The Last Marine : Book Two (A Dystopian War Novel) Page 17

  “Fuck, Chase, you’re so goddamned patriarchal!” a dingy-looking woman with blond dreadlocks and a ring pierced through her septum interrupted. Next to her a very thin man, with a long dark hair, laughed in agreement.

  “I’m sorry.” Chase seemed visibly deflated. “Cameron and his social companion, Bella.”

  “Ethan, Sean, have a seat,” Sophie invited. “Everybody, let’s make some room.”

  The two Marines took a seat at each end of the circular booth. Harris noticed Kailee was staring at him and smiling.

  “So, I bet you’re happy President Tang finally brought you all home?” Sophie asked.

  “Yeah,” Harris absentmindedly answered. He couldn’t tell if Sophie looked too much like a man, or if Cameron looked too much like a woman. It was unsettling to his mind.

  “So are you two excited about the big parade on Thursday?” Chloe asked.

  “Sure,” Edwards answered as if he couldn’t care less one way or another.

  “Oh!” Chloe seemed satisfied enough with his answer.

  “You don’t sound too excited about it.” Cameron’s tone sounded more like a line of inquisition than curiosity. It was offensive to Harris, although he didn’t exactly know why. Edwards did not seem to take notice of it.

  “We’ve never been big on dog and pony shows,” Harris answered somewhat aggressively.

  “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to have to march through all those protesters who are showing up,” Kailee added.

  “Protesters can go to hell, for all I care.” Edwards laughed in contempt.

  “They’ve set up a ‘peace village’ in Balboa Park. It won’t be a problem,” Chase said confidently. “FedAPS will keep them under control.”

  “Well, that’s a load off my mind,” Harris sarcastically replied, looking at Kailee. She laughed and fiddled with her long hair.

  “Yeah, well, WAR will fight back if FedAPS tries anything too fascist.” Cameron spoke up with an effeminate force.

  Sound pretty fucking excited about the idea, shit-bag, Harris thought as his eyes shifted from Kailee to Cameron to Bella. The dingy broad looks pissed, he concluded.

  “Seriously?” Chase’s voice cracked. He suddenly seemed on the verge of hysteria. “What can WAR do to FedAPS?”

  “Oh now–” Sophie laughed nervously and placed her hand on Chase’s forearm “–let’s not get worked up.”

  “What’s the deal with WAR?” Edwards asked. “When did they become such a big deal?”

  “They’re a bunch of scumbag anarchists. They–” Chase stopped short, noticing Chloe’s disapproval.

  “That’s an interesting tattoo.” Kailee pointed at Harris’s forearm.

  He looked down at the eagle, skull, and anchor tattooed on his forearm. “Thanks,” Harris said, becoming pensive. “Several of us had one.”

  “Why do Marines like to glorify death so much,” Bella said, more as a statement than a question. Harris looked her directly in the eye. He sensed a malicious self-righteousness about her that provoked him.

  “It’s not that we glorify death, we just really enjoy killing,” he answered her in a cold voice.

  Bella almost replied, but stopped herself. It was not the defensive response she had expected. And while her conscious mind would never admit it, what Harris said and how he said it frightened her. Bella’s instincts told her not to respond. Instead, she turned her attention back to Chase and his conversation about WAR.

  “The media started making heroes out of WAR after we invaded the PRC,” Ezra explained to Edwards.

  Kailee leaned toward Harris to get a better look at his tattoo. Flattered by her interest, he extended his arm towards her. She grabbed hold of his hand as she admired the design.

  “It’s nice,” Kailee said and smiled at Harris, letting go of his hand.

  “Thanks.” Harris pulled his arm back.

  “Heroes?” Chase nearly shouted at Bella. “All they do is destroy private property!”

  “How else do you stand up to fascist corruption!” Bella righteously replied.

  “They’ve got a right to protest, you know,” Cameron joined in.

  “Yeah, the same government you say you love so much gives us that right,” Bella continued.

  “Government didn’t give you shit; it’s a constitutional right,” Harris interjected. “By law, the government is constrained–”

  “Forget the law! I’m talking about justice.” Bella dismissively shook her head and stuck up her hand.

  “Besides, rioting is not the same thing as protesting, sweetheart,” Edwards calmly stated.

  “Of course,” Bella snarked, “I suppose the Marine Corps taught you how to be sexist too.”

  “No.” Edwards grinned. “Just sarcastic.”

  “Come on, guys, this is so boring.” Sophie rolled her eyes and tried to conclude the topic.

  “So what are you going to do now that the war is done?” Chloe asked Edwards, trying to change the topic.

  “I don’t know. Maybe stay out here. Maybe go back to Missouri.” Edwards shrugged, as he hadn’t completely committed to the idea. “Family’s got a small farm and a feed store.”

  “Oh,” Sophie responded, hoping Edwards would not go into any more detail.

  “So, like, your family really farms and stuff?” Chloe asked, enamored with Edwards.

  “Look, I understand what you’re trying to say about the Constitution,” Chase said, looking at Harris. “But I think we can all agree it’s a flawed document.”

  “How so?” Harris asked, genuinely baffled. The very concept was foreign to him.

  “Well, it limits the power of government,” Ezra said, nearly laughing at Harris’s ignorance. “I mean, that’s like freshmen level poli-sci or history sort of stuff.”

  “Try grade school,” Bella sneered at Harris, having found the courage to confront him again.

  Bella Bradford was the product of hardworking entrepreneurial individuals. Willing to deny their own wants and needs over the generations, they’d sacrificed their family life for wealth. Mistaking education for wisdom, they relied on educational institutions, private and public, and mainstream media to enlighten and culture their children. As a result, Bella Bradford abhorred the legacy and the sacrifice of her forefathers. She was taught her family’s wealth and the opportunities it afforded her were shameful sins that could only be purged through the doctrine of radical Marxism. Now as a young woman, Bella Bradford detested her family, her culture, and her nation, but not the freedoms and wealth it now afforded her. Those she could use to buy salvation in the name of social justice.

  At that moment, she believed she saw the scarred face of evil staring at her. A man who enjoyed violence, a man who enjoyed oppression and the victimization of others. She came through her fear and found her anger. After all, does social justice not protect victims and absolve them of their sins? Was victimhood and martyrdom not the path to salvation?

  “We need FedAPS to shut WAR down and lock them all up,” Chase spoke up. “We know they’re going to riot. FedAPS needs to just cut to the chase.”

  “That’s such a fascist Clark kind of response,” Cameron whined.

  “Clark? FedAPS was Harmon’s baby, and President Tang, whom you supported, has only empowered them since he’s been in office,” Chase yelled, his face flushed from exertion.

  Sophie noticeably elbowed her fiancée again to communicate to everyone that she really was the one in control of him. Ezra, never certain what to think, just sat with a sheepish grin.

  Cameron sat, flummoxed as to how to respond. He’d spent too many years learning to be submissive to be comfortable with confrontation.

  “First Amendment gives people the right to protest,” Harris said.

  Chase looked at Harris in surprise, shocked by what he’d said.

  “Not riot, but protest,” Harris continued. “Otherwise, we’re not any better than the damn ChiComs we’ve been fighting all these years. They start a riot, then sen
d the cops in to crack skulls.”

  “But I thought the ChiComs were empowering people and giving them food and stuff?” Chloe murmured quietly to Edwards.

  “At least they took care of the children,” Kailee chimed in. “They weren’t going hungry, like so many in this country. That’s the real tragedy of the war, really, that we hurt so many of their children.”

  “You’d probably enjoy cracking skulls, you sick fascist fuck!” Bella screamed at Harris. “What does the First Amendment have to do with anything? This is about the people. This is about justice! Fuck the Constitution. This is about human rights!”

  She felt proud she’d caught the attention of many people around their table. Her boyfriend’s friends sat in shocked silence at her outburst.

  “You make no goddamn sense,” Edwards said to Bella, ignoring Chloe and Kailee, and looking at Bella. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “You don’t like it when people try to exercise the rights you Marines claim you’re going out and murdering innocent people for, do you?” She shouted her accusation at Harris. He sat and stared at her without saying a word. His eyes shifted over to Edwards; then both got up from the table and walked to the bar.

  “Fucking savages!” Bella taunted, mistaking their silence for submission. “They should be put down like rabid dogs.”

  Harris knew from that moment, that Edwards was completely wrong earlier in the parking lot. You can’t live with people who want you dead.

  “What assholes.” Cameron had finally found the courage to voice his indignation.

  “Whatever fucked up the redhead’s face, I wish it had killed him.” Ezra laughed in agreement with Cameron and took a sip of beer.

  “Come on.” Cameron laughed at Ezra’s hyperbole. “They’re just naïve is all. Look, they were off to war while we went out and got an education. Really, what do you expect?”

  “The blond one was hot.” Chloe turned to Sophie and giggled, who responded in kind. Kailee checked her social media on her phone, disappointed the cute boy with the scar had been so fascist-like in his behavior.

  “Man! What a bunch of fucking losers they turned out to be,” Edwards said upon reaching the bar.

  “I think it’s worse than that. A whole lot worse,” Harris mumbled.

  “Say again?” Edwards asked.

  “Nothing,” Harris answered. He’d concluded Edwards wouldn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand.

  “There they are!” Rivett bellowed as he walked across the bar with the other guys.

  “Goddamn, Harris!” McCurry shouted with a big grin.

  “Quiet down.” Morgan nudged the drunken McCurry, then slapped Harris on the back. “Dude, you freaked out a lot of people back there.”

  “It was fucking great watching them scream! There were even some dudes who were crying.” McCurry, still speaking too loud, laughed and waved his hands around to mimic panic.

  “What the hell happened?” Rodriguez asked.

  “You want me to talk, you’re going to have to buy me a beer,” Harris began to explain with a grin on his face.

  “Hey, Ethan, is everything okay?” Mackenzie asked Edwards privately as Harris talked.

  “Huh? What?” Edwards, lost in his own thoughts, was caught by surprise.

  “You look upset. I saw you and Sean talking. Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Edwards answered.

  Bella could not stop glaring at Harris. Several more Marines walked into the place and had gathered around him. They were loud. They laughed. They hung onto every word Sean said.

  What makes him so special? Why do people listen to him? Bella seethed to herself.

  “Too bad Blondie’s into the slutty waitress,” Chloe complained to Kailee and Sophie.

  “What do you expect? They’re the service class,” Sophie sympathized. “Could you imagine trying to have a real conversation with someone like that?”

  “I never said I wanted to talk to him.” Chloe giggled.

  “Poor Sean,” Kailee threw in. “He could have been so handsome if it weren’t for that scar.”

  “Or the patriarchal brainwashing,” Bella tore into the conversation.

  “That’s not really his fault,” Kailee mildly defended.

  “Whose fault is it, then?” Bella demanded. Sophie and Chloe stared at their drinks, not willing to confront her. Cameron sat still, absorbed in his phone. Ezra and Chase hid within their own conversation.

  “Well, the war…” Kailee’s voice drifted.

  “They all volunteered for the Marine Corps. No one made him join. They chose to go to war! They chose to kill! To rape, to pillage, to destroy!” Bella self-righteously proclaimed as she pointed towards the Marines.

  “…dingy-assed bitch with the ring in her nose,” Harris’s voice rolled into the booth from the bar, followed by the laughter of the other Marines.

  What right do they have to laugh after all they’ve done? Justice demands they suffer, Bella seethed. I need muscle to put those Marine bastards in their place.

  As others went on with their conversations, Bella, in an inspirational fury, dug her phone out of her handbag.

  SIX CRACKER MARINES AT LULU’S, Bella typed. The memory of Johnny Sanchez and the Fourth of July popped into her mind. She paused a few seconds, flushed with another wave of anger over what he had done to her. It’s my turn to hurt others, she thought and continued typing, TALKING RACIST SHIT ON THE MOVEMENT. WHO WANTS RESTITUTION? With a push of a button, she posted her challenge on social media.

  Someone will see it, Bella thought with a sense of pride. Someone will do something, and I will be the cause of it.

  She caught the attention of a passing waitress and ordered another round for her table.

  “Thanks, Bella.” Chase raised his glass in praise. He was not used to Bella buying drinks and genuinely appreciated it.

  “Hey, anything to get this party started.” Bella smiled for the first time that evening.

  Huso Osmanović stalked the sidewalks of Pacific Beach, determined to kill someone. His brothers, Ahmed and Meho and Rahman, or Ray, as he was called in public, hunted alongside him. Huso stewed over the media ignoring his murder of an exotic dancer two weeks earlier. His mission tonight had to attract media attention. Colonel Raed had been clear. After tonight, the media would only have four days to blame the USMC for the atrocity before President Tang’s ceremony honoring the Marine Corps in San Diego.

  They reached the vicinity where a Marine was reported to have attacked patrons at a local bar not two hours before. The four jihadists stopped and all lit up cigarettes. Few people dared to smoke tobacco in public anymore, but Marines were known for flaunting the political taboo. He planned to exploit the earlier assault with an even more brutal one in the same area.

  Huso wanted them to be noticeable while they looked for a victim the media would be especially sympathetic towards. Besides, he needed the smoke to calm his nerves. If tonight wasn’t a success on a grand scale, Raed had threatened he could lose his command.

  “Attack an older couple. Better yet, elderly parents of a Marine, or sailor, who are in town for the ceremony on Thursday. Victims of the very institution they fed and supported throughout the war. It fits the media’s narrative of cruel Marine culture,” Raed had ordered.

  Old couple, Huso stewed to himself. I’ll be lucky to find anyone over forty out here.

  The team sensed Huso’s tension and smoked in silence.

  “Fucking bitch-ass Marines!”

  Huso and the others turned to look at who had yelled. Caught by surprise, it took him a moment to realize the comment was directed at them. A small mob approached the jihadists. They wore the paramilitary uniform associated with Black First. The black supremacist, left-wing radicals were said to be gathering at Balboa Park with other protesters for Thursday’s ceremony. Huso threw down his cigarette.

  “Praise be to Allah,” he said with a smile.

  Khari Z relished the opportunit
y to hurt someone. Sitting around the camp in Balboa Park had begun to bore him. Not that he didn’t enjoy all the sex and drugs Peace Village had to offer, but that wasn’t what he had come to San Diego for. Khari Z was craving the high of righteous indignation with which he rationalized violence upon those he did not like.

  Khari Z had not always been this way. He was born Michael Hill in Denver, Colorado. The People’s Liberation Army had attacked the United States when he was in middle school. Consequently, his sister and cousin, both in college at the time, joined the United States Air Force, just as their grandfather had done in the Vietnam War.

  His parents had raised him as a proud and patriotic American. Not until high school did his perspective begin to change. Through history and literature courses, he discovered the inherit bigotry of American culture. In his economics and government classes he learned of the injustices perpetuated through capitalism. He graduated high school with what he thought was a healthy hatred for his country, his culture, and his Constitution.

  Because Michael had gotten good grades, his father encouraged him to apply for an engineering program started by the Clark administration. The United States government would pay a significant portion of his college tuition in exchange for military service as an officer in the branch of his choice. Lacking the courage to tell his father he disagreed with America’s role in the Sino-American War, he applied and was accepted into the engineering program.

  High school taught Hill the sins of the United States. College taught him revolution was the salvation. What was spoken in the college classroom, he saw carried out on the college campus. Through violence, the students shut down buildings. Through intimidation, they silenced the lecturers speaking out against the people.

  But not until he and three other men tried to kick an ROTC cadet to a bloody pulp did Michael discover the ultimate high from revolutionary violence. When they learned the young man would have permanent brain damage, they celebrated. There would be one less killer for Clark’s War.

  That was his point of no return. Michael dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles, the emerging capital for the resistance of “Criminal in Chief Clark.” Using the name Khari Zulu, he went wherever the movement needed him. Any protest, any riot, anything he could do for the revolution, he did, transforming himself into dependable muscle for Black First. Advancing through the organizational ranks, Zulu was shortened to Z; and Michael Hill ceased to exist.