Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Terry DeHart is a former U.S. Marine and NASA security analyst. Three of his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short stories have appeared in the Barcelona Review, Zoetrope All-Story Extra, Night Train Magazine, In Posse Review/Web del Sol, Paumanok Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Vestal Review, and Opium, among others. Terry lives with his wife and daughters in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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The Unit

Orbit

Jerry

It’s been two weeks since the cars died, and we’re walking out. The bombs have shorted out every electrical circuit in North America, as far as we know. Yellow-brown clouds blot out the sun, and I’ve never been so cold. My family is here with me in the Sierra Nevada, Susan and our newly adult children, and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.

It goes without saying that I’m not expecting anything good to happen, so it doesn’t make me happy when I hear a light airplane approaching. We’re walking a deer trail that parallels the interstate. The plane is on us very quickly, and I motion for Susan and the kids to get under cover. We run into the pines. We press ourselves against the trees and look up. It’s been two weeks since we’ve heard anything in the sky except the occasional bomber, but this little bird is hanging from its prop and flaps, just above stall speed at tree-scraping altitude. It doesn’t fly directly overhead, but I catch a glimpse of painted aluminum above the pines. The plane makes a shallow turn and flies parallel to the interstate. I feel the pressure of searching eyes. When the pilot adds power to hold a sharper turn, we run uphill for better cover.

We get into a thicker stand of trees and form our four-person perimeter. It’s a sloppy diamond formation but it allows us to cover the highway with three guns. Susan gives me a flat look. Her lips are moving, and at first I think she’s trying to tell me something, but then I see that she’s praying, and I wonder if she knows it.

Our son, Scotty, is prone with his scoped .22. God help him, the boy looks like he can’t wait to shoot somebody. Our eldest, Melanie, is farthest from the interstate. She refuses to carry a weapon but I’m grateful that she still more or less follows my orders, no matter how it must gall her.

The Cessna drags itself over the freeway. The hum of its engine grows more businesslike, more attentive, and it rises and circles like a carrion bird. The pilot drops something. I watch the lumpy gleam of a bubble-wrapped package falling from the sky. There can’t be anything half-assed about it. It’s either something very good or something very bad. I watch its flawed shape pass through the trees and into God’s nature like a gift or a curse. I’m a naturally pessimistic bastard, and my pessimism has stood me well as of late, so I motion for Susan and the kids to put their heads down. The ground is matted with moldy pine needles. I listen to the buffeting sound of my breath pushing against the offal of trees. Time passes and there isn’t an explosion. It isn’t an improvised bomb at all and I hear people cheering, the voices of men, women, and children.

Another group is traveling the interstate. They’re on foot, and we’ve been trailing them for most of the day. It’s a group of a dozen armed adults and seven children. I’ve been watching them through my binoculars, choosing safe vantage points and trying to figure them out. The kids in the group are elementary school–aged, and the adults are well beyond their middle years. I think they’re grandparents walking with their grandchildren because it’s the way of the world, in hostile places, to thin out the connecting population of young adults.

They’re herding a handful of cattle and a half dozen sheep. The adults dote on the children, giving them rides on their stiff shoulders and carting them in the wheelbarrows they use to carry their supplies, but I can’t trust them yet. No matter how badly I want to place my family into the relative safety of a larger group, we’ve only been following and watching to see what they’re all about.

I don’t admit it to Susan, but I’m also using the group to clear the road ahead of us. If there’s any heat to be taken, it will fall on them. They’re down below us now. I can’t see them, but I imagine they’re waving and dancing at the prospect of salvation, or at least a meal. For a few seconds I think maybe I’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe they’re really not in somebody’s crosshairs. Maybe the bad feeling I have now is the result of my weakness for melodrama, or something I ate, or a lifetime spent looking through a half-empty glass. Maybe the airplane is actually a Civil Air Patrol bird, out trying to help people. Maybe Good Samaritans are still active in the world and maybe they’re doing their good works in this very time and place, and soon they’ll be dropping fresh steaks and cold beer and apple pie and linen napkins to everyone they see.

Yeah. And when the shooting starts, it’s the loud popcorn sound of rapid fire from multiple weapons. I flinch and try to sink into the earth, then I turn to check Susan and the kids. They’re okay; the rounds aren’t being directed at us, and I let my breath out. I’m relieved that we aren’t targets. I’m almost happy, but it has to be a slaughter down there, and my relief dissolves into the chamber of guilt that’s been burning in my guts since this fun-time began.

The ambushers are armed with 5.56 rifles. I know the sound well, from my Marine Corps days. Most of the rifles are firing three-round bursts, and that means they’re probably modern M-16s or M-4s. And the fighting seems far too one-sided. The people on the road are slow to respond. It’s an impossibly long five seconds before they open up with their shotguns, and they only get off a few rounds before their return fire falls silent.

We wriggle and burrow into matted pine needles. Echoes of gunfire roll past us and into the fingers and stubs of mountain canyons. My bladder feels impossibly full, though I haven’t had anything to drink since first light. I can’t see any movement, but my thumb reaches out to unsafe my rifle. My breath condenses around my head, and the ground steals my body heat. Exposed patches of earth are red with iron oxide, and wailing voices rise behind the gunshots, and my family is here with me, all of us on the brink of a mass murder, and I want to scream.

The firing winds down as the ambushers reload. A child calls twice for its mother, the last call a question, and a fusillade of fresh shots is the reply. Our peacenik daughter, Melanie, has to be eating her guts out. She keeps her head down and lets it happen, but she curses into the musty earth, and it’s as good a thing to do as any.

High misses and ricochets snap and crack into the pines on the opposite ridgeline. Twigs and cones and showers of needles fall in their wakes. We hug the ground and wait. I keep my head turned, cheek to dirt, so I can watch the children. I force myself to look into their eyes. I watch to see what the sounds of slaughter are doing to them. I hate myself for it, but I watch to see if the message is getting through: Don’t walk the road. Trust no one. Be ready, always, to dive into cover. Be ready to put rounds on target, RIGHT AWAY, and for the love of Christ listen to your old man.

Susan has always been a good mother, and she pushes her riot gun in the general direction of the killing. She watches the world over a brass sighting bead. I have no idea what this is doing to her.

Not ten feet away, Scotty holds himself tightly. He moves like a hunting reptile, every movement deliberate and barely perceptible, scanning in...