The Unit (35 page)

Have you always known that you wanted to be a writer?

When I was a boy, I didn’t think such a thing was possible. I’ve always liked to watch people and relish the deep feelings that certain places can bring and wonder about methods and motivations and ways of being. I’ve always thought it a waste that we can’t preserve more of our most moving experiences. Even though we can never answer the big questions about why we’re here, or what exactly we’re supposed to be doing, I wanted to try to somehow pull my weight. A writer can entertain, pull readers away from their daily troubles into worlds of speculation and, hopefully, small truths. It seems like a useful vocation, even if nothing real is produced, and I’m grateful to be working at it. Looking back now, it’s always been my dream job.

How has your past experience as a Marine and as a security consultant informed your writing?

I guess it’s given me an affinity for ordinary people who stand in the breach. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coasties who give years of their lives to stand up against those with malicious intent aren’t any better, as a group, than anyone else. They have the same weaknesses and flaws we all have but, for whatever reason, they’ve decided to put their posteriors on the line. Their jobs are often boring and lonely, and sometimes dangerous and frightening, so it’s sort of a concentrated version of life, the slow parts and the fast parts compartmentalized in the months and years of active duty—kind of like the chapters of a book.

Working in IT security has allowed me to meet some truly paranoid folks, and shown me some good reasons to worry. Virtual battles are being fought around us, every minute of every day. It’s not a bad field for writers interested in apocalyptic themes.

Who or what inspires you in your writing?

My family gives me all the reason for
being
I’ll ever need. If I want to interact with my wife and children, I only need to put out a bit of effort and time to reap the greater rewards of love. Writing is like icing on the cake. Being alive inspires me to write.

How did you develop the idea for
The Unit
?

I’ve always enjoyed post-apocalyptic books and movies. It’s one of the classic story premises, and I wanted to write something that would frighten me as I wrote it. I suppose I was trying to break out of complacency.

It’s any parent’s nightmare to see their family in danger. When that happens, all bets are off, and characters reveal things about themselves that would remain invisible in calmer days. As I came to know the members of this family, they came up with ideas of their own, and my primary job was to remain true to them.

Did you have to do any research to write this novel?

Yes. I had to look up recent military MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) entrees. Some of them made me hungry. Some of them made me wonder if it might be better to get my jaw wired shut. I used satellite imagery to map the route the Sharpe family takes after the bombs go off, so I could picture them casting shadows against real landscapes. I’m not a botanist, but the Calflora website is a salve for my ignorance.

But most of my research involved the effects of nuclear weapons. I found a recent study on the likely effects of a limited, regional nuclear exchange, the blast and fires and radiation and EMP effects, but also the way that tons of ejecta from the blasts would hit the stratosphere and bring about a sudden reduction of temperature. The part about ozone depletion really got to me. I’d never thought very carefully about all those effects occurring at the same time. I tried to imagine a world of freezing storms, the snow laced with radiation, and in the times of icy calm, the sun’s unfiltered UV burning the skin and blinding the eyes of the surviving animals and people.

Even a limited nuke war, say an exchange between India and Pakistan, could turn our friendly planet into a cold hell. I was an aviation ordnance technician in the Marine Corps, but I don’t understand how anyone sane can truly love the Bomb. (Maybe there’s a book idea in that.)

Was it challenging to write from each character’s perspective?

Yes, the multiple first-person structure didn’t come easily, but it allowed me to climb into the skins of the characters. It was fun to get into their hidden thoughts and emotions, all the cross-purpose stuff that people do inside their heads. After I learned the rhythm, I came to enjoy the challenge of keeping the plot moving from character to character. Also, I’ve always admired the way Faulkner used multiple first-person present tense in
As I Lay Dying
, and this story seemed to lend itself to that setup.

Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

At first it was all about the father, Jerry Sharpe, mortally afraid for the safety of his family. That’s how it began. But then the other characters asserted themselves, and none of them would allow me to write them as “lesser” characters. The lives of Susan (the mother) and the children were in the balance and they insisted upon being heard, so I was forced to give them equal billing.

The Unit
depicts what might happen in a post-apocalyptic United States. Literature, movies, and television shows that explore this territory have become increasingly popular. What do you think this says about society’s current mind-set?

Well, we have good reasons to be gloomy these days, but the post-apocalyptic genre can also be uplifting in a dark way, because it reminds us that things could be much worse. When I was writing about people without shelter, exposed to radiation and barbarism and starvation, I began to pay closer attention to the things I’d taken for granted, soft puffs of warmth from heater vents on cool days, the textures and flavors of a nice meal, walking in public with my family and feeling a sense of community rather than threat.

The post-apocalyptic world is a portrayal of ultimate poverty. The survivors lose all of their “stuff” and their sense of safety and all the systems and structures they’d come to rely upon, including some of the beliefs that previously sustained them. In that light, we’re doing pretty well for ourselves these days.

How realistic do you think the novel is? Is it speculation or should we be taking notes from the Sharpe family’s struggle?

We have determined foes who have demonstrated their desire to use weapons of mass destruction against us.
The Unit
is set in the aftermath of simultaneous nuclear detonations in seven of our major cities, but smaller attacks are probably more likely, in the real world. It’s probably a sensible idea for people to keep a few days’ of necessary supplies on hand, as we do here in earthquake country.

Disasters and attacks can certainly bring people together. We were gentle with each other after 9/11, united by horror. Disaster response efforts call forth the resourcefulness, hard work, and generosity of countless people. But when all infrastructure is destroyed, and there’s no expectation of a quick recovery, more primitive power relationships are likely to come into play. The very definition of what it means to be
strong
or
good
could be up for grabs.

Can you tell us anything about your next novel?

It’s a sequel to
The Unit
, following the story of the newly adult son, Scott Sharpe, as he ventures into a world of increasing government repression, with militias growing in the hinterlands and rumors of starvation in the surviving cities.

You know,
cheery
stuff.

Finally, as a first-time author, what have you found to be the most exciting part of the publishing process?

I’ve really enjoyed working with my editor, DongWon Song. He’s as determined as I am to make this book as clear and gripping as it can possibly be.

The Sharpes’ story

continues in the exciting sequel. Coming 2011

by Terry DeHart

A
fter the bombed cities burned themselves out and the first hard spikes of radiation began to fade, the survivors in the surrounding suburbs and country rose from their improvised shelters, hungry and helpful and determined not to botch their new chance at life. The body count was unknowable, but as the embers cooled, much work lay ahead.

While their leaders unfurled their steely fingers to push the buttons that ground their enemies to dust, and the skies continued to grow darker day by day, the people donned gloves and masks and layers of clothing to protect them from the sun’s unfiltered UV rays. They turned to rebuilding, as best they could, what was left. They hung radiation signs around their ground-zero nightmares and posted yellow flags far downwind, mapped in the shape of giant teardrops. They looked for new places to grow crops and build communities. The best and worst of America were on display, still and again, standing with equal parts brutality and kindness before what remained of the world.

And it was into this world that young Scott Sharpe set off from his mother and father to seek a path of his own making. He was determined to answer the call of duty, or at least that was the story he told himself. It was five in the morning when he said his goodbyes. He stood beneath the fantastic nuclear sunrise and hugged his mother and shook his father’s hand. There weren’t many tears left in the world, but his parents shed what they could spare as he climbed aboard the bus that would carry him to the rest of his life.

He knew he would always remember his last glimpse of his parents standing on the cold shoulder of the road in the Sierra Nevada, their thick hats and sunglasses making them look like eccentric tourists as they waved at the black-tinted windows of the recruiting bus and then through the departing swirl of its frozen exhaust until a curve of the road took their waving away. When they were gone behind him he felt very light and very free, even though he was on his way to the Klamath Falls military induction center to “sign his life away,” as his father put it.

It was a hard-frosted Northern California September morning, nine months after the last of the bombs fell. The previous winter had been a nuclear winter, with icy storms raging from the Pacific and even colder ones flowing down from Canada. Scott wasn’t happy to see the shortening of the days, and the pines were casting shadows that looked to him like thin, blackened bones, but still he couldn’t shake the light mood that had taken him when he left home.

The recruiting bus moved at top speed in the government lane, a commandeered tour bus, spray-painted olive drab. Scott hadn’t been aboard an operational motor vehicle since before the bombs. The driver, if there was a driver, was invisible in his hijack-resistant compartment as the bus thrummed past dead crops and the half-cremated remains of what had been blinded and sunburned livestock.

The bus floated on its soft suspension, giving almost the feeling of flight. It steadily put miles between Scott and the dregs of his childhood. After a half hour of listening to the diesel growl and the hiss of filtered air flowing from the heating vents, the glow of the sun rising through its nuclear layer caused the bus to cast a long shadow to the west, its elongated box morphing and flowing like a runaway flag over the imperfect canvas of rocky meadows and patches of contaminated snow.

Scott sat with twenty-four other passengers, young men and women in their late teens or early twenties. They were accompanied by two acne-faced Army MPs who sat so close behind the driver’s armored box that it could’ve been a bonfire built to warm them. One of the MPs leaned into the aisle and peered at the road ahead. The other one sat facing the recruits. Both of them kept their locked-and-loaded M-4 carbines close at hand.

Most of the recruits were sprawled in their seats, alternately scowling at nothing in particular and pretending to sleep. They held their heads loosely, so the bumps and dips of the road caused them to nod. Scott imagined they were trying to look bored, like battle-hardened soldiers riding a helicopter into combat, but their quick glances betrayed their excitement. It was pathetic, but Scott himself was nineteen that year, and he had to force himself not to join their show of pretend nonchalance and make-believe courage.

The bus left the alpine plain and began to shoulder its way into the Sierra. As the miles rolled beneath heavy wheels, the young passengers became bored at their game of pretending to be bored. A long-haired kid said something about how good it would feel to get some payback, and his rowmates nodded. A boy with a shaved head let loose an almost impossibly profane string of insults about North Koreans and Al Qaeda, and then the recruits were laughing and punching each other on the arms and aiming imaginary rifles and becoming brothers and sisters already, in their shared mission.

Even the MPs smiled, and Scott smiled, too, the muscles of his face moving beneath the ropy whorls of scar tissue that surrounded his eyes and lined his forehead and cheeks. He hadn’t smiled in a very long time, and he wanted the feeling to last. One of his new comrades slid into the seat beside him and offered his hand. Scott shook it. The kid was thin, but his grip was sharp and crushing, the grip of a farm boy or a high school wrestler, probably both. He examined the pocks and scars on Scott’s face. Scott could tell he was dying to ask about them, but he didn’t.