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35. TREACHERY; The Beneficiary Of Death.

The disarming of whoever is in these trucks goes on. The teams are very security conscious. I never see them take it for granted that the unknowns are surrendering. Some walk away, staggering under the load of rifles! Others have guns aimed into the backs of the trucks, constantly. It occurs to me that keeping them bunched up makes them easy to guard, less likely to make a move. A shooter could spray Thip-Thip into the truck and would or could kill them all in seconds!

I walk over to the right end of the building, look through the front windows there, see the trees in the forested area out back through big blown-out holes in the back. The window frame on the left hangs on the lower hinge, twisted into a trapezoid. The right window frame is that twisted piece I saw embedded in the dirt, back at the edge of the sidewalk. I go to the next door down, push it open. Yes. The roof toward the back hangs down in a hole in the back wall. There's no furniture. I turn, leave the door open, come back toward the street. The tree... the young tree there, near the street where the window frame is embedded in the yard... the broken wood... it's... white... like it got blasted... broken... not long ago.

I hear a dull 'Poof!' sound, then... a whistle... artillery!

I start running toward the truck! Eenunh is closing her gull-wing. I stumble on debris! I fall on the street!

The blast hits the building behind me! I hear debris splatter on the trucks, skitter on the pavement! I jump up and run to the doors! The left one is closed by the blast! I fall in, reach, pull the right door closed. I can barely hear Tinunh's and Soda's voices, but see their mouths moving!

Our truck in front rolls! Eenunh rolls! Everyone is getting their weapon strapped on their bodies. The two rescue trucks ahead are pulling forward around the two unknowns! Our friendlies are loading up, whip around in front of us, turn back up the street. I look out the back. Our two friendlies are gathering the last of their troops and coming around the two unknowns! I look ahead through the windshield. The two unknowns facing back down toward the building are turning, coming behind us. The other two are on the roll too!

Another shell hits! The last truck of unknowns swerves to the left, lurches to a halt! Men pour out the back! They run toward the other truck but it keeps rolling! They veer off into the yards of houses across the street from the motel.

We're going at a pretty good rate of speed! Suddenly the lead truck of friendlies slows, brakes, turns left, climbs carefully over the curb, and accelerates through the weeds of a yard, between two ruined houses, into a woods, stops! The second friendly climbs the curb, and men jump out. They flag the two unknowns on past us, out on the road, weapons threatening if they don't go on by!

They obey, go by slowly, accelerate quickly! The last unknown behind us follows the others. The friendlies mount up, roll! Our lead truck follows, slows, up over the curb. Eenunh follows. Our rear-guard team follows. The ground is uneven. We bounce around. We're rolling through a weedy pathway, tree limbs slapping at the windshield, scraping the sides.

"Safties!" Thimiannh calls out. Everyone checks their weapon.

We come out into a weedy field. The trucks in the lead have cut a path through the brown weeds! We're among ruins again, ruined houses! Out... onto another long curving street! We're rolling, fast! We come to another loop, cross the intersection at high speed. There are seven loops to the center of the city. This is only number two. The curvature of the street goes in that long arc to the left, and far ahead, back to the right.

There is less destruction here, occasional building ruins, others intact, looking lived in, cared for. Some trees are broken, old damage, gray wood. Most are not. They're like... an urban forest, housing among the trees. We roll. We slow. I look ahead. There are people on the sidewalks. There are cars; not water-trucks. Cars. Same flat white color, white tires, white road surfaces. But small, passenger vehicles, parked on the street, in driveways, driving. Suddenly we're just in traffic, not in flight! I look out the back windows, the front windows. Costaramannh, the Capital city!

Another loop, another intersection. We seem to have the right of way. We maintain speed. I see what look like shopping malls, mini-malls, many store fronts all in a row, shared walls. More residential. More trees. Trees abundant.

The next loop has what looks like shell craters, right in the middle. Traffic moves around the two holes, the barricades. The buildings, houses, stores, along the street don't look damaged, the trees either. Steady roll. Cars and trucks pull off, turn left, turn right, we roll steady on through. Another loop. Is that five?

I count the sixth loop and see a tall red building, red sandstone like Entemannh Garibe, but... built, courses of large red sandstone block. It's far away, but stands high, over the low one-story houses.

The stores are more sophisticated, more...upscale I think. Mannequins in the windows! People on the streets in colorful clothes! Yellows! Some red! Blue, green and brown common, but others! Patterns, stripes and checks, and polka dots or... or flowers... something!

We roll ever closer, finally come to the seventh loop, and there stands the building. It goes left and right, along the loop, walls that go for a distance, straight, then the next section angled in a little more, and another long straight section. 'Like the Pentagon,' I think, only more 'sides'. I wonder how many.

Our friendly escort stops on the loop, the two trucks blocking the road on the right. Our lead truck turns into an entrance, with a pedestrian passage overhead,people moving through it, lots of people. Soldiers at the pike gates. Cars, trucks coming out the left side. We're in the right. The lead truck gull-wing, up, papers presented. A soldier bounds out of the passenger side, around to the guards. The guard with the paper looks back at us. He salutes, hands the paper back. Gull-wing down, rolling. Eenunh rolls, slows, but the guard and the soldier who got out of the lead friendly flag us in without stopping. I look back. Our following unit is in. The other two friendlies go on by, out on the loop, disappear from view.

Across a broad courtyard I see the building encircles us. It's taller on that side, six stories. I think the front we just came through was four. There are some cars parked, some looking like limousines, big, stylish! All white. Trees, landscaping. Some evergreens. Some deciduous. The lead truck goes to the far side, curves around, and into a ramp. Second friendly goes out a gate under the building where other traffic is moving on the loop. He leads Eenunh up, turn, up, turn, a parking garage, up and up and comes out on top, open to the sky.

The driver slows, stops, backs in toward the inner wall. Our lead truck and Eenunh do the same. Our rear-guard does the same.

Everyone is on their feet. Thin Man and Eenunh go out the gull-wings, lift their weapons bags out, close the gull-wings. When Soda, Tinunh and I open the back doors they are there. Tinunh hands them their luggage. We all... my family... strap our pack-bags and store our weapons in our armor bags. I do what they do. I trust my girls.

As I come from between the trucks I see the two units of soldiers reconnoitering the perimeter of the parking. They circle, every one of them looking over the outer parapet, the inner, down into the courtyard. I decide to do the same. Tinunh follows. Eenunh and Soda too. Thimiannh is talking to each troop as they go by behind the trucks. I hear him praise their performance today. If we are secure, they're the reason why. We are secure.

"This way," Eenunh says, and leads us toward a structure the the inner corner away from the ramp we came up. She opens a door, hinged on the left, like Earth doors.

Ramps, steeper than usual, down. We go down two floors, come out in a hallway. Three troops get in front of Eenunh. She directs them down the hall to the right. The hall follows the straight line a ways, and the angle takes another turn. There... Eenunh stops. The troops continue on. They realize she's stopped and come back, take stations, eyes down the hall, back. Eenunh opens a door, on the right, the outer side of the building. I can see inside, darkness. She opens it wider. Daylight! Tinunh steps as if to go in. Eenunh closes the door, goes on. On the left, the inner side of the building, she opens another door. The troops go in, stack-up style. Eenunh waits. They come out. She goes in. We go in. All the furniture is covered with brown tarps, green tarps. It looks like Eenunh's living room, lily-pad chairs, end tables, central coffee table.

There's a dining room off the right end of the living room, tarped table and eight chairs, a kitchen across the living room, dish cabinet, no dishes, tarped table with four chairs. Big windows out on the courtyard. Off the kitchen is a hallway to the right. Eenunh goes down it. Following I see a doorway opens back into the living room, and a hallway parallels this one, divided by a central wall going on beyond the dining room. Soda and Thin Man come behind me, through the doorway into the living room, go down that hall. The white-light-emitting substance is in the ceiling, low on the walls, brightens as feet move by. Eenunh opens a door on the left, a room, brightly lit from the windows. Bedroom, adjoining bath on the right. I go on down to another door, open it. Bedroom, and a bathroom in the far left corner, close to the outer wall, where the one in the first bedroom was to the inner wall. Every bedroom has its own bath! I like this place!

I pass Tinunh, coming back. She goes to the next bedroom, in. I come back to the one Eenunh's in. She's sprawled on the bed, on the brown tarp. Her weapons bag is on a chest of drawers, and her pack-bag is still strapped on her. I set my stuff on the floor, go to her, strip off the pack-bag strap, set it with her weapons bag. She barely opens her eyes. I lift my canteen, slosh it. She opens her eyes. I uncap it, hold it toward her mouth. She raises up on her elbow, takes hold of it. I hang on to it, let her tip it to her lips. She lets go, puts the cap back on.

"Gary, I'm very sorry this is the way things are," she says. "I didn't think any of this out. I just..."

"Neh," I say, and, in Emoilihn, say, "Me too. And now, it's just the way things are. And we keep moving forward."

She lays back on the bed. I don't annoy her with the kiss I want. She closes her eyes. A tear runs from her left eye. She wipes it with the knuckle of her index finger.

"Rest," I tell her, in Emoilihn. "Rest."

I sit and watch her. I love her face. It's weary. It's worried. Slowly it softens. She breathes regularly.

Tinunh is coming. I don't hear her, see anything. I just... know. I turn to see her as she comes to the open doorway. I gesture index finger to lips. She nods, stands there. I get up, go to her. She turns, goes down the hall, gesturing me to follow.

In the living room she says, "I want to see where we lived."

I don't know what to say.

"I remember this place," she says. "This is where I lived when I was a baby. Not this apartment, but... the one down and across the hall where Amah opened the door. We'd go out to shop, to meet my father for lunch sometimes. I remember when the Terror Wars came. It was like... suddenly... I was paying attention to everything. It wasn't... just... routine... daily life... any more. My mother carried a rifle when we went shopping, or to meet my father. We never went out at night any more. It was big change. I noticed. I remember."

Eenunh is here at my back! She wraps her arms around me, lays her head on my back. "Okay," she says, in English, "Let's go." She steps around me, steps close and offers her mouth to kiss. I do. She takes my left hand in her right. Tinunh turns toward the door, goes, opens it, and we follow her into the hall. The soldiers are there, armed, stationed at the angle junctions, left and right in the hall. Some are coming in with their weapons bags, going into apartments on both sides of ours.

Eenunh goes to the door she had opened before. She looks at it, doesn't open it, then... does.

Inside there are clothes on the floor, debris. There's a crib against the wall, a bed across the room, and... where I might expect a hall out to the rest of the apartment, a gaping hole! The wind gusts in!

I can see out to the buildings across the street! I get closer. There's rubble piled below. There's nothing above. Three floors below. Two above. Nothing. The whole side of the building is gone for six stories!

The girls are quiet, but their breathing is labored! I see the distress in Eenunh's face. Tinunh turns, buries her face in Eenunh's breast, weeps. Eenunh speaks quietly to her, strokes her hair, gathers it in a pony tail in her hand. Tinunh quakes, sobs!

"I'm sorry mother," she says, audibly. "I cry for you. Your life... you nearly died... here... in this room... in this house. And me, you saved me, took me out of here, kept me alive."

"You kept yourself alive," Eenunh tells her. "You were braver than I was. You kept going and that kept me going. You never complained. You took every hardship with acceptance, helped me think through it, and do what we had to do. You were my hero! You are my hero."

They laugh. I'm crying. I turn back toward the hole, look out across the city. I see other damaged buildings, to the south. Terror Wars. Wars of terror, state-sponsored terror, organized terror, disorganized in the field to just whatever terror madmen unleashed might decide to wreak on the civilians. And then the terror became the Government, and it was how the people lived, in a state of siege, struggling for food, for shelter, for safety, subject to the whims of whatever individual or group who came along might do. I look down in the rubble on the floor, find myself looking at two little golden eyes, and a downturned mouth, little point of a nose. I reach and pull it out of the rubble. It's a tiny cloth doll, double elbowed arms, double kneed legs, springy brown hair, in a little blue dress, no pants.

I turn, step to the girls. "Who is this?" I ask.

"Blink!" they both scream. "Blink!" They're laughing and crying, hugging. They step apart, start examining... Blink... head to toe, talking about how dirty 'he' is.

Tinunh turns to me, introduces me, "Blink, this is Gary! He's our new friend! He found you and brought you home to us! Gary, this is Blink. He's my... mine."

Blink doesn't say a word, but I feel compelled to say, "Hello Blink!"

Tinunh steps to me, hugs me with one arm, holding Blink between us. She stands that way a long time. Eenunh's smiling, beautifully, looking at her daughter. "Is Blink a boy?" I ask Tinunh. "Why is he wearing a dress?"

Tinunh cries, saying, "It was bedtime. That's his night shirt! It was cold. I couldn't let him sleep naked!" She laughs, crying. She lets go of me. Says, "Where is his blanket?" She's toeing at the rubble.

Eenunh turns, begins lifting things from the rubble, clothing, a hair brush. She opens the bathroom door, waves her hand. The light comes up dully. She reaches, turns back out, holding a hand mirror.

She moves toward the door. Tinunh has found Blink's blanket, has him wrapped in it, shows me. She goes to Eenunh. They hug. Eenunh goes out behind Tinunh. I stand a moment, wondering at the closeness of... death. Terror was here. It took a life. It spared two.

And I am the beneficiary of... death.