Woo-jin was silent as they made their way to the trash mound. He was nervous that the other soldier would discover the missing bodies, make a fuss about it, and alert the superiors. Then, surely, there’d be some form of investigation, and Woo-jin wasn’t confident that he could lie about his knowledge of Winston and the bodies. He made the suggestion to empty the trash on the opposite side from where the bodies had been. The other soldier didn’t care, but Woo-jin did notice Jimmy’s body. It already stunk. He wondered who it was, and assumed that Winston was responsible for it being there. As they were leaving, Woo-jin stole a moment and looked toward the underbelly of the overpass. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw a dark figure lean back into the shadows.
Winston watched from the shadows of the overpass as Woo-jin and his partner emptied the trash, and he waited until after ten o’clock lights out before he attempted to make his way back to the apartment. He sat under the overpass for hours, contemplating what he had done to Jimmy, and what explosion could have made such a loud booming sound. He concluded that while it bothered him on a spiritual level to take another man’s life, at some point, Jimmy was going to be harmful to his family. Hell, he probably would have already hurt them had Winston been truthful about his and May’s situation — would he have raped May and taken all of their food? Killed her? This new world was no time to be democratic. It was survival of the fittest and Winston proved to be the fittest — or luckiest — since he hadn’t actually set out to kill Jimmy. Time was the only arbiter in this game of fate, and to survive, one was forced to take risks. Jimmy was only a pawn to Winston’s king. As to the explosion, he guessed that it was the PLA blowing up whatever infrastructure was left of the Georgia electrical grid.
He wound his way through the woods and back to the spot where he had left the stepstool — it was still there — and waited for nearly thirty minutes, watching the ebb and flow of the soldiers on his property. He was more frightened in the dark than in the daytime; at least in the daytime he could see his enemy. He had been away for twenty-four hours and was worried about May. Her psyche had crumpled over the past several days, though he hoped it was only his imagination. Satisfied that it was clear, he climbed up and over the fence and was soon at the barn window. He peered inside, but he couldn’t be certain if the barn was empty, and so with nothing more than faith, he pushed the window up and climbed in. He reached outside for the gun, shovel, and stepstool, hanging the shovel where it belonged, and hugged the wall back to the apartment’s door and pushed on it.
It was locked. He tapped and waited a moment.
“May,” he whispered, “open up, it’s me.”
Still nothing — no sound or movement.
He could push the door open, but that would make noise and render the door inoperable, and he wouldn’t be able to fix it without making a racket. He tapped with his fingers again. May was a deep sleeper who routinely slept through her own alarm clock. Again, he tapped on the door, getting more brazen, and tapping louder.
“Mother, wake the fuck up,” he said, his whisper cracking into a voice.
He waited. Still nothing.
Winston, with no other choice, was forced to seek out another refuge, outside.
Out
Winston cursed May for not waking up or for falling asleep or for not waiting up for him or for not walking the floors for him, like the Mayor had done when May’s own mother Mary was sick in the upstairs bedroom. Winston cautiously made his way back through the window, over the fence and into the woods, sans shovel this time. He was exhausted and starving, and what little food he ate today — the Twinkie being the highlight — had worn off twelve hours ago. He left the stepstool where he had before, though he made a better effort to conceal it, and made his way back to the trash pile. He hovered over the growing mound of trash, Jimmy’s body in rigor mortis and fouling up the place. There was nothing there to eat that he would dare put into his mouth.
He handled the puny .22 rifle as if it were his trusty old Vietnam-era M16A1 semi-automatic rifle, and the memories of Tran earlier in the day made Winston smile as he rounded the corner of the overpass and walked along the water department’s fence line. He peered into the empty facility grounds — it was deserted, and an eight-foot tall fence topped with razor wire enclosed it. There was no way over that fence, unlike the stunted one that currently surrounded his property. He continued to walk, his eyes in Johnsonville, but his head in Vietnam. He and Tran had seen plenty of combat in Vietnam, and they’d witnessed many of their compatriots blown to bits, too. It was a job that hardened a man’s heart and kept him from wanting friends, because one reckless moment sent men back home in body bags. Their fragile emotional states or clumsiness might kill them. Tran was different, though. There was no way he and Winston could have been EOD partners and not been friends, because with great risk came empathy, and to truly excel as an EOD technician, you had to watch over your partner. The reward was an unbreakable bond. Winston had always regretted that he lost touch with Tran after he was sent home to Georgia, but there weren’t too many days that passed by that he didn’t think of the tough little man and he wondered how many of the enemy that now occupied the U.S. felt the same as Woo-jin.
Winston realized that his reminiscing caused his concentration to wane. His head needed to be in the here and now, and as he prepared to cross the street, he was startled by a pair of Middle-Eastern soldiers on patrol. They walked leisurely past Winston with nary an inkling that he was there, concealed behind a concrete pillar built into the overpass’s immense structure. One of the soldiers cradled a box in his arms. Winston crossed the road and found himself in the tall, tick-infested grass he detested since moving into the house after the Mayor passed. His original intention was to check on the Harris property five doors down and crash in their shed, but curiosity got the best of him, and he decided to check out the status of his beloved little town. He waded through the thick grass and to Little River — a tributary of Robin Lake that he had all but forgotten existed until now. He was grateful that it was still running this late in the year as he knelt down and immersed his face in the clear and refreshing water. He gulped it in, never realizing just how dehydrated he was. He took in as much as he needed, and stood, feeling invigorated and alive. He decided to check out Calef’s.
Winston strode along the river until he came to a large water pipe that crossed from one side of the river to the other. The waterway wasn’t that wide, perhaps ten feet across at this point, but it was deep, and Winston precariously balanced his way , tiptoeing across the pipe to the other side. Calef’s was just on the opposite side of the woods. He decided to check out the apple orchard behind the store on the off chance that he could find an apple or two the town’s residents had missed. He trudged through the woods until he reached the clearing that became the orchard. Johnsonville felt deserted and abandoned — almost safe. But he knew that wasn’t the case, and he proceeded into the orchard with great caution, taking inventory of the trees as best he could under a Georgia midnight sky. He came up empty, and headed toward the store. There was little hope of finding any food left on the shelves, but he was curious as to its condition. The apple trees gave him a sense of security as he flittered through them — rifle in hand and at the ready — and reached the rear of the store, where he had so recently loaded up his truck with crushed stone.