysterically on the sturdy wooden door. And as Winston stood to wave Med down, three Russian-made Tigr troop transporters, vehicles similar to the American Humvee, pulled slowly into the driveway, and a mish-mash of nearly thirty soldiers from Russia, North Korea, and the Middle East spewed from them. Winston ducked down, terrified that his hiding spot had been discovered. The enemy soldiers were in no hurry to catch Med as they meandered to his desperate position — a rat in a trap. Spying the scourge that hunted him, Med put his right hand through the door glass and fumbled for the knob on the deadbolt.
“Get out of there, Med,” Winston mumbled, knowing that there was no knob on that deadbolt. The only way to get that back door open was with either a key or a heavy foot. Winston felt helpless for both he and Med when a hand on his shoulder startled him. He turned slowly, expecting to see an AK-47 pointed at his head, but was relieved to see May hunched behind him. She was just as terrified as Winston, but she motioned for him to follow her, and they both skirted through the cordwood and around the side of the barn that faced the woods. There, a gray, four-foot stepstool was stationed at the window in the barn that faced the woods. She was first, as she lumbered up the stepstool and flung her body inside the barn. Winston followed. When he was inside the barn, he thrust his body back out the open window, retrieved the stepstool, and closed the window, flipping its latch. The barn door was still wide open, but the enemy’s backs were to them, watching their latest victim being pulled from the porch. Winston, still clutching Amadeus’ empty water bowl, tossed it next to his food bowl. They had barely closed the apartment door when a dozen soldiers teemed into the barn.
May thrust herself onto the bed and jumped under the covers for safety as Winston picked up his .22 and stood with his back against the door, at the ready should their hiding spot be discovered. They were both terrified. Just on the other side of the false wall, they could hear, smell, and feel the soldiers, who were appropriating several small cans of gasoline and oil meant for the lawnmower and weed whacker, assorted tools and other paraphernalia that might help the PLA. May and Winston heard strange words that sounded like orders being given, and commands being obeyed.
“Khudhuu alnnaft walghaz!”
“Nieum sydy!”
“Ant! Jalab hadhih al’aqmashat fi shahina!”
“Nieum sydy!”
May poked her head out from under the blanket and Winston shifted his position to the slit that faced the house. He slowly lifted the dingy cloth and peered outside to a disorienting cacophony of sights and sounds. The PLA soldiers surrounded Med and they were shoving him back and forth, Med’s eyes wide with panic and fear as he pleaded for his life. He circled around and around, searching for an escape and praying for a rescue. He would get neither.
“What’s happening?” May asked, forgetting to use her quiet voice.
Winston turned and shushed her.
Several PLA soldiers wielded large daggers, and when Med was shoved toward them, they held out the blades as he fell into them, the razor-sharp edges slipping easily into Med’s fleshy abdomen. He stopped pleading for his life and fell to his knees when the third or fourth piercing stole his will to survive, both hands attempting to hold his entrails inside his gut. Two PLA soldiers caught Med’s arms and he flailed violently, his small intestines flowing slowly from his belly and forming a pile on the ground. Another soldier stood behind him and grasped his tufted head of ginger hair (as a child, Melvin’s mother would gently caress his hair to help him fall asleep — it was redder then — and it was his mother’s placid face that he now pictured at his journey’s end. She held out a cookie, and said, “it’ll be okay, Melvin. Come to your mother now.” It was a chocolate chip cookie — his favorite — fresh from the oven, buttery, and its dark chocolate chunks warm and melty.). The soldier’s grasp was so forceful that Winston thought it would have snapped Med’s neck, but, unfortunately, it didn’t. Spitting and snorting, the soldier whispered something into Med’s ear.
“They gon’ kill Med, Mother.”
“No, Winston, no, no, no…”
Med grunted, “Momma?” as the soldier pierced the delicate tissue of Med’s angular neck, driving the blade through it in one easy thrust. Med was lucky — the soldier’s blade was sharp. He choked and gagged on his own fiery blood, attempting to scream, as the soldier sawed back and forth several times, exposing Med’s spinal cord. Then, with technical precision, like a chef carving the holiday bird and finding the connective joint tissue of a turkey’s leg, the soldier detached Med’s head from his torso, his heart continuing to beat out a steadfast rhythm. A copious amount of blood spewed from Med’s severed neck as the two PLA soldiers let go of the torso. The soldiers cheered, some discharging their weapons into the air and into Med’s body. The soldier held Med’s head up high in great victory, paraded it around the jubilant group of men, and drove it down onto the three-foot high, wrought-iron fence that protected May’s beloved teacup roses from hungry deer.
Med’s head faced Winston with a death stare that caused him to gag. He stumbled toward the bathroom area of the apartment, inadvertently pulling the shower curtain and rod down upon him as he bent to vomit into a bucket. The contents of Winston’s stomach emptied, his heaves painful spasms of regret and sorrow for a man he had known since birth. Had the enemy not still been rummaging through the barn’s contents, and making its own loud racket, their apartment surely would have been discovered. Med’s death was the single most repugnant sight Winston’s eyes had ever beheld.
Winston quickly and quietly remounted the shower rod and curtain, and took his place at the slit facing their house. The back door was no match to a heavy steel-toed boot to the deadbolt, as the soldiers went about their business of ransacking the Sparrows’ home. He watched helplessly as soldiers flowed into their home, and moments later as they streamed from the house with armfuls of items that May and Winston either found no use for in the apartment or were too large to bring with them: Ramen noodles, condiments, magazines, other edibles such as flour and pancake mixes, May’s good towels, blankets, pillows, and an assortment of other items. Winston was grateful that he had built their apartment — for he knew that they would have been killed just like Med, or worse for May, at this very moment.
May flung the covers off and lurched toward Winston, on her knees and weeping. She wrapped her arms around his legs and gripped him intensely. She had never been so frightened in her life. He placed a soothing hand to her shoulder, but truth be told, he was just as scared as her. He said, “it’s okay, Mother. We’re safe, May. We’re safe.”
From where he stood, Winston could see from the house to the driveway and road simply by shifting his head from slit to slit. This he could do without disturbing May’s clutch, which only intensified with every crash and thump from the soldiers inside the barn and outside in the driveway.
“Hurry! Take that!” A startling shout came from just on the other side of the false wall. Laughter, and the unmistakable sound of a basketball bounced off the barn’s floorboards. Suddenly, the basketball crashed into the false wall several times. Winston watched as two North Korean soldiers exited the barn, one bouncing the basketball, the other carrying a toolbox that he had since he was twenty. He switched his view to the front slit. As quickly as they came, the soldiers climbed back into their Tigr troop transports and the trucks departed one by one back toward Calef’s, the highway, and the gunfire. The last truck to depart waited for the final two North Korean soldiers.