The Last Marine : Book Two (A Dystopian War Novel) Page 12

  For two weeks, the Marines were taught to suppress their “warrior training and violent instincts.” Many Marines were offended by the curriculum’s premise which suggested American civilians, whom they’d fought to defend, had a legitimate reason to fear them. Even more so, to be treated with suspicion because of their service in the Sino-American War. A Marine NCO had gone as far as to tell one of the instructors, in so many words, that she didn’t have a clue as to what she was speaking of. The instructor responded that that was exactly the kind of thinking responsible for the recent assault. The Marine stormed out of the classroom, cursing the instructor as he slammed the door. The rest of the class then followed him.

  FedAPS charged the Marine with insubordination, sexual discrimination, and sexual intimidation. Within ninety-six hours, word reached the battalion that the NCO was sentenced to two years in the brig. Marines were to keep their mouths shut. If they get through the course, they would be allowed to leave base for liberty.

  “If one more motherfucker tells me again how violent we all are, I’ll kill the goddamn bastard,” Harris told Edwards privately at the time. It was supposed to have been a joke, but Edwards had sensed a lot of anger behind Harris’s faint smile.

  “What time, again, are we meeting up with Murphy?” Edwards asked in an awkward attempt to start a conversation he didn’t want to have.

  “Two o’clock,” Harris answered, but Edwards already knew that.

  He’d wanted to get Harris out, away from base, and talk. Despite what he’d told Rivett, Edwards was concerned about Harris. They’d served together in war for years. Over that time, Edwards saw a lot of changes in Harris. He figured he had changed too, but to him, it was more noticeable in Harris. They were different people now and once again had to change to survive. Many of the Marines Edwards knew, himself included, looked forward to the change. Everyone looked forward to going home. Except Harris. Edwards knew Harris considered the war unfinished business, and there wasn’t much left of Harris’s pre-war life. He was concerned for Harris, whom he considered his best friend, and wanted to help. But Edwards really didn’t know how.

  “He told you he’s getting discharged in a couple of weeks?” Edwards followed up.

  Harris nodded as he took a drink of beer.

  “Lucky bastard,” Edwards mumbled, then wished he hadn’t. He took a drink of his own beer.

  “Yeah, well, we’re needed here for the war effort. Right?” Harris sarcastically replied.

  They’d gotten the word that no one from the First Marines would be discharged until “sometime before Christmas” or “after the new year.”

  The reason was that President Tang, Governor Wilmore of California, and Mayor LaRocca of San Diego wanted some kind of parade and ceremony to commemorate the Marine Corps’ birthday on November 10, and to “honor their service.” Most of the Marines agreed the gesture was nice, but just wanted to go home. Some, like Harris, were cynical enough of President Tang to believe he was using the Marines as a prop in his self-aggrandizement.

  “No kidding.” Harris finished off his beer. “Oh well, we’ve come this far, buddy. What’s a few more months. At least you’re an NCO; you ain’t stuck cutting weeds and scrubbing toilets, like us non-rates.”

  “No, I only got to answer for you fuckers. Some FedAPS agent doesn’t like the job you’re doing; I get my ass chewed out.” Edwards finished off his beer and signaled to the bartender for two more.

  “Say, uh, Harris…” Edwards started to speak, wanting to ask what, if anything, was wrong. But he stopped. I know what’s wrong, Edwards thought. Do I really need to say anything? Harris is tough. He’ll get through this.

  “What?” Harris interrupted Edwards’s thoughts.

  “Tell me, straight up, are you–”

  “The gentleman at the end of the bar says your tab is on him today,” the barkeeper interrupted, setting down two frosty mugs of beer.

  Harris and Edwards looked down to that end of the bar and saw an older man having a beer and a sandwich.

  “Just to let you know,” the bartender continued in a lower voice, “his son was a Marine. He was killed in action several years ago.”

  Both Marines got up from their barstools and went over to thank the older gentleman.

  “Don’t you boys think nothing of it. We all owe you so much for what you’ve done. You know, my boy was a Marine,” the old man said with watery eyes and sounding slightly intoxicated. “We…we lost him. He was killed on Luzon.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Harris was quick to say, but he felt awkward. He wanted to say more, but he didn’t know what.

  “I was at Luzon, with First Marines. Do you know who your son was with?” Edwards asked.

  “Third Marines. He joined before the war,” the old man recalled. “His enlistment was almost up when the goddamn ChiComs hit us. He made it through the Mexico Campaign, but not the Philippines.”

  “Third Marines fought like demons on Luzon. We couldn’t have won without them.” Edwards wondered why he could respond like that to the old man, but not say what he wanted to Harris.

  The old man sadly smiled and nodded his head.

  “Don’t listen to what those bastards on the news say, you guys.” Suddenly the old man’s demeanor became furious. “To hell with those news media people and those goddamn college brats! To hell with them and all their goddamn protesting! They didn’t know my son. They’ve got no right to characterize you boys like that. They weren’t worth it. That whole goddamn war! Ain’t one of them worth my son!”

  “No, sir, none of them are,” Harris empathized. The old man’s pain reminded him of his own.

  “You know, my daughter is an engineer in the Army. She’s in one of the units deployed in Operation White Dove to rebuild the PRC.” The old man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Can you imagine? Instead of destroying our enemy, the president orders our military to build them back up! He’s empowering that bastard Zhang. Why, so he can turn around and attack us again? Tang’s a damn communist.” The few patrons in the joint glanced over, then ignored the old man’s tirade.

  “Yes, sir, I agree. Don’t always feel like we’re all on the same team, does it?” Harris said loudly to the old man.

  The old man nodded, seeming to understand Harris. “You boys go enjoy your beers. Glad to have you home. We need you back,” the old man said with a sad smile. “We’ve got enemies right here in the United States of America.”

  The two Marines went back and sat down in silence. Edwards stared at his beer and decided to wait for another time to have the talk he wanted with Harris.

  After sandwiches and a few beers, Harris got a message on his phone from Murphy to meet him at a different location. Harris and Edwards waved to the old man and thanked him again for their lunch, then headed out. The sun was warm, and the breeze was cool. Distracted only by pretty girls and a couple of tattoo parlors, they reached the end of the street. They took in the sight of the Pacific Ocean and hundreds of Americans enjoying a beautiful day at the beach.

  “We wouldn’t have seen this eight years ago,” Edwards reflected. “There was still too much chaos, too much fear in those days. Let the media say what they want. They didn’t make this happen, we did.”

  “Yep,” Harris replied without feeling the sense of peace Edwards had conveyed.

  “Harris!” Murphy yelled as he limped towards him.

  “Finally lost the crutches!” Harris shouted back.

  “We made it, man.” Murphy smiled wide. “We are home!”

  Harris reached to shake hands, but Murphy gave him a big hug instead.

  “Sergeant Edwards.” Murphy greeted the NCO with a more formal tone.

  “What, no hug?” Edwards joked with a straight face.

  To his amusement, Murphy just looked at him like he was crazy.

  “It’s libo, man.” Edwards broke into a smile. “You can drop the sergeant.” He shook hands with Murphy.

  “So, this is
Lulu’s.” Murphy waved his arm towards the bar sitting on the beach. With all its doors and shutters open, the bar seemed to be as much outdoors as it was indoors. The place was full, but not crowded, with people in a combination of summer and beach wear. Harris thought the Hawaiian-themed décor promised a relaxed environment for the day.

  “What’ll you all have today?” a smiling waitress asked as soon as they had sat down.

  Harris noticed her tanned skin, long light-brown hair, and bright blue eyes, which matched nicely with her blue Hawaiian shirt and short shorts. He also noticed her eyes quickly averted from his when she saw him. Suddenly, very conscious of his scar, he dropped his gaze and looked down at the ground. He glanced up in time to see her look linger a bit longer on Edwards.

  “So what’s it like being back at MCRD?” Harris asked Murphy.

  “Hell, man, it’s like a resort. Boot camp must have been like a vacation for you,” Murphy jibed.

  “You’re from the east?” Edwards asked, assuming Murphy had gone to boot camp at Parris Island.

  “New Hampshire.”

  “Huh, never been there,” Edwards stated as a way of small talk.

  “It’s northeast of here.” Murphy mimicked Edwards’s dry mannerism perfectly, to the sergeant’s amusement. “How about you?”

  “Missouri,” Edwards answered as he offered a cigarette.

  “Thanks.” Murphy took the smoke. “But I don’t know if we can smoke out here on the patio.”

  “We’ll find out,” Edwards said as he struck the match and lit his cigarette in one smooth motion. Then he became quiet as he looked out at the beach and watched all the people enjoying the Saturday afternoon.

  “So, getting out in a couple of weeks?” Harris asked Murphy.

  “No. Been pushed back,” Murphy replied, not sounding disappointed. “I’m still finishing up physical therapy at Balboa. Doc says I should be out just in time for Thanksgiving.”

  “Less than two months,” Harris mumbled. “Word is, 1/1 will be discharged after New Year’s.”

  “Who knows?” Edwards sounded irritated. “Word changes every week. I don’t think anyone above E-7 knows what the hell is going on.”

  “So, anyway, you’ll be out of here before too much longer, huh?” Harris asked Murphy.

  “I don’t know,” Murphy hesitated a moment, then continued, “I met this chick, a corpsman, at Balboa. She’s a cell therapy assistant, or something like that. We’ve been dating for a few months. Anyhow, she doesn’t get out for about another year.”

  “You going to stick around San Diego until she gets out?” Harris asked.

  “I remember this devil dog. Tyler was his name,” Edwards interrupted, “down in Mexico. A bullet literally just scraped the fleshy part of his left shoulder when we were mopping up down around Acapulco. Now, this was before we had the integrated body armor. Anyhow, he got treated by this female medic. She was part of the local resistance that fought on our side. He fell madly in love with her.” Edwards waved his hands in the air to communicate the loss of control. “Of course, shortly thereafter, the Corps started gearing up for the Philippines. We got orders to go back to Pendleton. Dumbass went AWOL for the medic.”

  “No shit.” Murphy sounded astonished and wondered, What’s this got to do with me?

  “Yeah.” Edwards exhaled smoke and shrugged. “Tyler showed up about a month and a half later as a slick-sleeved private.”

  “How’d he get caught?” Harris asked. He was surprised he’d managed not to hear this story before.

  “Turned himself in.” Edwards smiled dryly. “Apparently, love doesn’t conquer all things. Spent some time in the brig, was busted to private, and sent back to the war.”

  “No shit,” Harris interrupted before lighting his cigarette. “What a dumb motherfucker.”

  “Yeah,” Edwards continued, looking directly at Harris. “But he was a lucky bastard, at the time, not getting shot for desertion. Luck didn’t last though. Caught it in the Philippines. At least he died fighting, and not as a goddamn deserter.”

  “I’m right behind you.” The attractive waitress placed her right hand on Edwards’s shoulder before she placed their beers down in front of them.

  “Thank you. Is it all right to smoke out here on the patio?” Harris asked, with a lit cigarette in his hand.

  Hesitant to answer, she looked around at the crowd. “Yeah, it’s all right,” she finally answered, looking at Edwards. “Let me know if you all need anything else.”

  “I’m going out on a limb here,” Murphy chided, “and guessing she likes you, Edwards.”

  “Yeah,” Edwards responded dryly and looked back out at the ocean. “Must be what it takes to smoke like a free man in this country.”

  D’Shon Cuppell sipped his beer and watched people go by on the boardwalk. He liked being in Pacific Beach. Ironically, it was one of the places he publicly complained about as being “too light.”

  He glanced at his watch and took another drink of beer. Every time he met Johnny Sanchez out somewhere, he always found Sanchez waiting for him. For reasons he could not explain to himself, this angered Cuppell. Today, he had shown up thirty minutes early to make sure he was there first. Today, Sanchez was five minutes late; it was starting to irritate Cuppell.

  Three tables over, Cuppell watched the waitress bend over as she placed drinks on the table. She had nicely toned and tanned legs.

  “Another,” Cuppell said. He held up his beer glass as the waitress walked by.

  “You got it,” the waitress replied and smiled. He admired her blue eyes and thought they perfectly matched the royal blue Hawaiian shirt she wore. He could not help staring as she walked away to retrieve his order. Cuppell’s eyes drifted up from the waitress’s backside to see Sanchez walking in with a big smile.

  Yeah, smile, you Latino piece of shit. Cuppell laughed at his internal voice, but it came across like he was happy to see Sanchez.

  D’Shon Cuppell was a rising star in the progressive movement. Four years ago, most Americans had never heard of Black First. However, so much had changed over just a few years.

  When the People’s Republic of China invaded, the nation’s focus shifted away from social justice towards survival. Back then, Cuppell was nineteen and dedicated to resisting President Clark’s “American Renaissance.” Those had been hard years for political activism. No one cared about restorative justice, globalism, nor fighting the patriarchy. The American people were too focused on winning the Sino-American War. To Cuppell’s frustration, Clark’s militaristic patriotism was just too seductive for most to resist even in the African-American community. His only refuge had been American college campuses, where many people went to escape the realities of a war-torn world. It was there he had found an audience.

  But then fortuitously, Clark died during his second term. Vice President Harmon assumed the office. Immediately, she apologized for Clark’s aggressive war strategy and even persecuted military personnel viewed as complicit. Her actions gave credence to the anti-war left, and Black First began to gain traction. Almost overnight, fund-raising drastically improved, especially from powerful patrons with an interest in the progressive movement. Cuppell’s years of work establishing a network of community organizers in Southern California began to pay dividends. The increase in funding correlated with a surge in media attention.

  Cuppell loved the media spotlight. He reveled in the abundance of female reporters willing to go to bed with him just to get access to a story. In a short time, he found himself addicted to the power and craving a national fix.

  However, the media could be fickle, and trends could be heartbreaking. Within the last year, Johnny Sanchez emerged as a new darling of the progressive media. Now Sanchez reveled in the money and attention that Cuppell saw as rightfully his.

  Still, Cuppell was the biggest community organizer in the San Diego area, and Black First was still the more popular social justice group, but Sanchez and ULA were catching up fast. Sanchez wa
s intelligent, handsome, and charming; this was what scared Cuppell the most. For now, he’d work with Sanchez if it benefited him. However, he viewed Sanchez as a threat to his power and his prestige. Ultimately, he would have to destroy Sanchez.

  “Johnny, my brother.” Cuppell stood up to embrace Sanchez.

  “D’Shon, my friend, good to see you.” Sanchez squeezed Cuppell’s hand tight. Not out of affection, but to demonstrate dominance. They disengaged and sat down.

  “Can I get you anything?” the waitress asked, having returned with Cuppell’s drink.

  Is she smiling more at him than she is to me? Cuppell internally seethed.

  Both men leered as she walked off to fulfill Sanchez’s order.

  “Please forgive me for being late. It seems to be a condition of my newfound fatherhood.” Sanchez apologized.

  “How’s the baby doing?” Cuppell asked but didn’t care.

  “Oh, she’s fine. Thank you for asking.”

  Sanchez loved his daughter almost as much as he loved himself, and was momentarily touched by Cuppell’s concern. “Dealing with all the crying and vomiting. The diapers, well, I avoid that,” Sanchez said, feeling witty. “That’s what her mother’s for.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” Cuppell smiled like he cared. I hope she brings you misery, motherfucker, he thought but then said “But what else is it all about, right?”

  “Of course, children are the future.” Sanchez leaned back and spread his arms, as if he were presenting that future to Cuppell then and there. “They are the means to our ends.”

  “Is there anything else you all need?” The waitress interrupted Sanchez’s self-aggrandizement, arriving with his drink order. Both men said no and again leered as she walked away.