“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Let’s move out. We ought to run into a road before too long. If we’re lucky we’ll find an empty cabin. Maybe grab a car. Change into civvies.”
They walked for another four or five hours, saying little. Henry was awed by the stark beauty of the winter Rocky Mountains. They slipped past frozen waterfalls, terraced and glittering like crystal. Henry’s feet were blocks of ice and his hands felt clumsy. His face burned with the subzero temperatures and the lashing wind. He thought about the Keys and sunshine and warm water; he walked in a kind of trance, physically alert, but mentally absent as his mind took him to friendlier times.
Henry marveled at the way seemingly inconsequential decisions changed lives. He’d seen it in combat, and he’d experienced it in relationships. One guy breaks right and falls, another guy goes left and makes it.
He and Bart were twenty-two years old and on leave for two weeks with a pocketful of combat pay. They’d started out in Daytona with a rented red convertible Mustang that just begged to be driven. After the first night, they got a wild hair and decided to drive down to the Keys. They’d stopped at Holiday Isle. Bart had just completed rehab on his knee, and Henry was about to be deployed again. But they had two weeks to be young and dumb.
Holiday Isle was an oceanside resort in Islamorada, and spring break was in full swing. College kids from all over the country flocked to the Keys to get hammered and laid in the sunshine. Bart was driving when they pulled into the gravel parking area across the street from the sprawling hotels and bars. They both had their shirts off, sunglasses on, and were highly alert for contact with the opposite sex.
Bart was driving through the parking lot with a sense of urgency. A bikini-clad pair of girls stepped out from behind a van, directly in front of the fast-moving Mustang. Bart slammed on the brakes and the car slid on the loose gravel.
The girls squealed and tried to leap out of the way, but not before the Mustang knocked the brunette down. “Assholes!” screamed the blonde. “You could have killed us! Mary, are you okay?”
Henry and Bart jumped out of the car and ran around to the front of the vehicle. Henry was appalled and terrified they’d really hurt the girl on the ground.
“Oh, man,” Bart said. “I’m so sorry. My bad.” Bart knelt down next to Mary, who was bleeding a little from one of her knees, a scratch.
“He just learned how to drive,” Henry said, deadpan. “But we’ll make it up to you. Drinks all day on me.”
“Fuck off,” said the blonde who would end up marrying Henry.
“Well, if you put it that way,” Henry said with a broad grin. The blonde cut her eyes at him, shaking her head, still pissed.
Bart helped Mary to her feet, and she smiled at him. “Well,” Mary said, still gazing at Bart. “You gotta admit they’re cute.”
They danced and drank frozen daiquiris and rum runners and lounged in the sun for a week. The night before the girls were scheduled to return to college at the University of Florida, Henry made a pitch to Suzanne.
“Look,” he said, “what really matters in life?” They were sitting alone on a rock looking out at the moonlit ocean. In the distance, a band played old eighties rock, and there were hoots and howls and the sound of fevered mating rituals. But Henry was serious. He reached out and held Suzanne’s hand.
“Ten years from now, when you look back on next week, what will you recall? What will matter then? Will you remember the test you took or the paper you wrote? Will you care about the boring-ass lecture you sat through on Shakespeare’s sexuality?”
“I like the Bard. He wasn’t gay, by the way.”
“Well there you go. You don’t need to go to that class. What I’m saying is, you should take an extended break. Give it another week, and we’ll make memories that will last a lifetime.” He leaned in and kissed the softest part of her neck. “And one of my favorite lines in literature is ‘Barkis is willing.’ I’m not saying all that, but I’m willing for seven more days. No promises, no regrets. One hell of a week.”
“You’re sweet, Henry. That’s not going to happen. And Dickens is overrated.”
“I want you to really think about it. Justify it. If you go back to school this week instead of the following week, what’s that going to change? How does that make a difference in your life? Whereas if you stay down here for another week, you can look back later on and explain to your kids you lived life to the fullest. You took every moment and—”
“Do you really believe this shit? You seriously should leave the army and become a car salesman.”
“… and sucked the marrow from life,” he continued, as if she had not spoken. “You didn’t leave anything to wonder about later on. No promises, no regrets, but let’s make this week something.”
“And why would I do that?” she said. And he knew he had her.
“Because I’ve got great abs, can quote Hamlet, and because we’re going to rent the suite for a whole week. Take out a boat every day. We’ll fish, dive, eat like royalty, live like kings.”
“That’ll cost a fortune. That suite is probably close to a grand a night.”
“Well, you know what? I don’t care, because I want to make this week something special. I might die in a month. A year. You know where I’m going…”
“You’re laying it on a little thick, soldier boy. And what about Mary? What if she wants to go back?”
“I trust Bart to handle that,” Henry said.
And that week made all the difference.
“You boys are slow and deaf,” Henry heard over his shoulder. He jumped, spinning, even as recognition penetrated his reverie. Sergeant Major Martinez strode through the snow, smoke coming from his mouth in the arctic air, bloodstains on his chest and arms.
“Are you hit?” Carlos asked.
“No. Not my blood. I cut your trail this morning.”
“Anybody else?” Henry said.
“Just me. All my boys. Gone. The colonel, too. Never made it out of the bunker.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Against my better judgment, I hung around. Got a few more of the bastards that hit us. They were SF. No insignias, no dog tags. One of the men I killed was a guy I went through SERE school with. He was a good fucking soldier.”
“What the hell?” Carlos said.
“Colonel Bragg gave me this.” Martinez reached into a pocket and held up a black square the size of a match, a case for a micro-drive. “He didn’t have time to tell me much. But he said if anything happened to him to get this out on the net worldwide. I’m guessing it’s the proof he claimed he didn’t have. Proof we’ve been usurped by something, someone, some whatever the fuck they are. The guy behind the guy, the puppet master all the gringos in tinfoil hats have been yammering about. He’s real, that guy. And he’s evil.”
“And on our ass,” Carlos said.
“Yeah, that too,” Martinez replied. “But we’ve got one thing going for us.”
“What’s that?” Henry said.
“The guy thinks we’re all dead.”
KEY WEST, FLORIDA
Suzanne was up with the sun. She padded across tiled floors, brewed a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and sat down at her desk. Her office was in the master bedroom, and afforded her a nice view of the pool and foliage and the waterway behind her home. She looked at her computer with a bit of disdain. Why bother?
She was under a deadline to complete a novel she had procrastinated on. She forced herself to write every morning, but she had not made much headway on her latest book, a romance novel set in Renaissance Florence. It was hard to come up with flowery prose and erotic double entendre when divorce was looming in the real world. And now, my publisher might not even exist.