As he reached I-75 North, Winston slowed his pace, though his heart still pumped furiously with the adrenaline of witnessing such total destruction. No, extinction was the word he wanted to use, especially if what he suspected was true. This was no longer conventional warfare, he agonized, recalling the results of the American conventional warfare that ravaged villages in Vietnam. This destruction was different — it was all-encompassing, with nary a structure left standing. The soot that choked his nose, clung to his clothes, and turned his favorite blue Rusty Wallace #2 cap black, was reminiscent of the stench that Agent Orange left for months when it was used against the Viet Cong. Even after its controversial and provocative use, and whether unscathed or horrifically wounded, there were survivors, be they lucky bastards or unfortunate victims. But here, in McDonough, there wasn’t a single survivor.
And then it dawned on him…
“It can’t be,” he said, “it jes’ don’ make any sense.”
Winston stopped dead in his tracks on the centerline of I-75 North.
“That is nuclear,” he burst out with remorse, lamenting the backpacks emblazoned with the radioactive markings hidden in his very own barn and only a few feet from where May now slept, “she was right.”
He stepped up his pace, hoping to beat the sun, which would be up in an hour or so, and decided to get May the hell out of that barn. He could do it. He could help her climb up and onto the branch limb and heave herself over the razor-wire fence. She could do it with his help. Winston could just make out the Cadillac’s form from which he acquired the MREs coming up in the distance, probably less than a half mile from where he now slowly jogged. As he fretted over the fact that the PLA was storing a nuclear arsenal on their property, he neglected to spot the three figures coming at him quickly from the shoulder. Before he realized the threat, one of them clocked him in the chest, which sent him reeling to the hard pavement. It hurt Winston’s old man bones, but his quick reflexes had his rifle trained on the figures before they could relieve him of it. He squared off against his assailants, which he recognized as three locals, based on their shabby appearance and soot-black faces and clothes.
“What’s you gon’ do with that peashooter, ya ol’ coot?” said the boy in the middle, presumably their leader. The other two boys snickered.
“I’m a shoot yo’ balls off first,” Winston retorted, scrambled to his feet and whispered, “then I’m a shoot yo’ rogue and peasant slave here through the eyes,” raised his voice and taunted, “that’s what this ol’ coot gon’ do!”
Winston didn’t understand the rage he suddenly felt against his fellow Americans, but understood that if these boys pressured him, he would kill again. A quick survey found that only one of them — the one to his right — was armed. He held a .38 special at his side. Still, they could overpower him if they wanted, but he would take at least one of them out with him.
“We’d like our MREs back, Sir, that you stole from us,” the boy with the gun said, “and we’re asking real nice, Sir. Real polite-like. We don’t want any trouble.”
He was their leader, not the one in the middle, Winston decided. He stood out among the other two, like he was once somebody before the conflict had divided the nation into two combatant factions even before the PLA declared war on the United States. And he was much older than the other two he now recognized.
“Not a chance, Chief. I need these.”
“Listen here you filthy nigg—,” the boy in the center started, but was coldcocked before he finished the sentence by the leader’s .38 special. The boy bent in half with a brief and humiliating stupor, but quickly regained his composure, a trickle of blood flowing down his cheek.
“I told you more than once never to use that word again,” the leader said, turned back to Winston and apologized, “my wife was African-American.”
The manner in which the boy lingered on the word was told Winston all that he needed to know about the man.
“I’m truly sorry,” Winston replied.
“I still need them MREs back.”
“Now stay with me here,” Winston replied, “how about we barter for them?”
“Whatever else you got on your person we can outright take, Sir,” the leader said, and inched closer toward Winston, “there’s three of us, and only one a you.”
“There it is,” Winston smiled, “Army Ranger. Probably served in the Gulf War, maybe Afghanistan, but you got out? Not a company man, though.”
The leader’s face twisted, his armor somewhat chinked.
“How’d you guess that?”
“They’s something you learn in the military that sorta sticks with a man his entire life. That’s respect. And you almos’ got them mini Claymore’s set properly.”
The leader’s face grimaced, and he smiled ruefully.
“Don’t be ashamed, son, but would you like to see how I would a done it?”
“You a military man?”
“Army Ranger through an’ through, but no company man — like you. Was an Explosives Ordinance Disposal Technician in ‘Nam, ’71 to ’73. Earned a ticket home for this.”
Winston pulled up his shirt and hoodie with his free hand to reveal the scar that ran horizontally the entire width of his abdomen, dividing his navel into two asymmetrical half-moons.
“Nearly cut me in two,” Winston said, not proud of the fact.
Both boys blurted out some sort of audible exasperation. The leader deflated into pride and held out his hand. Winston took it into his own hand.
“Cole Meriwether. This here is Mike and Earl.”
Mike and Earl both nodded.
“Winston Sparrow. From up in Johnsonville. Where you boys from?”
“Here,” Cole said, “McDonough.”
“We’re from Forsyth,” Mike replied.
“We been walkin’ north on 75 lookin’ for somethin’ ta et,” Earl, the boy Cole had coldcocked, added, “thought we’d score somethin’ at the ol’ Flyin’ J in Jackson — they got everythin’ a man could ax fer, but they ain’t even had one god-damned Ding Dong left. Not even a god-damned boiled peanut left in the pot. God-damned PLA took all of it.”
“Then blew it all to holy hell,” Mike chimed in, looking as if he could burst out in tears.
“I know,” Winston empathized, “we in the same boat up in Johnsonville. Jes’ hungry.”
“Yep. We were up there a couple a weeks ago thinking that Calef’s might have something left, but all we found was a bee’s nest a PLA soldiers,” Cole said, “damned near got killed trying to get away from ‘em. We’ve been poking around this area for weeks now, but there’s little to find other than beechnuts.”
Winston shook his head and asked, “did you see, well, I guess, what happened here?”
“Nah, but we heard it,” Cole replied, “we were all the way over in Lafayette when it happened. Ain’t nothin’ there either.”
“I think I heard it, too,” Winston recalled, remembering the day about three weeks after the PLA had commandeered their property, when he was busy killing Jimmy. If he had spent the day like he normally did, with May sleeping and he watching the PLA soldiers go about their business, it would have been the one and only day he’d see all three of the generals leave the Sparrow property together — just as they had come in, chauffeured in those fancy Mercedes trucks. They were gone a few hours, and he did recollect hearing and feeling a large explosion from somewhere down south. At the time, he just assumed it was the PLA blowing up the power grid. Now he realized what really happened.
“Them MREs are the last from my private stash,” Cole paused and added, “but you go on and keep ‘em if you can show me a better way of setting them Claymores. I got me a few cases of ‘em hid that I scored from the Army Reserve Center in Macon just after they blew the place to hell and the Army abandoned us. I’d sure like to kill me as many of them bastards as I can for what they done to my fam—,” Cole choked up, unable to complete the word, “but I was an UAV Operator, so…”