"A Cape Cod. With, ah, no liquor."

  Bartender didn't turn around.  Glanced in the wall mirror behind the bar stuff and kept wiping dry a tumbler.  "Please." He made sure he caught the girl's eye and real subtle, pointed at the EXIT sign also visible in the wall mirror.  A palm slap on the bar top.  "I'm thirsty." 

  "Duck 'em in here," men's voices said outside the bar entry door.  A couple.  Wedding outfits.  "That might explain the golf clubs with the big bow." The bartender tucked a leather tab book into his waistline.  Smoothed the apron, knee length. 

  Slow, tentative steps towards the lucky couple until halfway there and the tuxedo wrenching the bride-to-be's arm.  Stopped at a table and re-straightened silverware.  A small "clubhouse". 

  Bag of tees and a tee-off time.  Kinda crabby about plans shuffled around.  "But, do you think they really don't know, or...

  "Don't know. 

  "Anything? 

  "The mob's mixed up in all of this. 

  "So, it's too dangerous? 

  "No ice." The man shoved the bag of tees into a skinny pants pocket. 

  "Not even thin?" A sigh.  A sigh back.  

  "Remember what they counseled before the politicians went you know where."  She looked into the golfcart's visor mirror and put her lipstick on.  "Remind me."  The "m" a top and bottom lip together and perfecting of the lipstick.  The man pulled a wood from a golf bag and slouched against the cart beside the lady.  Took the 'frofrilly off the club and put it on the dashboard.  "What I'm going to remind you all day is what Father Trese said about married couples." 

  "And?" She took off a silky, perfumed neckscarf and flopped it over his shoulder.  

  "DAD!  You want pineapple, orange, or tomato?" 

  A long slow, balloon deflating sigh. 

"Don't."

  "Don't turn the lights on?" 

  "And keep your voices down." 

  Not much taller than a lower grade student, sitting in the 2x4 chair.  Someone knelt beside.  Someone moved to empty the ashtray.  A hand sprung for it and claimed it.  "How's your son?" 

  Staring through the picture window at the scavenging.  "We call them zombies," a child sat Indian-style, back straight against a chair leg.  "We don't go out there any more," another child sat the same, wrapped an arm around a leg.  A hand reached up for the flask. 

  "They sent home dirt in a flour sack."  The flask was passed hand to hand to hand.  Lips just wetted.  Gulps.  Almost a dozen people breathing steady, little puffs of steam from mouths opening but no words coming out.  "What's it mean?" 

  Dark figures approached the window and pressed not-saluting hands to glass to peer in.  "More war." 

"Well, whatever it was or wasn't,"

  a mom started to explain.  "IT BLEW UP." A kid told. 

  "How could it? I have the Contract right here." The man fumbled with a leather sports bag on the front seat.  Threw it over the seat as the woman sighed and asked, "Did you put the lid back on the Orange Juice?" 

  "Somebody really told you it was a Timeshare?" Another kid looking through a box of lace and embroidery put with the trash near the curb asked. 

  "Guess we've been duped." The woman got a sad face but the tears stayed in her eyes as she bit her lip.  "Is there a phone around here?" 

  "Downtown." Yet another kid declared.

  "Given to drink?" A gentle girl of a lady asked of a brother-in-law who wouldn't come out of the jukejoint.  Three ears of corn were half ground in a blender.  A shotglass being tapped on the bartop brought a girl bartender not a barwench over with dug up antique bottles on a tray.  More shotglasses placed in groups of five by sausage fingers in each one.  Smelling each liquid.  A serving cart wheeled behind the seated on barstools.  A truck's oil pan and a skeletal engine mounted atop.  A woman with a child clinging to each leg and a bandana covering rainwater washed hair.  "Gimme the matches." 

  "Comes another one!" The groan of a jet plane could just barely be heard.  "Get MOM!  GET A MOM!" A shake of the crusty black soot from garbage bag rain shelter.  Sneaker tracks in the quarter inch of soot covering the sidewalk.  "She's belching hard," the loudspeaker on the tank reported.  Lower and lower, the jet inked a dirty sky meaner.  "See any flames?" A man asked a woman with a blackened face and fleshwhite rings around her eyes.  "Not on that one.  Engines in flames was," clearing black powder dust from a tally sheet with symbols, "FOUR incoming ago." 

  "Is that right son?" The toehead blonde boy had gray hair that day and black in the gaps between his teeth.  "Here, suck on this," the woman pushed a wetted papertowel at the kid.  "And answer the man." A clear space around lips showed a little grin.  He nodded emphatically.  "Correct, Sir." 

  "Stand down Jersey," it came out as a mumble at first in the retelling.  Smelling salts.  WIDE AWAKE then.  Jumped up, hands and feet working themselves into a mix of karate chopping and dancing on a stage with the cane.  The astronaut suit not only deflated but bedraggled.  An iron's burnt crust shape with a white square in the triangle on the arm of the shirt being taken out of the still smoking suit.  "What was you iarnin'?" A metal jacketed syringe plunged into a thigh.  "I'll do that myself next time," the smoldering man grabbed the wrist of the nurse and shook the thing out of her hand.  She smacked him in the face.  Then reached into a black leather medical bag and pulled out a syringe and glass bottle.  Tipped it in the death position.  The man made himself get his other arm out of the suit and jumped his butt off the folding chair and pulled the legs off knobby knees and boxers.  "Get my boots off before they handcuff me," he head butted towards one of us on the floor but turned his whole upper body like catching a punt and knocked his head into the nurse's hands. 

  Wiggle it.  Wiggle it.  "Seems cut in half." 

  "We'll have to see." 

  The medical bag thunked onto broken glass and twisted fuselage part.  Boots and jeans, a sweetly hairy stomach scraped, cutting skin, but a man sliding down the strip of metal between the pilot and co-pilot's seats.  Incinerated. 

  "Who was the first one up out there?" A woozy me.  Shirt neck grabbed, twisted, face coming at...

  BREATHE IT 

 

  "But, but you couldn't have come out of there." 

  "Why?" 

 "There's no there there honey." 

 

Heads and eyes looking

  at the floor of the elevator shaft.  A grown up asked, "Is that the body?" 

  Suits coming up stairs and down the hallway. 

  One kid said to another, "Maybe that wasn't the Vampire." 

  "No, it was.  Had the black robe." 

  More heads and eyes looking down the shaft.  A whack on a muscled arm, means they went up. 

  "I'll call it in." 

  "Come on." A tug on a tie. 

  A quick crack open of a stairwell door.  And a firecracker tossed.  "Idiot 

  "Jesus! Whaddya do that for?" 

  A shoe used to prop the door open again.  Smoke clearing.  Dressed to the nines fancy high heel shoes.  Shredded clothing.  "They went up there," a man called in from back pressed against the hallway wall.  "Yeah." Came a lady's voice as smoke came out of her mouth.  "That's why we came down."  

  "Karen!  You look torched." A fancy dressed man in a coverup went to squeeze her arms together but quickly stopped himself and crossed his arms.  "Are you hurt?" 

  "WHAT'S HE ASKING ME?" 

"We'll call it a caravan then." The voice

  was flat but terse.  People pretended that it was a nice visit.  

  "Be a nice girl and that might not be so bad for you." The bruise on the woman's back matched the barrel of the gun herding us into an easy capture. 

  "A bunch of 'em!" A goofy grinning jacked up character like Yosemite Sam fired two gigantic revolvers into the air.  "They'll hear that on the highway." A woman assured.  But we'd seen the dead who'd tried to help. A three guy team approached the shooter.  "Done?" 

  "He's done." Another woman dressed like a gypsy opened a woven bag and peeled a twenty off a roll of stripped 'em of it.  "That's not stealing is it?" A leather jacketed boy wondered out loud.  "Why do you ask?" A far-away looking woman with a carpenter's belt holster stuffed with pistols didn't even look at the kid.  "It's on this list," he took a greasy fingered sheet of looseleaf from a pocket.  "Read it." 

  "I don't want to." The woman pouted.  "My dreamy is wearing off.  Let's get there." 

  "Let's try this again." An asthma attack had the Officer unable to just say it into the stolen Cop car radio.  The Officer turned to bend over to catch breath but was facing others with guns.  "Oh, oh, ohKAY." 

  "Why did you fire your weapon Occifer?" 

  "I, I try TRIED," eyes trying to read cue cards, breath steadying, "To stop the bad guys, bah" a loud smack on a bare back of a hairy chested man rolling a hand for the line to come out.  The Officer fell forward in a sort of swoon.  Peeked at the cue card in the hand of a hottie and stood up tall; "BUT they got away." Someone yelled, "That's the cue asshole!" The hottie stroked the smacked back.  "Let's go Epp." 

  "Idiot." A man said casually when someone fired a .22 near the feet of the Officer. 

  "It's about the oyle." Someone slammed a car door not going any further. 

  "I couldn't not," someone winced at the peroxide sting on full frontal road rash.  "Should I just write: Clung onto the bumper?" A helper asked.  "That doesn't begin to explain this." A Detective looked at the smear of black down the highway.  "Why could you not?" A Superior asked, stepping in front of a kid still staring at the roofing tar, and vehicles all over the road with shotgun blown out windshields.  A PAL jacketed man tucked another child behind legs.  Mirrored sunglasses and the creaking of leather turned heads.  "Hurry up.  Why?" 

  "They had all our children lined up naked and being photographed on a front lawn."  A squeaky chain unrolled from a tow truck crane.  A mousey haired nerdy type woman brought over a mug shot book.  "Gotta go," the wounded person ran towards a waiting Mustang.  That roared off. 

"I picked this up on the radio."

  The details were messenger'd up and down the line we were manning. 

  "It's one of us."  A barely graduated from high school kid said to a middle ager.  An agent brought a case file that was rapidly evolving from initial situation into developments.  "But it's still an impasse on some of these rulings," a consultant still studying State-to-State v. Federal Law broke out another folder. 

  "Sure it's not a drill?" A Commander asked a Commander.  "I'll try and find out." 

  Teams called together.  "How could we get there without disrespecting jurisdiction?" 

  "We've got a couple tanks we used in Tennessee." 

  "We could go in as us." 

  "Us?" 

  "Professionals." 

  "Let me think about that." 

  Like a couple decades before there'd been a snarl of road traffic and drug trafficking in West Knoxville.  It seemed a siege in many ways at the point that somebody had to step up.  The Services put service over petty arguments about credit and navigated the Branches' jurisprudence to at least clear paths and treat the wounded.  Back then, narcoterrorism was more of a concept than a foundation word for Americans to rally around and support. 

"What are you doing

  in here soldier?" The administrator started to back out of the broom closet with the quickly grabbed copy paper.  The man didn't answer just squished up his eyes harder and his face turned bright red.  The woman put the paper on a desk in the corner of the office room.  Slipped back into the little space while popping a piece of chewing gum in her mouth.  "Is there something in your eye, Sir?" His head rolled into a no and a yes. 

  "Let's step into more light since you have a firearm.  Okay?" 

  He followed her.  "Is it a sliver or something? I mean I saw you working on the outbuilding earlier." 

  Hands went up to rub the eyes. 

  "Did you get it?" 

  Again the headroll.  "It's not a sliver," he said after a big deep breath. 

  "What else could it be? Did you sleep in poison ivy?" 

  The man chuckled.  "Not last night." 

  "What then?" She looked closely at his eyes.  He ducked his. 

  "Missed my kid's birthday." 

  The administrator gently sighed. 

  "So I feel like I failed everyone." He focused on a cinderblock. 

  "Do they live close by?" 

  "Isn't that like aiding the enemy?" 

  "The Courts wouldn't do that." 

  "What are you kids thinking about for dinner?" 

  "Not hungry." 

  "What if I'm paying?" 

  "Is ending tariffs on enemies 'aiding' them?" 

  "Whoa.  Other people actually think about this stuff too?!" 

  A rifle through a purse for a highlighter and TO DO list. 

  "What do you think?" 

  "Above my pay grade to think that hard...But 

  "What?" 

  "A lot of things are a matter of timing." 

  "Like deciding what to do with war booty?" 

  "War BOOTY?? Are we up to all that paperwork already?!" 

  "Maybe we should eat in."

"What's this for?"

  The photographer snapped a photo of the writer holding up the cash.  "Clean underwear," the airman grinned.  The money pressed back to chest.  "Buy yourself a cheeseburger!" 

  "Remember those?" The photographer snatched up the money that fell to the ground.  "Not since pandemic days, so barely a memory.  'Sides, head's full of all those gorgeous women at the cafè last night." 

  "Bit of a headache too I bet." 

  "It's routine to get these recharged," an officer walking past explained to a newbie, "There where you'll turn in scheduling wish list.  Any questions so far?" 

  Half a world away the sun sank lower in an endless sky.  Not much glinted in ports readied for the steady flow of diplomacy and enforcement of policy.  The buzzword of the day had been whispered, then pried from some vet corrs...undermining.

"What is that smell?"

  "I don't smell anything?" The driving mom said to the mom standing beside the car. 

  "Oh, there's a smell." 

  "Have you guys been eating okay?" The driving mom looked in the rearview and asked.  "Kinda sorta," the young soldier replied.  "So here.  I want you to use these up." She handed him a six inch thick stack of plastic.  "Whaddya do mom? Knock off a credit card factory?" 

  "Most of them only have a few points left."  

  He patted his now bulging pocket and grinned.  "Sorry I had to give you my laundry.  Ours is broke." 

  "It's okay.  Need me to call someone?" To no answer.  "I shouldn't have said that." 

  "Just temporary there anyway." 

  "Well, I brought these!" She reached to the passenger side floor for a giftbag of DVD's.  "Sorry, no porn." 

  "MOM." The guy blushed. 

  Outside a rain shower started to lift lighter.

"Son, how do you plan to win the war if

  they are calling you the belligerent?" The man called out to a called up in the last thirty-seconds.  A really loud belch was the first response from a young gunner drove around all night because of the dogs.  At that point it wasn't only North Korean, patented, robo-dogs, traitors to nation had been stealing kids toys and having them sniffed by erzast "trainers".  We'd been sold yet another bill of goods packaged as U.S. Government property once the bill of lading was signed. 

  The only people that could save us was ourselves and locals were tied up and dog-mauled and half crazed about threats against loved ones. 

  Damn straight people drove to the outskirts of D.C., Virginia to protect this nation.

"Are they stalking us or

  are we just in their way?" 

  She'd asked the question in the jungle as boots and barefeet walked over and over what had been a person. 

  She'd asked a wounded camera person and then a freaking out soldier who'd fallen to knee.  The camera person was probably bleeding out yet her hands stuffed a can top size hole through the body with big soft leaves.  The soldier's hands tied in front of him with a muddy gray silk scarf. 

  It was a long time before the cicada picked up where they'd left off, the cadence of us and them.  

  In the morning the sun could not find it's way through the soupy milk sky.  Someone had tied newspaper plastic wrappers to many of the branches of trees surrounding the yard.  The three people that had been in the jungle were asked to recreate the scenario.  

  The store smoldering sent a long whisp of dirty cloud into the air.  An offshore wind jagged it's middle.  It somehow spoke of what's happening to us.

  "Make the foot work," to "I can't there's no more pulse." 

  A child imagined flexible.  Slithered under the driver's seat, reeeeached, and couldn't quite jam the foot on the gas.  A man hand shimmied a butt-end of a 2x4 up his arm, around the driver's seat. Putchitsh. The tangled mass of bodies shivered.  Marker smell filled the air.

  The candy-striper wiped hands on pink and wipe stripes.  Tucked a wool lap blanket more tightly under the legs of a man in a wheelchair.  Pushed the contrapshun into the vestibule.  Picked up a black medical bag from behind a glory statue and hurried. 

  The posterboard sign smashed up against the passenger side glass read 

     Iwe need you