The Last Virus Read online

  “No, sir. The emotions on her face. They were in line with what you were saying. She understands.”

  “Is that true? You speak English?”

  The woman nodded her head.

  “Well goddamn, Translator. You are one observant motherfucker. First Sergeant Johnson, go in the second drawer of my desk and get a Kit Kat for our new recruit here. No, let me change that order. Get him two Kit Kats.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, really the only thing I could say considering I was never one for sweets.

  “All right, back to where I was. You have anything to say before I blow your goddamn brains out?”

  “Please,” she began in the most humble entreat I had ever heard, “may I have my children?”

  The general looked around, perplexed at the request.

  “And where the fuck are these children?”

  “Taped to the inside of what I am wearing. You may lift it up. They are there.”

  “Well, thank you for the invitation.”

  The general lifted the undergarment. The three-by-five photo he ripped off and put it in front of her face. She looked at it for a moment and then nodded her head. The general dropped it from his hand, and as it floated to the floor, he pulled the trigger. The force of the bullet toppled both her and the chair.

  I walked over and reached down. There, now in my hands, the photograph. In the picture, she was crouched wearing a hijab and a full coverage bathing suit. Behind her was nothing but a body of calm water, aquamarine in color. In her arms closely wrapped were two girls, one of maybe four years and the other no older than seven. One was holding up a plastic orange pail. The youngest had her small arms outstretched, palms up with a collection of seashells to show the person behind the lens. In the foreground to the left, the impression of three perfect sand angels. I wanted to run over to him, rip the gun out of his hand and shoot him in the chest. Instead, I knelt and fit the memory into her lifeless hand.

  “You done over there?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered.

  “First Sergeant Johnson, get her out of here.”

  “You want her at the Lime Line before sunset, sir?” First Sergeant Johnson asked.

  “No, bring her body to the sewers. Take this piece of paper, shove it in her mouth, and put her on display so all of the other goddam Ka’ba lickers get the message that we’re not fucking around here either.”

  First Sergeant Johnson untied her from the chair, picked up her body, and threw it over his shoulder. He departed from the command center immediately afterward. The general was now in the back of the room. He already had the two doors to the seven-foot-high gun-metal gray steel cabinet flung open. He already had the neck of a whiskey bottle in the grip of one hand and an old-fashioned glass in the other. Both he brought with him to his desk. I waited until he started his pour. I figured what better time for my protestation.

  “You didn’t have to kill her,” I said.

  “Well, you’re a little late with that request, Translator. You should have spoken up earlier,” he answered, then knocked back the quarter glass he had filled.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “You’re fucking right it wouldn’t have mattered,” he fired off while proceeding to pour himself another round.

  “She had two children.”

  “You’re right, she did. And now if you’re done pointlessly defending the dead, you can get back to the station I so graciously set aside for you and begin translating that shitload of papers stacked on it.”

  “You could have just imprisoned her.”

  “Goddamn, Translator. I hope you understand that if it wasn’t happy hour on this side of the desk, I would have already had your skinny-ass neck in my hand just waiting for your eyes to somersault into the back of your head.”

  “I just want to know why you shot her, sir.”

  “Are you testing my patience, Translator?”

  “No, sir. Not at all, sir,” I replied.

  “Okay, I’ll entertain your inquiry, Translator. But this is going to be the last fucking time you’re ever going to speak to me again without being prompted. Are we crystal fucking clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, then I‘ll tell you why I shot her. First of all, we don’t have a goddamn prison. And the reason for that is because we are the only fucking people who are supposed to be down here. Secondly, we don’t have enough food for ourselves, so I find no reason to start a food pantry for all the fanatical fucks who want us inverted on a cross while their children throw stones at our fly-infested bodies. But even if we did have a prison, and we did have enough food for her, I still would have taken out my gun and bored a forty-five caliber hole through her skull. And do you know why?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s right, Translator. Of course, you don’t know fucking why, because you have no goddamn idea why she was strapped to that chair in the first place.”

  “You’re right, sir, I don’t.”

  “Well, two hours ago, while you were having a wet dream, a few of my men who were cutting through the sewers on their way back from a supply raid, heard two gunshots. They followed the sound for about two hundred or so meters before coming up on that cunt. And right at her fucking feet, the bodies of a man and a teenage girl. Now I’m thinking that gives me every fucking right to execute her in the exact same manner as she did to those two escapees from Ayla.”

  “I didn’t know, sir,” I answered, my eyes lowered and embarrassed now to be standing there.

  “Don’t get on my shit list, Translator. I’ll rip that soft heart out of your body while it’s still fucking beating.”

  I returned with one nod of my head. I was still wondering what to do with my body when he ordered me to take a seat on the lone couch in the command center. As I was sitting, looking at the clay wall because I didn’t know where else to put my eyes, he passed me by and slapped me hard on the shoulder. It rattled me, but I understood it wasn’t one of animus. It was one that a father would have given his son to let him know that all had been forgiven and it was time to move on.

  “Okay, boys, time to fucking play,” he said while he was lifting up one of the guitars from the three that were resting on stands up against the back wall. On it, I noticed it had the words “FUK EM UP” written in white on the all-black body. As he clipped on his black leather strap and plugged the cord into an amp, I watched as three other soldiers left their posts to get behind their instruments. He raised the mic stand so that it was now teeth high, and then started to tune the guitar. Afterward, he gave the strings one strum before looking over to me.

  “You ever see a guitar like this, Translator?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “This here piece of machinery is an exact replica of a 1989 ESP MX220, replete with EMG 60 and 81 pickups. Besides that forty-five you saw me unload a few minutes ago and a few AR-15s, it was the only other fucking thing I took from my apartment before I left for the Mannheim Front.”

  “It’s a good looking guitar, sir.”

  “You’re damn right it’s a good looking guitar, and it plays even fucking better than that. James Hetfield played one just like it. You know who the fuck that is?”

  “No, sir,” I replied.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. The first time you walked in here, I had you pegged as some pansy-ass lover of top forty shit.”

  “I listen to all types of music, sir.”

  “Great, fucking great. That’s something you tell some chick at two a.m. in a bar because you haven’t been able to get in anyone else’s pants for the last seven hours. True lovers of music put their souls into one type of music and that’s it. They wake up to that shit. They live their day with that shit. And when they put their goddamn tired head down on a pillow, it’s the last fucking thing they hear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now take a look at the poster on the wall over there. One of my men, God rest his soul, gave it to me last
year. Best gift I ever got. That’s James Fucking Hetfield. The goddamn 455 big block behind the band Metallica. Hetfield’s the messiah on a concert stage. The preacher of metal. He’s got long hair in that photo, but he cut it short just before they released the Load album back in ninety-six. That pissed off a lot of people. I understood it fucking completely. I mean, shit, if the Romans hadn’t murdered Christ, I bet you anything He would have severed His locks too. You get old, man. Can’t go around looking like that forever.”

  He then gave the guitar another strum and checked both the bass player and the second guitarist to see if they were ready. With the toe of his black boot, he lightly tapped one of the pedals on the floor in front of him to switch it on. “PFC Thomas.”

  “Yes, sir?” the soldier behind the drum kit answered.

  “We’re going to begin with ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ Now don’t fuck it up like you did a few days ago. I’m going to do the intro, and then you come in right before the verse begins. And stay in time. You got three measures of twelve-eight. After that, give me another measure at six-eight, followed by one more in twelve-eight. You fucking got that?”

  “Got it, sir,” PFC Thomas answered as he twirled one of the drum sticks over his head.

  There was no count to lead the band into the song. He just placed the pick between his teeth and closed his eyes. I suppose at that moment what I was expecting was some sort of sonic blast to come raging out at Mach speed through the amps set in the back corners of the room. Instead, what came forth was a sweet melodic dirge that sounded to me like he was playing at his mother’s funeral. The notes resonated so long after being fingerpicked you could almost see them floating off in the air. When he finally began to sing, it was difficult to reconcile the steel body and chiseled face of this man with that haunting baritone of a voice. I was mesmerized. I shuttered my own eyes, and my mind drifted back to the day I dropped into the sewers.

  The city was in flames, and I was walking fast down Madison Avenue toward the lake. Automatic fire was shattering storefront glass, and RPGs were opening gaping holes into the buildings all around me. It felt like I was alone, but I wasn’t. The street was crowded with others just like me. You would have thought at first that we were all rushing to catch a train. Yeah, I guess that’s what you would have thought if it wasn’t for the unlucky ones who happened to be in the path of either the bullets or exploding ordnance. Our stampede paid no attention to either their screams or their half bodies. Finally, I stopped, realizing the futility of it all. The lake would have only been a final burial ground. I drew in a deep breath and thought of just walking back the other way until my life was quickly put to an end. That was until I glanced at the middle of the street and saw a woman and the infant in her hands being helped down a manhole.

  I returned to the song. And now, it seemed like he had an entire orchestra playing behind him. He took the solo. His fingers slid down the fretboard, and the notes climbed a ladder to the heavens. It was perfectly executed and no longer than it should have been. He then leaned close to the microphone and spoke his last words: “So close no matter how far. Couldn’t be much more from the heart. Forever trust in who we are . . .”

  Yes, and he was right on that final line, “No, nothing else matters.”

  The general fingerpicked the song to its conclusion, and let the last notes fade out as if they were smoke from the last drag of a cigarette. This wasn’t his swan song, but it was his prelude to an end he must have understood was near. I watched him slowly remove the guitar and set it back on its stand. The tears in my eyes I quickly wiped away and returned to my desk. The day was just beginning and my emotions were already spent. How he was able to remain rock-steady was absolutely unfathomable to me.

  Entry #3

  The general was wrong when he stated that within a week’s time there would be a war raging over our heads. It actually started three weeks later. On some days, it was so intense that it shook us down here in the freight tunnels for hours. The general spent most of his time either working out new Metallica songs with his band or pulled up in a chair in front of the command center screens like he was watching a video game. Those screens, which were networked to clandestine cameras positioned throughout Ayla, gave us a limited front-row seat to the battle. As I write, by our best estimate, the faction trying to overthrow Ayla was occupying about a quarter of the city. For us, there was no vested interest as to who would eventually emerge as the victor. The best outcome would be a prolonged conflict that severely weakened the side that would ultimately claim the city.

  As much as I hate to use the phrase “good times,” as of course, it has to be taken in context, these did seem to be good times for us. The soldiers’ morale was stratospheric because we were, for obvious reasons, not running any missions. For the moment, the only real dilemma we had, or should I say the general had, was a quest for a set of guitar strings. During his last jam session, he had snapped the high E string to the point where it could not be salvaged. The other two guitars he had in the back of the room had already been cannibalized to the point that neither had more than two strings running down the fretboard, obviously neither of which held the high E string. A few days earlier he had sent two soldiers in search of someone in the freight tunnels who might have some guitar strings. They had just entered the command center and were giving him their report.

  “Well?” the general asked.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “No one? Not one fucking person down here came with a guitar.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it, sir. And we did a pretty thorough search,” one of the soldiers said. “We can try one of the music stores up in Ayla once the fighting subsides.”

  “There are no music stores left up there, Private. Jesus Christ, are you fighting the same goddamn battle we are.”

  “Yes, sir,” the private answered, even though the question was rhetorical.

  “Then if you are, you would have already known that one of the first things those camel-sodomizing assholes did after the invasion was to destroy every fucking music store we had up there. Which just pisses me off to no end because it just shows how ignorant these motherfuckers are of history, even their own goddamn history. Because if they weren’t, they would know that the last real fucking caliph they had, Abdulmecid the Second, played the goddamn violin. And he didn’t seem too worried about what the fuck either Allah or Muhammad had to say about it. Now go find me a fucking set of strings, preferably Ernie Ball RPS 10s, and don’t come back here until you do. Christ, all I want is to rip out a little ‘Fade to Black’ and then go up there and shoot a few of those ignorant motherfuckers in the balls. You ever hear that song, Translator?”

  “What, sir?” I said.

  “Don’t give me that ‘What, sir?’ shit. I know you got one ear to this conversation.”

  “No, sir, I haven’t heard it,” I confessed.

  “Well, you fucking need to hear it. At 5:05, Hammett starts in on the solo and doesn’t stop kicking ass until a good two minutes later. Best fucking solo in the history of rock and roll. Fuck, he just shreds that goddamn fretboard to pieces. Nothing like it. First time I heard it I was in my Camaro, Levi’s just past my ass and screwing some jock’s girlfriend. I think I was sixteen or something. Shit, that’s America, Translator. You got someone’s girlfriend in the backseat. You got a case of Budweiser chilling in the trunk. And you got Metallica blasting from your Blaupunkt speakers. Jesus, those were good fucking times.”

  “I’m sure they were, sir,” I said, and then asked the general how he had obtained all the equipment in the command center if the Caliphate had destroyed all the music stores after the invasion.

  “A raid on a warehouse last year, Translator. It was supposed to have light bulbs and a bunch of other shit we could use down here. Instead, it ended up having only musical equipment. So, the boys brought me back what you see here. As far as I’m concerned, the best goddamn mission we’ve ever had.”

  It was right after th
e general finished speaking that another soldier was let into the command center. She was small, no taller than five feet two. She had a black ponytail coming out the back of a camouflaged baseball cap. Mid-twenties I guessed. On the pocket of her uniform, in permanent black marker, were drawn nine tally marks.

  “At ease, PFC Smith.”

  She dropped her salute and then reached into that pocket and pulled out a set of guitar strings.

  “Nice fucking work, Smith. How in the hell did these fall into your hands?”

  “Sir, from two men down in the west end.”

  “Good fucking job. You want a Kit Kat?”

  “No, sir. One more thing, sir.”

  “Go on, PFC Smith.”

  “Our water’s been shut off again.”

  “Those motherfuckers. For the life of me, I don’t know why the hell I just don’t go in there and terminate their existence. It would sure as shit save me a lot of goddamn headaches.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  We walked southeast through the freight tunnels for about three miles. I knew this because of the street names that were stenciled on the concrete walls. I knew this because for a year while I attended Northwestern, I had also been a bicycle courier. By my third week on the job, I had memorized the city grid. Distances were easy to calculate, one block was one-eighth of a mile. I miss those days. I miss weaving in and out of the traffic at reckless speed and then gliding around pedestrians like they were moving construction cones. It was as if the city was my own motocross course. Every delivery was a harrowing but exhilarating experience. In that job, I had only one objective, and en route to that objective, I was beholden to no one. I was free then. And if it had paid enough, I would have dropped out of college immediately and kept pedaling for the next forty years of my life.

  The general and I were accompanied by a modest but heavily armed contingent of eleven soldiers. Five were at the point. Six were in the rear. All were carrying M4s and double belted with enough ammunition strapped across their chests to take on perhaps a platoon of Ayla regulars. We were headed to Tunnel X. That was the only thing I knew at the moment. Until I decided to inquire.