Page 63 of Them

He wiped away the tears with his shirtsleeve. “I didn’t want to at first. I wanted to go to college. Maybe even earn myself a football scholarship. And doesn’t that sound like just about the silliest thing in the world now that…” He lifted his palms to the crumbling horizon.

“No. Doesn’t sound silly at all.”

“It just didn’t sit right with me that others had to go and I could stay. Not right in the slightest. Perfect world? We all stay home…” Lane coughed into his closed fist. It wasn’t a healthy sound. “We all stay home and nobody dies. Nobody kills. None of my friends lose their arms or legs or their whole fuckin’ head. We don’t lose ourselves, we don’t… we don—” Another violent bout of coughing.

Tim got up, went over, and sat down next to Lane. Put a hand on his knotted back. “Let’s get back inside, what’d’ya say?”

Lane looked up at him. “Why?”

“ ’Cause you sound like you’re coming down with a cold, and I’ll be damned if I let you get sick on my watch.”

“No, I meant… why aren’t you angry?”

Tim sighed. He held his breath for a few seconds, letting the encroaching thunder fill the gap until he was ready. “I don’t know, brother. I think I’m sick and tired of being angry. Been pissed off and scared shitless for so damn long… but it hasn’t gotten me much of anywhere.”

“Got you here,” Lane said.

Tim shook his head. “I hope not. I want to think it was something else that did that. Something… good. Like whatever’s keeping you alive. I think it’s a good reason.”

“I’m no good,” Lane said, his voice cracking.

“Pretty sure the jury’s still out on that one.”

They were both quiet for a while after that. The city around them breathing for the dead. Somewhere, far away, a night bird called. Nothing answered. Finally, Tim asked:

“Why’d Weisbrot do it?”

“Do what?”

“Set the Scorpions free.”

“That’s…” Lane hesitated. “Officially, he was trying to kill them. Before they could escape onto the highway.”

“Well… why do you think he crashed the truck?”

The weary soldier thought about it for a moment. “Sometimes, it was like we were the only two people in the room who thought about the future, Weisbrot and me. He said something once. It wasn’t during the usual corporate chitchat or a scientific debriefing. It was just the two of us, and I think he let his guard down. Just for a second.”

“What did he say?”

“It was a few hours before the first scheduled mutated birth trial. Everyone was so excited. A fever had spread through the desert campus. But Weisbrot stopped by my office that morning out of the blue, and he told me he would sign any program-cancellation proposal that I drew up. Somehow he’d seen right through me, all my doubts. He knew. He fucking knew.”

Tim waited for him to go on.

“At first, I didn’t say anything. Hell, I didn’t know what to say. And then before I could get the words out, he started laughing. But… the thing is… his eyes weren’t laughing. They were dead serious.”

“What did you do then?”

Lane looked away into the dark, remembering. “That’s the worst part, I think. Weisbrot started to laugh, trying to pretend the whole idea had just been his stupid idea of a joke… and then I started laughing right along with him. You get what I’m saying, son? I never said a word. It was our one chance… our last chance to stop all of this. And all I did was fucking laugh.”

“You think Weisbrot came to your office to—”

“I think he knew deep in his heart the same thing I knew in mine. That our work belonged dead and buried. With such amazing progress, why were we the only ones wondering what would become of us once the monsters actually belonged to us?

“I tried to justify it to myself after he left. I thought he was just scared. Cold feet, y’know? But all I could really think was Nobody has to die anymore. If our soldiers were replaced by Scorpions, then no more boots on the ground. No more cold war euphemisms or mutually assured destruction. All I could see were my own ghosts—Jeffy, Doyle, Jorge, Carson, Petey, Timbo, Bob-O, Louie—the friends this country sacrificed on an altar of bullshit.

“Maybe if I had just acknowledged that he was trying to help me, help all of us, he wouldn’t have had to do what he did. Be all alone in the end. Maybe there would’ve been no end. If I had been a good soldier, I never would’ve let him on that truck. Not anywhere near it. He should’ve been flown to Portland first class but instead he volunteered himself to go along for the ride and I didn’t protest. Didn’t object. Didn’t know how fucking far he’d go.

“Weisbrot did it because he was more afraid of us than he was of them. Jeremy loved his Scorpions like the Grizzly Man loved bears. He knew they were born powerless, slaves destined to become mindless weapons.”