"It's not what you think," a woman told a frantic

  looking child, small in a circus of flashbulbs and clicking sounds like cicada.  The child who couldn't speak at the time later said she was wondering, (i)Is that my real father?(i) 

  "Why is that woman handcuffed to that man?" A typist asked a beat reporter.  The reporter shook head just a little dazed himself, but fighting nervous at all the commotion.  Then he unfolded a roll of newspapers.  WAR CRIMINAL RECAPTURED was the headline on one of the less popular papers.  "Could be related to this." 

  "I better call her Literary Agent." 

  "And a lawyer, no?" 

"We'll take this one, it's the fastest."

  Scrambled people had put together everything they had on "the issue", boarded a jet, and filed off as the most professional looking set in the world.  A small army of Trump University graduates, service people founding fields of discipline, and the paying attention to current events before, during, and after "legal action".  The "crem de la crem" of not totally bogged in a system perpetually grinding into gridlock as people "partied up" to battle for the hill. 

  A tall man placed a small stack of bills on an old oak table in front of the dismissed man.  He held surveillance camera stills and a mini tape in his hand like cards in a cardgame.  The dismissed man in the crumpled suit started blubbering. 

  A scream ripped through the saturated air. 

  The bodies of the dead people had had their throats slit. 

  "Nobody here knows where these bodies came from," said a man who was taking peoples' jackets and suitcoats to cover up the dried bloody and stiff sitting dead people. 

  "We'll start canvassing," said a policeman in a sweater that he'd thrown on in a hurry over his white teeshirt.  "We'll start with the neighbors." 

  "Wait.  Just hold on a minute." The town adminstrator's temple veins were pounding his pulse.  "I'm not sure anybody should go out there." 

The symbol had been carefully placed like a mineret.

  Some people moved from space to space, donning interchangeable sandals, and dresscasual pants.  Others cowered. 

  A Town Administrator wondered out loud at the options.  "Vandalism charges?" 

  "Who to charge?" A mom who'd started a Cupcake Club and who was filling in for the real Secretary kept playing devil's advocate so the man could "get his head around" what seemed like a dream or an hallucination.  This strategy blocked the ongoing shock questions like (i)how can this be happening(i)? 

  "What does it mean?" The TA asked the person who still had internet and who was scrolling through hundreds of images that came up under search: symbols. 

  "Maybe it's a brand." 

  "Of like cereal or something.  Come on people." 

  "Where did they all come from?" 

  "Your airport was one of the ones flights got diverted to." 

  "Well, where's the commander guy?" 

  "He fainted.  The heat and the stench." 

  "Well then who is that?" 

  People crept from under desks to peek out the window.  A man in a suit was approaching one of the men near the symbol.  The man was framing the Courthouse with a cardboard square.  "Are you the Representative here?" 

  "Well, I'm not the Senator, but" 

  "Dismissed." 

  The "commander guy" was revived with a bucket of melting ice.  Pushed outside. 

  The man with the cardboard square framed him then realized something.  He pocketed the square like a golf score card.  "Long time no see brother." 

  The commander guy blinked through the water dripping down his face.  The man in the sandals said, "Checkmate".

  "This is that Senator in D.C."  Other senators also picked up the fundraising phones and all heard a southern accented man squawking.  "What were y'all thinking?  Of course I understand but, this is SERIOUS!  They literally shuttered the International Criminal Court and now they can't find more than half of the criminals!" 

  "I might know.  I might know.  I might know what to do." He hung up and everyone else did too.  They looked at him.

"Hey, who's in charge here?"

  The man asked it like this group we'd stumbled upon had gone through the same process as our group. 

  "See, I wouldn't have opened with that.  Not my style," said the wounded alpha. 

  "God, obligations.  And we're a civil bunch, so I guess the Law." The woman in a Leave It To Beaver cooking apron explained.  Right away a man on a bunk bed said, "She's always been so obedient." 

  "You see it differently?" Asked an anthropology-background person amongst us. 

  The man yawned and scratched at the red bug bites on a leg.  "What led you people here?" 

  "Bad weather." Someone replied.

"Maybe you're addicted to entropy." The

  woman was trying to assess (i)something's wrong(i) and had started with the people in the vicinity.  "What would make you think that?" 

  "You talk about it a lot." 

  "It has to do with my working thesis." 

  "Which is?" 

  "Well, I don't have a neat statement about a world like this one." 

  "Is this about the world? Or is this about you?" 

  "Probably both.  I mean look, they all acted as a group to tell you something is wrong, but I don't see a group here now." 

  "Do you feel blamed?" 

  "For the something wrong? No." 

  "You can go." 

  Campus had emptied like the leaves from the trees. 

"Don't just be sweet on me,

  marry me and we'll raise a little family." The surviving couple in the Codebreakers Club had relayed a next location to keep eyes on.  The ease and cadence of their casual poetry made them popular dinner guests. 

  It wasn't terribly surprising then when some young people started acting like they had a (i)secret(i).  Some of the young people were wild-eyed, some lost looking, and very few had known the world of consumer goods and faith wars.  But all knew that actual survival "ain't pretty".  

  "Don't be that!" A man with a garbage dump accordion would stop playing and yell at any soul walking the edge between thinking (i)satisfied(i) and losing soul.  Little foil packets, baggies, used smoke cans littered the walking trails on the fringes.  "But I ain't got no kingdom," blank-eyed children would say.  "They's jus copying their drop out parents." 

  "You sound Southern American Mr. Accordion.  Or did you grow up here?" 

  "I been around a long time.  Long time." 

  "Old soul, eh?" 

  "Mind if we take your photo?" 

  He straightened the tuxedo tee-shirt and propped the accordion on his knees. 

  "You pair real angels? Or is Mr. Sam in town?" 

  "We're not a pair and don't know Uncle Sam personally." 

  "That's probly good.  There's a bunch of his men over there by the scales." 

  "Really?"  

  "Ah-hah, been here a long time too." 

  "We seen a mess of 'em.  You'n all they sent.  Lawsie." A wispy blue-eyed, older man came all the way out from behind a wall corner not attached to a building, telling unseen others, "I think it's safe.  They don't look like nothin' much." 

  "You weigh up the garbage going in or the garbage going out?" 

  A toothless woman smiled hugely.  "Honey, ain't nobody weighed nothing up in here in more'n fifteen years." 

  "'Cept one time we weighed Alvie's shoes." A different older person said.  Some of the people nodded.  "He filled 'em with ceement so as to stay soberlike." 

  "Are we not in Africa?" 

  "Hush.  Never let 'em see you sweat." 

  "And times kids weigh cats in the way." 

  "Preggers?" 

  "Pregnant?" 

  "Then we bet on how's many'll come out." 

  "I see," a third party with the communications people put away a compass and maplines traced onto a newspaper page.  "It's another thirty kilometers." 

  "Maybe we should camp here with these lovely folks." 

  One spat.  One adjusted his pants.  And the woman blinked. 

  "Maybe not too far away.  And take turns sleeping." 

  "We'll show you the Church." 

  The others looked at the one who'd said it with narrowed eyes. 

  "Okay.  Maybe in the morning." 

"They flushed," a kid yelled to a Dad.

  Dozens of TV monitors.  Kid pointed at the one camera-ing a jet's letloose.  "Freeze that." 

  Another monitor showed a mosh of crowd.  Rainbow flags and Palestinian dominating center view.  Keyboarding.  Some monitor screens breaking images apart like iced mountain parts bursting.  Then rearranging. 

  "Those reported calling the thing 'a wave'." 

  "Some sort of communications thing?" 

  Magnifying the jet's trash. 

  Dozens of small black boxes. 

  "Pull up that amphitheater halfway to Babylon."  A flip through plastic pages of negatives.  "This one," a finger pointed at what may have seemed like stone ruins. 

  "All those dropped." 

  "All what Sir?" 

  "Who said that?" 

  "Monitor twenty-seven." 

  Crowds, a stadium, all the people raving cheers.  Then no visible reason they all collapsed.  "Were any bleeding from their ears?" 

  No answer.  The question put on a delay, primed to chat with the medical team. 

  "Watch this one." 

  A similar jet.  A flush.  Static.  "Let it run through." 

  "We're out of peanut butter.  What should we do for lunch?" 

  Static to film frames.  Film frames picking up speed.  Sky.  Landscape.  A dizzying mix.  Then suddenly the video camera on the ground, bouncing like a soccer ball.  Stillness.  Almost two full twenty-four hour cycles of earth life in light and dark.  A wall of fire.

"It wasn't fourteen minutes,"

  from the time they'd left the tent to the time they were brought back on stretchers through the same tent flap. 

  Everyone and everything armed to the teeth, having seethed through less than two hours of awake after a sleep shift. 

  "YOU MUST," a whisper scream at furiously fast backs.  Fastly unplugging, coiling, stuffing equipment into clicking cargo doors.  "I told you," one man whirled on heel, pointed in the face of another, "(i)YOU(i)." 

  Another got behind both men.  And still more men fashioned themselves into the first tug-of-war of the day.  "And I passed (i)your opinion(i)along," the man backhanded the finger point out of his face.  Talking with stomach air. 

  "What opinion?" 

  "It's TOO RIGID.  Somebody's got this whole fucking thing in a straight line from this hellhole to Russia through Europe." 

  "Nobody leaves." 

  "What happened?" A headbandaged and bleeding woman named Donna clawed at the straps holding her to the stretcher. 

  "Bit of a setback honey," a man tore off a jumpsuit down to his scrubs.  Just stay calm.  Don't be a screamer on me.  All excited to go home already." 

  Bins of medical supplies were rushed over. 

  "They won't.  They will not listen to us anywhere in the world now." The man leaned heavy on an impromptu cane and drained a fifth. 

  "What happened?" A woman put two other bottles of liquor in an apron pocket. 

  "They labeled us all faggots." 

  Gasps of shock.  People gathering around. 

  "Anyone in the media.  Anyone with families.  Anyone religious.  Anyone they wanted to leave behind." 

  "That goes beyond fatwa.  That's more like jihad," explained two women who'd just arrived. 

  It was a tall man in his underwear who rushed into the pause, jabbed his leg with an injection of vitamins and minerals, and re-started actual conversation.  "Problem right now as I understand it, is that if we break up the axis/allies front, there's more chance of smaller group encirclement." He shook his head side to side to get ear drops in deep, chattered his teeth, and flapped his cheeks to the point of making noise.  A guy lifted himself off leaning against a sawhorse against a wall.  "Oh my God.  That makes sense." 

"I'll be the bean, you be the..."

  The sister said it to her brother as a fifth attempt to get him to finish a sentence.  Others broke down and clued, (i)po, po, po(i).  "Pole?" The brother asked foggily.  People around him nodded (i)improvement(i).  Then he sat up and rubbed his shin and asked, "Or are you tawkin' 'bout the shicken shester? Po Folkses shicken?" 

  "He's okay," and "He's fine," were both the snapshot.  Dropping in and on the move.  "Only back up plan we need?" 

  Hands reaching for "the good stuff", each other's hands.

"Now we just have to get you in the hangar!"

  "Put ME DOWN!" No one would. 

  "Well," to what should I know, "You should all know I was the first one in there." Some people dropped their hold on holding Marie up.  "And we're here, now, again." 

  "Put my mother down!!" A man dropped a bag of gear and hollered and reached for his gun. 

  "I am not your mother." It was down to three people carrying her.  "But I did put your gun in a new safety holder." The man looked at his hand pulling the pistol and the pistol not coming out of the holster.  "No mother would put their children through this life." 

  "God put us here!" 

  "Hear, hear! Amen.  Now we all go in together." 

"It's mohny."

  "Is he saying money?" 

  "No sir." 

  "What's that mean? I need to know and I need to know now," another liaison asked through the choppy air and the bleeps and sirens. 

  "It's, it's whawhawhat THEY, US, WE'VE BEEN CALLING THE GRUNTS' RIDEALONG TESTIMONY SIR, SO WE DON'T EVER LOSE THE WHOLE STORY."  The liaison spoke into the sat phone as choppers landed and took off. 

  "Where we y'all?" 

  "Honestly?" 

  "Lies," a sideways peace sign, "equal (i)death(i)," the woman was putting on a uniform blouse and trading shoes from a duffle bag.  "Or a month in the hole.  Tell me." 

  "We were in the curl." 

  "Getting your hair did?" 

  Another person stepped forward onto the tarmac.  "See you on the other side mofos." 

  "Picture the desert as a basket." 

  "Not sure we have time for all this embellishment." 

  "What if I just come with you?"