World of Ashes II

W
o
rld of A
s
hes
i
i

By J.K. Robinson

Dedicated to my friend Dan Sellers.

If it weren’t for you, buddy, I never would have started writing.

We miss you.

Chapter 1

              They were on the tarmac, in the grassy fields beyond, running through the city and bursting from every corner and building. The Boeing 727 flew low over the flaming war zone that had, just hours earlier, been the Capitol of the United States of America. The military forces in the area were not combat forces, administrative and strategic command were the most common this close to the Pentagon. Their weapons and tactics were too little too late to make an effective stand, or even save most of the people who ran to them for help. The most Historic President didn’t want men with guns on every street in DC, not even when the riots spread from Nogales. Too late to change his mind about it now.

              Just the day before Daniel had been in London. His father had moved back to his native country after the divorce. This was the first time they’d spent any more than a holiday weekend with each other in almost five years. Daniel made the most of it, the world was on a knife’s edge and maybe soon travel to Europe would be restricted. Skype was a good stop-gap, but nothing beat riding a motorcycle through the English countryside with your old man. Daniel’s father had come out as gay perhaps six years ago now, and that was the most blatant cause of the separation. Daniel was old enough, though, that it didn’t mean he hated his father or didn’t understand what was going on. If anything, Daniel’s mother and her complete lack of cooperation had been the only cause for bitterness during the separation. His father hadn’t remarried, or even moved in with anyone, to the best of anyone’s knowledge there was no secret lover. He simply didn’t want to leave his wife with a disinterested husband at no fault of her own. Annette had never seen it that way, believing Clyde could be cured by faith healing alone. In the opinion of her son, though, she was trying to keep the marriage together to save face in front of the other officers in line for captain. It doesn’t look good when you can’t keep your shit together at home.

              “When will you be going back to the States?” Clyde had asked, trying not to tease Daniel by referring to America as “the Colonies.” That ‘misinterpretation’ was reserved for riling up his ex-wife when she became belligerent over custody or child support. Annette might be a lot of things, bitch, harlot, but unpatriotic wasn’t on the list.

              “Tomorrow at noon. My flight leaves at three.” Daniel sipped at his father’s famous vegetable soup. “Have you heard about the riots in San Diego and Nogales? My unit hasn’t been put on alert yet, or I’d have gotten a call. Then again, Wyoming is pretty far from California or Arizona.”

              “Bloody Commies. Those filthy bums camping out and creating ghettos in the city parks. They’re not protesting, they’re squatting! Sometimes I think about moving back to America and not telling your mother. I can’t stand all the Stalinist bullshit Parliament puts up with from the fucking Pakis, they’re worse than the Mexicans sneaking into the States! At least those poor bastards want to earn a better life. All the Pakis want is for England to be part of their new caliphate.” Clyde tasted his own creation. He seemed to not approve, though this one relatively bland dish could have earned him awards or cured a cold instantly. “Gets worse every day, jackbooted thugs come door to door last month, asking if anyone had any firearms. Seems they think someone here is smuggling American weaponry to those little diaper-headed bastards. They assume anyone who’s got a gun is now on the Jihadist’s side! This is
England
, for fuck sake. When did we become the empire that couldn’t sort its own shit out?”

              “1986, the Falkland Islands. After that England pretty much gave up her place as ruler of the high seas, Pop. But then again,
you
have a gun. In fact, you have
lots
of guns.” Daniel nodded to the underside of the kitchen table. A Sig Saur P226 was in a special holster that aimed at the front door. The gun, like any other, was completely illegal in the United Kingdom. Clyde didn’t give a damn for the afore mentioned jihadists and overreaching police alike.

              “Well don’t tell anyone.” The elder Sawyer laughed. He wasn’t flamboyant and not given to public displays of laughter. He’d taken his ways to the U.S. Army in the early 1980’s after immigrating from England and that was where he and Annette had been introduced. She was an Air Force paper pusher, he a brash young officer in his new nation’s Army.

              “You’re a strange man, Pop. Changing the subject, do you think the riots will spread? I think the Army can stop them, but we gotta deploy soon or every Occupy camp will rise up.”

              “Have I ever told you about the American Soldier’s rebellion during the Great Depression?”

“No.”

Clyde was tickled pink that he had yet another amazing story to tell his boy. “During the Great Depression the former Doughboys demanded their benefits sooner, a price your government couldn’t pay after the stock market crash. So they deployed a young Lt. Dwight D. Eisenhower to use armed troops to quell the demonstrations and route the squatting men out of the capitol. Nothing like that could happen today of course, it would cause a media frenzy that would expose that Paki sonofabitch and his cronies for the un-American scum they truly are. I cannot believe your people elected him twice in a row!
No royalty in America my arse
.”

              “He’s running for a third term. Trying to overturn the term limit by flushing in new voters via Syrian refugees. And I’m pretty sure he’s from Hawaii.” Daniel smirked. He was messing with his father again. Neither of them believed that fairy tale.

              “Christ… You’re a little shit, you know that?”

              They spent the rest of that day watching movies on Clyde’s new wall projector and talking about life in the States. Daniel had a girlfriend from the town next to his mother’s base, but they were on the rocks. He’d caught Liz cheating once because the guy she blew found out he knew Daniel and did the “bro-thing” by telling him. He’d forgiven her against his better judgment, but a lot of that was because he was too lazy to find anyone better. Now she was back to old habits of sneaking around, this vacation to England was as much about seeing his father as it was escaping his mother and her panty-waste new husband, as it was about the inevitability that he’d have to confront his soon to be ex.

Daniel wasn’t old enough to drink yet, but somehow the men at the local pub his father frequented took Clyde’s word for it and served them both without question. The barkeep asked to give a cheer for their favorite patron’s son on his way back to war-torn America, to which Clyde readily agreed. It meant free beer, so… Everyone has a favorite memory, and as the other barflies gave three loud
hoozahs
to his son, Clyde and Daniel both found theirs. They rode the antique Harley Davidson Clyde had brought with him from America across miles of open English countryside in the deep, early morning fog. Daniel could find his way to the airport from the train station. “Love you, Pop.” Daniel said, hugging his father and soaking in the smell of his aftershave and mink oiled, aging leather jacket.

              “I love you too, son.” Clyde squeezed a little too hard, his signature sign for ending a hug, and rode off into the hedgerows like a classic war movie. If Daniel had known this would be the last time he would see his father, he might have said something more profound. Then again, what could he say that would be more all-encompassing than I love you? Besides, this was the way of men in their branch of the Sawyer clan.

              At the airport, security was tighter than usual. All the guards were on edge and more suspicious of Americans than they’d ever been before. Like many nations after September 11
th
2001, England’s airport security was a nightmare of personal violations and lack of empathy. Today it was a little too reminiscent of mass deportations past. Anyone traveling to America was sent through security twice, then got questioned about why they were going at least three more times, and once more by a secret security agent who struck up a casual conversation and read your body language rather than listening. Daniel’s interviews were always quick, he showed his Military ID and was left alone soon thereafter. He could see some of the men behind the secure areas, they were wearing British uniforms of course, but some he glimpsed wore the flat OD green of the Israeli Defense Forc
e
. The Israelis had a unique way of conducting airport security, and now they were exporting their expertise, probably for an exorbitant price. How bad had things gotten in the U.S. that Israel would stand apart from us? Daniel was in the Wyoming Army National Guard, and his phone was still on, but despite his apprehension he hadn’t received any emergency orders. Must not be that bad then, right?

              Their plane was delayed for almost an hour on the tarmac, but that wasn’t unexpected. The jetliner was already in the air when the captain announced that the flight would not be allowed to return to England, and that in case of an emergency they would be rerouted to Iceland or Newfoundland. The other passengers became upset, but Daniel just put his headphones on and tuned out the complaining. He didn’t want to be reminded about going back to Warren Air Force Base if there was a lockdown, or having to explain to his mother
The Colonel
why he was under investigation for choking someone’s annoying child on an international flight. His decision to join the Army National Guard as born entirely out of loathing for the strict nature of an Air Force Base. The Army, for those who know, can often be boiled down to a giant frat party for underage drinkers with a gun fetish. Daniel fit right in, of course. The real benefit was, if he was in an entirely different chain of command from the Air Force he couldn’t be touched by the drama and command level-housewife bullshit, even if he did live on the base with his mother. Daniel was 20 now, and like millions of kids coming of age in Post-Socialist America he wasn’t doing very well in the job market. The best he could hope for were seasonal jobs, or bagging groceries at the Warren AFB Commissary. A second economic recession right after the first one could do that to a generation, especially when China threatened to called in their debt.

              Their original destination for Flight 1851 had been New York City, then on to Chicago and eventually Wyoming, but the plane was rerouted to Reagan International on the banks of the Potomac River before they’d even crossed over the Atlantic. Ten minutes from touchdown the captain announced they were going to have to orbit and wait for a clear runway, the nervous tone of his voice making the passengers and crew uneasy. The plane was below the clouds already, orbiting with a dozen other airliners that were so close Daniel could read their tail numbers. Something was very, very wrong down there. The passengers climbed over one another to look out the windows as rumors of terrorists or race riots swept through the plane. DC was on fire, of that there was no doubt. The small military bases that dotted the landscape as relics of the Revolutionary War looked like miniature warzones, the soldiers of the Old Guard arming themselves to protect their posts against insurmountable odds might as well have been ants trying to fight off a tsunami. Daniel recognized General’s Row, a group of historic houses where high ranking officers lived. His mother used to date an Army Brigadier General who lived there, and he remembered the small post of Ft. Myer and its entertaining menagerie of Military Policemen. Never paying enough attention to catch him speeding on the road that followed the wood line below the munitions bunkers, always trying to beat each other’s scores for number of laps in the Henderson Hall parking lot. Now he was afraid for their lives, not just his own, he had to look away when a patrol car was swarmed by people. He may have known that guy.

              Daniel had a window seat and the Asian girl leaning over him not only smelled good, but looked even better with a view straight down her shirt. She craned over him for a look at the mayhem below. When he finally took his eyes off her breasts and looked down at the raging war again he almost gasped in shock. They were banking over Arlington National Cemetery in a long left turn as a wave of bloodied looking rioters washed over the tiny post, through the burial grounds and onto General’s Row, the Iwo Jima Memorial, and back out to the other side of the post where there was more apocalyptic looking city to run through. The convoy evacuating the family members in the parking lot of the Ft. Myer PX was overrun, those not already in vehicles probably didn’t make it. The sheer number of these rioters blocked the vehicles from moving, but before the drama could completely unfold the jetliner banked away to avoid tracers from machine on the ground. It wasn’t worth worrying about who was shooting at them, they just needed to get away.