Stone (Volume 1, Issue 4)

CW: blood, death, implied PTSD

Image Description: A wooden building is engulfed in fire. Explosive flames reach high into the sky. A black sky surrounds it.

Credit: Stephen Radford / Unsplash via Webador

The near corner of the military-operated grocery store exploded in a spectacular array of glass, brick, and mortar. Martin’s feet left the ground and his back slammed into the side of a check-out station. The sounds of fighting dulled, suddenly replaced by a ringing in his ears. He coughed dust out of his mouth as he tried to get his bearings. His unit had been stationed at this grocery for only a week, ever since the insurgence had reached this corner of Maryland. This close to the capital, and in the midst of the second Civil War, of course, the Marines were the first to be called.

Dimly, Martin considered the irony of defending resources most of his family could not hope to afford. He had been lucky – if one considered risking their life in a war on home soil lucky – to eat well himself and to be able to send home a few ounces of chicken or sugar every couple of weeks. Victory gardens had come back into fashion, but without dogs or guns, families often left their houses to find that their gardens had been ransacked in the night.

Another explosion rang out somewhere behind him. Two years ago, the talk of civil war had seemed so silly to Martin. Then again, the government had made sure his base had been well-stocked with food and water. He and his wife and their children had guaranteed housing. He had not been paying the right kind of attention when the buildings outside the base had emptied and the tents had sprouted up along the streets.
The shortages had been of their own making. As the climate hit their resources, people had gotten scared. Borders had closed. Inflation skyrocketed. People started fighting over sacks of potatoes and bagged lettuce in the produce aisle. When that didn’t work, they fought over them in the parking lot. Children stopped going to school. Businesses closed. When people realized the government was hoarding the goods they no longer had, they took to the streets. At first, they protested. Then they rallied. Things had quieted when the government promised to set up distribution centers like the one Martin currently laid in. But the rationing had not worked – probably because people realized they could not get much with their ration cards if those things had already been sold to people with enough money to buy the government.

Martin should have been paying attention. Should have listened every time his mother called and told him how bad things had gotten for the people living outside, but he had not wanted to believe her. It was easier to tell himself that the tent dwellers had earned their station. Easier to convince himself he was the good guy, defending his country from violent hooligans, not that he was shooting at crowds of dirty, hungry people ready to die over the chance to bring home some flour and salt. But he had not listened.

So, instead, he lay on the ground surrounded by rubble interspersed with bits of shattered carrots, cabbage, and squash, contemplating the mistakes he made. The government had made him the enemy of the people and it was too late for him to change course if he wanted to survive the day. Insurgents – no, civilians poured through the broken windows, tossing homemade explosives, and wielding a wild array of weapons from AK 47s to baseball bats. One combatant, a lanky girl whose long legs gave her the look of a hurdler, swung a ten-pound weight in each fist.

As Martin sat up, he felt something warm and wet trickle from both his ears. The girl with the weights went down a few paces from him, with a hole in her chest. Martin looked away. What else could he do? As much as he hated what was happening around him, he did not hate that his children got fed and his wife got medicine. All that was left was to survive. He braced himself and raised his rifle.

Martin choked, eyes streaming as the poorly lit maintenance room came into focus around him. He scrubbed his face and looked to his left. Shonda was still sleeping deeply. He found himself glad that she did not have the military training he did. Otherwise, his outburst might have woken her. It was not that he was afraid to cry in front of someone else, but in his current state, Martin was unprepared to answer the concerned questions that would inevitably come his way. He needed a minute to process the memories so that he could let them return to the back of his mind.

Looking back, that was the day he had decided to change course. He had stuck with his unit until the insurgence had been quelled. Borders with Mexico and Canada had reopened, and fresh waves of supplies had made the distributions centers more effective. He had waited for his mother to say that before he believed it.

He left the corps with good recommendations and used his expertise to get himself onto NASA’s next Mars expedition. Working security for a small unit of researchers had seemed not only cushy, but also a way to lighten the weight on his soul. This mission was for the people – a way to find a place and situation where people could prosper again. He did not know anything about terraforming a planet, but he knew Earth’s time was limited. This was supposed to be the solution.

Martin pulled his knees to his chest and rested his forehead in his palms. He could still feel the blood trickle from his ears even though it had been washed clean years ago. Every time he felt the phantom blood, it reminded him of his failure. As the sun rose across the horizon of the red planet, Martin wondered what new phantoms would remind him of his latest failure.

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